Giant Pumpkins Grow From Giant Pumpkin Seeds

When I first come to the city they said I had an attitude, and then they tried to kick me out of my room. And I told them, no you can't kick me out, I have a deal wi y'all. I pay my rent and I live here, you cant kick me out. But they could and a new family moved in, a new family with an old beat up Ford that backfired all night long. I heard it in the back alleyway. It kept me awake at night, and I asked them to stop please stop, I knocked on their door and a little girl opened it up her hair was mussed up with sleep and she called her dad and the noise stopped and I said thank you for stoppin the noise. He said get the hell out of my yard or I call the police. I said it was noisy and I couldn't sleep and there was a noise ordinance. He said get the hell off my porch you old hag or Ill call the police. He had a gun, I saw it on the far wall of the living room, hung up on a peg, just out of the reach of tiny fingers. I was glad he at least done that, and I said thank you again and left.

I left real far this time, just like I always done all my life. Better to be new and needy, like you have a reason, than to be just plain old needy, like my dad used to be. That's what I remember best about him, how he got religion and said that the Lord respected humility the most because it was the hardest for a man to follow. He took the greatest pride in his humility. And all the time I grew up, we were the towns living example of a charity case. Whenever anyone had a fit, they took it out on us. Brought us all kinds of knickknacks-- broken-down toasters, hand-me-down sweaters, old dolls, plenty of kindly meant words, and they even sent a professor down to us to show us how to be "self sufficient" he said. They give us a little plot of mud past the edge of town and in the woods, and said out of the goodness of our hearts, we done this thing for you. And they patted each other on the back and left us out there in the dark.

My daddy took to that little plot of land right away. And everyone bought everything we grew. Sometimes I'd pull up the skankiest old vegetable and ask the next person that come by if they wanted it, and, lo and behold, they always did.

I left my childhood as soon as I could. Ran away, and worked odd jobs, here and there for as longs I could stand it. I used to stay in boarding houses and watch a lot of tv. Could stay there all day just setting in front of that little black and white set. Sometimes there would be sports on, a whole buncha games one after the other, and the tv would focus in on the one great player and say, lookit him, he has An Attitude. That's why his team, and his coaches, and his fans adore him. And I said to the tv, I know all about Attitudes, and no one who wears a uniform of any kind has An Attitude. He don't have An Attitude. What he has is a nasty temper.

Lots of famous people on tv, and the tv man would interview them and say it was their Attitude that made them successful. That's fine for them. An attitude attached to talents one thing, but just An Attitude like I got is worse than nothing. It gets you kicked out of your home. It makes your bosses say get out of here you have An Attitude. And so I have fixed myself a home in the shut-down section of the city that no one wants, and here I stay and don't have no one telling me anymore about my Attitude.

This time I went to the inner city where was all the riot-rubble. Nobody but me could pick their way through the bare ground that was all broken up and unfriendly, or get past the brambled up forest of twisted rebar. Dirt caked everything, not a fine layer of dust like in old houses, but dirt that would have to be measured with a yardstick, and cleared out with a bulldozer. I liked the dirt. It had an attitude all to itself.

Come springtime, it rained and the ground turned to muck. I went to the edge of a playfield and dug down into the oozy mud, hit chunks and chunks of cement. There's where I threw in the seeds. They were a real find, and I had gone through a broken store window and cut myself real hard on the leg, left a trail of blood to the seed display to get the seeds I wanted. Didn't look at the blood, knew it was there, but just let it drip cause as long as I didn't look, it sorta didn't exist. But giant pumpkins grow from giant pumpkin seeds. And I got ten of them. After I planted them, I sprinkled them with water and watched the droplets of water forming little round craters in the mud.

When I was little and we got that charity land cleared, the first thing we planted was pumpkins. Bran new soil was poor, my dad said, and the pumpkin roots would go down deep and break up the clay. Then the next year all the dried up old leaves and stems would be mulched down and real crops could be planted. Then he said the pumpkins themselves weren't no good. Not for eating anyway. Pumpkins was only good for kids on Halloween, so he didn't sell any, just gave them all to me. They were my favorite and one time, years later, I planted some right in the middle of the snap beans. Dad hollered at me when they come up and I cried. He didn't pull them up though, and he didn't hit me or nothing.

