a visual storybook
MY PET
PUMPKIN
a story that grows
it starts sweet. it does not stay sweet.
The Seed
The spring I turned eight, my grandmother gave me a seed.
It came out of the little brass locket she wore around her neck. She never took that locket off. Not in the bath. Not in the rain. Not even at Grandpa’s funeral.
She pressed the seed into my palm like she was telling it a secret.
It was warm.
Seeds are not supposed to be warm. Remember that.
I didn’t. Not for years.
“Three rules, junebug.”
- ONE. Talk to it every single day.
- TWO. Plant it before the first frost. Never after.
- THREE. Never, ever tell it your name.
I asked her why. She looked at her locket for a long time and said:
“Everything you feed,
feeds on you back.”
I was eight. It sounded like a riddle. I planted the seed that same afternoon, in the soft black dirt behind the shed — next to the twine, and Dad’s rusty old hatchet.
The Sprout
He came up in eleven days. One green knuckle, punching out of the dirt like a tiny fist that had won something.
I named him Gordo, because I wanted him to be fat and happy, and I have never once in my life been wrong about anything the way grown-ups are wrong about things.
Rule one was easy. I told Gordo everything. About school. About Mom. About Biscuit, my dog, who was old and golden and smelled like corn chips.
I told him everything. Except the one thing.
Once, I got close. “Grandma calls me June—”
—and Biscuit barked so loud the birds left the whole yard.
Good dog. Good, good dog.
When my tooth fell out, I buried it next to Gordo instead of trading it to the fairy. So he could grow one of his own someday.
That’s just what you do for family.
Grandma’s secret ingredient went in the watering can every Sunday: one spoonful of her iron tonic, thick and dark and red. It smelled like pennies.
Gordo drank it, and his vine curled around my wrist, gentle as a handshake. We shook on everything, that summer.
I never asked what the deal was.
Biscuit never chewed Gordo’s vine. Never dug at his mound. Never once peed on him — and Biscuit peed on everything, including, one memorable Christmas, the tree.
Dogs know things.
Dogs are polite about the things they know.
The Golden Summer
Mom measured me against the doorframe every birthday. I measured Gordo against the shed wall every Sunday.
By July he passed my first mark. By August he passed them all.
I was very proud. I want you to remember that I was proud.
The other kids practiced carving on melons all summer, getting ready for Halloween. Triangle eyes. Jagged mouths.
I put both hands on Gordo and promised, out loud:
“I will never, ever carve you.”
He hummed. I felt it in my teeth.
I thought it meant thank you.
That summer, Mom married Rick.
Rick called the garden a waste of water. Rick laughed with his mouth but never with his eyes. Rick kicked Biscuit when he thought nobody was watching.
Somebody was always watching. Somebody was rooted eight feet from the fence with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.
In August, Grandma fell asleep in her chair and didn’t wake up.
At the funeral, her locket was gone. Nobody could find it, anywhere. Mom said things get lost.
Grandma never lost anything in her life.
Things lost her.
The last thing she ever said to me — two days before, her hand on my hand — was this:
“Someday it will ask you for something. When it asks, junebug — remember that you’re allowed to say no. Nobody ever told me that.”
Then she winked, touched the locket that was about to vanish off the face of the earth, and asked if there was any pie left.
All the Other Smiles
That October, every porch on our street grew a face. Triangle eyes. Sawtooth grins. Candlelight breathing in and out of their heads all night.
If you looked too long, the smiles looked like screaming.
Gordo stayed whole, and round, and blank as an unsaid thing. I tied Grandma’s scarf around him when the nights got cold.
Pumpkins are supposed to die in December. Go soft, go brown, fold in on their own shoulders like tired old men.
Gordo did not die in December. The snow fell on the whole garden and melted in a perfect circle around him — like he was warm inside.
Seeds are not supposed to be warm.
There it is. There’s that thing I was supposed to remember.
This is the part where I get older.
I’m sorry. It happens to everyone.
The Years That Hummed
Gordo turned four the year I turned twelve. He was the size of a bathtub. The shed wall ran out of room for his marks, so I stopped measuring —
which is the first way you lie to yourself about anything: you stop measuring it.
That spring I found something in his crease — that long, folded smile he’d had since he was small.
Something little. Something white. Set into the fold like a pearl.
My tooth. The one I buried when I was eight.
He’d grown it. Just like I asked him to. I told myself it was sweet. I kept telling myself that for years — at roughly the volume you’d use to talk over a sound you don’t want to hear.
At thirteen, I heard him humming Grandma’s lullaby. Right tune. Wrong end of the garden.
At fourteen, the humming had shapes in it. Not words. Not yet.
Like a mouth, somewhere, practicing.
At fifteen, Biscuit disappeared.
Rick said the dog ran off. Rick smiled when he said it.
