Green Valentine, page 9
‘Can we work for a bit?’ I said. ‘The garden’s still here, and we have lots to do.’
But the rage-monster was controlling me, and I couldn’t do anything right. I kept crushing the tiny seedlings with my rage-monster hands. I spilled a bag of chicken manure and broke a terracotta pot.
‘Okay, I think we need to get out of here,’ said Hiro at last, stripping off his gardening gloves. ‘Your head isn’t in it today. You’re like The Hulk.’
‘But we’re supposed to transplant the new zucchini seedlings today.’
Hiro chuckled. ‘The zucchini will wait. Come on.’
He gently pulled my gloves off too, and a warm, fuzzy feeling flickered inside me, soothing the rage-monster for a moment.
‘Wh-where are we going?’
‘I’m taking you to Nonna’s house.’
‘Your nonna? The one with the garden?’
Hiro nodded. ‘Nonna can fix anything,’ he said. ‘She’ll cure your Hulkness.’
‘Really? Now?’
‘Now. It’s only a few blocks away.’
‘But you’re in detention.’
Hiro gave me a flat look. ‘Are you planning on turning me in?’
He grabbed my hand, and pulled me away from the garden.
I couldn’t believe I’d never seen it before. All along the narrow suburban street were identical brown brick houses with identical yellowing lawns.
And then, an oasis.
Even the sight of it soothed the rage-monster.
It was still the same boring brown brick house, but I could barely see it. There was no lawn, just an enormous lemon tree, heavy with fruit, surrounded by a confusion of basil, swiss chard and about a million other green, interesting-looking plants that I didn’t recognise. Green tomatoes hung like heavy jewels, some of them just beginning to blush pink. There were three apple trees carefully pruned against one fence – Hiro told me it was called espalier. They were covered in new greenery and swelling fruit. The opposite fence was lined with tall, upright plants with pods bursting from the stems.
‘Broad beans,’ said Hiro, following my gaze.
‘Is your grandmother a witch?’ I asked.
Hiro laughed. ‘It’s not totally out of the question,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
‘Shouldn’t we call first? How do you know she’s not busy?’
‘Nonna is never too busy for a visit from her only grandson.’
He led me up the path towards the front door. Bees and butterflies flitted around the garden. Everything was so green it practically glowed. It was probably producing about eighty per cent of Valentine’s oxygen.
The door opened before we reached it. Hiro’s grandmother was tall and thin, with wiry grey hair swept into a messy bun. She wore a simple black dress, and intelligent eyes glinted behind black-framed glasses. Her eyes flicked over me and her mouth curled in a smile as she reached out and pinched Hiro’s cheeks before hauling him in for a hug.
‘Hi, Nonna,’ he said, his voice a little muffled, before extracting himself. ‘This is Astrid. Astrid, this is my grandmother, Maria.’
‘Hi,’ I said, feeling suddenly shy. Shy? I hadn’t felt shy for years.
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Maria, in heavily accented English.
‘You too.’
She looked me over with a shrewd eye, and for a moment I felt like she could actually hear my thoughts. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to approve of me as a good girlfriend for Hiro. Finally she turned back to him and said something rapidly in Italian. He replied, and I drank it in. I couldn’t understand a word, but there was something very, very appealing about Hiro speaking fluent Italian.
‘We have to stay for dinner,’ said Hiro, turning to me. ‘We have no choice in the matter.’
‘As long as it’s not an inconvenience,’ I said, ‘I’d love to stay.’
Hiro snorted. ‘I don’t think you understand how this works. Staying for dinner isn’t some generous offer that she’s made. It’s an order. Non-negotiable.’
He said a few more words in Italian, and Maria nodded and smiled. Hiro took my hand.
‘She’s going into the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you out the back and show you around.’
Hiro led me through the house, which was full of so many knick-knacks and ornaments that I felt a bit overwhelmed. I noticed a preponderance of cows – china cows, brass cows, paintings of cows, cushions embroidered with cows. Hiro grinned.
