That Wild Berries Should Grow (9 page)

After the wash was done, it was time for the garden. She seemed really angry at the little tufts of green she was yanking out of the flower beds. I asked her what they were. “Crabgrass and chickweed,” she said. I saved both of the words.

In the kitchen the bread dough grew until it pushed up the clean white towel that covered it. Grandmama shaped the dough into loaves and let it rise again. Then it went into the oven, and the whole house smelled of fresh baked bread.

After lunch we all picked peaches. I picked the ones on the lowest limbs of the trees. Grandmama reached up into the branches. Grandpapa stood on a stepladder. “Handle the fruit gently,” he said. “Peaches bruise easily.” One by one we lay the fragrant fruit into a bushel basket. When all the ripe peaches were picked, Grandpapa carried the basket into the kitchen. Grandmama boiled up a kettle of sugar syrup. By dinnertime two dozen jars of gold fruit were lined up on the kitchen table.

We had thick slices of the fresh bread with our dinner. For dessert we ate the peaches that were too ripe to can. The peach juice ran down our chins, and we all laughed. Whatever had made Grandmama angry in the morning had disappeared into the clean clothes and the bread and the garden and the jars of perfect peaches.

That Wild Berries Should Grow

That wild berries should grow

and fling their thorny shoot

above your head and jail you

while you steal their fruit
,

that they should let you go
.

I picked blackberries with Grandmama today. I was used to picking raspberries and gooseberries in the garden, but the blackberries grow way at the back of the field. Raspberries and gooseberries grow in neat rows that Grandpapa keeps trimmed. Blackberries grow in a tall tangle of briars. The shoots were higher than my head and covered with thorns that tore my dress and scratched my arms.

I would have given up, but the berries were so plump and juicy. And they were free — a gift.

We wore straw hats so that our hair wouldn't get snagged and strapped pails around our waists so that our hands would be free to pick the berries. In no time the bottoms of our pails were covered, and the blackberries began to heap up. Our hands were stained purple and so were our mouths. While I picked I could hear Grandmama singing a song. She wrote down the German words for me and told me what they meant:

Mit den Händen: klapp-klapp-klapp,

mit den Füssen: trapp-trapp-trapp,

einmal hin, einmal her,

rund herum — das ist nicht schwer.

Noch einmal das schöne Spiel,

weil es mir so gut gefiel.

Einmal hin, einmal her,

rund herum — das is nicht schwer.

With the hand: clap, clap, clap,

with the foot: tap, tap, tap,

this way once, that way once,

turn around — now that's not hard.

Once again the happy game,

because it feels so good to me.

This way once, that way once,

turn around — now that's not hard.

She pointed me in the direction of a bush where the ripe fruit hung in thick clusters. “Over there,
Liebchen.” Liebchen
means “sweetheart.” It was Grandmama's
kosename
, “cozy name,” for me. She seemed so happy that it was hard to remember that sometimes she is cross. Just like the blackberries, I thought, you had to get past the thorns to taste the sweet fruit.

We got home with the blackberries just as Grandpapa returned home from Greenbush. He had gone into town to buy a part for the water pump, which had stopped working. Something went wrong with the pump about every week. Then we had to use water from the rain barrel or drag up pails of water from the lake. “Look what I have,” he called to us. He was waving a letter. “It's from Switzerland. Kurt and Ruth are safe. Now we must make plans. They can have one of my apartments.” He meant the same apartment building where my parents and aunts and uncles live.

“What about a job, Carl?” Grandmama was heaping the blackberries into a pot to make jam. Even if the world was coming to an end she would still be working.

“I'll call the art school. Both of them could teach. In these hard times there won't be much money, but if things get a little better someday they might have their own art gallery again.”

The blackberries and sugar were boiling on the stove. It smelled wonderful. All afternoon Grandmama and Grandpapa made plans for their friends, and at the end of the day, besides all their plans there were thirty-five pints of blackberry jam.

September Storm

I watch the storm unhitch

the yellow leaves

from off the birch
,

grab the poplar by its scruff
,

toss two helpless

gulls that hover

above the tumbled waves
.

I watch the bank

I'd walked upon

crumble like a slice of cake

into the gully's belly
.

I know that ground
,

I know its fleece of chickweed flowers
,

its golden dandelions, its taste of sour sorrel
.

I know fall will follow

on the storm

to sweep summer

into the net of my

remembering
.

Yesterday while I was packing my things the storm came. It happened so suddenly we weren't ready for it. It didn't start with a few plashes of rain on the sidewalk or a dance on the lake. The sky exploded with flashes and a roar of thunder. The wind threw a fit. A minute later the water came down as if someone were throwing it at us, just as Grandmama throws dishwater on her roses.

We ran through the house shutting windows, but the rain was ahead of us, and we had to mop the floors. When the rain was shut out we stood at the windows watching the show. It was a real roughhouse. The birch tree bent over until its branches swept the ground. Apples, pears, and plums rocketed over the orchard. Along the edge of the bank the ground crumbled away into the gully.

What I couldn't stop looking at was the lake. It was turning itself inside out. It was like someone you love suddenly growing angry. The whitecaps came crashing onto the shore. The water reached farther and farther up onto the beach until even the pump house was threatened. A couple of seagulls were tossed around over the churning water. There wasn't a boat to be seen. I hoped the
Billy Boy
was safe on shore.

Just as we finished our supper, the lights went out. Grandpapa brought out kerosene lamps. “Just like old times,” he said. The lamps were bright enough so that you could see, but not bright enough that you could see much. I couldn't read, and Grandmama couldn't sew, but Grandpapa could play his violin. He played for nearly an hour while the wind and rain and thunder carried on outside like the loudest orchestra you ever heard.

