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I am in the backyard this and every morning because I have an uncontrollable itch to shove my fingers in the earth. The soil is solid and firm, and when I am inside it, I feel solid and firm too.
Sometimes I feel like I am only half here.
Sometimes I feel like my body is a collection of feathers that could fly away at any moment.
Is it wrong that I get a kind of morbid glee when I deadhead the flowers? The dense click of my shears as they split off a dying bloom is probably more satisfying to me than it should be. I really like the gardening, but I love the payoff. I take pictures, and after I'm done puttering around the garden it reveals something new and beautiful every day.
My first stop is always the shed, where I grab a large trash bin and the rest of the tools I'll need-various spades, a rake, a trowel, and the aforementioned shears. My camera is hanging across my chest and slung over my back. One of these days I am going to break it beyond repair because I treat it like an old sack. Then again, photojournalists take pictures in warzones dodging shrapnel. If I start treating my camera like it's made of glass, I will for sure miss a great shot.
My mother (as she loves to point out) bought me this camera. She's out of town so I don't have to worry about her telling me for the umpteenth time how my camera belongs in its well-insulated bag. Even if she was home, it was the previous owners of this house that made this glorious garden. My mother rarely steps foot in it.
When the weather is nice, my sisters might help out with basic maintenance, but as soon as the sun disappears, so do they. Ana will watch TV while sketching a design. She might even cut a pattern right on the kitchen table and begin to sew pieces together on our avocado-colored machine that has been in the family since before our mother was born. Ana can and will do many things at once.
Since Etta is the chef in the family, the vegetable patch in the garden is hers, although she tends to it without pleasure. She enjoys the spoils, but she complains out loud (to herself? Me? The Garden Gods?) every single time she pulls a weed. For the most part, the three of us are house cats.
Besides the vegetable garden, there are four more formal boxes-two are filled with spectacular roses with names that always make me smile: Duchesse du Brabant, Papa Hemeray, Marchesa Boccella, Sweet Peg, and my favorite, The Undervale, a rose the color of a creamsicle sunset.
One other box has violet and plum-colored hydrangeas, and the last one is for annuals. At the bottom of these boxes is a healthy crop of wildflowers that require just the right amount of weeding. If I pull up too many, it will lose all sense of abandon.
Beyond them is a long full stretch of grass surrounded by massive oaks and maples. The grass ends abruptly where our property butts up against a dense thicket of woodland.
The first thing I do this morning, as always, is bury my fingers in the ground. I let the dirt collect in my nail beds. I wiggle and push until the earth chills my entire hand. A great sigh of pleasure escapes my throat.
When that is done, I bounce down to the grass and rake the leaves into a pile. There are surprisingly few given the season and the wind, which is gusty enough to make my nose cold.
Eventually, I look down at my progress. There are claw marks in the grass and a few brilliant crimson leaves scattered between the gauges. I stare thoughtfully at the earth. The turf has been sliced cleanly, disemboweled almost, and the scarlet foliage is like a mix of blood and tissue. I frame the tableau in my head. I cheat a little and move a couple of the leaves and then pull up my camera and start taking pictures. Mid-snap, I hear a rustling from the hedges leading into the forest. This isn't so unusual. There are all kinds of critters and birds back there, but it's really loud. A chill races up my spine.
Something is not right.
Something is not normal.
I walk slowly to the edge of the property. My black rubber boots catch in the mud where the rain collects, and there is little to no drainage. The backyard tilts ever so slightly on a downward angle and then levels out again at the entrance into the woods. The bushes rustle too frantically to be a rabbit or a squirrel. Could it be a deer? Do does or bucks watch people the way that I feel I'm being watched?
I pick up my right foot so that I can walk forward into the dark thicket. Even as I do this, I know that it's stupid. It is, in fact, epically dumb. It goes against the rules of every horror movie and True Crime TV show there is. But this is my house and my backyard. I am not going to be stopped by a damn noise. I will my body to move, and I am baffled when I realize that I can't. Not even an inch. When I lower my foot, the sound gets louder.
