I Have No Aunt Helen

I have no Aunt Helen

It makes me sad

If I did

She would be cheery

With freckles

Pull radishes up from the ground

Barehanded, with clipped nails

Short but still with dirt beneath them

Black grains would find a way

“Come and see this little ladybug,”

She would say

Not red with black circle dots

But yellow
It would make her remember

A story about one yellow ladybug

Unusual, Different

“More so than just on the outside,”

She’d say, shaking dirt off the radish

Yanking it hard from the ground

One speck of dirt would fly into my eye

The right one

I would shut it, and squint

Not reach up to wipe it away

Both eyes would water up

To make me worry if she noticed I wasn’t

Looking her in the eyes

 If I moved even that much

to break the connection

“Life would be simple,” she would explain,

“A lot easier for others to make up their mind

Whether they would accept him, or her, but it wasn’t

That easy for the yellow ladybug.”

She would reach over to my left side, where

My hip was connected with the earth

Start to pull again

“That’s really the most of it

What I wanted to say,”

I would suck up her words

Feel each letter turn around in my mouth

Each word disconnected from the next

I would almost be able to see them

And feel what she was saying

Knowing how important it must be

What she would be telling me

She would reach over

Grab another weed

Never with gloves on

Just barely brush the side of my shorts

With her bare hands

Just that much of a connection

Like wind when it ruffles things

My hair, the grass, the wish flowers

Bending down their fluffy heads

No good luck with those, no belief in them

I would have already blown a million

Still each day the same

The brush of her hand while reaching

For the metal rusted garden tool,

From many years of use

The claw we would call it

The claw, it shall reclaim the Earth

It shall make the weeds behave

Surrender and retreat

If I had an Aunt Helen, I wouldn’t have to

Ask my dead father, or convince my distracted Mom

I’d ride my bike since she lived

Exactly three miles down and on the corner

We would spend time together

Real time

The kind where she would talk

And I would listen

Sometimes she would ask

Me a question

“Are you okay, is your world

Still on kilter?”

Kilter, the word would make

Me think of a rocking chair

Broken, someone spastically rocking

Until it flipped over

She’d keep telling the story

The other ladybugs did not shun him

 Ignore him, or make him an outcast

She would say

How they made it a point, a very pointedly point

Acting like he was the same

 Exactly the same as everyone else

Like a person with only one eye, the other poked out

Or a crippled girl in a wheel chair with dribble

Running down her chin

People stopping to smile and say Hello Dear,

And walking by like there was no spit pooled on her shirt

Or the guy with the empty eye socket, looking at

Him full on, like there was still an eye there.

“And that was more disturbing, Aunt Helen would say,

Those other ladybugs creeping close to him, invading his space, the poor

Yellow ladybug. Forcing smiles,

Not giving him a voice.”

I would not understand

Distracted by the gold and red shimmers coming

In through the holes of her hat

Shining on strands of her hair

Something about a bug, and smiling

I would think

“Nature, in its wild unruly ways

 As much so as this garden

As much so as the breath you take in

And the breath you breathe out

Taking it in, forcing it out, or letting it out gently,”

She’d say

We would sit.

Still. Quiet for a moment.

Weeds growing despite all of her effort

To pull them

No chemicals to spray on them

Not My Aunt Helen

Not killing any living thing

Even for her food

I would have seen her actually harm a fly

Swat at it with rolled up newspaper

And laugh as she did it

So that would be confusing to me

As sayings and words come and go and people

Use them for things that don’t make sense

She’d make a game of swatting flies on our back porch

And mosquitoes.

“We’re all good for something,”

Her reply after a good swat on the table squishing

A speck of bloody mess

“But not flies, or mosquitoes, but your Aunt

Doesn’t know a thing,” she’d say,

“I don’t know a thing or two, or three

But I can swig with the best of them and keep my wits

About me, my wits, yes, that and my swing.”

I wouldn’t know what she means, but it would be

Something she’d say

My Aunt Helen

Spraying red hot sauce from Louisiana

Or the orange bottled ones on tables

Where we’d have coke and tacos

That and some dishwashing liquid, and some

Ground pepper, or Old Bay

The one the tourists would ask for

We would live near the beach

The homemade bug spray would be natural but stinky

I’d try just a drop on my finger        

To feel what the plants feel and what the bugs taste

“Anything to keep the bugs at bay,” a common

Aunt Helen saying

Not the ladybugs, that we would be talking about

The yellow ladybug

Only stopping to take grubs off leaves

 Worms a fat green, not really worms

Distorted feather pillows

All sewn up in separate lines

To fluff up their selves, slimy fat things

Squishing, never moving it would seem

The ones that eat up everything

Especially the tomatoes,

Eating holes through the leaves

The spray would not bother the bugs

She’d say “Bloody Hell!”

All the time except

Never ever in her garden

Not for her plants to hear

She would hate anyone who said the words

“Mother Fucker,” because “All women are

Beautiful especially mothers, and they are

More than fuckable.”

I would know this from listening to the conversation she

Would have had with my Mother

The spray would do nothing to the weeds

The green stalks just slightly bending their heads in shame

Continue to keep pulling

Her way

Through the radishes

 The carrots,

Hiding below ground

Green leafy stalks

Asparagus would be trickier

“Taking three years

To grow, the stupid blessed buggers.”

My Aunt Helen

Would have already said a million times before

All fluffy green cloud like stalks

Mistaken for weeds

Stubborn as poppies

My favorite

Big face like flowers that smell like fruit punch

Some peach, some white, some pink

“They need ants at their bottoms to bloom,”

She’d have said,
“Watch your step when you walk near them”

Pulling weeds

Tossing them aside

“Those blasted ants, the bloody buggers,

They have no purpose, but for robbing the

Fruits of our labor.”

Laughing at her own joke

Me not getting it because it would be vegetables not fruits

Throwing piles of long leaves, and grasses

 Paper cuts if I dragged my hands along them

She would throw them behind her in a pile for

The compost

A red stained wooden one

Full of egg shells, coffee grounds, and even shredded bills

Not with plastic see through letters

A handle to turn, many turns

I would crank the handle

Churning the compost for her

She would say,

“The ants, they stick together in piles

And rows, and perfect straight lines.

All one being it would seem.

Sometimes a few going off on their own

Sometimes not lines, but zigzags and squares

Some few, or several, maybe a lone one or two,

That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

She would ask, “Does it depend on their job

Were they truly supportive of their queen or Taking

What crumbs they could for themselves?"

I wouldn’t answer, just look up at her through her hat

So she would know I am listening

“The birds I know a whole lot about, a whole lot,

More than one should know.”

 She’d wipe her brow, under a big floppy hat,

Wicker or something

Ones worn at the beach

Wipe her brow with the knuckles of her right hand

Smudge soil on her forehead

A spot on her nose

Bigger than the freckles on her face

It would annoy me

And I’d sit on my hands to keep from reaching out

To wipe off what wasn’t

My Aunt Helen.

“The worst thing about the yellow ladybug”

She would say,

“Is that it knew it was different.

And it was treated exactly the same.”

Just like all the other ladybugs on her tomato

Plants eating aphids, which is a fun word

I would think because

If I had an Aunt Helen

I would be eight years old forever

And I would follow her wherever she would go

Trying to make sense of her mumbles