Clear

Seeds to Buddha

You can tell by the way T moves that throwing mulch into the back of my truck with a pitchfork is getting to him. People hollering on Needle Street. Somebody done somebody wrong who was just trying to get right, if you know what I mean. You wonder whether standing on this corner might be easier than throwing mulch.

You remember the kids that would come from up North, Jewish kids and Christian kids, how they would come to you, sometimes after sorting beads with people who have mental retardation. You wonder if this wording is acceptable. You remember how those kids, come down to do service for their respective Gods, and you remember thinking how these kids are lazy, how they don’t know how to work, how you started working at ten.

And you remember a writing prompt from Iowa City, how you were told to go down to the basement of your childhood home–can’t nobody in New Orleans do this–but you could and you would see the water heater where you helped your dad load rock salt from big bags that said Morton. It was a magic world down there, nails and hammers and hand saws without supervision.

You remember your dad getting angry as you tried to pry a board from a crawl space he had you helping him tear down. You might have been ten or eleven. Your dad hit his hand with a hammer and said, “Goddamn it!” Not the way Holden says. Dad was angry. He threw down the hammer and went upstairs.

While he was gone, you tore down the entire crawlspace with hammer and crowbar and vindication. Your big F U for when he returned. And when he did, he looked at you and he said, “Goddamn” more like Holden. And then, “Good job.”

You think of this while T struggles, ninety degree heat, atop a smoking wood chip pile. 

“How about we switch? You pull this cayratia.”

He looks dizzy. Like a sweaty teenaged single American Gothic he leans. 

“You need some water?”

“Yes.”

“You got to drink water.”

T takes off his hooded sweatshirt. Inside of you there is still the idea that no kid ever worked harder than you did.

You have him pull everything that is not the fig–bidens alba and cayratia–and you realize in order to teach clear vision is sometimes needed.

On the way to the school garden you ask him of all the stuff he has done what he likes the most.

“Planting,” he says.

“Tomorrow I’ll have you start some seeds.”

You have him dig holes for cotton and gulf coast penstemon that you brought in a pot. You walk the edges of the garden and cut grass with a special clips from an old man who left town a few months ago. 

You consider how these edges are what the people see.  

When you get down on your knees and cut the grass around the bronze fennel, drop calendula and pigeon pea seeds because you have so many, spread mulch around dianthus, and move on, crawling almost, to s space where you put a bench, under the overhang of moringa, perfect for two kindergartners. You think that pay does not mean a thing because what you want to offer is experience. 

T walks the garden slowly with a watering can. It’s about to rain. You see him stop in different spots. You see him see, pause, and return to watering.

You take the heads of sunflowers, empty these around amaranth that grew from seeds you collected in Lumbini, Nepal, the space where the Buddha was born.

“Not all of these will come up,” you tell him. “But the whole goal is to grow our own seeds. Grow our own mulch.”

He loads a shovel into the truck without being asked. He gathers other tools.

You ask him if he saw the figs at this garden.

He says, “Back there.”

And you realize the importance of clearing what stands in the way.