Paulina’s Bio:

S. Paulina Nelson’s love of the English language began with her immigration to the U.S. from Poland at the age of 6. As an undergraduate, she minored in creative writing with an emphasis on poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and have placed in the Dorothy Sargeant Rosenberg poetry prize. Inspired by her students’ love of literature, she began writing short fiction last year. Paulina happily teaches 7th grade English at Carmel Valley Middle School in San Diego, where she lives with her husband and son.

Seeds of Change

By S. Paulina Nelson

 

Nothing grew in our neighborhood. Nothing but weeds anyway, of which I was one. Kinky-haired kids like me seemed to sprout up from the cracks in the sidewalk; when one got hauled off to juvie, or got himself killed, or more rarely, managed to flee to a nice suburb, two more would pop up and take his place.

Everyone believed that except Miss Cassidy, my old teacher, who smiled like someone who grew up looking out at a lush lawn instead of a broke-down convenience store. She had overlooked my crime of taking two dahlia seeds for the growth cycle project instead of one, perhaps sensing how desperately I craved something more than standard issue.

Oh yes, it was time for that extra seed to begin its frilly pink life in the ghetto of my Grandmama’s yard. Square by square, I released the dahlia from its safehouse of Kleenex.

“Neala! Where you going, girl?” Grandmama said, seeing me at the front door, gripping my tools: an empty juice jug and a wedge-shaped cake spatula.

Wordlessly, I slipped out, letting the screen clack closed.

“Don’t you know the streets got your mama?” she called after me. Even without looking, I knew Grandmama would move from the ratty couch to the well-worn chair by the window where she anxiously awaited my daily return from school.

In stabbing the makeshift spade repeatedly into the stubborn ground, I barely heard the car roll up. A voice from inside a low rider with a glittery paint job and blinding chrome wheels threatened, “Hey you! Ain’t gonna grow no damn daisies ‘round here!” The passenger stared me down, flashing his gun to make it clear who decided the tenor of this neighborhood.

I stood there mutely as wetness darkened the front of my jeans and pooled around my only pair of sneakers. The gangsters erupted in laughter before tearing off down the street, leaving me wailing in shame and fury. Wailing for the lack of sidewalks, for the sirens at night, for the old-ass library books that I’ve already read twice... only the surprise of Grandmama’s arthritic fingers gripping my shoulders made me stop.

Marginally disguising her own anguish, Grandmama took the jug and filled it from the spigot. She began watering the spot where I had so lovingly set the nascent dahlia, cultivating my hopes for pastel cardigans and hair that smelled of apples like Miss Cassidy’s.

The next day, at 8 a.m., I found Grandmama at the front door, pocketbook in hand, manila folder tucked under her arm. “I’m walkin’ you to school today, Neala. And I’m ‘ona have a talk with that principal a’ yours,” she said, punctuating with a stinkeye that stops a child from protesting anything.

When we arrived at school, we marched straight to Mrs. Adler’s office, and found her staring, zombie-like, into her monitor. She waved us in without raising her eyes. “What can I do for you?” she asked in the dull voice of someone who could do nothing for us.

Grandmama opened the manila folder across Mrs. Adler’s desk, revealing the seed cycle poster I had made last year, each petal on the mature flower painstakingly crafted out of red tissue paper so that it looked alive. “This,” she pinpointed the first box, “is where we are. And this,” her wrinkled fingertip rested gently on my vibrant bloom, “is where we need to be. There’s a board meetin’ tonight, and I want those politicians to tell my granddaughter why she can’t grow flowers in her own yard ‘thout being hassled by punks who should be in school. And furthermore, why they fire that nice Miss Cassidy when all Mrs. Woods do is worksheets?”

I knew then, that even though Grandmama barely left our little clapboard house, she understood all the disappointments I had ceased mentioning long ago.

Mrs. Adler cast a doubtful look, as if she was about to crack open my academic record to determine my worth. “With all due respect, Mrs. King, what would Neala share with the board?” she challenged.

“We’re all flowers trying to grow in a garbage can,” I added quickly, startled by the force of my own voice.

The principal pinched my project between her fingers. A minute dripped from the clock before she said, “So, you do speak, and it seems you have something important to say.”

And there, in that six-by-ten foot gray cell of an office, hope took root in my heart.

***