When I was 16, I went away to a public boarding school, a magnet school, which was not only a magnet for smarties, but a magnet for weirdoes. I was in heaven.
The school was located in a lovely, antebellum town, and there was a house with a walled garden that I used to walk by all the time and stand on my tiptoes and try to peer into its depths. The brick wall was old and crumbling on the outside, and from what I could see, the garden was an old one too. The trees were enormous, and their shade made the garden seem more mysterious and more attractive to me.
I was walking by the house one afternoon with my boyfriend and a friend, and for the first time, I saw the owner of the house at the mailbox. It was an old lady, probably in her 80s, or at least, she seemed that old to me at 16. She was wearing a pastel suit and a hat with flowers. If you can imagine the essence of the old moneyed Southern lady, you can imagine exactly what she looked like.
Now, in contrast, you should try to imagine me. I had hair that was long and dyed black, and so did my boyfriend. He was wearing shorts and an M.C. Escher t-shirt with combat boots. I have no memory of what I wore, but you can be sure it was weird enough. My friend was less strange looking, but she probably took on the aura of Goth/hippie kid just by standing so close to us.
When I saw the lady who obviously owned the house, I forgot that I was in rebellion against everything that she and the South and the Church stood for. I snapped back into the girl, deeply moved by the beauty of the world, that I was underneath all the rebellion, and I told the lady that I loved her house and her wall and the trees that I could see growing behind it.
I will never understand what made that tiny, old woman look past my boyfriend’s black eye makeup and my hair color, but she did. She might have acted out of Christian charity. She might have been mostly blind and had no idea what we looked like. But I like to think that she saw past my clothes into the feeling behind my words, and that because she loved her house and her walled garden, she was kind to someone who loved them too.
She was leaving, but she let us into the garden and told us to look around as long as we wanted to. When I think of that, I want to be kind and good to everyone I meet, to smile at every stranger, because without knowing it, she gave me my best moment, and I don’t want to miss my chance to give that gift.
So, we went into the garden. I’ve found that when I have anticipated and imagined a good thing for a long time, I am usually disappointed by what it turns out to be. But not this time. The garden was like an alternate dimension. The wall blocked out the sound of cars; the huge trees blocked out much of the sun. The town disappeared; our century disappeared. I had walked, in those five or six steps, out of the world I lived in and into the world I wished I lived in.
A green lawn stretched from the gate through about half of the garden. It was that lush, deep green that grass used to be before the yellowish kind became the fad for subdivisions. I immediately took off my shoes. We were alone now; the lady had left and closed the iron gates behind us.
Where the lawn ended, a rose garden began. Tan colored gravel walks were laid out in intersecting straight lines all through the roses. Behind the rose garden was a shady, damp walk along the back wall. The shade came from a giant, ancient wisteria vine that twisted in and out of a rickety looking wooden pergola. The wisteria was in full bloom, a fact that I consider one of the greatest pieces of luck I ever had, and the smell of the blooms (indescribable) mixed with the earthy smell of wet, rotting leaves. Under the vine, there was a tap in the wall, an old one shaped like leaves, and water dripped slowly from it. I turned it on, though it was rusty, and drank cool water.
I have a tendency to get carried away with the stories that I invent for myself in my head. That, and my youth, will be my excuse for what comes next. I said to my companions, “This is the Garden of Eden. This time, let’s not talk to the snake.” Overcome with the beauty of that idea, I took off my clothes, every stitch, and stretched out sunning myself on the lawn. I would have no fig leaves, no original sin, only the sunshine and the smell. My boyfriend and my friend did not take off their clothes, having less courage and imagination and more good sense. We talked as I soaked up the sun, and then I got dressed. It was late afternoon now, and cooler.
Our peace was interrupted sometime later by a middle aged man who walked out of the house and demanded to know who we were. We told him that a lady had let us in, and he huffed and puffed and blew us right out of that garden. I suspect the man was the lady’s son, just come home from work, and annoyed that his aging mother had been taken in by wierdoes like us. We left, still happy. The snake had come and we were driven out, but we had not fallen. I could still feel the heat of the sun on my arms.
That night, I wrote a letter to the lady. I told her how beautiful her garden was, the happiness it brought me, and how thankful I was that she had let me in that day. I left the letter and a bunch of wildflowers on the porch that evening. I signed my name, but told her nothing about who I was or where I lived.
Two days later, I was called down to the dorm office. I had received a telephone call. The message said that the lady who lived at ___ would like to see me again. She had assumed by our looks that we went to the magnet school (so she wasn’t blind after all) and called to get in touch with me. The message said that I was invited to tea the next afternoon, and I was to invite the two other young people as well.
Of course, we went. The lady gave us tea in beautiful china cups, gave us a tour of the house, told me the history of her family, and pointed out the portraits of her ancestors. She also made an apology for her son, the kind of apology that let me know she had taken my side and routed my enemies, without ever saying anything negative about her son to me. She practically glowed with the godlike social skills that old Southern ladies use to control an entire region without ever asserting themselves at all.
I never saw her again after that day, but I left gifts sometimes on her porch. They were offerings really, a portion of anything I baked, a part of any bouquet given to me by a boy, a tithe of all my good things as a thank you for the good thing she gave me that I could never repay.
6/8/10
