Into the Garden

Everybody wants to be part of a story.

Most people don’t realize that they are.

The winter doldrums descended over Emma’s house in early February. The excitement of Christmas, New Year’s, and her brother Sam’s birthday had long blown out, and now she was a ship with no wind in her sails, languishing on the sea.

Emma drifted down the hall and into the kitchen where the smell of the burnt tuna melts they’d had for lunch still hung in the air. Her mother was perched on a kitchen stool, elbows resting on layers of homework and mail, flipping through a cookbook.

“Mom, I don’t know what to do,” Emma said.

“Practice piano?” Mrs. Rhodes suggested without looking up.

“Already did.”

“Homework?”

“Did it.” Her fourth grade teacher didn’t assign much homework, and she had whipped through her math and copied out her vocabulary words and definitions on the bumpy bus ride home. Only one word had been new to her. Doldrums: 1) an equatorial ocean region known for dead calms, baffling winds, and sudden squalls, 2) a period of inactivity, a slump.

Emma slumped over the counter.

“The cat box needs cleaning,” Mrs. Rhodes said, finally looking up.

“I want to do something fun.”

“Well, it’s your job to think of what to do.” Mrs. Rhodes turned to the index and ran her finger down the Ps until she reached the word poultry. “Enchiladas or chicken soup—either of those sound good for dinner?”

Emma didn’t answer. Instead, she turned and used her toe to swing open the craft cupboard door and surveyed its contents. She liked making things for people. Maybe she could come up with a project to work on. But, like Mother Hubbard’s, the cupboard was bare. She couldn’t make anything with two pieces of tan construction paper, an empty tape dispenser and—“Hey, who did this?” Emma snatched up a box of watercolor paints. Every plastic oval contained a cake of mud-brown paint. “Who mixed all the colors together? Now it’s ruined.”

No one answered.

Emma tossed the paints back into the cupboard and flicked the door shut. Slogging on into the living room, she flopped onto the couch. How was there a whole world, and not a single thing to do in it?

A rubber ball, the size and color of a maraschino cherry, zipped past Mrs. Rhodes’s face.

“Keep it out of the kitchen, please,” she said to the back of Sam as he lunged after the ball. His long arms and legs, perpetually in motion, made the house seem a size too small on a dreary Saturday.

Sam threw the ball up and catching it fell backwards over the arm of the couch and landed on Emma, making sure to get his stinky toes tangled up in her hair.

“Uh! Get off!” she hollered.

“You’re pretty comfortable,” Sam said, jouncing up and down on top of his sister. “Nice and soft.” As he bounced, a snort popped out of Emma’s nose, and Sam laughed.

“Get off!” Emma gave Sam a shove and reached around for her glasses, which had fallen somewhere on the carpet.

“Will you two please go do something?” Mrs. Rhodes said and jerked the fridge door open. “I’m trying to think of what to make for dinner.”

Emma pushed her tortoiseshell glasses back onto her face and caught a glimpse of red. “Hey, that’s my ball. I got it in my Valentine’s bag from my teacher.” Emma pried at Sam’s fist. “Yours is blue. Give it to me!”

“Too late, I had it first,” Sam said and pitched it down the hall. The ball ricocheted off the wall and knocked a framed photo making it swing crookedly on its nail.

Sam and Emma’s father emerged from his study with a fat stack of dog-eared papers— homework, no doubt, that he had assigned and now had to grade. Mr. Rhodes taught physics at the local university and usually had to spend part of Saturday correcting pages of mangled equations. He liked his job, Emma knew, but he wasn’t so fond of grading.

Mr. Rhodes nabbed the offending ball and held it between his thumb and finger. “Take it down a notch, okay?” he said and handed it back to Sam. He turned and straightened the portrait of Sam and Emma as peach fuzz babies with a little more force than necessary.

Sam trailed his dad into the kitchen, dribbling the ball like a tiny, revved-up yoyo. “Hey, Dad.”

“Mmm?” Mr. Rhodes slid his grading into his briefcase and began to flip through a pile of mail on the kitchen counter.

“Will you do something with me?”

Mr. Rhodes tossed the pile into the recycling bin and turned to Sam, who was orbiting the dining room table. Sam was a kinesthetic learner, his teachers explained each year, and needed to move to think.

“What do you have in mind?” Sam’s father asked.

“Well…” Sam pinged the bouncy ball off the ceiling. “How about we scrimmage out on the hockey rink? Will you go out with me?”

“I’m sorry, buddy,” Mr. Rhodes said, sinking into his brown corduroy chair and reaching for his computer. “The ice is too soft. Nothing we can do about that.”

