“Leona”
From Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman
Directions: As you
read, stop and make PREDICTIONS. Underline clues from the story that helped you
make your predictions.
Mama believed
in doctors, but not Granny. Not even if they were black. No, ma’am. I grew up in her house, back in Atlanta . She drank down a big cup of
goldenrod tea every morning, with a nutmeg floating in it, and declared she
didn’t need no other medicine. Dr. Bates tried to sell her his iron pills and
told her straight out that that tea of hers would raise her blood pressure and
burst her heart. He passed away that very same summer. Next doctor said it
would give her brain fever.
He died on his
fiftieth birthday. I believe, right during the party. Had him a real nice
funeral, later. Granny lived to ninety-nine, by her count. She kept a scrapbook
with the obituaries of all the doctors she outlived and could recite the list
of names by heart, like a chapter out of Genesis. We took to going to their
funerals right regular over the years. She always laid some goldenrod on their
graves.
I was thinking
about her one day, walking home from the grocery store on Gibb Street . Then I came to the vacant
lot and saw three people in different parts of it. I thought maybe they were
looking for money.
Turned out they
had shovels, not metal detectors. When I saw they had little gardens going, I
said to myself, “I believe I’ll plant me a patch of goldenrod right here.”
There was a man
standing and watching from the sidewalk and a gril looking down out a window.
There were probably lots of folks who’d want to grow something, just like me.
Then I studied all the trash on the ground. Don’t know why anyone called that
lot “vacant.” The garbage was piled high as your waist, some of it from the
neighborhood and some dropped off by outside people. The ones who don’t want to
pay at the dump, or got dangerous chemicals, or think we’re such slobs down
here we won’t mind another load of junk. We can’t get City Hall to pick up our trash, but we got it delivered just fine. The smell’s enough
to curl up a crocodile’s nose, especially in the summer. The gardeners had made
some trails through it. But I knew precious few would join ‘em until that mess
was hauled away. Looking at it, I knew this wasn’t a job for no wheelbarrow.
This was a job for the telephone.
I marched on
home. I’ve got two kids in a high school that has more guns than books, so I
know all about complaining to officials and such about things that need
changing. Next morning was Monday. At nine o’clock I drank me a tall glass of
water. I knew I’d be having to say the same thing to fifteen or twenty
government folks. I put Miles on the CD player and stretched out on the bed.
Might as well be comfortable when you’re on hold. Then I opened the phone book
and started dialing.
You ever watch
a sax player close? They push down a key and way at the other end of the
instrument something moves. That’s what I was looking for – the key that would
make that trash disappear.
I tried the
City of Cleveland , then Cuyahoga
County , then the State of Ohio , and finally the U.S. government. Six and a half
hours later I found out the lot was owned by the city. But the people running Cleveland don’t usually
come down here, unless they take a wrong turn on the freeway. You can’t measure
the distance between my block and City Hall in miles.
Just the same,
I kept working on it the next day. That Citizens’ Information Center
told me to call the Public Health Department. They sent me to someone else.
They’re all trained to be slippery as snakes. And to be out to lunch, to not
return messages, and to keep folks on hold till they get gray and die. I had
the feeling I was getting farther from the key I needed instead of closer. Then
on the third day, I thought on it. When people talk to you on the phone, you’re
nothing but a voice. And when you’re on hold you’re not even that. I had to
make myself real to ‘em.
That morning I
took a bus downtown and walked into the Public Health Department. Told about
the trash all over again to this dolled-up receptionist. Let her see me up
close and personal and hear me loud and clear. She just told me to sit down
with the others waiting. I did. Then I opened the garbage bag I’d picked up in
the lot on the way. The smell that came out of it made you think of hog pens and
maggots and kitchen scraps from back when Nixon was president.
It was amazing
how quick people noticed it, including that receptionist. And even more amazing
how quick I was called in to have a meeting with someone. I was definitely real to them now. I brought
that bag along with me into the meeting, to keep it that way.
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