by Cathy Lamb
I wanted to thank you for buying Olive Oliver ten chickens. That was certainly kind of you to do, though not necessary. I know that your parents would have done the same thing in this pickle, they being honorable people.
I saw Olive in town and she was infinitely pleased and surprised at your generosity. She said she tried to give five chickens back to you, but you insisted. Olive named them, as she probably shared with you, after flowers: Violet, Snapdragon, Daffodil, Rose, Begonia, Crocus, Dahlia, Marigold, Peach Blossom, and Tulip.
Intelligent and neighborly decision on your part. We now no longer have chicken wars in the village.
Olive said she’ll kill Tulip and send her over. Perhaps I will go to Gitanjali’s spice shop and buy spices and chat with Gitanjali about how to prepare Tulip. Do you know Gitanjali yet? I am (delicately) trying to get to know her better, as she is an intriguing woman.
So far I have bought twelve pounds of cardamom, four pounds of cinnamon, and two pounds of dill weed. Gitanjali gave me recipes to follow. I have filed them in a new recipe box I bought called Gitanjali’s Recipe Box for this particular purpose, but I have no clue how to cook.
Yours,
Chief Constable Ben Harris
A friend of your parents, may the choirs of angels accompany your father as he plays the bagpipes for Our Lord.
Dear Chief Constable Harris,
The pleasure of our visit was all mine. You are right, though. Seeing my mother’s goldenrod daisies and the honeysuckle vine did send the two of us down an unexpected emotional lane! Next time I will bring more tissues. I am glad we have reconnected, and I shall tell my mother in South Africa in my next letter to her.... I know she thought the world of you and Lila, as did my father.
I was happy to buy the chickens and have them delivered. I don’t want to be involved in any village chicken squabbles, and a chicken crime was committed.
I have met Gitanjali, and you are correct. I liked her. If I am not being too forward, perhaps you would like me to speak to Gitanjali when I see her at Garden Ladies Gobbling Gang and tell her what a long-term and loyal friend you were to my parents, that you are a man of character and integrity.
Yours,
Charlotte
Charlotte,
I would be most indebted to you if you could put in a word for me with Gitanjali. My intentions are honorable. I don’t want to offend her in any way or to step in a direction where she would not wish me to step. She is a gentle woman and I don’t want to alarm her. I am not a skilled man when it comes to dating. In fact, it confounds me. I am, currently, confounded.
I did, however, buy three pounds of curry powder today from her and two pounds of Indian gooseberry. She gave me more recipes to follow. I have no idea how to cook. I did file the recipes away in the Gitanjali’s Recipe Box.
Gratefully,
Chief Constable Ben Harris
A friend of your parents, may your father win all the events in heaven’s Scottish games.
Silver Cat showed up at Toran’s the next evening. Toran heard a meowing at the front door and opened it. Silver Cat limped in. He picked her up and cradled her against his chest. “Isn’t this the cat that was at your house?”
“Yes. That is. I didn’t know where she came from. There are a few houses down the road from us, I thought she might belong to them.”
“We’ll check. I’ll put up signs tomorrow.”
Silver Cat meowed. I meowed back, then Toran meowed.
I had a feeling we had a new cat.
5
“I want to take a shake of a lamb’s tail minute to welcome Charlotte Mackintosh to our St. Ambrose Ladies’ Gab, Garden, and Gobble Group,” Olive Oliver said, her white braid over her shoulder. Tonight she was wearing a knitted pink scarf with a frog with a long pink tongue. The frog looked inebriated. I don’t think it was intentional.
Seven women, including me, were in Olive’s living room, tea, cream, and sugar ready. Olive lived right outside of town, within walking distance, in a three-hundred-year-old stone home with her husband, their acreage, and animals behind the house. She had a rock wall in front of her house and white daisies surrounding the border. The home reminded me of Snow White’s.