Sam looked out the window at the barefaced yard and groaned.

Poor Sam. Their Aunt Joy had given him a hockey stick for his eleventh birthday, but he’d only been out with it once before the rink turned to pea soup. Minnesota had not kept its end of the deal this winter. Instead of sending down drifts of heavenly snow, the sky turned iron grey and leaked cold, drizzly rain like an old pipe.

“Can we play video games?” Sam said.

Emma perked up. Their mother had banned video games since last week when she and Sam had gotten into a tiny, little screaming war over whose turn it was to use the tablet.

“Please, Dad, there’s nothing else to do.” Sam reached for the tablet where it sat on top of a bookshelf.

“No,” Mrs. Rhodes called from the kitchen. “No video games until your rooms are clean.”

Sam slumped on the couch. “Ahhg, you guys don’t let us do anything!”

“That’s enough!” Mr. Rhodes slapped down the lid of his laptop. “Get your coats and shoes on. We’ve had enough moping around. Everybody get ready to go.”

“What?” said Mrs. Rhodes looking up from the fridge, which still hung open like a book with a broken spine.

“Get ready and get in the car. We’re going somewhere.” Mr. Rhodes sprang up from his chair and clapped his hands. “Chop, chop!”

“Where are we going?“ Sam said. He pulled some old, balled-up socks out of his tennis shoes and started putting them on.

“Clean socks.”

“Oh, fine.” Sam tossed the old socks on the floor and ran to his room. He came back a moment later wearing his favorite grey and red flannel shirt.

“What are we going to do?” Emma asked. She sat at the top of the stairs getting on her pink canvas shoes, the tip of her tongue appearing as she worked her shoelaces into double, no triple, knots.

Mr. Rhodes shoved Sam’s dirty sock pile aside with his foot. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. We’re going somewhere. We all have cabin fever, so let’s just get in the car and go.”

Sam and Emma grabbed coats from the hall closet. Gerald the black and white cat—whom Mrs. Rhodes called Cow Cat because he looked like a furry, little Holstein—scrambled out of the way, his baggy tummy swinging back and forth as he ran.

Emma dug in the big basket by the front door for matching gloves, finding only one purple stretch glove and one black ski glove.

“Just grab two and let’s go,” her mother said, standing on the stairs waiting to get by.

Emma stuffed the mismatched gloves into her coat pockets. She’d bring them, but she wouldn’t wear them.

Five minutes later, all four members of the family were buckled in the car. Mrs. Rhodes freed one earring from where it had snagged on her fuzzy hand-knit scarf, and leaned over toward the driver’s seat. Raising her eyebrows at her husband, she asked, “So, where are we going?”

“Well…” Mr. Rhodes drummed on the steering wheel. “I was thinking the Municipal Gardens. We can stretch our legs and smell the flowers. Heck, we can pretend we are at the equator. We could use a little vacation, right?”

“A pretend vacation,” Mrs. Rhodes said with a sigh. “Well, the price is right.”

The family drove down Sunrise Lane, made a few right hand turns, and was soon scooting down the freeway toward the City Center. It had been quite a while since Emma’s family had visited the sprawling, glass-walled greenhouse, but she remembered how scrumptious warm, wet dirt and flowers smelled in the middle of winter. Her dad had mentioned the equator. That’s where sailors got stuck in the dead calm of the doldrums. How did they ever escape? Did they have to wait for a storm? How strange to be trapped by stillness.

Sam absent-mindedly kicked the seat in front of him. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Did you bring any snacks?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Mrs. Rhodes replied. She fished two granola bars out of her purse and tossed them to the backseat. “There you go, but stop kicking Dad’s seat, okay?”

“Can we listen to music?” Sam asked.

“Sure.”

“I don’t want to listen to music.” Emma opened her peanut butter and chocolate chip bar and sniffed it before she bit off the top. “And I have to go to the bathroom.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t you go at home? I don’t want to waste time at a stinky gas station.”

“Sam’s not being nice.”

“Kids!” Mr. Rhodes punched a button and music filled the car. American Folksongs for Children was a little babyish, but Emma thought better of saying so. She turned her head to the window. Cars sped down the highway spitting up slush with their tires.

Slush was about how she felt.

Twenty minutes later, Mr. Rhodes turned left at a sign that said Minnesota Central Municipal Gardens. They slowed to a stop in a long queue of cars looking for parking. It seemed that every family in the greater metro area was visiting the gardens that Saturday. They circled the parking lot, ready to pounce on any empty spot that might be hiding behind an oversized SUV or van. Sam spied an Oldsmobile with its reverse lights on. “There!” he said, but the car was just straightening out and didn’t leave.

