Buried Seeds Read online

  The last clump of ricotta and spinach slides into a giant pasta shell. The shells look like cute turtles flipped onto their backs. I smother them in Poppy’s marinara—he is still allowed in the kitchen with supervision—and slide the pan into the oven.

  We think, but don’t know for sure, that MacKenzie might be vegetarian now, so the shells are for her, in case she won’t eat the meatloaf Mom made. If she turns out to be vegan, there’s always salad with Mom’s beefsteak tomatoes and Poppy’s signature vinaigrette, and the Italian bread Trish picked up at Tomaro’s Bakery. A kettle of water is on the stove to steam ears of corn fresh from Mom’s garden. I could live off that corn, heavenly sunshine harnessed in every kernel.

  Trish slices the bread, her long, thick braid swinging across her back, her skin radiant, glowing from all those good hormones.

  Vases of crayon-colored zinnias adorn the center of the dining room table. Mom has laid out her best white damask tablecloth, Grandma’s Forget-Me-Not china, and the good silver. And naturally, MacKenzie’s place at the table is set with the red plate—the special plate for the guest of honor. My place has never been set with the red plate.

  With my sister due any minute, I take off my apron, a necessity when you put me anywhere in the vicinity of tomato sauce. Before the day is out, despite my best efforts to be careful, my blouse will be smeared with colorful splashes worthy of a Jackson Pollock painting.

  The purr of an engine alerts us to MacKenzie’s arrival. “Here’s my girl!” Mom rushes outside and approaches the car before the tires stop spinning, repeating her greeting—“Here’s my special girl!”— all open arms, the bear hug mandatory, even though it’s only been a few hours since the bocce matches.

  MacKenzie hugs Mom back, though it seems to me her arms are braced to keep a little space between them, probably doesn’t want her blouse mussed.

  “I’m not your special girl.” MacKenzie’s voice sounds scratchy like she’s swallowed shards of glass. “That would be Angela, the daughter you chose. I’m the accident that came after her.”

  I have never given credence to demonic possession, but I might have to change my opinion. Who is this person speaking? Can’t be my sister.

  My mother looks crestfallen. “How can you say that? You know how much I longed for a baby. And I love you both the same, always have.”

  MacKenzie makes a sound I’ve never heard from her before. Not quite a snort. Not quite a snuffle. A snorfle.

  I try to make light of the moment. “Give me a break, Mac. You’ve always been the perfect daughter. I was the troublemaker. Remember my plan to raise chicks for Easter—and those soft white eggs I found by the creek and hatched in my bedroom turned out to be snakes and it took weeks to find them all? I was the tomboy who deliberately steered my bike through mud, while you skirted the puddles and kept your clothes clean. It’s a wonder they didn’t send me back.”

  Mom throws her hands up in the air. She looks so frail it’s a wonder she doesn’t pitch right over with the motion, but I know she’s stronger than she looks. “Stop it now, girls. I love you both the same.”

  “We know.” I hold out my arms for the requisite sibling hug, but MacKenzie needn’t worry about my crushing her clothes. I know better. A hug with space. A space filled with the dread of moving aside because behind me is Trish, my beautiful, athletic daughter, lushly ripe, ready to bear the fruit of her womb.

  MacKenzie pushes past me. “Trish!” Her arms open wide and then waterfall, flowing down the front of dazzling white capris. She whirls around to me. “My only niece is having a baby and you didn’t tell me?”

  “You should return phone calls once in a while.”

  “We were together all morning at the bocce court. You might have mentioned it.”

  “Didn’t seem like the place for a family chat.”

  My sister back-steps, a thought visibly climbing her throat, choking her red-faced. Her voice crackles like tires on gravel. “You didn’t invite me to the wedding!”

  “Girls, all this fussing is going to spoil your appetites,” my mother says.

  I am ready to scream, but Trish only laughs. “Take it easy, Auntie Mac—there hasn’t been a wedding, but if there ever is, yours will be the first invitation I send out.”

  Oh, lordee, call the firemen! Mac’s face is really burning now— and she wonders why I didn’t announce the news at the tournament.

  “Not married!”

  “I’m not at all sure I want to get married.”

