Jianna
I remember, when I was in third grade, my teacher taught me how to knit. When I walked into class one day, there was a ball of blue-purple yarn and metallic blue needles sitting on my upside down chair atop my desk. I cherished that yarn as I knitted different size squares (for that is the only shape I could, and still can, make) that would eventually become big worms and little birds.
We didn’t visit my grandma much then; she lived in an apartment in Cleveland, and we lived in Michigan. The drive was long, and we were busy. We did eventually get to visit, though, and made time to drive down for Thanksgiving. I was excited to give Grandma, an avid bird-watcher, the three knitted birds I had made alone in my room the week prior. In school we were learning about the rainforest, so I created a little cockatoo and toucan, and with the leftover yarn, some made-up bird. I eagerly anticipated surprising Grandma with my creations, relishing in the fact that she, of all people, would be able to identify and name my knitted birds.
Driving to Cleveland, I was always fascinated by how different it was from where we lived. People actually walked to their destinations. People looked like the hadn’t been inside in days. And there were many buildings that, to my third-grade mind, just looked broken. That was the only word I had at the time to describe what I saw: broken.
The closer we got to Grandma’s house, the more broken things looked. I always knew we were close when we passed the vacant lot a few blocks from her apartment building. It seemed like people treated it as one giant garbage can, and everything about the lot was broken. Literally. Broken TVs. Broken refrigerators. Broken air conditioners. And little did I understand then, but also broken dreams. This vacant lot turned dumping ground was how most people viewed this area of Cleveland. Grandma used to talk of the old days, when the city didn’t always look this way. I couldn’t imagine it looking any different, but I took her word for it.
This time was different, though. As we passed the lot, it wasn’t vacant, but rather there were people in it, and it looked like they were planting things. Who would want to plant in that dump? I thought. I asked my parents what those people were doing planting things in a garbage dump. They said they didn’t know, but that I should be happy about it because it was better to plant flowers than to dump garbage in the lot.
I kept thinking about this vacant lot turned garden as we pulled up to Grandma’s building and walked inside. She was waiting behind the tattered screen door as always, the smell of corn casserole drifting through the tiny criss-crossed holes of the screen into my nose. She hugged me, and I quickly went into the kitchen to get out my knitted birds. I carefully unwrapped the cloth I had used to make sure they made the trip safely and set them up on the small, 1970s-green kitchen table.
“Oh my gosh! A cockatoo, a toucan, and that one there, it must be a robin, right?” Grandma exclaimed as she walked into the kitchen. “They look so real.”
“Grandma, you guessed right! I knew you would,” I said with delight. Then more quietly, because I was always shy about giving people things, “I made them for you because last time you were here, you said your birds didn’t come around as often as they used to. You sounded sad.”
“Oh, honey, a lot things don’t come around these parts anymore,” she replied as she shot her eyes towards where my parents were standing.
When we got the call a few years later that Grandma had died, we weren’t there to say goodbye. It wasn’t unexpected; she had cancer. What was unexpected to most people, though, was that I didn’t cry as soon when I found out. I’ve always had what most would consider an inappropriate response to grief. I don’t cry. I don’t know why, I just don’t.
We arrived in Cleveland in time to go to her funeral, but we had to leave the very next day because of some business thing of my dad’s. At the funeral home, I refused to go in and see my dead Grandma lying there in a wooden box. I could honor her without looking at her lifeless body. When people finally gave up trying to convince me to go inside and stopped asking me how sad I was, I was able to sneak outside. I started walking. The funeral home was close to Grandma’s apartment, so I decided to head there. When I got inside, I headed straight for the kitchen to get a drink of water. Rounding the corner, I saw the little knitted birds I had made for her a few years ago. I wished I still knew how to knit. It was weird being in the apartment all alone, so I grabbed the knitted birds and ran out the door. I continued heading away from the funeral home and came across that weird vacant lot turned garden. It was hard to believe that people were still keeping it up and that it hadn’t gone back to being a garbage dump.
Squatting in the garden was an Asian girl about my age. It looked like she was growing some kind of bean, and it looked like she had been doing this awhile. I slowly walked up to her, not wanting to disturb whatever she was doing.
“Hi,” I blurted out. She looked up, startled. “What are planting those beans for?”
Hesitantly, she replied, “My dad died about 10 years ago, before I was born. I grow these beans to honor him. I plant a new group each spring, so that when he looks down to see the beans grow, he will also see me grow.”
I nodded and turned away, thinking about what she had said.