I left the seeds alone for two days, then every day for a week I came by and checked to see if they come up. Nothing. But then it was a cold, rainy spring. I came back a week later, and checked it offn on for another. Nothing. I threw some manure on top and stirred it around. The dark, dark manure mixed with the clay, got up my fingernails. I watered it, even though it sprinkled most of the time. Still no shoots. I decided, very disappointed, that the bugs had eaten the seeds up. Bugs in such poor soil must be starved. So was I. But a few weeks later, when the sun had been out and the weather warm and rich, like cows milk, the government showed up in a fancy-dancy firetruck, and drew the only crowd they could- me- and then began testing the fire hydrants.

A fine mist rose from their hose. I yelled at them what the hell you think you're doing. They ignored me over the spray, and then pointed them hoses off toward the playfield. Little bits of clay went flying up, and lo and behold, when the spray got near my pumpkin seeds and just began lifting off the top layers of dirt, I saw them. Tiny shoots, just under the surface, the leaves still held together by the husk of the seeds. I ran out and stood in front of my patch. They turned the spray out onto the street instead. I stood with my hands on my hips, then bent down and looked at my seeds. Fine pairs of healthy green leaves, on wiggly, skinny, corkscrewing stems. I pulled the husks offa some of em, real gentle like and watched the leaves slowly unfold.

After the firemen left, that was when more people started showing up. Not a lot, but poor raggedy folk like me. And my plants kept growing till they had beautiful jungly leaves. They musta been two feet across, shade enough for a small child.

I say it that way cause I had got a child now. She wasn't mine, but had followed me home from one of the back streets, near the giant boot sign that said SHOE REPAIRS. I fed her and put her out the door, and she musta stayed there for about half an hour, Ida heard her footsteps if she run away. But she didn't want to disappear like all the other strays, and when I went back out she still sat exactly where I had left her, staring stubbornly into a lower corner of the door where the wood was rotting away. She wouldn't look at me, just sat. I let her back in. Picked her up set her on her feet and pulled her in by the arm. I looked her over close. A small mottled-skinned blonde, with pressed rags and wildly knotted hair. I touched her hair and she jerked out of my reach. She still would not look at me. But after awhile, she got to following me around. And by the end of the week I'da got to worrying about her and always took her by the arm and lead her along.

The pumpkin plants had gotten big and long ago filled the entire corner of the tiny little garden space. All the vines were like octopus arms reaching out onto the playfield.

Gigantic sticky yellow flowers began to bloom. Bees buzzed the area.

The vines began to creep onto the corner of the basketball court, soon they were weaving their way up the basketball post. No one dared step on them. People played on that court and not one tiny leaf was trampled. I watched the boys, and they made their new "rules rules" no stepping on the pumpkin plant. They made it out of bounds, and wherever the giant vines grew was their new, green sideline.

One day the boys asked me if it would have pumpkins. No one had ever seen a pumpkin plant, but they all knew what it was. Maybe they had looked it up in a book. I remembered my pumpkins, and examined the flowers. My dad had shown me the little green buds at the base of the female flowers. He said they would swell up into giant pumpkins. All girls has got buds he said. But these flowers were all male. I shook my head and said No.

I watched the child all the time while that summer passed. She always ate sneaky like, in a corner, with her back towards me. Sometimes I gave her more food than I knew she could eat, whole loaves of thick-crusted, heavy peasant bread. The real stuff, not the one where the piece of bread could be squished into a tiny pill. I went special to a bakery that unloaded every morning about 5 when all the city busses started running again, and waited till no one looked and took my one special loaf. I never took more. I figured they would forgive one loaf, and that's all I was rightly entitled to. Sometimes I wondered if their old delivery man saw me and just let me take the bread. There's nothing wrong with a little charity, course it wasn't his bread to give. Sometimes I wondered if they noticed at all, or if they thought an employee was stealing the bread. Maybe they would sue. Well, if they thought so much of their bread, they shouldn't leave it stacked up on the sidewalk where anybody could get their hands on it.

