Writing, day 3

an excerpt:
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Believe


I admit, I am more gullible than most. I am a cynic and skeptic, too. I don’t know how both sides of the dichotomy exist within me without some internal combustion, but they do. Most times, I believe what I am told.


I only knew my grandfather as a retiree. I’ve heard stories and seen pictures of when he was in the army or when he sliced open the dead bodies of mental patients. Maybe, looking back, these are selective memories, what I choose to remember or file away in the card catalog of memories and deceased family members. I am guilty of that. Choosing things I want to remember: mostly the positive things. Once, my family was reminiscing about him – noting his absence – at a cook out. Everyone was throwing around a series of “do you remembers” followed by nothing that sounded like the man I knew. I refused to believe that. Here is where my skepticism kicked in. I refused to believe that he was a drunk, or that one time he set his Monte Carlo on fire while driving down South Carolina’s I-20.


The James – we called him Papa James – I knew spent his afternoons turning his suburban backyard into a farm. For me. Everything he did, he professed, he did it for me.


In my grandparents’ back yard, around the magnolia that is positioned right in the center, were the following (not all at once, but some permeation of the following based on the season and availability): chicks; ducks; a pond with carp, goldfish and two small turtles (my sister named them Thelma and Louise; I named them Felix and Otis); rabbits; a “jungle gym”; a picnic table and grill made of cinderblocks; a storage shed; a green house; a house where he put a TV, bed, and rocking chair; cats named Tom and Jerry – none of the animals except the finches were allowed inside; Iguanas; a small garden with various fruits and vegetables; a barrel opened on its side filled with a strawberry patch.


Over the summers, I would spend weeks at a time there; my grandfather and I both needed something or someone to occupy those empty days. My grandmother was still working and would be up and out of the house before I woke up and I would hear in my sleep the faint sounds of some lawn mower or gardening appliance. I’d wake up and make my way to the kitchen where a ritual breakfast of fried eggs, grits and sausage were waiting.


Eventually, I’d make it outside. By then the sun was up and out and my grandfather was done with his work for the day. He’d come inside and take a nap. I’d romp around from sprinkler to greenhouse to chicken shed to rabbit cage to the strawberry patch.


It wasn’t until I entered the house one day – my fingers and face marked – to find Papa James reading his Bible, preparing for his Sunday school teaching. He looked up and asked me what I had gotten into. I was sure that he’d still be napping and I could wash my face and hands and settle down to whatever lunch he had fixed. I couldn’t lie; I told him I tasted some of the strawberries. That was a lie. I had picked all of the red ones and eaten them right there, hovering the barrel.


He closed his Bible and began to fix my lunch. I rushed to wash up. He entertained my desire to watch cartoons, and I remember this particular cartoon was an episode of Rugrats. The trouble-maker girl – Angelica (of whom I related to most at times) was tormenting one of the younger kids because they had eaten the seed of some fruit. Watermelon, I believe. She told them that they should know you never eat the seeds of anything. Ever. That to eat the seeds of something would surely mean that you’d have the whole fruit growing inside of you. And you’d die.


Papa James took this opportunity to tell me that it was true. You never, ever eat the seeds. You could die. He then asked me if I ate the strawberries. I said yes. He said, soon there will be a strawberry patch growing in my stomach.


Scared of what that could mean – that my small frame would expand to explosion – I wanted to give every strawberry back. It was too late he said. We sat and watched the end of the cartoon, and he cleaned up and went outside to tend to his garden.


How did one avoid eating strawberry seeds? They were outside of the fruit; countless numbers embedded in the red flesh. I contemplated the thousand seeds I had consumed. How each one would grow and grow. I hadn’t believed the cartoon. It was a bunch of moving pictures and voice-overs and extreme scenarios enlarged by childish imaginations. But my grandfather had confirmed its truth. I believed. I was going to die.