"Hello?" I hate myself for sounding like such a little girl. Much to my relief, no one and nothing answers back. I squint my eyes and stare into the black mouth of the dense forest. My pulse begins to thunder and my face flushes. I whip my head in one quick, deliberate motion. I remind myself to take a breath and be rational. There's no reason to be afraid. I've been playing in these woods since I was a kid. We built forts out there, lost entire days exploring, and brought home countless treasures-bark chips with dried sap that looked like icicles and dozens of smooth-surfaced rocks.
"Hello?" I ask again, and thankfully this time with more gusto. Still, my voice sounds weird outside of my throat, as if it doesn't quite belong to me. The bushes rustle again, and then. I see something, an outline, a shape . . . a shadow? I bring up my camera and quickly begin to take photos. It's impossible. How could there be a shadow inside the shadows? The bracken and trees are so thick that it looks like it's a different time of day in there, not quite night, but maybe late evening?
I gingerly back away, my heart slowing down as I do. I want to run to my sisters and tell them . . . what exactly? What could I tell them? That I heard something inside the forest? I saw a shadow? They would snort and call me paranoid, and maybe I am. But that doesn't explain the absolute terror I felt or the fact that my body flat out refused to enter the woods.
Whatever it was-my imagination or a wild boar or . . . I don't know-I am done for the day. I return my gardening gear and race back inside.
"I made grilled cheese," Etta says as I stomp through the back door, making sure to leave my boots on the mat. "Mozzarella, Jack and a bit of Gouda with just a touch of Tabasco."
I groan. "Why? I don't like cheese," I tell her plainly. It might sound rude after she made lunch for us all, but she knows my tastes.
"Not true," Ana chimes in from the couch. Sure enough, her sketch pad is on her lap and there's some sort of Alaskan wilderness program on the TV. A man with a beard covered in ice is weaving pine needles into what looks like a kind of sweater. "You like white cheese-cheese that doesn't really taste like cheese."
"Like I said . . ." Etta is twirling a wooden spoon in her fingers. "Mozzarella."
"You lost me at Gouda, sorry. I need to get into the shower; it's chilly out there and besides, I really want to develop the photos I just took."
"I made food." Etta smacks the wooden spoon on the counter.
"She's been in the kitchen for a while" Ana pipes in, but she's not that invested, I can tell. She is drawing, and mountain man on the TV is doing a weird kind of dance in his tree sweater.
"I appreciate that," I tell my sister earnestly. "But I just cannot with the smelly cheese. I'll grab a protein bar, okay?"
Etta cocks her head and narrows her eyes at me. Protein bars are sacrilegious. I might as well have told her I was planning on eating a Twinkie covered in Doritos.
Normally, I might try to reason with Etta or at the very least do a better job at apologizing. I'm too freaked out and cold and curious. So instead, I run up to the bathroom and take a shower that is so hot my skin is bright red when I come out.
I clear the steam off the mirror with my palm. My face is pink and my hair, which in all honesty is my best feature, is russet and copper when dry. Because it's wet, it just looks like a blah brown now and despite the healthy glow from the near boiling water, my eyes look strange and old and wearily exhausted. I give them a squeeze and push my knuckles into my lids as I shake my head. This whole day is going sideways. When I look in the mirror again, my eyes look normal.
I put on a thick cardigan and sweatpants. I throw my wet hair into a bun on to the top of my head just to get the damp off my neck. I grab the protein bar and my bottle of water from the kitchen before Etta can say anything and race down to the basement.
My darkroom is a large narrow space under the stairs meant for storage. While it is only six feet wide, it's almost fourteen feet long. I've even built a ventilation system of sorts made of white tubing that I assembled in serpentine shapes leading out to the basement window. It isn't fancy and it certainly isn't pretty because most of it is reinforced with duct tape, but I give myself credit for not being stupid enough to work with chemicals in an enclosed area.
Even though I take pictures and I could technically call myself an artist, I know that I'm not...
