That Wild Berries Should Grow (3 page)

After the garden was planted I went back to the screen porch, but every hour or so I hurried out to the garden to see if anything had come up. Finally Grandmama told me that it would take a couple of weeks. I was sure that in a couple of weeks I would find a way to get back to the city. In a couple of weeks I'd be at the movies with Lucille Macken and maybe even wearing lipstick. Someone else would have to take care of my garden.

Night

In the city the rule was:

come home when

the street lights go on
.

In the country

I know it is night

when overhead

the white patches

disappear from the wings

of the nighthawks

and the whippoorwill

makes his rounds boasting

he can stay out

as late as he pleases
.

After dinner tonight I went out to check my garden. Even though it's been nearly a week since I planted it, nothing seemed to be happening. But when I dug up one of the beans I had planted, I saw a sprout with two tiny leaves sticking out. I stuck it back in the ground, hoping I hadn't killed it.

I stood at the edge of the orchard and looked out over the fields that lay between me and the road that led back to the city. As the sun began going down, things got quieter and quieter. The birds disappeared, except for some black-and-white birds that my grandparents said were nighthawks. They flew up so high in the sky that you could hardly see them, and then they dropped down until you thought they would crash into the ground. Instead, just in time, they swooped up again. As it grew dark there were no sounds but the crickets chirping and the call of the whippoorwill. Nighthawks and whippoorwills. The names sounded sad to me.

I missed the sounds of the city: the cars screeching past our apartment, and my friends calling to one another. Lots of children live up and down our street. In the early evenings, before I got sick, we would play “Relievo” and “Giant Steps.” There were six of us. Every night after dinner we would hurry out of our houses to find each other. Sometimes we would just sit and watch the cars hurry by until the streetlights came on. In the city you never have to listen to silence like you do in the country. There is always something to talk back to you, even if it's just an automobile horn or the squeal of brakes.

The quiet of the country made me nervous, so I hurried back to the cottage before it got dark. Grandmama was sitting in her favorite chair, hemming dishtowels and listening to Caruso records on the Victrola. Caruso is a famous Italian singer who is dead now. Grandpapa was reading the newspaper, shaking his head over what he was reading. “Germany has chosen a dangerous leader. This Hitler is an evil man. We have friends in Germany who will find themselves in trouble. I only hope they can leave before it is too late.”

I asked Grandpapa, “Why did you come to America from Germany?”

“
Ach
, over there they wanted everyone to go into the army. They would have sent me to Africa to fight just so they could steal a little more land for themselves. That was not for me.”

Grandmama sighed. “But when we came away from Germany we had to leave behind everyone we loved.” I thought about my parents and my aunts and uncles and my friends miles away in the city, and I understood what Grandmama felt. Grandmama told me about the
grossen Schiff
, the big boat, that had brought her and Grandpapa to America. “We sailed from the city of Bremerhaven,” she said. “My papa and mama and my brothers and sister all came to see us off. As the boat pulled away from the dock my family grew smaller and smaller until I couldn't see them at all. They separated your grandpapa and me. The women had their own cabins and the men had theirs. I was in a stateroom no larger than a closet with four other women, and I knew none of them.”

“You became good friends,” Grandpapa said. “We could hear you laughing and giggling.”

“For the first days we were all seasick. You can't have five women in a closet, all throwing up together, without becoming friends.”

Grandpapa laughed. “You should have been in my cabin. Hans Liebig's mother packed a basket for him to take on the ship. The basket was the size of a bathtub. We ate from it for a week: bread, sausages, pickles, cheeses, cakes. We were so busy eating Hans's food we had no time to be seasick.”

“Except for the canoes on Belle Isle,” I said, “I've never been in a boat.”

“Our friend Mr. Ladamacher has a boat,” Grandpapa said. “This week we will take you out on the lake fishing.”

I wished I hadn't said anything about a boat. I didn't think I wanted to be out on that big lake in a little boat.

Fishing

A chase in the bait box

until my five quick fingers hug

the minnow's slick body
,

the flat face, the hook

in and out of the lips
,

then overboard and freedom

on a string to tempt

a passing perch. Soon

two prisoners dancing

to a single tune
.

Today was our day to go fishing on Mr. Ladamacher's boat. It took forever to load the car. There were straw hats and umbrellas to protect us from the hot sun. There were raincoats in case it should rain. There were cushions to sit on. There were bottles of Grandpapa's homemade root beer packed in ice.

There was also the picnic hamper. Grandmama was up at daybreak making our lunch: sweet and sour potato salad with bacon and green onions, deviled eggs, ham and chicken sandwiches, sugar and molasses and oatmeal cookies. Living in the country seemed to put you closer to food. I wished I could pack some of it up and send it to my parents.

When he saw us unload our car, Mr. Ladamacher shook his head. “My little boat will never hold all of that,” he said. But it did. We put on our straw hats and sat on our sweaters and cushions and tucked the food under the seats. Grandpapa and Mr. Ladamacher fished and Grandmama kept handing around food.