  My sister glares at me as if this was all my idea. “What does Reverend Carr have to say about this?”

  “He hasn’t commented,” I say.

  “What about the school board? Won’t she lose her job?”

  “And be sued? This is 2017, Mac. Wake up.”

  Trish plants her hands on her hips. “Hey, you two, cut it out. You’re talking about me as if I’m not here. It’s my life and I intend to live it my way. I want a baby now, but I refuse to get married until I find the perfect husband.”

  To my surprise, Mac says aloud what I am thinking: “Good luck with that.”

  Trish laughs. “At least he has to be perfect for me. Anyway, I know you are going to be a great Great Aunt, Auntie Mac—the best ever. Because you sure have been good to me.”

  I almost blurt out a huh? but bite my tongue. In some ways, Mac has been a good aunt. She comes through with the perfect gifts for birthdays and Christmas from the smartest fashions to the smartest phones—stuff I can’t afford to buy. But it’s not as if she ever took Trish shopping or went for walks in the woods or even shared family stories.

  Trish pulls my sister into a real hug. Mac is smiling again, her bestness reaffirmed.

  I remember reading somewhere that flattery works best on insecure people. It dawns on me that my sister may not be the arrogant Queen of the Capital after all. She seems more messed up than usual. Why? The answer washes over me in a nasty wave. Something’s gone wrong in her marriage.