Her husband was a carpenter. They had married ten years ago, and she made and sold scarves, which accounted for the dizzy white cat and the inebriated frog. Her business was called Lady Olive’s Scarves. She was an animal lover who believed, “Animals should be cherished until eaten.” In addition to her chickens, she had pigs, horses, and lambs. She did not eat the horses, she told me. “I won’t eat an animal I can ride.”
“Yes welcome . . . hello, Charlotte . . . nice to meet you, from the States then . . .” the women’s voices blended.
“Your grandma,” Rowena said, “told my own mother that she would become pregnant when two pies were baked and when the moon was full, but colored orange like fire. Sure enough, when Mr. Beacon’s barn burned down and turned the moon orange, my mother was pregnant with me and it was the same day she baked two pies: huckleberry and strawberry.”
Rowena has red hair and gold eyes and is bright and confident. She was wearing a funky necklace with a rock wrapped in silver wire. It was earthy. I liked it. Next to her I felt like a dull possum, but I couldn’t help but like her. I liked her when I was younger, too. She’s about five years older and was always nice to Bridget and me. Her family’s farm is down the road, which her elderly parents had sold to Toran.
When Rowena saw me she screamed and hugged me. I am not used to people getting excited to see me or long hugs. I was surprised to find that I became very emotional.
Which made Rowena yell, “For the love of God, Charlotte’s crying! For the love of God, I’m crying now, too.”
“Your grandma told me that when two birds collided, and a shot went through a foot, I would be free,” a blond woman named Kenna said. She’s a doctor. “When that horrible first husband of mine saw two birds collide in midair and fall, he thought that was so neat he accidentally shot himself in the foot and died of an infection, the buffoon. I was in medical school then. He used to slug me when we had a fight to ‘shut my trap shut.’ Said I was getting too uppity for him. When he had the infection he was even worse. He tossed my cat, broke its leg.”
I sucked in air, other people made equally angry noises. Cats are furry people and must be treated with respect.
“The cat tossing did it. I moved out.” Kenna smiled. “Too bad he died alone.”
“Too bad,” Olive drawled.
The other women nodded.
“It’s been years, but I still miss your grandma,” Kenna said.
“Me too.” I felt a pang in my heart. “My grandma died two years before my father. She told me she would die after the houses were flipped upside down, thousands of trees were on the ground like toothpicks, and the wind spun hell up from its grave. She died about two weeks after Hurricane Low Q.”
They all remembered Hurricane Low Q.
“I would love to see your mother again, prettiest woman in the village when she was here,” Rowena said. “I remember thinking that when I was a child.”
“Well,” a woman in her late fifties humphed. “She was one of the prettiest women here, in an American sort of way.”
I studied her. Grayish hair. Face set like a bulldog. Her upper body was normal sized, although she had ponderous boobs, but her hips sprawled. It seemed as if she had two bodies, one average sized sitting atop a lap spreading like packed oatmeal. She smiled with irritating condescension at me. “There were others who were as pretty, or prettier, everyone said so.”
“So you knew my mother, Ms.—” I paused and waited for her to fill in her name.
“Mrs. David Lester.”
As a feminist I fought not to roll my eyes back into my head. Why on earth would a woman identify herself by using her husband’s name, as if she is no one, only an appendage, like an octopus’s leg?
“Mrs. Lorna,” she emphasized. “Lorna Lester. And y
es.” She squiggled her oatmeal butt in the chair. I could tell by her drawn, disapproving expression that she hadn’t liked my mother. “I did know Jasmine. Some. We didn’t socialize. We had different . . . friends.” She pursed her lips. “Her friends had different . . . values than myself.”
Ah. I got it. Let’s imply that my mother had poor values, in front of all these ladies. I studied Lorna Lester. I wasn’t surprised that my mother wasn’t friends with her. She wouldn’t have liked that patronizing, petty personality. My mother liked interesting, outgoing people with an edge. She was friends with prosecutors, professors, doctors, two strippers—one of whom was transgender and made the best banana pie ever—artists, writers, and two ex-cons who now run a floral shop. She was friends with other feminists and political activists, and with one member of the mob in Jersey.
“What would those different values be?” I asked.
