Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns (2 page)

Personally, I think the country sounds like the
opposite
of heaven. Who wants to tug some old cow’s bag when he could shoot hoops? But Mama’s stuck on country-land. She even named me Jackson, after her old horse.

Still, Jackson is a good name, horse or no horse. What if she’d called me Bossy?

Every mother has her weirdness, I figure. Abraham’s mother watches over him like a
worried bird. The only time he can eat cake or unwashed carrots is when he visits Reuben or me. I’ll take Mama’s plant-yakking any day.

Abraham lit the candles. Everyone sang, “Happy birthday, dee-aa-rrr Jackson,” and I made a wish.

You guessed it. I wished for a basketball. But it was an I-got-this-wish-in-the-bag kind of wish, instead of an eyes-squeezed-want-it-with-all-my-heart wish. I
knew
I was getting that b-ball.

“I keep waiting for
them
to appear,” said Juana.

She gobbled her cake as if
they
might suddenly appear and snatch it away. “Yesterday I took one of those stress tests at People’s Drug. You press a dot and the color changes. Blue means relaxed; red means totally whacked out. Mine was
crimson
. Those kids made me a basket case.”

“Gaby and Ro might calm down in a few years,” said Mama.

“Where’s your basketball?” Reuben whispered to me.

I ignored him. I ate my cake very slooowwly.

“Mister Cool,” hollered Miz Lady, “don’t you think it’s time you opened those presents?”

I untied ribbon and peeled tape so slooowwly, the wrapping paper didn’t rip at all. That paper could wrap up next year’s presents.

I got socks from Abraham (“Mom picked them out,” he said. “Sorry.”); a glow-in-the-dark armband from Juana; and a Georgetown Hoyas T-shirt from Reuben and Miz Lady.

I carefully folded the wrapping paper.

“There’s one more,” said Mama.

I gave her my best Is-it-my-
birth
day? look.

Reuben rolled his eyes.

Mama held the envelope like a little white bird. Stuffed with money, I couldn’t help thinking.

“Ten years ago,” said Mama, stroking the bird-money, “God gave
me
a present: my son, Jackson. Each year I grow prouder of him.”

I was cool, just taking it in. Thinking about slam-dunking my new b-ball.

“I always wanted Jackson to have the kind of childhood I had,” Mama continued.

Wait a minute. Mama had no basketball in that country childhood. Her best friend lived seven miles away.

Mama handed me the envelope. Her eyes were all misty-happy.

“Jackson, I hope you enjoy this gift as much as I enjoyed mine as a girl.”

Forget slooowwly. I snatched the envelope. Clawed the flap.

I drew out the card. Opened it.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

N
oise pushed at me.

“Do you like it?” from Mama.

“Ain’t Mr. Cool excited now?” from Miz Lady.

“What is it?” from Juana.

“Plot five one,” I answered all of them.

“A plot in the Rooter’s Community Garden on Evert Street.” Mama beamed.

I knew Rooter’s. I must have passed it a billion times and never felt the urge to open the chain-link gate and join all those sweating, digging, grunting garden people. Mailbags Mosely even had a plot and gave us tomatoes each year. “Sweeter than store-bought”—he’d
smack his lips. But I couldn’t taste a difference. And who cared?

Now I was a Rooter.

“There’s ten dollars in the card for seeds, manure, and tools,” said Mama. “I’m as excited as if this was
my
garden.”

I wished it was.

“I don’t know anything about gardens” was all I said.

“Oh, gardening is easy,” said Mama. “All you do is plant the seeds and—”

“Talk to ’em.”

“See, you’re a pro already.” Mama looked at me anxiously. “Do you like your present?”

“Sure.” I figured the present could be worse. I might have gotten a cow or a “vacation” in the country with rope swings, fishing poles, and other country-doing things.

But my tenth birthday had flattened like a basketball hit by a Mack truck. POP!-fssssss.

Mama answered a knock at the door.

Maybe some razzle-dazzle player would dribble through. He’d juke and leap and send a birthday b-ball straight into my hands. “Surprise!” everyone would yell.

But instead, a dervish whirled right for the cake, separated into two parts, and clung to Juana. I groaned. Gaby and Ro Rivera.

Juana is about the smartest kid I know. She can speak English
and
Spanish, at the same time even, and not get them mixed up. Her parents came from Colombia and still speak Spanish. Juana’s tried to teach me a few words.

She can even understand Gaby and Ro, who usually chatter at the same time. And because they’re little—Gaby’s six years old and Ro’s four—they sometimes use the wrong words. To figure out their speech Juana must be brilliant.

Now the kids wanted cake.

“Just a little piece,” said Juana.

The devouring duo hurled themselves at the paper plates, gobbled the cake, grabbed Juana, and dragged her out the door. Juana didn’t even struggle. She looked like a prisoner resigned to her fate.

“What are you going to plant in your garden, Jackson?” Miz Lady asked.

“Oh, flowers,” sighed Mama, gliding the
cake into the kitchen. “Marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums.”

I was wrong. My birthday could get worse. Who ever heard of a basketball star with a summer bouquet?

Reuben shot me a look that said, What you gonna do now?

Mama came back with packets of cake for Miz Lady, Reuben, and Abraham. Abraham would have to eat his quickly—before his mother snatched it.

“Happy Birthday, Mister Cool,” Miz Lady hollered as she left.

“Nas-tur-tiums.” Reuben shook his head.

Then I got a brilliant idea. Not just brilliant—spectacular. How to have a garden and a basketball too. Or, rather, how to have a basketball because of a garden. My deflated day started pumping back up again.

“A garden.” Mama smiled to her pot of begonias.

