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GRANDMA
ROSALIE’S GARDEN
It
was a modest garden, but notable on
99th
Street
where front gardens
were mostly small patches of grass or weeds, a sorry azalea with sparse flowers
each spring and two or three leggy marigolds for summer. Grandma’s garden had
trellises of red roses blazing over the door, along the white picket fence and
arcing over the gate, the grass was trim and along the path she planted yellow
and mahogany marigolds and pink begonias. People stopped to look. One was a
troubled girl, mentally ill, we supposed, who came to look and look. Said it
calmed her. Grandma invited her in, gave her tea, listened to her troubles. Then
the girl, wide eyed in a dark blue dress, scruffy shoes, stringy brown hair
disappeared for a time. One morning Grandma awoke to find the garden uprooted,
plants pulled out, the roses in shambles. There was a note in the door. “I had
to go away and need to take the garden with me. You can plant another. I
can’t.”
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