Stop That Girl by Elizabeth Mckenzie

Author:Elizabeth Mckenzie
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307431844
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

I now owed $337.

“Just get it over with. Ask your parents,” Hannah said. Her parents paid for her to get her toenails done.

“My mother wouldn’t like it,” I said.

“Well, maybe Archie’ll change his mind and chip in,” she said.

I didn’t want to be seen as surrounded by tightwads. “Right. I’m going to call him, somehow, tonight.”

That afternoon I found myself scanning the bulletin board in the employment office. A notice for yard work caught my eye and, from a phone booth outside, I called. The job wasn’t taken! After I described my yard-work experiences, the woman gave me directions and invited me right over.

My tires hummed on the hot concrete, while the air smelled of palm resin and drying grass. There were old oaks and redwoods scattered around these neighborhoods, wild creek beds to cross, and real squirrels running along the phone lines. I found myself rolling up to a little gingerbreadtype house, with copper butterflies mounted on the lintel and with a personalized mat welcoming me.

The Holcombs. An older woman appeared at the door, the pleasant kind that probably played bridge or went to church or made large happy Thanksgiving dinners for her children and grandchildren without outbursts or fuss. She took me into her world, past her cozy plaid couch and cabinet full of animal figurines, out again through a sliding glass door. There she showed me a big mound thriving with birds-of-paradise.

“You pull this part back and this thing pops out and then you take off the old dried leaves back here and now the face can shine out. See?”

With her knobby fingers she managed to preen one. It involved opening the blossom on the bird-of-paradise to its fullest potential. They tended to get trapped in their own armature.

“Good,” she said, when I completed one. “My hands are frozen stiff with arthritis; otherwise I’d do it myself.”

I kind of enjoyed it too. “That’s all you want me to do?”

“Let’s see how it goes. I’ve got a boy who comes and does the grass.”

“So I guess you really like birds-of-paradise,” I said.

“They’re very special,” she said.

“Do you worry about them?” I asked. “Like, if they’re all going to die, or get diseased, or not enough water, stuff like that?”

“Well I’d rather spend my time enjoying them. Now if you see any snails, peel them off.”

She had just found one, and she threw it on the grass and stomped on it.

We agreed that I’d come by twice a week to start. What a stroke of good luck! She also provided sandwiches and root beer, and I didn’t even know that yet.

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