Lorna made an impatient pfft sound and waved a hand, as if it was “nothing,” my mother nothing. “We were different . . . women. I valued my home life, and my husband and daughter.”
I heard Kenna, the doctor, groan and mutter, “Not again.”
Gitanjali murmured, “Unkind. Let us be gentle.”
“My mother didn’t value her daughter and husband?” I felt my temper rise. I am somewhat shy and socially insecure, but I am no doormat, and don’t mess with my mother.
“Well, your mother worked.”
“You say that in the same tone as if you’re saying my mother caught lizards and ripped off their legs with her teeth.”
Lorna’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yes, my mother worked. She helped my father run the farm.”
“She also wrote articles for the local paper on many . . . let’s say, inflammatory issues that we didn’t need to hear about.”
Olive flipped her white braid back, tugged on her knitted inebriated frog scarf, and said, “I liked your mother’s articles. I read them in the village I was living in an hour north of here. Some people need to have their minds opened up so they can properly join us in the twentieth century.”
“I’m in the twentieth century,” Rowena said. “Firmly planted. Go women. Boo men. Especially my ex-husband, The Big Arse. May his scrotum rot.”
I nodded at Rowena. “Creative thinking.” I turned to Lorna. “My mother wrote about women, women’s rights, women’s choices and opportunities. I’ve read her articles.” I had met women like Lorna. It was one of the reasons I prefer cats.
“I personally believe that a woman’s place is in the home, supporting her husband and children.” Lorna tilted her chin up, proud of herself in an oh-so sanctimonious way.
“Well, rah-rah for you,” Kenna said. “But not everyone shares that opinion.”
“I work,” Olive said. “I make my scarves and sell them. Not as many as I’d like, but I’m growing my business. Fortunately, I haven’t used them to gag anyone.” She dipped her head toward Lorna. “Yet.”
“I work,” Rowena said. “I recently started making rock jewelry and I’m trying to sell them, too. I call it Scottish Rocks of Love and Lore.” She tilted her chin up and held her necklace out. Proud of what she’d done. “I have four children. I stopped working to take care of them, then The Arse walks out the door. Was that the best choice? Yes. I loved being at home. But no, I gave up my career and I can’t pay my mortgage. What I can do is make The Arse’s life with The Slut as miserable as possible, and I do try my best to do that. It takes time.”
Lorna sniffed. “My family needed me at home and thankfully my husband was able to provide for all of us, so I did not have to work.”
“Why say it in such a snobby and nauseatingly superior manner?” Kenna said. “That’s not the point. Some women want to work.”
“No, they don’t,” Lorna said, shaking a finger. “They do so because their man can’t provide.”
Wow. Her ignorance was truly stunning. “Some people believe what they want to believe regardless of facts.”
Lorna shot a malevolent glance my way.
“Did you not receive my letter, Lorna, about your snippiness?” Olive asked. “This would include inane, piggish comments about women and working.”
“I cut people open with knives and sew them back together, sometimes after removing something sick from their bodies.” Kenna leaned forward. There was no fondness between those two women. “I worked and I raised my children at the same time. If I stayed home all day to change their nappies, my brain would have dribbled out of my head. Like yours.”
Lorna rolled her eyes.
Malvina, Lorna’s daughter, hadn’t spoken. She was shaped like her mother, although her lap did not have as much oatmeal in it. Her shoulders were scrunched in, her short brown hair flat on her head, and she focused her gaze on the floor. She was an assistant librarian. She and Bridget had both gone to St. Cecilia’s.
“I have not job for the many years when I live in India,” Gitanjali said, her voice music, but sad music. She was wearing a wispy, yellow embroidered tunic and yellow pants. “It was unbroken. That not right word. It not allowed for me. For girls. My father, he marry me off when I thirteen to a man my great uncle. He want me, he tell my father, my father say yes for cow. So he give my father three cow. I would have love job because it give me, ah, the word is . . . when you are strong, alone . . . Independence! Money mean independence. Independence mean power not to get hit and marry off to old men.”
