Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

"Why don't you quit prancin' around on the grass and help me out for a change," my mother muttered without looking from the dirt where she was yanking up weeds. She patted the dirt back down by the wild wisteria bush that she built the bed around. Its long coned bunches of purple flowers bounced around her when she brushed up against them. "Get down here and start pulling out anything that doesn't belong."

I squatted beside her, reached in and wrapped my hand around a long, thick weed sticking up above the rest, and pulled. My hand slid up its stalk and over the sticky seeds at the top. I fell back on my rear, and she started laughing. I scrambled back to my squat.

"You're gonna have to get down on your knees and give it some elbow grease."

"Fine," I said and stood up.

"I didn't think that would last long." She didn't even look up.

"I'm just going in to put on something else, I don't want to get these shorts dirty," I protested and ran into the house. I dug my bathing suit top out of the drawer, slid on my cutoffs, and then checked myself in the bathroom mirror. After pulling my hair back and then readjusting my bangs, I lubed up with some cocoa butter and went to the door.

"Don't stand there with the door wide-open, Becky! How many times do I have to tell you, we can't afford to air-condition the outdoors!" she screamed from her rocking chair. She was finished and had taken up her customary seat on the front porch to smoke. I shut the door and slunk into the chair beside her.

"This ain't the prom, Becky, it's just yard work. I swear, for a sixteen-year-old, you sure don't have much sense." She laughed, her cigarette bobbing up and down on her lips. She had noticed the lipstick I smeared on my lips just before I walked out the door. I snarled. By this time of the summer her hands were rough, her nails were jagged, and she had a farmer tan all the way down to built-in socks and the most awkward stripes across her thighs and back from too many different tops and shorts. Her outfits, as well as the tan lines, were a running joke between us.

"Well, I'm sorry if I don't have any farmer gear," I said, thinking that I couldn't get tan even if I dipped myself in chocolate.

Sweat dripped down her temples, and she grabbed the wet rag off of her shoulder to drag across her entire face and neck. "Well, I guess asshole and that slut he's been seein' ain't gonna drive by and flaunt themselves today," she said and punched out her cigarette in the clay pot filled with sand she kept on the front porch. Then she added with a sarcastic snarl, "And I so wanted him to see my new flower beds. I put them out just for him." My father had driven by the house only once with his new girlfriend since he moved out last October. But with my brothers off at college, the divorce had left us alone and once was enough. I still wanted to kid her about her tan, but I knew that it was too late. It was normal for her to change subjects in the middle of a conversation, especially if it was one I had begun.

When I returned from getting the sunscreen she instructed me to put on, she was already on the third hole for the garden arch. The sun was getting lower, giving a sheen to the handle of the shovel as her sweat dripped past her hands and slid down the slick wood.

"Becky," she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the rag she still kept over her shoulder when doing yard work, "go unwrap those poles and start assembling them for one side, while I finish up these holes."

The poles were white and made of a hard plastic that wouldn't bend even if you ran over them with a truck. I pulled each one out of its individual plastic wrapper and lined them up on the ground: long with long, short with short, curved with curved, then all of the skinny round ones that connected the back to the front. My mother was on the last hole so I skimmed the instructions and began piecing it together by glances at the diagram.

By the time I had one section of the garden arch assembled, Mother was working on her third cigarette, letting it dangle from her lips as she handed me the next pole. I pressed the top pole for the front left side down over the bottom half which had been cinched for the fit. Beads of sweat rolled into my eyes and I grabbed the bottom of my shirt to wipe it away.

"Here," she handed me her rag, "you'll stretch your shirt

out."

I took the rag though it was drenched in her sweat already and wouldn't do me much good. I dabbed it across my hairline and gave it back. "Hand me the arched piece, Mama." She hesitated but gave me the long curved piece of hard plastic. She pulled the rag across her face again. My sweat didn't bother her.

As I reached to slide the arched piece onto the long poles, I stepped backward and my right foot went sideways into one of the holes. I fell onto it with all my weight and went down onto my side, the arched piece still in my hand. My ankle throbbed.

"Well, what in the hell did you do that for? You knew the holes were right behind you." She had been watching me.

I didn't cry, but I wanted to. Not because of the pain, though it did hurt, but because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to tell her like this. I knew she would say that I hadn't been careful enough, that I knew there had been a risk of tubal pregnancy, but that if I had been careful about it I wouldn't have lost the chance to ever have children.

I didn't stand right away, but I moved the pieces of the arch to my side. I just sat there and refused to speak as she stood over me looking at my foot. I thought of all the things I could tell her instead of what had really happened: that I decided that I really didn't want children, that Terry had left me and I was upset, that it was the doctor's fault, not mine. Anything but that I got pregnant to save my marriage and prove a point even though my doctor told me to wait until my body was stronger, until the endometriosis was under control, until I was healthier and I had more time and less stress. Anything but that I knew better and did it anyway.

When I was in the third grade my nicest white shirt with fitted Victorian lace sleeves was ruined when I got hit with a rock at school. I had begged to wear it and she had conceded, reluctantly. After it happened my grandmother had to take me to my mother because she was having her hair done. I saw my reflection in the glass door before I went in. My hair was matted at my temple where it had brushed up against the blood. My eyes were swollen from the tears, and the blood that had run down my face and onto my shirt had dried leaving flaky streaks down my cheeks. The blobs on my shirt were darkening to a smeared maroon mass. I rushed past the counter with my head ducked and went down to the stall where my mother was. She didn't see me approach and I had to tug on the shiny black smock, almost unsnapping it, to get her attention.

My mother had a look of confusion, concern, and humor all at the same time. "What have you done now? And look at what's happened to that beautiful shirt," she said like she was holding back a laugh.

I could feel my cheeks flush and my face get as red as the dried blood. "Are you OK?" she asked, like it was an afterthought, and I shook my head with more big tears welling up in my eyes. "Well, I guess you're probably gonna need some stitches." She sounded disappointed, like it was something I'd done on purpose.

Finally, I stood up although I knew my ankle was swelling and would be covered by a purple and green pigment in a few hours. I grabbed the arched piece and slid it into its slots.

"You all right?" she asked in the same afterthought way she'd had about my head.

"I'm fine, hand me the hammer, Mama, I'm almost done with this side." I tried to sound excited but it came out more like frustration.

Mother hunched over and yanked at the weeds when she finished the last hole. Her legs were muscular and tan. The veins in her arms bulged from the work. She looked young and strong enough to still have her own babies, but that's when it happened.