Chapter 2
Dirt Memory
“It’s a Tudor greenhouse,” Rosalinda said, emphasizing the “Tudor” like it held some special meaning for Rose. She lifted her walker over the sill of the door, and then together Rose and Rosalinda entered the balmy glass space. The warm, humid air was laced with scents. It seemed as if she were untangling a skein of fragrances. There was definitely a rose fragrance, but as she followed her grandmother, she detected an exotic, spicy smell that began to nip at the sweetness of the roses.
As she stood beneath the soaring glass roof, she felt as if she had entered a crystal castle. Indeed, there were three intersecting roofs, as there were three different areas of the greenhouse. Large cupolas floated like bubbles at the junctures where the roofs met, their glass panes tinted different colors. There was a calendar propped on an easel indicating which plants, depending on the time of the year, were to be hoisted on a rope-pulley system into the cupolas for exposure to the light. But there were winding staircases to these lofty realms as well. “This is amazing,” Rose said in a hushed voice, forgetting herself. “What are those?” she asked, pointing up to one of the cupolas where vines with white clusters of star-shaped flowers swayed in a spectral breeze.
“Jasmine, a tropical.”
Rosalinda was now perched in her planting chair, which was adjustable so that she could raise or lower it a foot or so, depending on which table she was working at. The tables ran for thirty feet down the center of the space and held tray upon tray of small plants and seedlings. Rosalinda explained that when they grew big enough, these plants would “graduate” to another area. This explanation began their longest conversation to date.
“Uh . . .” Rose was not quite sure what to call her grandmother. Granny? Grandma? Her best friend back in Philadelphia had called her grandmother Nana. Cook and Betty called her Mrs. A. Surely she shouldn’t call her that. She supposed Grandmother would be okay.
“Grandmother, why do you call it a Tudor greenhouse?”
“Because that’s what it is. It was an architectural style back then. And it’s not a kit, mind you. I designed it. After I built mine, they stole the design and made build-it-yourself kits. But none are like mine. Never could be. You can’t stuff a century into a kit.”
“A century?”
“Sixteenth,” Rosalinda mumbled. Her reply was barely audible.
“What?”
“Never mind,” she snapped. “I need you to thin out those ragged robin seedlings over there in that tray.” She pointed. Her finger was gnarled and bent, the knuckles swollen into knobs. “But before you do that, get me one of those pie tins and put some water in it from that pitcher. I have to soak some seeds overnight. Gives them a good start. Then you can do the thinning out.”
“Thinning out?”
“Yes, pluck out some of the little ones. The bigger ones need breathing space. Survival of the fittest, you know.”
But if she was ripping out the weaklings, was it survival of the fittest or murder of the frailest? She looked at her grandmother again. She was over eighty and seemed pretty frail, but something had changed since her grandmother was in the greenhouse. She seemed more alert. Even her eyes had lost that vague look they always had. For the first time, Rose could see a resemblance to her mom.
“Ragged robin—funny name.” She began pulling out the weaklings. It was an oddly restful activity. She felt as if she were allowing the other ones to breathe a bit.
“Nothing funny about the plant,” Rosalinda replied. “The leaves make a fine tea, and their flowers are delicate and lovely. With any luck they’ll be in bloom by Christmas. Let others have those hideous poinsettia plants.”
“You don’t like them?”
“I loathe them,” Rosalinda snarled. “Their immodesty offends. Wanton showgirls!”
Rose almost giggled. She sneaked a look at her grandmother, who had a most determined expression in her eyes now. She continued thinning out the ragged robin. Within a few minutes she had finished. The notion of studying for the upcoming spelling games dissolved. They no longer had spelling tests but games where you did stuff like rearrange the letters in a word to get a new word, like “carouse” out of “discourage.”
“Is there something else I can thin out, Grandmother?”
Rosalinda looked up. The trace of a smile played across her face and something halfway between a snort and a chuckle escaped. “Try that seedling tray next to it—the love-lies-bleeding.”
And from there Rose went on to another table where there were more plants with names like heartsease, cupid’s dart, scarlet snowcaps. Rose felt as if she were walking through a poem, or perhaps the shadows of very old legends. Stories swirled about her. Cook came and brought tea and small cakes. The afternoon faded into evening and Cook came again, this time with two trays of food, but neither Rose nor her grandmother was particularly hungry. Rose had learned how to take the seedlings that had become “plantlings,” her grandmother’s word, and move them into larger pots. It was a delicate operation. “Always let some of the old soil cling to their roots,” Rosalinda instructed.
“Why is that, Grandmother?”
“Memory—dirt memory. Nothing comes clean into this world. It shouldn’t. Spick-and-span, pristine, perfect—ridiculous notions.” She had held up a young fern. “You see this fern here?”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“Ferns are among the oldest plants on Earth; older than time, they are. Now just think if I had cleaned off all these roots. It would be as if I had sliced them from their history. From their great-great-grandmamma’s and grandpapa’s spores.”
“Spores?”
“One-celled little bitty things. They’re found on the underneath part of the fern frond. They’re in charge of reproduction. No romance. They can do it all by themselves. But still there’s a history. So you always start them in a nice little mixture of vermiculite, peat, and some soil that their ancestors have grown in. People always say that when you die you can’t take it with you. But with plants, especially very old plants, you can take it with you. So old dirt is good dirt. Let the soil cling—otherwise they’ll wither and die.” She paused and inhaled sharply. “It’s almost as if they get lonely.”
Rose shut her eyes. An ache swelled within her. Rosalinda reached out and touched Rose’s hand. Above, a flash of moonlight filtered through the glass ceiling. And outside she thought she heard the meow of a cat.
“You know, my dear, I’m too old, but that staircase winds up to the central cupola. It’s lovely on the night of a full moon. When shafts of moonlight fall through the tinted panes, it’s as if there’s a garden of light blooming up there. Go see for yourself. And say hello to the queen’s petticoat. It’ll have to be lowered tomorrow. We don’t want the poor thing moon-blinked. You know too much moonlight can do that.”
“What’s moon-blinked?”
“Slight confusion and then . . .”
Rose was already starting up the spiraling staircase. She felt the pools of colored light falling down on her. An intensity of scents swirled through the air. There were cinnamon and rose fragrances, then the spicy scent again mingled with something like lilies.