This morning when I awoke the sun was dancing on my ceiling. I hurried into my clothes and ran to see what was left of my garden. The snapdragons had laid down and died. The cages had saved my tomato plants, but a lot of the tomatoes had shaken loose. Some of them were still green. “We'll have to throw them away,” I said.

“No, no,” Grandmama told me. “They won't go to waste. We can make green tomato pickles.”

Grandpapa was walking around in the orchard. Branches were scattered everywhere. Fruit that had blown off the trees lay on the ground. I couldn't see Grandpapa's face, but I could see how his shoulders were hunched over. He began putting the fallen fruit into a bushel basket. Grandmama and I helped. This time it was Grandmama who was trying to cheer up Grandpapa. “I was going to make jelly today, anyhow,” she said. “Now the fruit has been picked for us.”

“By rough hands,” Grandpapa said with a sad shake of his head.

When we were finished filling the bushel baskets with the bruised fruit I walked down the stairs past the pump house to the beach. The lake was perfectly calm, but all along the beach were souvenirs from the storm. The huge waves had washed in floats from fishing nets and bits of pink and green and lavender glass worn smooth by the water. It was as though the lake had scattered those pretty things along the beach, like presents. It wanted to show that, in spite of the storm, we were still friends.

Last Look

They have shuttered

the eyes of the cottage
,

the dresser drawer

pockets are picked
,

in the pump house

the heartbeat has stopped
.

All that is left

of the summer

is a bushel of pears

in the trunk of the car
.

Beyond the birch tree

is bright water

and the smoke

that I see

at the top

of the lake's

wide blue page

is the freighter's

sooty scrawl
,

“
Go away and return
,

go away and return.
”

Summer's over, and I'm going home. Grandmama and Grandpapa and I stood at the end of the driveway watching my parents' car come toward us. When I first came to Greenbush, all I wanted was to go home. Now my parents were coming to take me back to the city, and I almost didn't want to go.

“How healthy you look!” Mom threw her arms around me.

“How tall you've grown!” Dad had a wide grin on his face.

I laughed. “Grandmama and Grandpapa make everything grow!”

I held onto my parents' hands and led them to the orchard. I named all the fruit trees for them: Jonathan, Rome Beauty, Spitzenburg, Mayflower, Elberta, Red Haven, Russetts, Bosc, Bartlett, Damson, and Mirabelle. The trees were like good friends.

I got the salt cellar and took Mom and Dad to my own garden. I showed them how we pick tomatoes right off the vine and eat them still warm from the sun. I gave them the bag of my own beans all ready to take home. “Next year,” I said, “Grandmama and Grandpapa promised I could have a bigger garden.”

I took them to see the lake. I showed them all the things you could find along the beach. I even made them climb down into the gully. “What did you
do
down here?” Mom asked. “There seem to be a lot of bugs and weeds and things.”

“That's why I like it,” I said, and I told them the names of the bugs and weeds.

Grandmama took Mom into the pantry to see the jars of fruit and jam and the green tomato pickles. There was a big box all packed with jars for us to take home. Every time we opened a jar of peaches or tomatoes or blackberry jam I would remember the day Grandmama had made them. Grandpapa had picked us a bushel of pears.

We were just going to have our lunch when Tommy turned up. He always seemed to know when it was time to eat. He brought us a big package. “It's some pickerel,” he. said. Pickerel is just about the best-tasting fish you can get. “You can take it home with you. It's fresh. We caught it this morning.” The fish was wrapped in newspapers and chopped ice like they have at Meyer's Fish House. The newspapers were all wet, and the package was leaking.

Mom took it and held it a little way away from her. “Pickerel is my favorite fish. We'll certainly enjoy this. Thank you so much.”

“Who is this very nice young man?” Dad asked. Everyone waited for me to introduce Tommy, so I had to.

“You're probably giving your folks a big dinner,” Tommy said, so Grandmama asked him to stay and eat with us. He kicked my shins under the table and I kicked his back. Also he took the last piece of cake on the plate, which isn't polite. He told fibs, too. “My dad and I saw this huge fish that was as big as this whole house. We would have caught it if we had had a cat to tie on our line. Fish that big just eat cats.”

“Where do fish get cats to eat in the middle of the lake?” I wanted to know.

“People who want to get rid of their cats and kittens dump them in the lake to drown. It happens all the time.”

“It does not! That's a terrible thing to say!” Tommy just shrugged. As he was getting ready to go home, Tommy said, “I'll see you next year.”

“Not if I see you first,” I said. He punched me in the arm and I punched him back.

In spite of the fact that we had just finished a huge lunch, Grandmama packed a big supper for us to eat in the car. Later in the week my grandparents would leave the cottage for the city, too. Dad and Grandpapa were closing some of the shutters on the windows. Mother and Grandmama were putting sheets on the furniture so it wouldn't get dusty over the winter. The cottage was beginning to look like it was getting ready for ghosts.

Finally it was time to go. Our car was loaded. I hugged Grandmama and Grandpapa. Hard. While my mother and dad were saying good-bye to my grandparents, I slipped away to the front of the house. There was the screen porch. There was my old apple tree. And there, stretching as far as I could see, was the shining lake. I stood watching it a long minute. Then I walked slowly back to the car and climbed in.

About the Author

Gloria Whelan is a poet, short story writer, and novelist best known for her children's and young adult fiction. Whelan has been writing since childhood and was the editor of her high school newspaper. Many of her books are set in Michigan, but she also writes about faraway places based on her travels abroad. In 2000 she won the National Book Award for her young adult novel
Homeless Bird
. Her other works have earned places among the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults, the International Reading Association's Teachers' Choices and Children's Choices, Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, and Los Angeles' 100 Best Books. Whelan has also received the Mark Twain Award and the O. Henry Award. She lives in Detroit, Michigan.