A garden. Already, I could picture myself dribbling down a wide-open court. Fast. Smooth. And not a flower in sight.

• • •

“Nas-tur-tiums,” Reuben repeated the next day. “They even sound nasty.”

He was back at his desk, drawing. I was sprawled on his bed. Our favorite working position.

“A garden. What kind of present is
that
for a tenth birthday?” Reuben shook his head.

Then a look of horror crossed his face.

“Do you think Miz Lady would give me a garden—”

“Relax,” I said. “Your birthday’s in August. Gardens are almost over by then.”

“Re
lief
” said Reuben. He paused, drew a finicky line, erased it. “You gonna tell your mama you don’t want it?”

Very coolly I said, “Maybe I do want it.”

“What!” Reuben shot up so fast, he forgot he was slow. “You
want
nas-turtiums and marigolds and that other thing?”

“Zinnias.”

“You
want
zinnias?” he howled. “Man, turning ten turned your brain. What you gonna do with flowers?”

“Sell them.”

“Sell them,” Reuben said slowly. I could
almost see his mind puzzling the idea of planting flowers, selling flowers, buying…

“What you gonna buy?”

“Basketball,” I said. “Wilson’s best at twenty-four ninety-five. Shoot, I’ll buy two basketballs. A hundred basketballs. One rose at Mabel’s Fantastic Florals costs five dollars. We sell twelve roses—that’s sixty bucks.”

“You know nothing about growing flowers.”

“It’s easy. All you gotta do is plant some seeds and, um, talk to them.”

“Man, you gonna talk to
seeds
?”

Outside I was very cool. Inside I was squirming. “Maybe we can take turns.”

“Oh, now you want
me
to chat up some plants.” Reuben stuck his pencil before his nose and chirped: “Good day, Mr. Zinnia! Are we ready to grow, grow, grow?” He crossed his eyes and resumed drawing the twelve zippers on Captain Nemo’s uniform.

I leaned back on the bed, so cool I’m almost an ice cube. I started talking, like I was talking to myself.

“Bet I can grow fifty—no, a hundred roses.
And how much is five dollars times one hundred?”

Reuben was still drawing, very carefully.

“That’s five hundred dollars for roses,” I continued. “And I’ll charge one dollar for each zinnia and whatever.”

Reuben made tiny pencil strokes like he’s fashioning the most careful zipper known to man.

I let my voice get so quiet, it’s almost silence. “I wonder if Abraham and Juana would like to earn some extra money?”

“Jack-son,” exploded Reuben, “I never said I wouldn’t help you plant your flowers. But I
refuse
to talk to ’em.”

“Maybe Juana will do the talking. Girls are supposed to like flowers.”

“When do we start?”

“Tomorrow. We’ll buy some seeds, stick them in the ground. Presto!—flowers.”

Reuben thought. “I don’t think a garden works like that. We gotta make a plan. You know, to decide what goes where.”

Reuben drew a square precisely in the middle of the page. With a ruler he drew six
dotted rows. All this took exactly eight minutes and forty-two seconds. (I checked my watch.)

Then he erased his first line and redid the dots. Another one minute and nine seconds.

“Reuben, man, it’ll be July before you finish that plan. We gotta decide how much money to invest in seeds.”

Reuben looked with satisfaction at his square and dots. “I got two dollars and fifty-seven cents.”

“And I’ve got my ten-dollar birthday money, plus one dollar and eleven cents.” I figured rapidly. “All in all that’s thirteen dollars and sixty-eight cents.”

“You two,” Miz Lady bellowed from her chair by the TV. “I don’t hear homework being done. You drawing that Nemo character?”

“No, we’re not drawing
Captain
Nemo,” said Reuben. “We’re planning our garden.”

“Oh, that’s
nice
,” Miz Lady hollered.

“And we’re doing some math,” I shouted back.

“Even better. Now, don’t bother me. This
lady on the TV is about to win a refrigerator and some Stove Top stuffing.”

I figured I’d never understand Miz Lady. Drawing Captain Nemo was a waste of time, but drawing a garden was
nice
.

“Be sure and plant some roses,” yelled Miz Lady over the TV’s hollering. “I do love a beautiful rose.”

Reuben and I high-fived.

I
told Mama about the garden plan. But I left out the part where Reuben and I would charge five dollars a rose. Somehow, I don’t think in the country she harvested her flowers for cash.

Mama smiled. “Jackson, this is wonderful. I had a hard time deciding whether to give you a basketball or a garden. I wish I had enough money to give you both. But I thought you’d get so much more enjoyment out of a garden.”

Yeah, right.

“You do like the garden, don’t you?” Mama asked.

Mama is always anxious about raising me
right. See, my father ran off when I was a baby and she worries about me having no male role model. (She got that from TV.) I tell her I have Mailbags Mosely to role-model me. And she tells me not to bother him ’cause he’s-work-ing-full-time-and-going-to-college-and-don’t-have-time-to-hardly-breathe-poor-man. I just shrug when she says that.

Mama has a little frown line between her eyes from worrying about giving me a good childhood in the city. (Her words.) And she reads books like
How to Talk to Your Child
. I read a little of that one, so I could learn how to talk back. The whole book was like this:

Child: “Give me that radio.”

Parent: “You are behaving inappropriately.”

Child (screaming): “I want that radio.”

Parent: “You are behaving inappropriately.”

Boring. Also stupid. I couldn’t talk that mean to my mama. She’d probably start crying. And Miz Lady would clobber me.

So when she looked at me with that little
worry frown, I said, “Mama, the garden was a
good
present.”

The worry frown disappeared. She smiled. “I can hardly wait to see the first seedlings. Why, the flowers should be blooming by June.”