THORNS
By SEAN D GREGORY
“April showers bring May flowers.”
Gram said that all the time when Leila was a little girl. It held true then, and as far as she could tell, it still held true today. Garden work always made her think of that saying.
Leila, donned her garden gloves, snatched her pouch of tools from the small table on the back patio, its pastel flower print faded with sun and time, stained with garden soil. Her straw sun-hat, its brim flimsy, and tattered, shielded her eyes from as she laid her garden mat down and knelt before the roses. She refused to replace the bag, hat, or mat. They were a gift from Gram. The last gift, Gram gave her before she passed.
“Another season,” she said to Gram. “April showers bring May flowers.”
Gram had other sayings. Silly phrases like, “Children talk when chickens pee,” when Leila would get too talkative. “Nice bum, where ya from?” whenever anyone left the room for even a moment. Then there was her personal favorite, “Nothing flutters like arms of butter,” when Gram would lift her arms and wiggle the skin on her triceps.
For some reason though, the small refrain about rain and flowers most reminded Leila of Gram. It most remindered her of their time together in the garden as they toiled, side-by-side, before the rose bushes. Leila stared up at the sky and smiled as memories of Gram’s grin threatened to overwhelm her emotions.
Shadows moved quietly across the backyard as wispy clouds toiled and rolled into ever-darkening purples and greys—the storm clouds encroached as if mother nature sensed the melancholy within the fourth generation gardener. Leila missed Gram every day and the soft roll of thunder, prolonged and almost quiet, traveled through the air—a perfect metaphor for the rumble in Leila’s soul.
She found solace in that kind of thunder. It was the only thunder Gram wasn’t afraid of. Whenever it happened, Gram would lift her arm and shake the loose skin in her triceps, all jiggly and swishy, and laugh as she said, “Uh oh, sounds like my rolls got loose!”
Leila giggled at the memory as she clipped the shears and removed a small stem off the rosebush. The annual early spring ritual offered a sense of connection to her family. The roses, planted over eighty years ago by her great grandmother, were a family legacy. Tending them was when Leila felt closest to the old women who came before her. Pruning was an art. She glanced down the long fence to which the bushes had wound their way, creating a wall of beautiful vines that would soon be covered in little pink buds. She shaped the bush, as much art as science, each selection a careful consideration to what the bushes required to increase blooms and maintain the essence of the nearly century old garden.
It wasn’t April yet but signs of and early Spring meant mid-March pruning was requeired. A bit too soon for her liking, but if she didn’t clip the rosebushes today, she’d never get a chance for them to take advantage of the growth signals.
Another snip and another piece of the bush fell. Small drops of rain tapped the brim of her hat and caught on the dark green leaves that began to bud. Overhead she could hear the drops through the empty tree branches whose buds formed mere days ago, too small to catch water. Soft droplets fell all around her, a light pitter-patter of sound all around. She imagined Spring in full bloom when the leaves would offer shelter as water traveled down and gathered into greater beads, rolling faster, collecting additional smaller beads as gravity pulled them down into their final free-fall to earth.
Life felt like that to her, small moments that rolled along the surface of time, gathering up other small moments, accelerating into bigger moments until there was nowhere left to go but down to the earth.
“You’re being silly, Leila,” she teased herself. She knew her thoughts were symptoms of the absene of Gram. Today was harder, since it was the tenth anniversary since Gram died. The timing of early Spring made it a little harder than normal.
With a heavy sigh, she smiled and returned to the bushes and carefully selected the next stem to clip. She willed the buds to form sooner, but they refused, choosing to move at their own pace. The small rain drops began to grow in size as the shadows grew darker. Light patters turned into solid thumps against the ground, her head and shoulders, and the soft canvas of her tool bag with a lot more force than seemed necessary. The storm drew closer.
She looked to the sky as gray and purple clouds covered its entirety.
“Ah!” she yelled as the large raindrop landed atop her head with a loud thump. The drop ran down her head as if someone dumped a bucket of water over her. She worried once again just how big rain drops could become. She wondered if they could grow big enough to drown her, and not for the first time. She’d heard stories of vengeful water sprites—though she’d never seen one personally—who liked to play games on garden tenders like her.
At least that’s what her brother River always said.
She certainly hoped she couldn’t be drowned by a raindrop! But then again, River always teased that he’d leave her out in the rain to see if she’d drown and maybe that was where her fear of large raindrops came from.
He really wasn’t nice sometimes. But she loved him anyway. She pondered where the troublesome boy had gotten off to as she watched the woman across the yard. Likely the vagabond was playing tricks on the dogs in the other yard. He loved to torment them and get them riled up.