When I gave the child the whole loaf of bread, I wanted that she would fill herself up completely. I wanted her to be satisfied. But no matter how much I give her, it always disappeared, in secret with her back to me, and she come back sticking her hands out for more. One time I undressed her and she didn't have any food hidden away anywhere on her person. I puzzled, put my hand on her tummy. It bulged like a puppy's. I still didn't believe it, the loaf was half as tall as she was, but I never did figure what she done with all that bread. I scolded her sometimes for her greed and she looked ashamed. That was how I knew she understood what I said, but she never answered. Just like I knew she had a family. She was trained, and when she first come, her clothes were clean and smelled of laundry soap. And she was polite. I'd say go open the door, and she would, and stand there holding it open and push it shut when I was all the way through. She never slammed the doors.

I tried most to find out her name. Over and over I'd ask you got a name? Then I'd say Pretty Baby? Susan? Honey? Andrea? Joanie? Annie? Just when I thought I'd seen her light on one I'd go out of the room and try scare it out of her. Sudden-like, in panic JOANIE! No response, not even startled by the shout.

It bugged me that she never played, never smiled, and tried not to let me catch her looking at me, like she had no feelings, or had no right to be a real person. Mostly she sat, and her ears twitched, til I told her to get up and do something.

Every day we would go do our pumpkin rounds. By the end of August, one female flower had bloomed, and not trusting the thing to the bees, I fertilized it myself. The flower eventually dropped off, and the bud began to swell up big with pumpkin. By then the vine had found the basketball post, the tendrils found cracks in the blistery wood, and the plant started growing up the post. The writing on the wall said this pumpkin couldn't grow halfway up the post like that, hanging down like a tumor. And as it ballooned out, it began pulling the vine down, every day it slid down just a little bit more. Finally it bumped on the ground surrounded by coils and coils of vines.

And the pumpkin grew right there in the middle of the coils, fitting itself in, wherever it could. It swelled out like summer was a giant furnace and had put it through a candy-korn meltdown. It slumped over in huge jelly rolls of pumpkin flesh. Soon it was twice as big as the child. I posed her with her mottled yellow-brown skin and baby colored rags against the orange of the pumpkin. I remembered the picture she made and told her she looked like a fairy princess.

One day the child disappeared. There was no sign of a struggle. I hadn't heard any noise, not even the door opening or shutting. That was how I knew she'd left of her own mind. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't very well panic over a child that wasn't mine, but she was too young to take care of herself and I didn't know that she had anybody else to do for her. It bore down on me, so I begun cleaning out the rooms. I beat the old furniture. Stuffing flew everywhere. Would I scold her when she came back? Would she come back? Would I spend the rest of my life worrying about when she would leave again? Would I spend the rest of my life worrying if she was coming back?

I hoped, knowing I hadn't no right to hope. You can't ever know what another person's thinking. You can't ever control another person, not even a tiny bit of a person like that little girl. Lord knows I woulda if I could. And I had no right to be her Mama, but she had every right to expect care from me. That was what I thought upon while I scrubbed the floors: that she had all the rights cause I'd given them to her.

She reappeared that afternoon. I saw her out the window, walking along the very edge of the sidewalk in the shadow of the buildings, half-hidden like. She sucked her thumb. I'd never seen her do that before. It looked like she was allowing herself a special treat. I saw her look down and pick up a small scrap of metal. With her thumb out of her mouth, admiring her new toy, I could tell her lips were moving. I couldn't make out no sound, but she mighta been singing a nursery rhyme. I didn't yell at her come on home like I'd meant to. I was going to let her do what she wanted, and felt the entry door to the building sucking air as it opened, and I knew she was coming up the stairwell.

She was coming home.

She was coming home. Then she quietly slipped into the room.

