My first short story in forever: Garden Club (okay to share if you give me proper credit and link this page)

Garden Club  

by Laura Moher
 
It’s an ungodly hot and steamy day, the sun burning a stripe on my neck between my collar and hairline. I edge my chair farther under the shade of the awning, wincing at the scrape of iron on flagstone. My fellow garden club members don’t seem to notice. They’re discussing grafts and shoots and pollination, how much manure is too much, how to get rid of weeds and pests without contaminating land and water, and what tools are highest quality, least expensive, and most accessible for people with limited strength or mobility. How to do the work so that next year’s garden will be better.
 
I listen and watch and think what an eccentric bouquet they make. What an eccentric bouquet we make.
 
Anne would be lily of the valley. She’s tiny and pale, delicate and gently curving, always sweet-smelling, her head often lowered in thought or in deference. Her voice is soft and Southern, blurred with honey and time and good manners. When she first joined the club, she rarely spoke or moved at all; she’d spent forty years yoked to an overbearing man and silence had become her habit. Now when she talks, her pale hands flutter like the bells of Convallaria majalis in a breeze. She’s an unlikely one to be taking part in a conversation about eradication of weeds, being raised as she was in a church that taught her all God’s creatures—including weeds—deserve love and care. That belief probably explains her long marriage to her late husband.
 
Tamara is oleander, all vivid coloring and long, lean, limbs and a beauty that leaves you breathless if you look at her too long. She laughs more than all the rest of us put together, her rich chuckle burbling up out of her at unexpected times, her eyes flashing with heat and amusement and sometimes a tiny brief glint that might be pain or despair, covered over in the next second with a wink. I figure she probably had to learn to take enjoyment wherever she could find it, growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, always having to steer clear of people with badges and hoods and wandering hands.
 
I don’t think Abril and Breza ever expected they’d be doing this together; garden club hour was supposed to be their time apart to cultivate separate interests. And at first glance they’re as different as azalea and foxglove, Abril always covering herself with bright clothing and bangles, eye-catching glasses and shiny dangly earrings, while Breza stands tall and austere beside her in plain white. But they are a love match if ever I saw one, and if Abril insisted that Breza not spend all her time care-giving, saying she needed to have something else to do that would give her real pleasure, something she could continue and find solace in when Abril’s gone, well, that insistence melted away when Breza got her own diagnosis.
 
I’m another unexpected gardener. Sure, I’m tall and strong and limber, but people who know me know I have trouble sitting still. Staying quiet. Slowing down. Keeping my temper. Sometimes I wonder how I might be different if I’d had a real partner. More love. If I hadn’t spent so much time alone with plenty of hours to study how people treat each other, especially those they deem lesser beings. I’ve gotten myself in trouble a few times, pointing out people’s bullshit at work. At home. In stores and parks and movie theaters. And when they reacted by yelling, I yelled louder, and when they responded by hitting, I hit back harder. So. Got myself in trouble once or twice. But I did my time and I’m out now, and I’m not going back. Gonna spend the rest of my life doing something worthwhile. Hence the gardening. I guess in our bouquet I’d be something tenacious and unpleasant. Maybe poison ivy.
 
Anyway, we’ve identified the weeds we need to concentrate on, and now the talk has moved to tools. Tamara and Breza are still strong enough to handle those AR-15s you hear so much about. That’s what I’ll have too.
 
Abril still has a fair amount of hand and arm strength, from hauling herself out of her wheelchair. She wants a pair of Beretta 92 FSs. Not as flashy as she’d like, she says—they don’t come with pearl handles—but they make up for it in accuracy.
 
Anne’s too weak to carry a weapon, and it would be near-impossible with her walker anyway. She gets a scary light in her eyes now as we talk about how to wire her, where best to place the detonator switch so she can reach it when she’s ready. “I’m goin’ out like fireworks!” she says, her unexpected laugh a sharp cackle.
 
We’ve kicked the younger, healthier women out of Garden Club for their own good. Most of them would want to help if they knew our plans, but they’re going to be needed to care for the seeds we’ve planted, help protect and feed the young saplings once we’ve done most of the weeding. Still, without knowing what we’re up to, they’ve provided all kinds of helpful information we’re using to infiltrate custodial crews in legislative offices and courts and smug shiny glass towers of misinformation. That’s where most of us will do our weeding, but not Anne. She’s going to “pardon me, excuse me honey, thank you so much” her way right into the middle of the biggest crowd at the political action convention tomorrow.
 
The meeting ends in giggles as we share the messages each of us has decided to leave in our homes and apartments. Anne’s is going to say, “My body, my choice, weren't you silly for not respecting that, bless your little hearts.” Abril and Breza wrote a joint message to leave on their bed: “Our love and our bodies are as valid as yours. Guess you’re regretting keeping these guns so readily available now, huh?” Tamara’s message, in her bold slanted handwriting, says “Black/brown/women’s lives matter. We are not your colonies, not your captive incubators.” And mine just says, “Fuck y’all for all these years of punching down, keeping people down, abusing everybody within reach. Fuck all y’all.”
 
Early on someone had asked about body armor (for everybody but Anne, of course), but we all decided we didn’t want to try to survive. Let our bodies nurture the gardens we’re protecting from these weeds. They always have anyway.
 
We’re only one of many garden clubs in town. Sometimes I wonder how many there are in our state. In the whole country. I wonder if they take their weeding and pruning and planting as seriously as we do. If they make their plans with the same meticulousness. If they take to heart, as we do, the adage that “as you sow, so shall you reap.”


The End

(okay to share if you credit me properly and link this blog)