Almost as if on cue, Ja-ja and Milly began to bark and run around the yard on the other side of the fence in frantic agitation. She shook her head as she watched the two golden retrievers sprint from one side of the yard to the other.
She returned her eyes to the garden in her own yard. Faint hints of yellow drew her attention to the buttercups. Close to blooming, their waxy flowers, petite and delicate, peeked through the tiny buds that held them contained in anticipation of the approaching spring. Buttecups were her favorite spring time arrival. They reminded her of the big gold dog of the same name that used to claim the yard as home.
She missed Buttercup. The giant butterscotch colored pit-bull was sweet, quiet, and gentle. She never barked like the new dog or the ones next door. She loved the new dog too. Just not as much as she loved Buttercup.
Buttercup was special. Butercup was the Ferdinand the Bull. Once the lazy gal, half blind, discovered a small den of bunnies in a burrow in the yard. The sweet old gal lay next to them, licked them clean, and tucked them in the grass as if they were her own babies. The poor bunnies didn’t know what to do so they laid quiet in the small hole their real mother built for them until Buttercup wandered back into the house.
The memory brought a sad smile to the garden tender’s face.
Another large raindrop hit her head, this one much bigger. She shrieked in dismay at the size of it. Her hair was soaked now. She reconsidered the notion of drowning by raindrops and shook her head and vigorously shed the thought away with the water.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Daisy Mae,” she mumbled and returned to the buttercups. Tapping into her magic, she coaxed them with a gentle nudge and the tiny flowers grew a little brighter as the buds opened a smidge. Her work done, Daisy decided to sneak a peek at the woman in the garden pruning the rosebushes on the other side of the pool.
Daisy always liked Leila. Of all the humans a fairy could be assigned, Leila was her favorite. Leila, gentle and kind, loved her dogs, her garden, and her pool. Daisy smiled at Leila, hidden from view. The garden fairy lived in this garden most of her life. She’d been here so long she knew Leila since the day the girl was born. For over eighty years the fairy called the garden contained in the little yard deep in the suburbs of Pittsburgh her home. Ever since Leila’s great grandmother, Louella, first planted it. Daisy helped tend the garden to ensure the efforts of the generations of women who cared for it didn’t go without reward.
Daisy remained with the gard when Louella passed and Leila’s grandmother, Virginia, took over. She remembered Virginia with a special fondness. Virginia liked to play jokes and tease her kids and grandkids. From her quiet space, hidden from human eyes, Daisy watched as Virginia’s grandchildren arrived. Daisy loved how fond of jokes and tricks Virginia was. The second owner of the garden had a mischievous streak in her and played many tricks, especially on Leila, over the years. Daisy suspected Leila was the favorite grandchild. Something Daisy understood because she felt the same way about the young woman who now owned the glorious garden.
Side by side with each generation, unseen by her fellow caretakers, Daisy whispered to the roses, hydrangeas, daffodils, tulips, buttercups, and other wonderful things within her tiny domain. She knew Leila’s mother as a child, tended the garden with her until Leila became the owner of the home. Leila’s mom was still alive but she never returned to the house to live, having had three daughters of her own, and starting her own home somewhere. Upon Virginia’s passing, Leila took over the home.
Daisy watched with a warm heart as Leila snipped another stem. Motion to Leila’s right caught Daisy’s attention and she narrowed her eyes. The rosebush had been acting a bit persnickety lately, and Daisy wasn’t sure why. A wily stem, miscreant and untamed, moved closer toward Leila. Daisy squinted at it.
“Don’t you dare,” she told the stem. She watched, breathless, as the stem tried to hide itself from pruning. “Oh no you don’t,” she whispered and shot through the trees. She made her way around the yard’s long perimeter, careful to stay out of Leila’s vision as she made her way to the edge of the buttercups and hemlocks. Daisy kept an eye out for Betty, the new dog, as she maintained her surveillance of the errant stem. Leila’s new dog liked to chase Daisy every time she saw the fairy and Daisy Mae wasn’t entirely sure the grumpy looking puggle didn’t intend to eat her.
More than once she’d landed on Betty from above and poked her with her tiny garden hoe in the ear, sending Betty on a wild run to break herself free from Daisy’s playful stings. Daisy did it to try and convince Betty to leave her alone. Sometimes it worked, other times it only emboldened the Puggle.