I came out and she was exactly as if shed never left, sitting silently in the corner. I burst out well lookit you now! She shrank at my voice, so I muffled my feelings, took her by the arm, and said its time to visit the playfield. She trotted obediently behind me.

By October, that pumpkin had gotten monstrous. It woulda won prizes at the fair, that overgrown sloth of a vegetable. I cut it off a week before Halloween. It was going to freeze that night. I couldn't move it myself, and it wouldn't turn sideways and roll, like Id hoped-- it was too deformed. So I got the kids playing basketball on the other side of the playfield to help me lift it up onto a cart. It tilted way over to the left, and when we pulled, it went squeaky all the way down the road. I explained to the boys how this was no ordinary pumpkin. It was a giant pumpkin. They said they could see that. They was very polite, then they asked if I could make a pie out of it. And I said, yes, yes I would try.

They put the pumpkin on my table and left. Now everyone knew where I lived, but there was no helping that. I ran my fingers over its mounds and ridges. It wasn't even a true orange color. It was golden where it was ripe and on the underside, pale yellow with green veins.

But first I was going to carve a ghoulish face in its twisted lumpy flesh. An all triangle face, with upside-down triangles for eyes, and fangs for teeth. It was that kind of pumpkin.

But I stared at it, like an artist stares at his first lump of clay, noting the coloring, the twists and turns of the flesh and the bumpy texture. I liked the picture of the pumpkin sitting right against the purply blue walls of the kitchen and the cardboard-stuffed window panes. The boys kept asking about their pie, so I went out and got them one. I left the pumpkin right where it was all winter so I could admire it.

Near spring, a government person stopped by and saw my newly painted kitchen and the giant pumpkin, she peeked into the other room too. She commented, neither here nor there, that none of the members of my family were compulsive. She meant none of us were neat. She said it wasn't either good or bad, just a trait and none of us had it. She said at least that made it easier for us to live together.

Good, I said. Good.

She asked to see the child. I pulled her out from behind the chair. She is big the lady said. Yes, I said. She said but you have never had a child before, its on all our government records. No child.

Well I didn't want you to know. You never know what the government will do about a child.

She said okay and said something about phantom babies. I bit my lip before I said this ain't no phantom and it ain't no baby either. This heres a little girl and she got her rights, as good as anybody's, and that includes you, and anybody like you social worker, government know-it-all people.

I musta looked worried standing there gnawing at my lip. The lady stared hard at me, said to come down to the office if we needed help, put her card down next to the pumpkin, and left.

I cut into the pumpkin that afternoon. It had gotten a little soft on the bottom, and the wetness had made a mouldy spot on the table. Other than that, it was okay. I laid out the pumpkin guts and several pounds of seeds onto some newspaper. It smelled like a damp forest floor. In a few days they had dried and everything stuck together, the paper, the pulp and the seeds. I was going to plant them all. The barren neighborhood would grow all green and lush with elephant ear pumpkin plants.

The child began picking the seeds off, carefully digging fragile pink nails under the seeds and prying them off from the newspaper. The seeds were bigger than her nails. Bits of paper stuck to the seeds. I gave her a bowl of water and she began rinsing them off. Her whole body tensed holding on to the now slippery seeds. She didn't drop a single one.

I looked at the child. I touched her hair again as she lay down the seeds on the table. She placed them out one by one, fat ends pointing towards herself. Ten to a row, one for each baby finger.

Savannah. I decided right then that I would call her Savannah. I remembered seeing lions at the zoo, and a tiny picture of them out in the wild, stuck next to the cage. I spent all my time staring at that little picture. It said Lions in the African Savannah. And it showed the tall beautiful grasses growing thick on the plains. Even the lions were nothing compared to the grass that went on forever and ever like a magic carpet. She would be like that, only better, a goddess, shimmering in her golden-brown husk of skin. Stronger than the animals, stronger than the winds and the sun, forever young and pliant, she would be ruler of everything.

Then slowly, tenderly, I began untangling her curls.