‘This place drives my mother crazy,’ he said. ‘She hates clutter.’
‘Why all the cows?’
‘Nonna’s family back in Italy owned a dairy farm,’ he said. ‘But she fell in love with a mechanic who wanted to move to Australia.’
‘Is he still …?’
‘Alive?’ Hiro shook his head. ‘He died when I was a baby. I don’t remember him at all.’
He pushed open the back door and led me outside.
Maria’s back garden was even more amazing than the front. More fruit trees, as well as a whole grove of olive trees and a huge trellis of grapevines. Pumpkin vines sprawled between rows of staked vegetables. At the very back of the garden was a potting shed covered in passionfruit, a chicken run where five or six fat birds scratched around, an enormous compost heap, and what looked like a beehive. I tried to take it all in, my mouth hanging open.
‘Cool, huh?’ said Hiro. ‘She’s pretty self-sufficient.’
‘It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,’ I said, and I meant it.
I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. I could smell basil and mint and green. I pointed at a plant with droopy red bunches. ‘What’s this one?’
‘Amaranth,’ Hiro replied. ‘It’s a kind of cereal grain.’
‘This one?’ I pointed at a bush with little round leaves and fat green buds.
‘Capers.’
‘How about this one?’
‘Bay tree.’
Hiro walked me around the garden, pointing out broccoli, cabbage, beetroot and garlic, as well as neat rows of young eggplant, zucchini and capsicum. There were also lots more tomatoes. The smaller varieties were all bearing fruit in a riot of yellow, green, red and even purple.
‘Isn’t it too early for tomatoes?’ I asked, thinking of our tiny sprouts in the kitchen garden.
Hiro nodded. ‘Nonna has a special touch.’
‘So she is a witch.’
‘It’s all organic, too,’ said Hiro. ‘Nonna doesn’t believe in pesticides.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s amazing,’ I said. ‘I wish people knew how amazing it feels to produce fresh, delicious vegetables, without pumping them full of chemicals.’
Hiro winced. ‘Please don’t say that.’
‘Say what?’
‘Pumping them full of chemicals. You’re saying that chemicals are bad. But everything is chemicals. Every single thing in the universe is made from chemicals. So don’t blame the carcinogenic toxicity of a few chemicals on all chemicals.’
I stared at him.
‘What?’
I grinned. ‘I love it when you shed your sarcastic, disaffected exterior to reveal your squishy inner dork.’
He stuck his tongue out at me.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, looking at a rubbish bin that had green leaves poking out the top.
‘Potatoes,’ said Hiro. ‘It’s much more efficient to grow them vertically. I’ll show you how back at school.’
A warm glow spread throughout my body. This thing with Hiro and me, it was not going to be just a small thing.
‘Nonna lives for this garden,’ Hiro explained. ‘Dad wanted her to come and live with us after my grandfather died, but she wouldn’t leave her garden. She produces all her own fruit and vegies and eggs. And all her own honey, of course.’
So it was a beehive. Amazing. Hiro was amazing, too. His slouch was gone, and he was more alert, open and happy than I’d ever seen him. I realised that this was the real Hiro – that the sulky, angry guy who stomped around at school was just a mask. In his nonna’s garden, surrounded by green growing things, Hiro came alive, like a blooming flower. I squeezed his hand.
He shot me a sly smile. ‘How’s your Hulk monster?’
I smiled back. ‘All gone.’
Maria opened the back door and presented Hiro with an empty wicker basket, rattling off a list of instructions in rapid Italian. Then she went back inside, and Hiro and I pulled up carrots, beetroot and radishes, then cut fat leaves of silverbeet and lettuce. Hiro showed me how to tell which tomatoes were ripe, and explained the difference between the five different varieties of basil. He showed me Maria’s garden shed, where plaited ropes of onion and garlic hung, filling the shed with a spicy, earthy scent. We also inspected the chicken run and the roosting boxes, and discovered four brown speckled eggs and one greeny-blue one, which Hiro said came from a kind of chicken called an Aracauna. We took our overflowing basket back into Maria’s kitchen, which was warm and full of jars and pots and appealing smells. She bossed us around, and Hiro showed me how to make pasta, mixing flour with the eggs and then hand-cranking the resulting dough through a small machine that flattened and sliced it into fat fettucini strips.