Daisy caught her breath as she heard Betty’s paws tear through the tangled vines and leaves of the buttercups. Choosing stealth over speed, Daisy snuck around the trunk of a hemlock and waited for Betty to apss. The dog’s Beagle tendencies overwhelmed her Pug gentleness more often than not and Daisy needed to deal with that ornery stem. Betty sniffed her way past Daisy, her attention on the trail of a squirrel, intent on a different scent than Daisy’s. Daisy held her breath and watched at Betty sniffed, full of frenetic energy, obsessed with whatever had captured her obsessive tendencies.
Daisy made her way in silence to the other side of the tree and returned to her task. She walked along the edge of the buttercups and, after another galnce to ensure Betty was well away and occupied with her hunt, took a quick flight over to the rosebushes, eyes locked on the rogue stem that was now just a few inches from Leila’s hand.
The rain threatened to let loose, but Leila decided that she could chance it and finish her task. One last rosebush remained to trim. If the rain held on for just a few minutes longer, she could finish pruning and go sit with her book on the covered patio, or watch the rain fall on the spring-ready garden.
If she could finish in time for March to turn to April and bring the garden to life, May flowers would soon arrive. Leila was happy with the progress and didn’t want to quit till this day’s work was finished and she’d have some part of her Gram back for a few months.
The air turned a little cooler than she expected and a slight shiver ran through her. Shivers had been more common lately. Goose bumps formed on her arms from the chill. An odd sound of soft chimes echoed over her shoulder and she looked to see what it was, but nothing was there. It was a familiar sound, though she often assumed it was in her imagination. She thought she caught motion of a dragonfly in her periphery but again, when she turned, all she saw was Betty off by the fence, sniffing for something.
“Betty Spaghetti!” she called. Betty looked over at her, the deep resting frown making her look angry. A puff in her cheek told Leila that the little dog’s snaggle-tooth was hung up. Leila smiled at the dog and went back to her rosebush.
A feeling came over her, warm, comforting, like she was being watched by someone who cared for her. Gram came into mind again and she looked around for the cardinal that usually accompanied the warm reassuring calm. But no cardinal was there to indicate her Gram was watching.
She shrugged her shoulders with a content sigh and turned once again to the last rosebush.
Daisy squatted in the back of the last rosebush, close to the fence that contained the yard, her breath held in panic. She’d almost broken the first rule of Faedom. Leila almost caught a glimpse of her. Daisy shook from fright of the almost broken rule. That belligerent thorny branch had distracted her and Daisy’s timing was almost dangerous.
“Don’t let yourself be seen by mortals!”
It was a hard rule to follow when one was charged with being around humans all the time. Other fairies had it easy, tending to places with little to no human traffic. Garden fairies had it rough. Their’s was a constant state of imminent discovery, surrounded by humans as they were. Their job was more perilous. But Daisy knew this garden better than most garden fairies knew theirs. After nearly one hundred years, she better.
She watched, her breath still locked inside, and stood perfectly still, as Leila looked around at the rosebushes.
Daisy loved Leila more than any of the women who’d owned the garden prior. Leila had a sadness to her that Daisy had empathy for. She knew that Leila missed her grandmother. She watched as the child form of Leila played in the yard with Virginia, danced on the patio to Frank Sinatra, held afternnon tea in the little gazebo to the back of the long yard, and learned to tend the many flowers. Daisy watched as Leila grew up, moved away, and then eventually returned to spend many days as an adult with Virginia in the splendor of color that bloomed from Spring to late Fall every year.
Daisy stifled a tear as she remembered the first day Leila came to the garden without her grandmother, and then again a couple of days later when she scattered her grandmother’s ashes in the soil of the rosebushes. She watched Leila as tears cascaded down the young womans cheeks and her heart broke. She wished she could comfort Leila then.
But THAT was definitely not allowed. THAT would get Daisy in such trouble she would never be allowed back to this garden—the only home she’d ever known. The memory of how she sat, helplessly watching Leila, as tears flowed andg her hands shook while pruning that day.
Movement on the far side of the bush drew her attention once again back to the present.
“No, no, no,” she whispered as the beligerent stem moved again, it’s thorns glistening with small drops of water from the hardening rain.
Leila couldn’t stop thinking about Gram.
“I miss you so much,” she said as her eyes filled with tears, blurring her vision from the work. She let them fall, the desire to cry pressing against her resolve. She needed to cry. The emotions built up all winter. She knew today would be difficult. Leila took off her garden glove and ran her bare hand through the soil, feeling for Gram in its damp coolness.
She picked up the shears again and returned to her task. A stem moved to her right and she looked at it, curious. Leila couldn’t help her imagination. She was sure the stem moved on its own. Was it trying to get her attention? She reached over to the errant stem. She couldn’t be certain but she was sure the thorny plant jumped at her.
