Tootie McDaniels performs her autumn gardening, as her neighbors rightly do too, displaying talents in adjacent lots, acting out their morality plays on the Master Gardeners’ method to compost the vegetable garden remains, on the wise and prudent manner to attack ruthless, invasive blackberry canes, on spading and tilling techniques of fall in preparation for the glories of next spring.
It is this latter work that tires her out, prepping the soil around the hostas and bleeding hearts and the lettuce beds. In the warming sun of the waning afternoon she strolls to the remaining piece of outdoor furniture, lying down for a quick rest on her faded blue canvas chaise lounge. She muses, “This chair was once cornflower blue — back when Mom bought it.”
Lovely, lulling autumn sun can be the narcotic that takes our minds to other worlds, of hope, of despair. The impending woes of winter might knock us into torpor, stupor, negligence in vigil. Today the sun casts its spell and Tootie’s mind sails off.
She awakes to a jungle about her. The lounge — and she — are entangled, snared in the taunting green tendrils of conquering blackberry canes, traveling on as she watches, slithering about her ankles, her wrists. She is fascinated, observing rather objectively, transfixed.
On of Tootie’s prideful vanities, her fine lawn, sways transformed. Grasses, sedges, thistles, all with seed heads gracefully oscillating in the breeze, stalks of this growth brushing her nose and toes.
Tootie blinks, beginning to fathom the forest about her. Where once had stood one broadleaf maple and a pair of black locusts, now scores of saplings reach for the sky, taller than she. No, not scores, but hundreds, so thick she cannot see the fences of her neighbors.
Gazing up she spots a swarm of bees, then beyond some insect hatch in the rays of sunlight. A squadron of barn swallows soars and swoops, feeding on the bugs, succulent bugs.
Tootie’s eyes pop open. “Succulent bugs!?!” she exclaims. “Good God! Yuck!”
The dream and its horrors of yard stewardship gone to seed energize her into action. It had been a power nap for her and she scanned the yard for chores that might forestall that Armageddon that gardeners dread, when bounty strangles.
Tootie walks over to her garden tool caddy and picks out her dandelion weeder, proceeding to stalk any nasty interlopers. As she strolled about, eyes on the ground, her mind went to the City Council. At last week’s meeting Gloria Petrovich had presented an idea for the ears of the councilors, school superintendent Clammers and police chief Swanon. She wants to donate funds, fifty thousand dollars she offered, to form a partnership to establish a summer program for the girls of Warhaven, to aid them in becoming strong resilient women. The concept of a summer camp out in the Craggies was well received. Ike Moseseek was especially enthusiastic and offered the Quaish longhouse as a possible site. The schools, the police, the council, and the hospital all agreed to participate. The wellness of it all pleased Tootie immensely, but something gnawed at her.
Tootie McDaniels was a beloved child, yet there was a glass ceiling she encountered at home, a sexism within American culture that relegated achievement to the female to certain subordinations. She fought that, but still, the subtle comments steeped in generations of tradition rumbled around in her head. It was a subtle insidious cancer of emotional servitude. She thought, “If I had those struggles, imagine the girls raised in certain of our homes that lead them to run feral, homes where they receive no blessing of loving support to achieve an education, independence, liberty, happiness. All the drugs and alcohol out there that retard the common senses and plunder loved ones! We can do better!”
Tootie finds a dastardly weed out in the front yard, bending to extract it from her beautiful lawn.
She frowns. “Here I am in my secure sanctuary of a home, with all that I need — and want! Warhaven is a great place to raise a child, but we can make it better! Gloria is an anomaly, for sure, and what a model for feminism! I bet if she were 50 years older, the ERA would have passed!”
Commented