Seeds
By Marylou Fusco
I didn’t think it was strange for Father Dan to show up at our house with a packet of seeds and some dirt. While the casseroles and pies had tapered off, people still brought things they believed a woman living alone with a small child might find useful. Tool kits, a clunky paper shedder, brand new fire extinguishers. They left these items on our doorstep, rang the bell, and fled so they wouldn’t have to talk with me. This was new as I had always heard myself described as friendly and warm. But I didn’t want to talk with them either. I waved and shouted ‘thank you’ pleased by the discomfort I inspired.
Father Dan was different. Straight out of seminary his homilies sometimes meandered; it was easy to get lost in the boom of his voice. Other times his meandering led to unexpected places. He could hit on certain truth, almost by accident, and make me think what? In person Father Dan’s razor-nicked face reflected his essential rawness. He was desperate to connect. Although not an official work of mercy like Visiting the Sick, I was one of his duties for the day. Bringing Seeds to the Widow.
“It was a bad winter. I thought you and Lucy would like something green,” he said.
My husband’s illness had been dormant for so many years that it was easy to forget. It was something that was just part of him, he explained to me early on. Neither friend nor foe. I came to see his illness as a minor annoyance; something that required a yearly visit to a specialist who inspected his blood. Afterwards we always went out to celebrate. The meal was romantic or silly or even, occasionally, infused with something like gratitude. ’Another year,’ we would crow and clink our wineglasses together. Sometimes desire caught us and we took our desserts to go. Because we had been spared we felt like we would always be spared.
“That’s nature for you,” one especially brilliant but heartless doctor said when my husband got sick. “Tenderness or terror. Unfortunately we don’t know which is being offered until too late.”
When he got sick, it was out of superstition or spite that I decided to keep Lucy away from nature. Instead I built for her a world of books, a world of nursery rhymes and poetry. I taught her the vocabulary of fairy tales. Turret. Moat. I told her that a girl could defeat a dragon with cleverness and cunning. This was not to say it would be easy but that it could be done.
Despite my efforts, Lucy was still drawn to nature. Even as baby we would sit her on a blanket and watch her get stoned on the sunsets. These days, on our rare trips to the park, she takes off her shoes and socks and rushes along the grass. She climbs and falls from trees. The story of each bruise is filled with such elaborate and fanciful details it was as if we experienced two separate events. I saw injury and she saw blessing.
Lucy liked the seeds. She liked idea of growing something from scratch. We used a butter knife to place them, one by one, in the dirt. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she snuck a clump of dirt into her mouth. Too late I heard the crunch, crunch and saw her jaw working. I hauled her over to the sink to make her rinse her mouth.
At bedtime Lucy banished me from her room saying she wanted to talk to God alone. “I liked eating that dirt,” she said and her voice was filled with defiance and longing.
For a long moment I lingered outside of her closed door. Is she praying for a father who no longer needs prayers or for a mother who has forgotten how to pray? I wondered if her prayers were flavored by the rich, strange taste of dirt. Was she considering the mystery of how things grow and what might blossom within her own body? I was thinking about the seeds again. Light was going to be the problem. I’d have to search every room, every corner to find a spot with the best light. It had been a bad winter. What we needed was a wholly contained, consistent light source. What we needed was our own sun.
THE END
Author Bio: Marylou Fusco’s fiction has appeared in Carve, Swink, and Philadelphia Stories magazine. Most recently, her nonfiction appeared in Mutha magazine. Marylou lives with her family in Baltimore and is completing a novel about reluctant saints and resurrections.