  Something beyond the fact that her husband is Ted. That part has always been wrong.

  ~~~

  Preplanning days mean major hustle to prep my classroom to receive students. With a box cutter, I slice into cartons of supplies I ordered at the end of last term. I unpack beakers, slides, Petri dishes, pipettes, and multi-packs of probes for measuring pH, temperature, and soil nutrients. Then I carefully unwrap three new basic model digital microscopes, which at three hundred dollars each, ate a big hole in my budget. No choice. To meet the new state science standards, lessons have to be lab-centered—and that means more equipment. I would give my eye-teeth for a couple of research-quality microscopes, but I can only stretch the dollars so far.

  Next I unload another big ticket item: preserved specimens. Sure, these days students could do virtual dissections on the computer, but virtual experience just isn’t the same as the real thing. So specimens: one worm for each student to serve as an introduction to dissecting, and one fetal pig to be shared by eight students in my human anatomy classes. I sigh. It should have been a pig for every four kids, but at thirty dollars each, this was as far as the budget would stretch. The legislature screwed us over once again. I can use my personal credit card to buy sterile soil at the local garden center. They know I’m a teacher and always throw in little black plastic pots for free. I’ve saved thousands of Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce seeds, enough for all my students. Just once it would be nice if I didn’t have to use my own money for school supplies. Yeah. Might as well wish for world peace.

  Despite harboring evil thoughts of slashing cheapskate legislators’ tires, tingles slide up and down my spine as I look around the classroom that has been mine for the last twenty-five years. The desks and whiteboards are neat and clean. One wall is brightened by my “Mrs. Fisher’s Seeds for Success” bulletin board. It uses a winding garden path as a metaphor for getting along in my room, and, I hope, in life as well. I turn off the lights and lock my door.

  The first day of school is only a few day
s away. If ever I don’t feel this rush, this hope, this I’m-ready-to-change-the-world-one-child-at-a-time at the beginning of the school year, I will know it’s time to retire. I feel optimistic, even though experience has taught me my shining enthusiasm will dim by the time I issue the first report cards and will darken right along with winter skies in the weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday. Luckily, I rebound over the break.

  I jog down the hall to Rebecca’s room and call through the open doorway, “Going out to lunch?”

  Rebecca is standing on a chair, wobbling as she pivots toward me. A short brunette, she carries thirty excess pounds—“ten for each child I birthed,” she claims. I don’t have that excuse since I only birthed one child. Instead I blame Poppy’s pasta and tiramisu.

  “Come help me pin up the last pieces of this bulletin board and we’ll head out.” Rebecca, in a gesture I’ve witnessed a hundred times, tugs a tuft of her short hair straight out from her scalp. She wears it in a spiky, gelled style, a bit wild and youthful, a deliberate contrast to the premature silvering. In her early forties, Rebecca still has school-age kids. Our principal asked me to serve as her mentor when she arrived here straight out of college. Since all my friends from high school and college had long since moved out of state and Rebecca was new to town, our work relationship soon expanded into caring and sharing; in short, a friendship.

  On her desk I find a thin cardboard red and blue circle graph and hand it to her. I pass Rebecca little cardboard cars that reinforce the concept of three-fourths. Repetition. Eventually most kids will conquer fractions, though they prove perennially difficult for Rebecca’s special needs kids to grasp. Rebecca is a saint. It takes incredible patience, perseverance, and determination, when student progress arrives in baby steps rather than leaps and bounds.

  “Nice board,” I say.

  She hops down to admire her work. “Thanks. I made all the pieces myself.”

  “Paid for the cardboard yourself, too, no doubt.”

  “Do I detect a touch of sarcasm, missy?” Rebecca chuckles and slings a suitcase-of-a-purse over her shoulder. “Yeah, I bought it. How else is a body gonna get supplies around here?”

  “Some things will never change.”

  Rebecca holds the outside door open and lets me pass through ahead of her. “Not true. We can change education policy through AFT and WVEA. Things are different this year.”

  She has to say that, as president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. The other union is the West Virginia Education Association. I’m a member of AFT, the inactive type.

  “People say that every year and nothing changes.”

  “No, really. This time our unions are working together instead of competing. You’d know that if you ever came to a meeting.”

  “I’d rather eat chalk than sit through long, boring meetings. Besides, you might as well believe in the Education Fairy. She’s going to wave her magic wand and every room will be lined with SMART Boards and state-of-the-art computers, all raggedy lab equipment will be replaced, and we’ll get free A-plus health insurance.”

  We stride to Hilltop High’s teacher parking lot. “My car,” I suggest. My electric vehicle, a Bolt, is one small way I try to lead students by example. It makes talking about clean air easier in a state where people can get mighty defensive over any suggestion that burning coal and petroleum products might not be as clean as coal and oil company commercials claim.

  Rebecca climbs in the passenger seat. She tugs on another spike of hair, and then for good measure, tugs on two more. “You need to get more involved. You’re coming with me this afternoon to our first meeting of the new school year, and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Great. I had hoped to use that first hour after this teacher-prep day to tweak directions for my all-time favorite biology assignment, one that lasts all year: making each kid responsible for determining the exact ecology of his or her own small plot of undeveloped land, cataloguing every living and non-living thing, no matter how small or large, and determining how it sustains its life. During the year they will create models for food chains and nutrient cycles for their little piece of Planet Earth. They will record their observations regularly in their science journals. I want GPS coordinates of individual plots ready for the start of the school year.