At first the boat was close to the shore and I wasn't too worried, but as the shore got farther and farther away, the boat started to feel as small as a thimble bobbing on the lake. Grandpapa saw how scared I looked. To take my mind off the big lake he asked if I wanted to try fishing. He found a pole for me. “Catch yourself a minnow from the pail and put it on the hook.” I looked into a pail of quick silvery forms flashing back and forth in the water. My hand closed on one of the silvery darts. I felt the minnow squirm in my hand. Grandpapa showed me how to stick the minnow on a hook. The line went into the water. I watched the minnow disappear into the lake.

I was sitting there feeling awful about the minnow when I felt a tug on the line and let out a scream. “Hang on,” Grandpapa said. I reeled in a fish.

Grandmama was pleased. “A nice perch. Big enough for the frying pan.” When I put the next minnow on the hook I hardly felt sorry for it at all.

We had the perch for dinner, and they were the best fish I ever tasted. We all went upstairs to bed early. “There's no lullaby like a rocking boat,” Grandpapa said.

The quiet followed me all the way up the narrow wooden stairway to my bedroom, where my grandpapa has painted garlands of pink roses around the walls. There is a wooden dresser, a rocking chair, a brass bed, and a little table where I can write my poems. It was so quiet in my room that to stop the silence I opened my window. I could hear the leaves of the big poplar tree rattling and rustling just outside my window. So I knew I wasn't alone.

I hadn't thought much about trees before I came to Greenbush. They just seemed to be there like lampposts and buildings. Here in the country, where there aren't any buildings or lampposts, the trees stand out.

Early in the morning when I wake up, I can look out of the window and see Grandpapa walking in the orchard. He pays each tree a visit. He knows all of the fruit trees as well as he knows Grandmama and me.

There are other trees, too. When my mother was a girl, she planted a little maple tree. Now the tree reaches to the roof of the cottage. In front of the cottage are two weeping mulberry trees. Their branches hang all the way down to the ground. You can push the branches apart like a curtain and hide yourself in the little room the weeping branches make.

My favorite tree is an old apple tree. It teeters on the edge of the bank that leads down to the lake. Grandpapa says the apples are sour and wormy, and the tree isn't worth caring for. I like the tree because it makes an umbrella of shade where I can sit and read and keep an eye on the lake.

The Library

Alone
,

walking slowly
,

my city girl's bare feet

shy of glass and stone
,

fields orange with hawkweed —

by whose hands

so many?

One look takes in the town
,

awnings cranked down

against the sun

making pools of shade

cool to cross
.

The library building

its age in stone 1859
.

Floor, tables, chairs
,

all oak

all with shiny skin

of varnish
.

Sun stopped by

window shades

the color of dried moss
.

Books leap

to my hands

green, tan, brown
,

dog-eared
.

I choose three
,

their small weight

friendly

in my arms
.

And home

I walk

three friends

with me now
.

Everything is up! My garden has five green rows. Only what I had to do was awful. Grandmama said there were too many seedlings. (“Seedlings” is one of my favorite words now.) They were crowding each other out. So I had to pull some of them up and throw them away. I hated that.

Something else. I can walk barefoot. It took me a week to get used to going without shoes. When you're barefoot you can feel the softness of the dirt and the graininess of the sand and the sun's heat on the sidewalks in town. It's as if you're attached to the earth.

I walked to the library today because all the books I brought with me to read are used up. Though she had never set eyes on me before, the librarian, Miss Walther, greeted me with the kind of smile that says, “I knew you'd be coming.” She was sitting at her desk with her glasses clamped to her nose and her white hair done up in a big puff with a pencil through it. When I said I would please like a library card, she wrote down my name without asking what it was.

I love the way libraries smell. If you just smell one book, it doesn't smell like that, but when you get a whole lot of books together in one room it's a papery, leathery, inky smell. The older the books, the better the smell. In the Greenbush library the books are so old that some of them have rubber bands around them to keep in the pages. In the back of the books, where people have signed them out, the handwriting is spidery and faded. Their names are different than ours. Girls were called Abigail and Sophia and Matilda. Boys were called Theodore and Amos and Joshua. I love the sound of the names and say them over to myself.

The library in Greenbush is different from the library in the city. In the city you know you couldn't read all the books in a million years. In Greenbush if you lived in the town all the time you would be able to read up one shelf and down the next. You could finish all the books in the library in a couple of years.

I took out
Eight Cousins
because I had only read if three times and
The Princess and the Goblin
because I had forgotten some parts in it and
Little Women
because I always take that out. When I got the books home, Grandpapa picked up each book and turned it over in his hand. “Yah, that's a good one,” he said, although I was sure he had no idea what the book was about.

Grandmama just shook her head. “Sit and read all day and nothing gets done. A waste of time.” But she gave me some cookies to eat under the apple tree.

I had just opened my book when out of the corner of my eye I caught a quick movement. It was a chipmunk. It crept close and sat up staring at me. I tossed it a piece of cookie. That scared it away, but in a minute it was back eating the crumb. I kept tossing the pieces closer and closer to me. The chipmunk crept up to me. He rested one paw on my hand while he nibbled the last piece of cookie. He was so busy eating he let me run a finger down his back. The fur was soft and warm. The bones were so delicate I was almost afraid to touch him. I stopped thinking all wild animals were ferocious.

The Rat

High

above the altar

of the country church
,

God shines in the window

disguised as a dazzle of sun
.

On this rainy Sunday

the window is dark
.

A lie has crept