Hiro clowned around with his grandmother and me, getting flour all over himself and making me giggle. He was like a completely different person. His guard was totally down, and if I’d liked him before, I adored him now.
We carried full plates into the dining room. I couldn’t believe it had all come together so quickly and easily. There was pickled zucchini and eggplant next to a bowl of plump purple olives. Maria had cooked the pasta we’d made and mixed it with a simple tomato, garlic and basil sauce. There were four kinds of dip, and a loaf of crusty bread. The vegetables we’d picked had been simply cooked and combined with olive oil and vinegar. There was so much food, and it was all amazing. And we’d picked most of it from the garden only an hour or so previously.
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘In our family,’ said Hiro, ‘eating is serious business.’
‘Grazie,’ I said to Maria as we sat down. It was the only thing I knew how to say in Italian, other than ciao.
Maria beamed. ‘Prego,’ she replied, and then said a bunch of words to Hiro that I didn’t understand.
‘She likes you,’ said Hiro. ‘Says you’re very pretty.’
I felt myself blush. Maria said something else.
‘Nonna!’ Hiro scowled at her.
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing.’ Hiro shot Maria a dark look. ‘Nothing at all.’
Maria chuckled.
‘Okay,’ said Hiro. ‘Enough of the chit-chat. Let’s eat.’
I didn’t need a second invitation. I dug in, loading up my plate with a bit of everything. Maria watched approvingly. Hiro flashed me a grin and I felt such a wash of warm contentment to be sitting here with Hiro and his grandmother, in front of such a glorious feast. I realised I hadn’t eaten a proper meal at home with Mum for ages – I’d fallen into the habit of eating in my room while I finished my homework. I’d forgotten how wonderful sharing a meal was, how intimate and beautiful. And I realised that the garden I was making at school wasn’t just about the environment. It wasn’t just about minimising food miles and providing fresh organic options to our students. It was about this. It was about passing a dish of beans over the table. It was about meeting someone’s eyes over a glass of perfectly clear water. It was about tearing a piece of bread in half to share it with the person sitting next to you. Gardens made food, and food made families.
It was a perfect moment, and I wanted to remember it always.
And.
The.
Food.
I’d never eaten beans so crunchy, tomatoes so sweetly acidic, herbs so full of flavour. It was as if in my whole life I’d never really heard music before, just the tinny rattle of someone else’s earbuds on the train. And now a symphony orchestra was playing live inside my mouth.
I ate everything. Even eggplant, which I didn’t think I liked. I had spent my entire life hating anchovies, but in Maria’s white bean salad they were the most astonishing little salty parcels of deliciousness I’d ever eaten. And when I thought I’d never be able to eat again, Maria brought out an enormous lemon cake, dripping with honey from her hive.
‘I don’t know if I can fit anything else in!’ I protested.
Hiro snorted, and cut me a piece of cake.
‘What did you think?’ he asked.
‘Apart from the fact that I can barely move?’ I said. ‘It’s the best meal I’ve ever had.’
Hiro said something in Italian to Maria, who looked smugly satisfied.
‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘Really, you have no idea how much this has meant to me.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said.
After a suitable period of digestion had passed, we said goodbye to Maria and wandered back out. The sun was setting, drenching everything in golden light, and I paused for a moment, breathing in a last lungful of the fresh green air, listening to the chirping of crickets, and running my hand over the bark of the lemon tree.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Hiro. ‘You’re unusually quiet.’
‘I was trying to remember the last time I ate dinner with Mum. A proper dinner, not just pizza in front of the TV. Even before Dad left … we used to have family dinners all the time, but in the last few years everyone got so busy.’
