A Confession

It’s lying in the center of my plate, limp and green, its heart stabbed by the tines of my fork. Steam rises from its salted surface and assails my nostrils. It smells of wet afternoons in Grandpa’s garden when the sky is grey and the black soil smells sour with horse dung and cabbage leaves. Afternoons when my knees are raw and muddy and the east wind from the Channel is burning my eyes and making them water but I can’t complain because Grandpa is glowering under his rain hat and forking manure into a fresh pile at the bottom of the row – one forkful every second.

I wiggle in my chair and push the bulbous vegetable around the edge of my plate. I lay down my fork, the morsel impaled, a victim dangling on the point of a spear. I take a long, slow gulp of water and pick up my fork again. One bite. It’s just one small Brussels sprout. It can’t be that bad. And I’ll cover the aftertaste with water. I’ll drown out the bile that rises in my throat every time. I’ll do it really fast and get it over with.

I raise my fork halfway to my mouth but I can’t draw it any closer. The smell alone makes my stomach lurch. I lower my fork back to my plate.

I feel a sharp kick and look up. Vicki is leaning across the table, elbows resting on the edge and round face alive with mischief.

“Know what I do?”

“What?”

“I hide it under the table and ask for the second course. Look at our parents. They’re talking. They’ll never notice.”

“Vicki…that’s like lying.”

“No it’s not. If one of the grownups said, ‘Did you eat your Brussels sprout’ and you said ‘yes I did,’ then that would be lying, but if they don’t notice it’s totally fine.”

“Really? I don’t think…”

“Course!” Vicki leans back and sighs. “You’re a goody-goody, that’s what you are.”

“Am not!”

“Yeah, Lily, you so are. You never get in trouble.” Doug has stopped eating and is grinning at me.

“Doug! Go away! Why are you getting involved?”

“Because Vicki’s right. You’re a chicken and you’re scared of getting in trouble.”

“So are….” But I can’t say that because it’s not true. Doug gets into trouble the whole time. My twin brother is a prankster, willing to do anything for a laugh, disregarding the consequences.

Like the first day of school, when, in rebellion of having to wear shoes again after a long summer of barefooted bliss, he took a sharpie and drew laces, a sole and a Nike symbol onto each bare foot and walked into the classroom. He was sent to the principal for disrespect and flouting the rules, and was shown the door. Doug had walked to the door meekly enough, but paused in the doorway, squatted, and said over his shoulder, “Miss, do you mind if I quick tie my shoe before I go?” The class had shrieked with laughter and Miss Emery’s face had gotten pinched and white. Anger or suppressed laughter, I couldn’t be sure.

I knew Doug and Vicki were right. I was a chicken. And a goody-goody. But I’d show them that even I could break the rules.

“Okay, so what do you do with it once it’s in your lap?” I ask Vicki. She’s been smiling at me, her face cupped in her hands, her brown hair swept back from her face in a long ponytail. She’s been loving the torment playing over my face. I swear my cousin will grow up to be a professional torturer.

“Oh, duh, that’s easy.” She grins at Doug, but when I turn to look at him his face is blank and innocent. “Get a napkin,” she continues, “wrap it around your Brussels sprout, put it in your pocket, and the next time you’re in the bathroom, flush it down the toilet. Bam. Done. Easy as pie.”

“Will it really go down? You’re sure it won’t plog the toilet?”

Vicki rolls her eyes. “Like I said, I do it the whole time.”

I’ll show them. Before I have a chance to reconsider, I reach for a napkin, lay it over the offending food, and slip the package into my pocket. Then I lean over to Doug and say, “ask Auntie Lou to pass the mashed potatoes please.”

The flow of adult conversation barely ebbs as Auntie Lou passes the bowl down the table and Mom leans over and calls down to us, “You kids getting enough to eat down there?”

“Yes,” we chorus.

“Grandpa,” Mom says, adopting the tone of voice she uses when talking to small children, “Grandpa, we just love your Brussels sprouts. Especially the first ones of the season. It’s a new taste for the kids, but they’re learning to appreciate it. Right, Lily?”

She smiles down the table at me and winks. Mom knows how I struggle with Brussels sprouts.

“Lily, you’ve already eaten yours. Good for you!”

She gives me an encouraging nod before turning back to the bubble of adult talk that is already gathering speed and flowing over her interruption.

My heart is thudding inside my chest. That was deceitful. Deceitful is a big word but it basically means you’re a liar. But Vicki said it wasn’t technically lying. Still, the Brussels sprout is lying wet and heavy inside my pocket. I can’t wait to get rid of it.

Dinner ends. I excuse myself quietly and head for the bathroom. I pull my soggy package from my pocket and drop it in the toilet bowl. I push the flusher and watch as my guilt bubbles and swirls out of sight.

