Day 54: A Garden by the School

"Sow your seed in the morning, and in the evening do not hold back your hand, for you do not know which will grow." That is from Ecclesiastes.

We sowed ours in the afternoon, which is somewhere in between, and I hope that counts.

Dear Grandmother,

There is a strip of ground along the south wall of the school, between the bread oven and the gate. All winter it was mud and old leaves. Last week Mrs Varga stopped me at the gate and pointed at it with her walking stick. "Your grandmother had a garden there," she said. "Beans, and marigolds, and one row of peas that the boys always ate before they were ready." I think she ate the peas too.

So we made a garden. Tomas brought old boards and built a low frame, so the little ones could reach the middle without stepping on anything. He did it on Saturday, without being asked, and when I thanked him he said the boards were going spare. They were not going spare. They were good boards. I did not argue.

On Wednesday afternoon all eleven children came out with spoons and cups and an old bread tin with holes punched in the bottom for a sieve. We dug in the compost Dora had saved from the kitchen all winter. Yuri found a worm and named it. Sami found another worm and gave it the same name, so that there would be two. Noor made very straight lines with a piece of string tied between two sticks, and would not let anyone sow until the lines were perfect. Ari dropped his whole packet of radish seeds in one place and then looked at me in horror. I told him that radishes do not mind company. We will thin them later.

Before we sowed anything, we did a test I would like you to know about, because anyone with a packet of old seeds can do it. I had found some envelopes of seeds at the back of the school cupboard, very old ones, with no date on them. So last week we counted out ten beans and laid them on a wet cloth on a plate, folded the cloth over them, and kept the plate by the stove. Each morning the children checked. On the fourth day, seven had split and shown a little white root, like the tip of a tongue. Seven out of ten. Sami worked it out on the board. It meant that the old beans were still good enough to plant, if we planted a few more than we needed.

The children could not believe that a seed could wait in a cupboard for years and still be alive. I told them about a seed that waited much longer. Some time ago, people digging in an old ruin found a few seeds from a date palm, about two thousand years old. Somebody decided to try planting one. It grew. It is a tall young palm now. Seeds are made to wait. They hold a little food and a very small plant inside a hard coat, and they do nothing at all until there is water, and warmth, and the right time. They are a little like the jars in Dora's cellar. Everything they need is already inside. They are only waiting for someone to open them.

We sowed beans and marigolds, and one row of peas, because Mrs Varga said so. Bea wrote labels on lolly sticks in her best writing. Leon watered everything twice, which was once too many, and we watched the water sink into the dark soil as slowly as stock reduces on a low flame. Then we washed our hands under the yard tap, all eleven pairs, with a great deal of splashing.

As I locked the gate this evening, I saw something I had not noticed before. In the corner by the wall there is an old lilac, bent and woody, with the first green leaves just showing. Mrs Varga told me later that you planted it. She remembered the day. She said you were cross because the boys had trampled your peas, and you planted the lilac in the corner so that there would be one thing in the garden they could not eat.

Ecclesiastes says to sow in the morning and again in the evening, because we cannot know which seed will grow. You sowed fifty-eight years ago, Grandmother, and went away, and never knew. The beans did not last. The lilac did. Tonight I will not worry about which of our seeds will come up. I will sow, and wait, and see.

Vera

Day 55: Plain Words

"Before my bed the moonlight is so bright, I think it is frost upon the ground. I lift my head to look at the moon, and lower it, and think of home." That is Li Bai, in a short poem written on a quiet night far from his family.

I looked at the moon tonight too. I did not have to think of home. I was sitting in it.

Dear Grandmother,

Mr Okafor's letter came on Monday. Greta brought it on her green bicycle and stood at the gate while I opened it, which she never does, so I knew she knew what it was. A second year at the school, if I wanted it. An answer by the end of May. I read it twice and folded it and put it in my apron pocket, and it stayed there all week, while I peeled potatoes and marked spelling and swept the classroom floor. Every time I put my hand in the pocket I felt the paper there, like a warm stone.

I told no one. That is not true. I told Dora, because Dora knows everything anyway, and she only said, "Good," and gave me a bag of onions, as if one had to do with the other. Perhaps it did.

On Friday Tomas came to fix the latch on the garden gate. Mila was at Noor's house. He finished the latch and did not leave, and I made tea, and we sat on the school steps in the last of the light. He was turning his cup in his hands. Then he said it, plainly, the way he says everything. "Greta told me about the letter. I'd like you to stay. Not only for me. For the school, and for Mila. But for me as well. I wanted to say it before you decided, so you'd know it was there."

That was all. He did not make a speech. He did not look at the lake as if the lake would help him. He looked at me, and then he drank his tea.

I have learned something this year about saying hard things, and I want to tell you, because I think you knew it already. It is easier to say something true while your hands are busy. Peeling. Folding. Drying a cup. The words come out between the movements, and there is no need to fill the silence afterward, because the hands are still working. I have tried it with my mother, at the sink, and it worked better than any telephone call. Anyone can try it. If you have something to say, find a basket of washing to fold with the person, and say it in one sentence, and then keep folding.

So I did not answer at once. I went in and fetched the bag of Dora's onions, and a knife, and a bowl, and sat down again beside him and started to peel. He watched me for a moment and then took a knife too. We peeled four onions without a word. My eyes ran, of course. So did his. It was impossible to tell which tears were onion. Then I said, "Yes. I'm staying. I wrote to Mr Okafor this morning, before I knew you would ask. I wanted it to be mine first." He said, "Good," exactly like Dora. And then he laughed, and so did I, with onion on our hands and our eyes streaming.

Later, when he had gone home to fetch Mila, the moon came up over the lake. It was nearly full. The light on the yard was so white that the gravel looked frosted, just as in Li Bai's poem. I read once that the moon's own surface is quite dark, about as dark as an old road, and only looks bright because the night around it is darker still and the sun is shining full on it. I like that. It does not need to be bright itself. It only needs to be in the right place, with the light falling on it.

I did not cook the onions. I put them in a covered dish in the cold cupboard for tomorrow's soup. Then I sat down to write this, with the window open, and the smell of onions still on my fingers, and the moon sitting on the water.

Li Bai lifted his head to the moon and lowered it and thought of home, Grandmother. He was a long way away. I lifted my head tonight and lowered it and saw the school, the garden, the dark ferry house, the road to Tomas's door. I did not have to think of home at all. I only had to look.

Your Vera