The Nature of Communication

Her gaze is guarded during early morning and twilight hours and warm while the sun is full. It follows me from across the fence that separates our properties. I think it’s possible she might be the owner of that acreage in her own right. She is the only one I have seen out on the land, although truthfully, I only have glimpses into the slender slice of garden I see while hanging out my laundry. The bulk of her land seems to flow away from the fence, out of sight from our land or the road that curves away out front.  Since the day I was brought here by the taciturn man I met and married in a small town many miles away, she is the only gaze I have met besides his. I live on my husband’s land, which was his fathers before him, which was his grandfathers and great-grandfathers before that. I can only guess there were women involved during each of their generations. There are a few old photos, labeled on the back with the name of the man in the picture. The women stand behind them, nameless, projecting a stoic exhaustion across the decades. There are no pictures or records of the children they must have born. Having no photos to guide me, my sparse and distant relatives only faded further in my memory.

It is hard to see into her world at all as summer progresses and her garden blooms with a towering hedge of sunflowers. I can see she harvests what she can save from the squirrels and birds. She seems to plant them as much for them as for herself, laughing as she shoos them away. Like me, she has row upon row of tomatoes for canning, potatoes, carrots, onions, and other vegetables good for keeping through the winter. Unlike me, her garden contains the bright spring pop of green that speaks of lettuces, which my husband will not tolerate on his plate. She grows trellises of nasturtium near our fence and I see her pop them off the vine and right into her mouth. I miss their peppery taste, but stopped debating their merit with my spouse some years back as they are clearly on the list of things that are unnecessary. On occasion, a vine or two makes the unlikely journey from her yard over my fence and I am quick to enjoy their sharpness before they are noticed by other eyes. He doesn’t like to see me waste my time on something so frivolous. She grows rainbow chard, and I harvest beets. She grows fanciful, thin-skinned summer squash that crossbreed and yield a carnival of colors. I grow their harder shelled, winter hardy cousins. She accepts the need to pay a certain percentage of her garden to the wildlife with whom we share this land. I attempt to sabotage the traps and remove the poison my husband sets along our border, being caught would exact a price I am not always in a position to pay.

I catch brief glimpses of a rocky herb garden that flows down the hill away from her house when the wind blows through her giant willow tree. I’m sure it was planted to control the water that flows toward the creek that runs through both of our properties. Our willow went down in a storm one spring and my husband doesn’t see the point of replanting. We don’t tend to use the lower end of the property, it’s not productive enough. Her herb garden is covered in patches of tiny flowers that cover the oregano, thyme and lavender. It looks like it is shimmering in the heat. I eventually realized it was the dancing of her bees. They live in a chaotic assortment of hives at the other side of her herb garden, pinpricks of mismatched colors stacked atop each other at the edge of my visible world. Both the stream and the bees are capable of moving back and forth across the boundaries of our property in a way neither of us can. When I follow the fence along the property line down to the stream, I am careful to do so when I haven’t seen her outside for fear of an actual need to converse. I can’t imagine what excuse I could make for this life I am living.  

Much as trips into town to buy groceries can be more readily performed by him on his way home from work, religion can be more easily obtained by reading from the bible on Sunday, anything that I need to say can be said to him. It’s hard to argue with the basic truth of these things. If I ever thought I needed to run next door and borrow a cup of sugar, I would surely be scolded for my failure to place it on the grocery list. My punishment would be knowing he had to do without a slice of pie after dinner and the deep sense that I had added to the balance against my worth in this household.  

So we communicate in the ways of voiceless women. A few sunflower seeds mysteriously sprout along the fence, adding a splash of color to my days. I grow some of my best winter-keeping squash a little too close to our border and a few vines are trained to snake under the fence hidden by the cover of the long grass. Herbs sprang up far from the house, almost to the river, clustered and creeping under the fence at seemingly random intervals. Pennyroyal, queen anne’s lace, sage, thyme, and rosemary all had something in common, although it took me considerable time to remember. Finally, noticing that they were the only plants the voracious and prolific rabbits did not eat, the connection came to me. She was opening a window and offering me the most basic of control over myself. I made sun tea, bitter and unsweetened, brewed each morning, my glass and pitcher washed and put away by afternoon. I left the glass pitcher brewing in a place she might manage to see it if the wind and light helped out.

There wasn’t a tipping point or the kind of explosion I remembered hearing about when I lived in town and relationships unwound. There was a gradual increase in commentary on his part regarding the need for an heir to take the reins of what remained of the family farm. Maybe he had started looking for a more likely accomplice in this effort, which would leave him with one too many women. I didn't lose my temper and my caution over the nights he came home later, smelling of beer and unnatural scents. Without having to be told, I knew that a walk into town, public knowledge of his failure to hold onto his property, any property, might prove to be my undoing. So instead, when the tension on the string that held our lives together grew so taut it emitted a low level thrum at all times, I snapped it. 

I rose from my bed, provided the same breakfast that he ate every Thursday morning, brewed and drank one more pitcher of tea, and cleaned the house until it shone. Should there be questions, I had at least been a good housekeeper. I lingered over the marriage certificate provided by the elderly minister in the wooden church, and lit the corner with a match. I suspected that our union had never gained a more legal status than whatever small power that piece of paper held. I took the small suitcase I had arrived with and stepped out the back door into my practical, well tended garden, and walked toward the river. When I reached the gap where the fence brushed the river bank I slipped my shoes off and holding them in one hand, took a step out into the water. I concentrated on how my feet felt balanced on the cold smooth rocks with the rushing water up around my ankles, and then turned to my left. 

There she was, waiting. Her face, which I had only seen at a distance, held an offer of sanctuary that I suspected she knew I might need before I did. We didn’t smile, for this was a grave matter. She had seen the spring leave my steps over the past years and my face turn away from the sun. We both knew that the days ahead held uncertainty, that the one offering refuge might be offering more than she could afford to. Then she reached out a sun browned hand to steady me as I stepped through the shallow water from one side of the fence to the other. Together we stepped onto the warm grass and moved toward the color, the shimmering flowers, and the sound of bees.