Charity's Garden

"Charity?" my mother grabbed my arm with her cold hand.

"Ma'am?" I answered, watching the tears roll down her face and land in her lap. Her dress was soaked and stained with her grief.

"Don't go out of the garden," she whispered to me, her puffy face distorting with an oncoming sob. She hung her head down over her lap and continued her crying.

"Yes, ma'am," I answered dutifully.

With her cold hand gone from my arm I crept through the rest of the solemn house, listening to the sounds of grief spilling from every room.  I walked through the sunny kitchen and thought how old it felt that the kitchen seemed cheerful while the rest of the house grieved.

I peered out the top of the kitchen door out to the garden. With a great breath, I swung open the heavy door and stepped out in to the bright sunlight.I danced down the old stone steps, singing Little Kitty Popcorn.  At the bottom step I stopped and looked around my family's garden.

The warm afternoon sun poured down on my hair. The garden lay before me like a treasure trove waiting to be explored. I walked through the tiled paths, scuffing my high button boots. I strolled to my favorite place in the garden, an old stone bench planted in a bed of pink phlox.

I smoothed my fussy dress and plunked down on the bench. Its rough surface was sun warmed and comfortable.

I looked out across the garden, my eyes catching on bright flowers, and searched for the small bed of herbs. With my eyes on the herbs, I could clearly smell their fragrances. Mint, lemon balm and rosemary intermingled and created a fresh, earthy scent.

The shady fruit trees stood at the back of the garden. The pear and cherry blossoms were breathtaking. In the summer the trees would grow heavy with fruit and we would have sour cherry pies.

The flowers all around me overwhelmed my eyes. Roses of varying colors sprung from every bed. My mother loved roses and grew them incessantly. The phlox I was surrounded by drew butterflies and bees. They flitted and buzzed around my head.

I sat back against the rough bench and closed my eyes. I focused and concentrate. My brows knitted and the blood drained away from my mouth. I concentrated harder.
I shivered despite the spring heat. All the fine hair on my arms stood straight up and I felt a cold wind sweep across my body.

I opened my eyes to another world. Though I knew it was the garden I had skipped through earlier, everything had changed. I had seen through the pretty reality to a place that existed beneath it: a place I knew very well.

The afternoon shadows had grown longer, darker, and malevolent. The sky above me clouded and the blue was shot through with a sickly green. The enchanting garden had transformed into a court of air and darkness.

The winding paths that I strolled down had become a hellish labyrinth, trapping anyone who dared trespass. The jasmine and creeper vines created gnarled snares and traps for the unwitting.

The tiny flying insects took on a menacing air. Their innocent fluttering was now threatening and hateful.

The thistle along the back wall of the garden lengthened its thorns into foreboding spikes, prohibiting outsiders to cross the wall. The roses lost their romantic charm and became bits of colored rags torn from some victims clothing by the unrelenting thorns.
The herbs in their neat rows grew wild and fierce. Their once soothing scents overwhelmed the air and stirred up a sickening miasma. The fruit trees bore, not spring flowers, but the overripe fruit of late summer. Rotten pears fell from the trees and split, spilling their fetid stench.

Near the entrance to the cellar, the cook's mangy cat crept along the ground with a mouse clutched in its jaws. The pitiful rodent pleaded in squeals and shrieks, but there would be no mercy for the poor creature in this place. The cat, uninterested in the mouse's struggle, merely tightened its jaws and silenced the feeble thing.

The house behind me grew dilapidated and seemed absent. The kitchen window, which had once been lit by the afternoon sun, was now dark and cracked. It did not seem the sunny bustling kitchen where I would retreat from my mother.

The world around, that most saw, was gone. It had been replaced with a kingdom of horrors.

What most girls would have run from, I embraced. I skipped down the twisted paths reveling in the strange, new world. I loved this realm, this place of demented fantasy. It was a perverted reality that only I could see. My cruel little duchy where nightmares cavorted and shadows sang to me.

As I sat down in the middle of one path, I crushed a beetle with my boot. I squealed with delight at this tiny meaningless sacrifice. I sat there and gloried in the horror and sickness of this place. My thoughts wandered to the first time the garden had changed for me.

My parents had been overjoyed by the birth of a son. Even at nine, I saw that a male heir was far more precious than any girl. They celebrated his birth with luxuries rarely wasted on me. My mother had no other children after me and they had begun to think there would be no more. So, my brother was a blessing, a gift from God.

I snuck into the nursery almost every night and watched my brother sleep. He lay in his bassinet by the window and the moon lit him for me. His tiny mouth would open and close like a fish in a tank. His fists balled and tightened as if he were seeking something that he couldn't reach. He slept so soundly there by the window.

One morning my mother called me to her.

"Charity," she said, "your father and I have come to a decision about your education. You have run wild far too long. Your tutor is dismayed by the lack of progress you are making and recommended we send you to school. We have decided that this is the best solution. You are to pack your things and tomorrow you will be sent to school."
Her words all came out in a rush, as if she was afraid she wouldn't be able to say them.
"Yes, ma'am" I said bowing my head in deference.  I walked to my room and allowed my things to be packed. I waited all afternoon for the orange sunset and the night that followed it.

In the early hours of the next day, well before the sun arose, I slipped into my brother's room. I crept to the window. The moon was full and his face was perfectly illuminated. I bent down and kissed his pale forehead. I picked up the cushion I had embroidered to welcome him and laid it over his pale face.

"Charity, you mother wants you, " a voice intruded into my memory.

"Yes, I'll be there, " I called back.

I turned back to the depraved world I called up. I surveyed its dark delights one more time.

I closed my eyes and willed reality back to the garden. When I looked again, all is as it was before. The roses, herbs, and thistles were just plants. The butterflies and bees once again hunted merrily for nectar.

I smoothed my pinafore and made sure my hair was in place before I strolled to the kitchen door.

As I reached the steps I turned and looked behind me. My blue eyes sparkled and my face split with a wide smile. I would not be leaving.