Short Story: In My Father's Garden

Short Story: In My Father's Garden

There was never a place for me in my father's garden.

That's not to say my father didn't clear away this latent corner and stand a rusty, battered swing there. And it was for me, or rather the idea of me; so that I could fly... backwards and forwards and never really go anywhere. So that I would always be just where he wanted me to be. Or so he thought; my father couldn't see my wings. I loved that swing. I'd cling onto it for dear life, this rusty squeaking filling the garden like crooked birdsong, whilst the world tilted first one way then the other. I used to get red stains on the small mounds at the base of my fingers from the rust, and the skin would harden and flake off like a scab. The new skin underneath would be fresh and pink as a kitten's nose before I got it rusty again jumping off that swing time and time again. For a few seconds I would be flying. But then I always hit the ground.

Like the day I came home from school to discover that my father had removed my swing.

He replaced it with a pond; a still and perfectly round creation, that he tamed with black netting and a little fence. In the blackness of the water you couldn't see the bottom, you could only see the white reflection of the sky, tilting first one way and then the other as the wind stepped on the surface so lightly it didn't make a ripple.

When he talked about that pond it had a small fountain, and fat goldfish, and water lilies, and a gnome with a fishing rod sitting on a red toadstool. But none of these things ever appeared. It was just what he had made it; a puddle that dreamed of being a pond.

I dreamed of that pond. Maybe that could be my place in my father's garden, maybe I could become something else and I could live there in the pond. I dreamed that beneath the surface was the sea, the whole sea, and that I could breathe under water. I would go outside and make ripples in the surface of the water with my fingers and imagine diving in and swimming down. Once I lifted the net off to see better. I was standing with my feet together, bending over like a diver, peering into that white surface with all its black promises underneath but he couldn't see me.

Getting to and from that pond became increasingly difficult as time went on. There were many boundaries that were not to be crossed and in between were pathways fur-lined by moss, clogged arteries overhung by fat flower-heads and slimy, sodden leaves brown about the edges. I fitted through more easily when I was small. I didn't know anything different then and I would happily coat myself in mud and slime. But as I grew bigger, and the pathways clogged up, my attempts to break through were arrested. I was never willing to turn myself into a slug just to find my father hunching over the spade handle somewhere telling me that he was busy so I would just have to wait; then watch as he stepped over one of his own boundary fences and be left to slime my way out again.

I just wished that the garden was a place where I could run and play freely. But fences cordoned off large areas like crime scenes, as if something traumatic had happened there and now care must be taken not to disturb anything. Inside these boundaries delicate new growth formed fragile tips on old, battle-hardened plants. These old plants had not been well tended but had been left to gnarl their own way through the winters. They had never been pruned back and allowed to breathe themselves into new life. Rather new scabs formed on top of old like armour plating to protect the fleshy heart of woody stems. These calloused fingers reached up out of the soil like corpses trying to escape their graves and live again.

It was not that he told me not to go near these old plants but rather I felt that if I did I would hurt them more, even wearing only my tiny buckled shoes I thought I would trample down the tentative life that reached a shaky green hand out into the world. I could see their fragility. And so I left them alone. I never knew any of their names or what they were. Or what they could have been. But I did have the sense that, tended correctly, they could have been something.

They could have been magnificent.

But he couldn't dig that soil, it was so hard and compacted, like heavy boots had stomped it spitefully down, as if someone had walked all over it unconcerned about ruining the fertile ground. Nothing could gain any root purchase and sometimes plants would be found uprooted and blown across the grass like tumbleweed. They ended up heaped onto the pathways clogging them further, warm and rotten. Then he would plant new seedlings. But the scarred soil was too tough and the vulnerable roots didn't have the strength to push through and the young plants would die.

But their souls would hang around, like ghosts with unfinished business. I fancied that I saw them sometimes, hiding behind leaves or under a fallen petal, a small green eye would peep out at me and blink. My father couldn't see them. The plant souls and I would play hide and seek but they would win because I couldn't get through the pathways or cross the boundaries of the fences. But sometimes they would let me find them because they understood; afterall he was their father too.

Once I was older I was allowed the run of the woods behind the garden where the wild plants grew strong and healthy. Here I was an explorer, charting out new territory, but it didn't take me long to find the water. Not like the pond, this water was alive, moving, churning with brown foam like you get on cola ice cream sodas and I thought that here was my chance to show him that I had become something better, that I could breathe under water. Then maybe I could live in the pond. That would be my place in my father's garden.

But the water overwhelmed me and I couldn't swim and I couldn't breathe.

And he couldn't see me drowning.