The Memory Garden Read Free Page B

when Nan found her, left in a box on the front porch, mistaken at first for a shoe donation until she heard the strange cry, even then expecting a kitten, not the baby who blinked tear-beaded lashes when Nan parted the odd draping like some kind of primal mosquito netting, though she recognized the caul immediately for what it was, the sign of a witch.
    Nan peered down at the strange arrival as if expecting the newborn to disappear, which did not happen, of course. When she looked up, she scanned the front yard, its crowd of shoe flowers yawning open in July’s mist, craning her neck to peer around the side of the house, leaning over the railing, careful not to squash the morning glory’s blue throats. She walked, barefoot, past the two rocking chairs, to the other side of the porch, frowning at the elm tree, scanning the quiet S-curved road and the bank beyond lined with a blaze of tiger lilies and purple phlox.
    Who knows how long she stood there, breathing in the minty scent of pennyroyal, before a strange sound interrupted her reverie? Nan returned to the abandoned baby just opening her little mouth to cry in protest. A bright sunbeam pierced the dawn to shine on the newborn as though anointed.
    Nan squatted, feeling the resistance of her knees and the uncomfortable girdle of her belly, placing one hand under the soft, small head covered in downy red hair, one beneath the swaddled blanket. Their eyes locked, for just a moment, in a very adult manner before Nan brought the baby to her shoulder when she realized she could not easily rise to stand from this position, which caused a momentary panic. She could not risk wavering to a fall, not with this innocent creature depending on her, nor could she put the baby back into that sun-tortured box. Nan sat on her bottom, and once there, stayed for quite a while, watching the mist depart in wisps like night fairies frightened of the light, not realizing for some time that she had been singing to the child, a lullaby of sorts, from that poem by Yeats.
    “For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
    Goodness, why would she sing such a thing? Nan shook her head at herself. She was old. Well, not that old, only sixty-four, but certainly at an advanced age for realizing she could no longer do, or say, or sing whatever she pleased.
    Nan discovered that by scooting across the porch she could place her feet on the step below and, holding the baby tight with one hand, using the other to pull on the railing, she rose to stand, by which time she was overheated, her hair damp against her forehead.
    “Well,” she said, as she turned back to the house and the cool rooms that waited there, “I haven’t killed you yet, at least.”
    It was meant as a joke, but she immediately regretted saying it.
    Over the years, Nan had received other strange donations. Mrs. Vergonian, for instance, always donated only one shoe of a pair. Nan wondered what she did with the other. Perhaps she’d started a secret shoe garden of her own. Some people seemed to confuse Nan with Goodwill, leaving boxes of clothes for children and men that Nan had no interest in. Somebody left bags of giant zucchinis on Nan’s porch every fall, which she very much appreciated. For years someone had left homemade bread, still warm enough that it was sweating the plastic bag it was wrapped in. Nan was sorry when that tradition came to an end. One summer, someone left honey, and though the jar was sealed, bees clustered around the lid when Nan discovered it at the far corner of her porch. She took advantage of the situation and whispered her secrets to the swarm until, one by one, it became too much for them, and they flew off. Once there was a hand-knit sweater. It was a beautiful shade of lavender, too precious for Nan. She did not wear it, but tucked it into the bottom drawer of her dresser.
    She was never sure what she’d find on her porch, the lovely gifts interspersed with bags of dog poop and nasty