Bonsai in May
"Sorry," she said cheerily, "can’t do that–unprofessional and all. Policy." The young guy drifted off. Dumb dork. Couldn’t he see her at all?
Anyway, Jory didn’t let them get too close. When she had been sacked at the Youth Detention Center, she had been really hard up. Her parents would never forgive her for being what she was; she couldn’t ask them for help, especially not when she had been fired for inherent vileness–nothing. She didn’t have a significant other who might have helped her over the abyss suddenly at her feet. Getting out of the lease had been really hard, but finding her way through sleazy neighborhoods in search of a furnished room had been harder. She had worked three shifts at burger joints, house cleaning and–off and on–she had worked in ancient Miss Elsie Dreielbiss’s garden. Funny, she reflected, watching the guy’s receding back, Miss Elsie had been the one she had finally been able to talk to about the injustice of it all.
"They fired me for walking in a parade!" she had exclaimed. She could still feel the outrage.
Miss Elsie had looked over the tops of her glasses at her and said, "How could they?"
Jory hesitated before telling her antique employer, "It was a gay pride march. Somebody spotted me on the evening news."
Miss Elsie never hesitated, "Poor Jory."
"A week later I got a memo in my box telling me I was no longer employed. They didn’t even have the balls to tell me face to face."
She had gone to Elspeth, the head of their six-person Recreational Services department and together they had gone to see the director. But he was in a directing mood. "I bet some councilman or state senator had slammed him over the phone," Jory said. "Richard was always such a politician. He told me that they couldn’t risk exposing the youth of the community to a person like me. These kids were rapists, Miss Elsie, murderers, drug pushers and worse. I was the one in danger when we went down the stairways or out in the yard to play ball." She paused and some of her anger evaporated. "Heh, one or two of the boys tried to get fresh, but I stay on my toes and keep fit, so it always worked out okay."
Miss Elsie looked at Jory’s bulging arms and chest and said, "I can imagine it did, but how did you get into such dangerous work?"
"I majored in PhysEd in college. I loved that work. I really could get into their heads and make the bit of difference that changes things sometimes. It was what I lived for and, dammit, I was good at it!"
She moved, for fear the departing customer might turn and see her looking at him. She had finally used her jock image to her advantage and this position as a personal trainer at the gym was the best thing that had happened in the last year. She didn’t need anyone or anything to endanger it, so Jory moved briskly into the staff locker room to dress. In fact, hard-assed though it might sound, she didn’t need anything or anyone. She had an appointment to meet Miss Elsie’s son, Harold, at the old woman’s house. He had called her and told her that Miss Elsie had wanted her to choose something from her belongings as a keepsake.
* *
Miss Elsie had been tiny, so her son was a surprise–bigger, heavier and more grey-haired than she had imagined. When he let her in the familiar front door, Jory felt like a burglar and, with her new, burglar eyes, the room looked scanty– old. When Miss Elsie had been alive to animate things, she had never noticed. Harold told her that his mother wanted her to have something. "Pretty much anything left," he said in a subdued voice, with a general wave of his hand.
Jory wandered around, thinking she would like something small, easy to fit in her micro-apartment. She didn’t know what. While she looked around, the son went through a doorway into the kitchen. From the occasional clashing sound, Jory guessed he must be packing utensils. Miss Elsie had been wonderful with plants and her house had them in every window, some of them big and old. Jory didn’t have a place for anything lush and leafy, but then she noticed the juniper in it’s Japanese dish, tiny and twisted and bent, just like its last owner. It was fragile, dependent on others for the frequent waterings and regular pruning that kept it distinguished and alive. Jory’s hand went out. She could feel, as she lifted it from the low window sill, that it was too light, in need of watering. May had brought little tufts of lighter, softer needles all over it’s three branches. There was no sign of wires; apparently Miss Elsie had achieved all through judicious clipping. Weighing the plant in her palm, Jory reflected that Miss Elsie had taken a weedy juniper and, through constant attention, knowingly pruning away the inessential, by frequent small waterings and discipline, she had made idiosyncracy look fine.
"By damn!" The words escaped her lips, but very softly so that Harold wouldn’t have heard them. This plant was a veritable portrait of Miss Elsie.
She walked toward the kitchen to ask if it would be okay for her to take the little plant, and to find a drink of water for it. But in the doorway between the two rooms, it struck her– the contorted little plant was a model of something else, as well–her own, spare existence. Jory had surprised herself and Harold, who looked up from poking under the sink, by busting out in real tears.
It was like hugging a big dog for warmth and lack of recrimination. He was the wrong size, Jory’s nose pressed against his breast-bone; he was the wrong age, way too old; he was out of shape, too fat, too bald; he was the wrong sex, too, but she felt she would have fallen without his support and that was even okay. In a bit, the inexplicable wave of grief passed and she went to find a tissue. She took up the little tree in it’s pot. "I guess this will be it, then," she said, her voice still a little husky.
"That’s nice, isn’t it?" Harold said. "But wait a minute." He went to a low shelf at the back of the room and rummaged. "Here." He held out a paperback, brittle with age, limp with use. "This goes with that." Jory saw the picture of a little green thing in its pot against a yellow background– "How to Bonsai."
So she took the booklet in one hand and the freshly watered juniper in the other. At the front door, she turned. "Thanks, Harold. I’m a dope, I guess. But you’re a rock. And Miss Elsie was something really special."
Harold gave her a smile made vague by his thick glasses, holding the storm door open with his fingers. "Um, did she tell you about that bonsai?" he asked before she could step past him to leave.
Jory shook her head. "No, I worked in the yard, mostly, with the heavy stuff. She’d have me in for tea, usually, but I never really looked at the house plants.
Harold reached out to the small pot in her hand, brushing lightly with his thick finger at the soft shoots. "She used to say, some things you have to learn the hard way–to keep one of these things alive, you got to allow a little new growth all the time. Cut off as much of the old as you think you need to, but always allow for new growth."
Next thing she knew, Jory was standing outside, holding a potted plant in her hand.
appeared May, 2002