  Someday I’m going to learn to keep my snarky comments to myself. I’ve heard the grumbling. I’ve grumbled too. No pay raises for years. Health insurance premiums increasing astronomically. But I can’t afford to be branded a troublemaker, can’t afford to lose my job. Especially now that Dewey is likely to lose his.

  We head into a downtown that’s pretty enough, with attractive streetlamps, smooth sidewalks, and tidy facades, but it sure isn’t the same downtown I knew growing up. One by one, locally owned businesses— Broida’s Bridal Shop, Parsons Souders Department Store, Mellet’s Clothing for Men, and Palace Furniture—and even Sears and JCPenney’s closed their doors. Of the old stores, only the James and Law Company, a stationer and bookstore, remains, though new businesses inhabit a few of the old buildings now. First the money fled to the Fairmont and Bridgeport malls, and then moved on to East Pointe, New Pointe and White Oak, those sprawling outdoor strip malls. Rebecca and I try to patronize locally owned establishments, so we head out Bridgeport Hill to Twin Oaks, which has been part of the Clarksburg-Bridgeport scene forever. Or at least for all of my life. The restaurant is housed in a tan-sided building with a giant sign near the highway. A red arrow beckons guests to enter. The décor is unpretentious: wooden tables with paper place-mats and slat-backed, padded-seat chairs.

  Over meatball hoagies oozing mozzarella and marinara, Rebecca outlines her goals for AFT. “I think you would make a great vice president. Peggy can only serve until October, and then she’ll be out on pregnancy leave, so I need someone to finish out the year.”

  “No way.”

  Rebecca holds her palm up like a traffic cop. “Hear me out. You have tons of classroom experience. No one knows what these kids and teachers need any better than you do. You’ve been a member of AFT forever, so how about it? Give something back.”

  “As if I need one more thing to do.”

  “Who does? But change only happens if we all work together for it. Think about it, okay?”

  Finally I agree, if only to get Rebecca to turn off the lecture mode. There are better people than me to take the lead. Later I’ll find some excuse to renege. Meetings suck. Which reminds me, I’d called a science department meeting for 1:30—one with a tight agenda that will take no more than fifteen minutes. With a napkin, I mop smears of marina and cheese from my mouth and push my chair from the table.

  “Back to the grind,” I say.

  “You know you love it.”

  Truth. I can’t imagine any more rewarding—or aggravating— way to spend my life.

  Late August 2017

  Two weeks pass and it’s still hotter than blue blazes. I can hardly touch the steering wheel when I first get in the car. As I pull into our driveway, I spot several ripe tomatoes in the pots along the side of the house. I stop to pick them before going in. When we moved in twenty-five years ago, our middle-class neighborhood was already fraying around the edges, a loose awning here, broken window there. Now half a dozen houses have deteriorated to the point they deserve demolition rather than renovation and folks with money have moved to Bridgeport. Dewey, though, has repainted our modest two-story with a fresh coat of white. New windows and thirty-year shingles on the roof, too.

  He meets me at the front door. “Angie, your mom called. She wants us to come over for supper tonight.”

  “Not tonight. I had a crazy, crazy day at work.”

  He takes my purse and satchel of papers, sets them on the end table by the sofa. I collapse into the cushions. They are lumpy and on the verge of collapse themselves.

  Dewey trudges to the fridge, brings back a glass of iced tea for me. He settles in beside me. “What happened? Tell Dr. Dewey all abo
ut it. Big smooches gonna make it all better.”

  The smucky sounds he makes are so silly I can’t help but smile. Two long sips later, I sigh. Where to start?

  “Kev dropped one of my microscopes in first period and broke it. Another one quit working because the gear mechanism locking the stage down is stripped and it won’t focus. I had to send both off for repairs. A forest ranger I’d scheduled as a speaker tomorrow called and said she couldn’t make it. And the assistant principal tried to twist my arm into becoming an assistant girls’ soccer team coach. I refused.” I stop to take another long drink.

  “Yeah, Ange, but none of that would have driven you over the edge.”

  He knows me too well. “Marla Harding’s mom dropped by on my planning period and it took her half an hour to insist that her child must sit in the front row because she has poor eyesight and refuses to wear glasses because some boy made some crack about how ugly they were. Right before my next class came in, Mrs. Harding sneaked out the real reason for her visit. She wants to be sure I don’t teach her daughter about that—” I finger air quotes—“ ‘sacrilegious evolution garbage’ or she is going to homeschool her.”

  “So let her—fewer papers to grade.”

  Dewey can’t understand how that suggestion distresses me. I truly like Marla, a no-nonsense, big-boned awkward girl who reminds me of myself at that age. I truly believe a strong public school education will enable her to develop her full potential.

  “I want to keep her in my class, Dew. I suggested the best place to study creationism was Sunday School.”

  “I take it the mom didn’t like that.”

  “Nope. After school I got called into Mr. Esposito’s office to see if I couldn’t make accommodations for Marla and her mother. Like what? Nail myself and the biology text to a cross on the front wall?”

  “Ange, I know you didn’t tell him that.”

  A visit to the principal’s office causes brain freeze worse than sucking down a whole slushy in one gulp. It’s not that Mr. E. isn’t nice to me—he is kind, helpful, paternal, an older gent with thick salt and pepper hair and a waistline that tells me he loves pasta and warm bread as much as I do—but there’s something about being called to the principal’s office, whether you are eight or over forty-eight. Shame hangs around your neck like a big scarlet P. Once I stood before the man, every glimmer of a smart-alec comeback faded away.