Biscuit was fourteen years old, slept nineteen hours a day, and had to be carried up the porch steps. He didn’t run anywhere.
That night the garden smelled like pennies, and I chose — carefully, the way you choose things at fifteen — not to wonder why.
Feed
TONIC — GARDEN — IRON-RICH
a cup from the butcher,
— or from whoever deserves it.
— E.
At sixteen, I found Grandma’s recipe box. Between PIE, RHUBARB and PRESERVES, one card. The recipe was a single line long.
What the fuck, Grandma.
Nobody ever told me how Grandpa died. The family joke was “he left.” Ha ha.
And every time somebody said it, Grandma would smile, and touch her locket, and look out the window at her garden—
at her garden—
Ha.
Ha.
The autumn I turned seventeen, Gordo finally asked. Not out loud. A vine, tapping the glass at 2 a.m., patient as rain. And written in the fog of the window — from the outside —
Grandma said I was allowed to say no.
I want it on the record that I knew I was allowed to say no.
I started with a raccoon from the highway shoulder. Groceries, I told myself.
He took it the way the sea takes a dropped bottle: patiently. Completely. Without any particular opinion.
Then the vine curled around my wrist. Same handshake as when I was eight.
Much, much bigger hand.
That winter, Rick put my mother’s face into the kitchen wall, because the store had been out of his brand of beer.
The hospital wrote down “fell.” The wall got patched. The house went quiet and careful, the way houses do when they’re learning about weather.
I patched the wall myself. I’m telling you that so you know exactly how steady my hands were.
And are.
The first frost came early that year. I remember, because of the rules.
I found Rick in the garden at two in the morning, with Dad’s rusty hatchet from the shed, saying he was done with this fucking freak show. Saying we’d all thank him.
He got one full swing in.
Gordo didn’t bleed. Gordo has never bled.
In eleven years, that has always been somebody else’s job.
I could tell you I tried
to stop what happened next.
But there are three rules to telling a story, too.
And the third one is: never, ever lie to it.
It was not quick, and it was not quiet, and a mouth is what that smile had been practicing to be all along.
That crease. That fold. My little pearl of a tooth — and the hundred new sisters he’d grown it. White, and wet, and patient, row after row after row.
The garden smelled like pennies until spring.
I told the police Rick ran off. They smiled when they wrote it down.
Everybody hated Rick.
A week later, a vine set something down on the porch, gentle as an apology.
Biscuit’s collar.
Dug up from the fence line — where Rick’s shovel had left it, three years before. Gordo’s roots find everything, eventually. He had just been waiting for me to be ready to know.
Some feedings are groceries.
That one was a funeral.
First Frost
I’m nineteen now. Tonight is the first frost — the deep one. The one Grandma meant.
And Gordo is dying. I can hear it. The hum has gone low and slow, like a record winding down.
Everything you feed,
feeds on you back.
He has fed on this family for eleven years. My words. My tooth. My dog’s funeral. My mother’s worst mistake. All of it, in him.
Now the feeding goes the other way.
The vine wrote on the glass one last time tonight.
Not FEED.
CARVE.
I promised I never would. He waited eleven years to let me out of that promise.
I think it’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.
I used Dad’s hatchet. It was already out there. And a promise like that should be broken by hand, by somebody who loves you.
Inside a pumpkin there is supposed to be pulp, and strings, and slop.
Inside Gordo, there was:
Grandma’s locket, coiled in its chain like a nest.
Grandpa’s wedding ring.
Rick’s watch. Still ticking. Cheap ones always are.
And seeds. Hundreds of seeds.
Every single one of them warm.
I set a candle inside him. Because that’s what you do with the ones you love: you put a light in them, and let it shine out of the holes.
And Gordo spoke. Out loud. First time, last time. Grandma’s voice, and Mom’s voice, and under those a third voice that was nobody’s but his — rich, and round, and orange as August:
“Goodnight, June.”
He knew. Of course he knew. He’d known since the locket. Biscuit’s bark bought me nothing, eleven years ago.
Rule three was never a rule.
It was a mercy — so I could spend my whole childhood believing I still had a choice.
Heirloom
That was a long time ago.
I wear the locket now. I never take it off. Not in the bath. Not in the rain. Not at funerals — and I want you to know it has been years, and years, and years since I’ve had to go to one of those.
People in this family live long lives now. And the people who marry into it are very, very kind.
The ones who aren’t?
Ha.
They leave.
There’s a seed in the locket.
You already know what temperature it is.
My daughter turns eight in the spring. She talks to everything — spiders, spoons, thunder. She is going to be so good at rule one.
“Three rules, ladybug. And when it finally asks you for something — remember: you’re allowed to say no.”
Somebody told me that, once.
It just didn’t take.
The spring my daughter turned eight,
I gave her a seed.
It was warm.
🎃
THE END
(plant it before the first frost)