The Shoes Come First: A Jennifer Cloud Novel

by Janet Leigh

  ~

  “Earth to Jen.” Eli waved his smelly armpit hands in front of my face.

  “Why did Aint Elma leave Jen a toilet?” Eli asked Dad.

  “It’s an outhouse,” I corrected him.

  Dad shrugged. “I don’t know, but she really wanted her to have it, so we should make room in the backyard, maybe plant a garden around it.”

  Eli immediately remembered some homework he had forgotten to finish and left the room.

  I didn’t want to explain the strange things that happened when you went inside the outhouse. I had visions of my Uncle Buster coming by after a few drinks, using our outdoor facilities, and getting rocketed into the Blaylocks’ yard three doors down. I agreed planting a garden around it was a good idea.

  “We could set it way back in the corner and plant all around it. People would think it was kind of like garden art,” I suggested. Maybe the garden would keep people a stone’s throw from the outhouse. My mom frowned at the idea of having an outhouse in her backyard, but dad promised to plant the herb garden she had been asking for, and it was a done deal.

  Later in the week, my dad bought some herbs and tomato plants. We spent a weekend digging up the yard around the outhouse, and pretty soon we had grown an amazing garden. Mom starting using the herbs in her recipes, and life was good. When spring came the following year, flowers in all colors started to bloom. And like in Aunt Elma’s garden, the Blue Moon roses grew around the base of the little house. Dad figured the seeds must have blown in from a neighbor’s garden. I hated to tell him the only thing our neighbors had blooming was a wild honeysuckle vine on Mrs. Dombrowsky’s fence.