“I still have to go to the bathroom,” Emma said, squirming and trying not to think of the two glasses of lemonade she’d had with lunch.

“Better try the lower lot, there’s usually room there,” Mrs. Rhodes said. She twisted around to look at Emma. “Hang in there, honey.”

Finally, they pulled into a spot at the end of a long row.

Mr. Rhodes pulled the key from the ignition. “Keep your coats on, gang. It’s a long walk.”

The ceiling-high glass doors swung easily on weighted hinges, and Emma, Sam, and their parents stepped from February and 40° into summer and 80°. Emma felt like Dorothy jumping from black-and-white Kansas into the brilliant colors of Oz, and she began to perk up. The Municipal Gardens were every bit as green as the Emerald City. Maybe this day would turn out to be interesting after all.

Emma shrugged off her coat, stuffed her hat into the sleeve, and tossed it to her father.

“Too bad we have to lug these warm things around,” Mr. Rhodes said as he layered the kids’ coats over his elbow.

Mrs. Rhodes pulled a five-dollar bill from her purse and handed it to Emma as they approached a donation box stationed near the front doors.

“Thank you,” the elderly volunteer said, bowing his balding head and smiling as Emma slid the bill through the slot. “Enjoy your visit.” To Oz, Emma added to herself.

After stopping by the restrooms, the family crossed the lobby and passed through double doors into the lush Rainforest Room. Humid air carrying the scent of earth and growing, living things rushed into Emma’s lungs. She tipped her head up. Little yellow birds chirped overhead, darting from branch to branch. Fog clouded her glasses, but she didn’t mind. She loved this room. As soon as she entered, she transformed into a bold botanist hunting for the cure or a lonesome backpacker on the jungle trail.

Pfffff—a cloud of water droplets mushroomed up near the path. Sprinklers, like the ones that freshen the broccoli in the produce section of the grocery store, had turned on to moisten the rainforest. Emma danced through the mist, the dampness kissing her skin.

Garden visitors crowded around a pool where whiskered fish and brown turtles with pig-like snouts circled in the water. Children lined up along the pool wall, squatting and smudging up the glass with fingers and noses as they peered into the tank.

“Careful, honey.” A sweater-vested grandmother hovered over a little boy who was trying to touch a turtle’s shell. “Don’t put your hand in,” she said. “We can’t bother the turtles.”

Emma and Sam hurried ahead to see the tarantulas and poison dart frogs in their enclosures. The bright red and black frogs looked like plastic toys behind the glass—until they moved.

“One lick could kill a grown man,” Sam read from the informational sign. “Who would lick a frog anyway?” He stuck out his tongue at the frog. “Can’t get me, little frogger.”

Emma snorted. “C’mon,” she said. “I want to go see the ants.”

Since she was a little girl, Emma had always liked insects and worms. She loved the tickle of tiny feet exploring her arm and was known to go on rescue missions after rainstorms when the pavement was littered with stranded worms.

Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes caught up with Emma and Sam, and together they studied the leaf-cutter ants busily carting cracker-sized leaf bits to and fro in their habitat. Did the ants know that they lived in a glass box? Emma glanced at the glass walls around and above her and felt a twang of camaraderie with the little ants.

Sam ambled over to a door hidden behind a spray of vines. “What’s in here?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s a nursery where they tend seedlings and keep supplies,” Mr. Rhodes answered.

Sam jiggled the door handle.

“Employees only,” Mr. Rhodes said.

“Blarg,” Sam said. “Why don’t they let us do anything interesting?”

“Come on. Let’s just keep going,” Mr. Rhodes said, letting out a quiet sigh.

Mrs. Rhodes reached for her husband’s hand. They seemed to enjoy strolling along, reading the placards that explained the scientific name of each species and their commercial, medicinal, and alimental uses.

“Hemp Palm,” Emma’s mother read, “Trachycarpus fortunei. Strong fibers covering the trunk are used to make rope and brooms. Isn’t that interesting?”

Emma’s legs, however, itched to go a little faster. Her fingers longed to touch the dangling leaves, to shinny up the coarse trunks of the palms, to pick orchids and weave them into crowns. She preferred to go into the garden’s landscape, not only to walk calmly along the prescribed trail. She did intend to behave, but impulses to clamber onto and dip into kept pulling her off the path.

“Emma, you can look, but please don’t touch the flowers.”

Sigh. “Okay, Mom.” Emma’s shoulders slumped a little. She just couldn’t take things in properly with only one sense—at least two or three were needed. She wished she really were in Oz.