Hiro nodded. ‘We never have family dinners at home anymore either,’ he said. ‘Mum doesn’t usually get home from work until eight or nine.’
‘I wish everyone could experience this, you know?’ I said. ‘Everyone in Valentine. I wish they could see how wonderful it is, how beautiful. How good everything tastes. How sitting down to a home-grown, home-cooked meal with family can make you feel so good. I wonder if we all did it more often, perhaps there wouldn’t be so many fights and tears and dental nurses.’ I shook my head. ‘Do you think I’m crazy?’
Hiro put his hands on my shoulders and kissed my forehead. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’re crazy at all. I think you’re amazing.’
I smiled and we started walking down the street in the direction of my home. Hiro was quiet.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
He smiled, distracted. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘About you.’
I tugged on his hand. ‘You have plenty of time to think about me when you’re home without me,’ I said, teasingly. ‘But I’m here right now, so you should pay attention to me!’
Hiro chuckled. ‘Yes, Il Duce.’
We walked on. I counted twelve houses in a row that had ripped out their front gardens to create concreted carspaces. Valentine was the worst.
The thirteenth house was the same, but something made me stop.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Hiro, stopping too.
I nodded and bent over the low brick wall to examine the cracked concrete of the house’s driveway, squinting in the fading light. There, peeking through the cracks, was a tiny green shoot.
‘Looks like a geranium,’ Hiro said.
The crack in the concrete was only a few millimetres wide. It had been such a dry spring everything else was utterly barren. And yet here was this one little green shoot. This one sprig of life, coming from the harshest conditions.
If this tiny little geranium could make it, without water or fertiliser or even proper soil, then so could I.
Suddenly the rage-monster was back, but this time it didn’t want to smash things. This time it was clever and sharp. This time it wanted to win. I straightened up.
‘I’ll fight Mr Webber,’ I said to Hiro. ‘I’ll get a petition. I’m not giving up.’
Hiro wrapped me in a great, crushing hug. ‘Of course you’re not,’ he said. ‘You’re Lobstergirl. You never let go.’
When we reached my house, Hiro stopped and I saw his defensive hunched shoulders return.
‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked.
Hiro glanced warily at my front door. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m not really the meet-the-parents type.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘You just took me to meet your grandmother,’ I said. ‘And I’ve met your sister and your dad.’
‘Exactly,’ said Hiro. ‘You are the textbook example of a meet-the-parents type. My parents will be thrilled that I’m dating you. They’ll think you’ll be a good influence on me. Your family, however, will be suspicious and disapproving.’
‘No they won’t,’ I said. ‘My parents are very relaxed about that sort of thing.’
Hiro spread his hands. ‘I hate to inform you of this, but I am terrible boyfriend material,’ he said. ‘My marks are bad, I get in trouble all the time and there is absolutely no way that I will ever take you to prom. If you want to back out now, I’ll totally understand.’
He was mostly joking. I was pretty sure.
Hiro held up a finger. ‘However, I’m prepared to make one small concession. One chink in my bad-boy armour. I think we should go on a proper date.’
‘Isn’t this a date?’
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘This is hanging out. You think I’d take you to meet my grandmother as a date?’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘How would you know what a real date is?’ I asked teasingly. ‘From what I hear, you’ve never been on one.’
For a moment I thought I’d said the wrong thing. What was I doing, reminding Hiro of how I’d deceived him? But to my relief he smiled.
‘I like to think that my lack of experience in this area is a good thing,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no tired dinner-and-a-movie clichés here. Do not expect a corsage. I won’t win you a giant teddy bear at a carnival. There will be no long walk along the beach, and I won’t make out with you in the back of my car. That last one is mostly because I don’t have a car.’ I laughed. ‘So what can I expect on our date?’
‘Well,’ said Hiro, his face deadpan. ‘It’ll be the most amazing night of your life, obviously. You can safely expect that.’
‘More amazing than the night me and Dev and Paige had a séance and Paige was possessed by the ghost of Michael Jackson?’