“Ow!” she cried, a thorn sticking her in the back of her hand. “You little monster,” she said to the stem. “Gram, I think that sucker stuck me on purpose.”
Leila couldn’t be sure, but she thought she had heard a gasp from inside the rosebush when the thorn poked. She peered through the jumble of stems and budding leaves for the source of the sound. But she didn’t see anything. She shook her head.
A louder roll of thunder signaled the rain and the pace of drops began to increase.
“Wow, Leila,” she said to herself, chagrined. “You’re a wreck today.”
Thunder clapped too loud, too close for comfort, so Leila decided she’d have to finish tomorrow. She gathered her tool puch and knee pad, tucking the pad under her arm. She stared at her hand and winced at the sight of blood from the thorn prick. The thorn had put a decent hole in her skin and gone pretty deep.
“That stings,” she said as she stood up. She turned to the patio where her husband Rip, sat with his nose buried in one of his spaceflight magazines. Leila’s head began to feel light as she walked and her vision began to blur. She paused, steadied herself, and took a breath.
But the world began to spin.
Leila tried to focus. She could swear she saw something fly in front of her face. She was certain whatever it was called her name. Then she felt like the world spin out of control. Everything fell away the world went black.
Daisy hadn’t stopped crying for days. She sat, hidden in the buttercups as Rip sat in front of the rosebushes. Spring had sprung and the roses bloomed. Beautiful, full, and abundant garden roses with bright pink petals glistened in the morning due.
He’d come out every day since Leila died and sat in front of the stems. Daisy was so tired, but she was afraid the bad stem would get Rip too. She slept only when Rip wasn’t in the garden. But he was there all the time. Diasy assumed the duty of guardian. She watched the bad stem, resolved to stop it if it tried anything. She’d break that dumb rule this time. She’d sacrifice herself to save Rip—expose her existence to him—if the rosebush tried anything.
But months had passed since the stem stuck Leila. Five days had passed since Leila died. And the stem never moved again. Not once since that day.
Daisy liked Rip, almost as much as Leila. She’d watched them laugh and argue and laugh again. She’d seen how he looked at Leila and she knew he loved her with all his core. And she knew how sad he was as she watched his shoulders convulse, his body wracked with sobs. She watched as he took the urn that carried Leila’s ashes and spread them into the soil with her grandmother. She swallowed a sob as he spread the ashes with his hand, gentle, and slow.
Rip let out a deep sorrowful sigh and stood, petting Betty, who followed him. Even the Puggle’s own sadness echoed in an unending attachment to Leila’s widower.
When Rip and Betty were back in the house, Daisy went to the rosebushes and walked the soil, her bare feet in contact with the ashes that Rip spread there. She took her own moment with Leila.
Once again, movement caught her attention.
It was the bad stem. She walked over to it, ready to give it a piece of her mind.
“Why did you do that?” Daisy yelled at the stem.
“Because she missed me,” a familiar voice said. “And I missed her.”
Daisy was stunned.
“Virginia?”
“Yes, Daisy, it’s me.”
“But why?” Daisy asked, perplexed, her voice cracking.
“Because I was sick, Daisy,” another familiar voice said.
“Leila?” Daisy whispered, stunned.
“Yes, dear friend,” Leila said.
“You were sick?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. I tried to fight it. But I couldn’t anymore.”
“I didn’t know,” Daisy replied. “Did Rip?”
“Yes, he knew. When I fell in the garden, the doctors found my illness. I fought as long as I could.”
“Virginia? Did you know?” Daisy asked.
“Of course! I couldn’t let my girl suffer. Now she is here with me.”
Daisy looked back at the house, tears blurring her vision.
“But what about Rip?” she asked.
“Daisy,” Leila said, “Rip will care for Betty, and when she passes, he will place her here too. But not before I stick Betty with a thorn.”
Daisy smiled. “Will you stick Rip?”
“When the time comes,” Virginia said.
Daisy could imagine the twinkle in Virginia’s eye as she said it.
“I will make sure he stays safe till then,” Daisy replied. “And I will help him tend the roses.”
“We know you will Daisy. You’re our garden fairy. This is just as much your home as it is ours.”
Daisy sat in the soil under the shade of the rosebush and spoke to Virginia and Leila until sunset and Rip let Betty out for her last sniff of the day.
“Uh-oh!” she said as Betty came bounding out the door straight for Daisy. Daisy fluttered her wings and shot across the yard to the buttercups. Betty, barking like a crazy woman, chased after her and Daisy laughed.
She knew then, everyone would be okay.