Gitanjali’s words whipped into that room, swung around, and fell hard.
“I’m sorry, Gitanjali,” I said, tamping down my anger at Lopsided Lorna.
“Me too,” Olive Oliver said. “You’ve never told me that.”
“I know. Please forgive,” Gitanjali said. “Trust not come simple to me, but if you will excuse the words, Lorna, I had to give you some thinking, no not right word, I had to give you a tongue, no that not right word, no tongue. Ah yes!” She smiled and stuck a finger in the air. “I had to give my voice to this talk on the women and working.”
Lorna glowered.
“When did you leave India?” Kenna asked, pushing back a stray strand of blond hair.
“I escape from hitting husband fifteen year ago. Go to shelter in Bombay, run by American woman. Husband and brothers try to find me, kill me. Say I cannot leave him. I hide. I get new name, then stay ten years. I work in factory making clothes for America, then I a maid and man and wife I a maid for, he Scottish, he in government, he tell me, I get you Scotland. So. He got me papers and I comes three year past. They are smiles in my life to me.”
“And now you have your own spice store,” Rowena said. “I love the free recipes you hand out.”
Gitanjali bowed her head, palms together. “Thank you. Yes, spices, for me. Independence. No choking my neck.” She wrapped her hands around her neck. “No hitting on the face.” She mocked getting hit in the face. “No push up there.” She pointed to her lap. “No man say, you do that, Gitanjali, you dog. Now, I share my love Indian food with every one of the persons here with the recipes and the spices.”
“Your recipes are delicious,” Olive said. “I killed Mr. Knee to make the chicken curry and my husband said it was mouth-watering. It was worth it to kill Mr. Knee.”
“Do you have any spices that will make my ex-husband’s scrotum rot?” Rowena asked in all seriousness. “Special red peppers? Hidden Indian spices that will make it wilt?”
“No, I scared, no, I afraid, I fear, I do not. I do have spice that rumored to lower the, uh, the sex push?” Her brow wrinkled. “That not the right word. Hmm. The intercourse lay? No, not that. I have spice that take away the—how you say—the way that a man—” She lifted one finger up, then flopped it back down, up, down. “The spice can do that to the man and the stick.”
“You have spice for a penis killer. I’ll take five pounds and put it in a dinner I’ll make him,” Rowena said, triumphantly. “He’ll never know what made his pecker not peckable anymore.”
Kenna laughed. “To thi
nk of the millions spent on modern medicine to give a man an erection.”
“Yes,” Gitanjali said, her finger flopping. “Erection. Down. I have that down erection spice.”
“I haven’t tried your recipes,” Lorna sniffed. “My husband enjoys roast loin of venison, braised cabbage, lamb, puddings, and Scottish shortbread. Pure Scot, we are. His family has been here for thousands of years, at least, like mine. We are not foreign to this country and are not interested in foreign food.”
I wanted to knock my fist into Lorna’s oatmeal gut. I knew what she was doing. She was pointing out to Gitanjali that she, Gitanjali, was the foreign one, that her family, Lorna’s family, belonged. They were Scottish, not Indian, and they did not like Indian food, they liked Scottish food, as all their ancestors before them liked Scottish food. Nothing foreign. No foreigners.
Gitanjali dipped her head. Her English wasn’t perfect, but she got it. I got it, too. Racism resides in all places, villages, cities, and everywhere in between. It’s subtle and it’s blatant. Tonight, it was Lorna.
“Gitanjali’s food is delicious,” Kenna said.
Lorna waved a hand. “We prefer our own.”
“Now I understand why there is violence in this garden club sometimes,” I said.
“Don’t make others bleed is my motto,” Rowena said. “Unless it’s The Arse.”
“If there’s blood, I would sew most of you up,” Kenna said.
“Let’s begin tonight’s discussion about garden design,” Olive interrupted, glaring at Lopsided Lorna. She was obviously agitated. She stood up and handed each of us a slice of iced cherry cake, then started pouring tea. “What should we think of when we are designing a garden or redesigning an existing garden?”