When dinner is cleaned up and the cousins, grandparents, and aunts and uncles have gone, it’s just me, Doug, and Dad and Mom left. Usually I beg Mom to let me stay up late, but tonight all I want to do is go to bed. All I can think about is Mom’s encouraging smile and the wet, heavy lump in my pocket.

I walk to the door, hoping no one will notice me.

“Lily,” Mom calls over her shoulder. She’s standing with her back to me, drying the last of the dinner dishes.

“Yeah?”

“I think Dad wants to talk to you.”

“What?” I say too quickly, too anxiously.

Dad is sitting in the rocking chair, hidden behind the Guardian Weekly. He lowers the newspaper and looks at me.

“Lily, come here. I have a question for you.”

I walk over to him. My heart has dropped in my chest; my legs are leaden.

“What happened at dinner tonight?”

“What do you mean?” I can’t quite look him in the eye.

Dad is quiet for a moment. I look up at his face and his eyes are black. Dad usually has deep, sea-blue eyes, but when he’s angry they turn black and seem to cut me like two daggers. He looks at me for five long, silent seconds.

My eyes dart this way and that and finally rest on my feet.

“Did you eat your Brussels sprouts?”

“What? How do you…?”

“I saw you.”

Dad’s voice is calm but firm.

“It’s not my fault. Vicki…”

“Lily!” Dad’s voice is louder and sharper than I’ve ever heard it before.

“Lily! Grow up! When will you start taking responsibility for your own actions? Do you know how hard Grandpa worked to grow those Brussels sprouts? He works day in and day out, planting, weeding, and turning manure. He grew up during the war. Do you think he had any vegetables to eat then? And you are so ungrateful that you flush your food down the toilet! That was sneaky and disobedient! How dare you?”

Dad has never spoken to me like this before. I’m frozen. I can’t talk. I can’t even cry.

“Lily. Look at me.”

My eyes are hooded, but I will myself to look at him.

“Go tell Grandpa. Tell him exactly what you did, and tell him you’re sorry.”

No. Nothing could be worse. Grandpa’s garden is the pride of his life. And wasting food? Sacrilegious.

Dad has told me plenty of stories about Grandpa. I knew all about him even before I met him only one month ago. He’s not someone to mess with.

Grandpa grew up in East Germany just two years before the Second World War broke out. His father was a soldier and his mother was poor and depressed and abandoned him when he was just five. Grandpa wandered the streets of his tiny German village, digging in garbage bins for food, begging, or singing for a meal. Once, when he tried to return home to see if his mother was still there, he was met by soldiers. They drove him off the premises with dog whips, threatening to beat him till he bled if he dared return. Eventually, Grandpa was picked up by a teenaged girl who took pity on him, and together they fled across the Iron Curtain into western Germany. There, the girl abandoned him, and after a few days he was found and taken into the custody of an orphanage. The orphanage was Dickensian, but with a German twist. Boys stole food off each other’s plates and got into bloody fist fights. Each boy for himself. Grandpa was lucky, though. He was adopted by an English couple and extricated from his frightening world into a secure, albeit primitive English home. Dad told me that Grandpa’s height was stunted from malnutrition and that after years of near starvation, he believed wasting food was a sin.

Our family moved from northern England down to Kent, where Grandpa and Grandma live, just one month ago. Dad’s job allowed him to make the move, and Dad thought it would be good for Doug and I to get to know Grandpa and Grandma. I’d seen lots of pictures of them before moving, but somehow Grandpa doesn’t fit my preconception of him. On the pictures he has a smiling red face rimmed with scraggly white hair. He’s usually holding Grandma’s hand, or leaning on a wooden cane, a sheep dog at his side.

But I know a different Grandpa. If he really does smile, it must be just for the camera. Because when I see him, his eyes glower under untrimmed eyebrows. He gets up at five each morning, pulls on his coveralls and wellies, and marches out in the misty drizzle to check on his sheep and his vegetable garden. He returns at six, drinks lukewarm tea, and gulps down a bowl of porridge sunken in a sea of milk while listening to the morning news. Then he’s back in his work clothes and out on the farm again. Grandpa’s seventy-two but he works from seven to five every day except Sunday.

I’ve seen him at work with his sheep. His sheep dog, Sweep, is a lousy dog, according to Grandpa. Grandpa is used to dogs that do what they’re commanded, but Sweep is young and bouncy and scatters the sheep instead of herding them. I’ve seen Grandpa bellow his frustration at the dog and tuck its front paw up into its collar to slow it down. But even on three legs Sweep runs too fast. Once Grandpa got so angry that he held Sweep by his collar and brought his walking stick down hard on his back. The stick broke and I looked away as Sweep yelped in pain and slunk behind Grandpa’s heels. I’ve seen Grandpa wrestle ewes onto their backs at shearing time and shear their wool off with strong, deft strokes. I’ve seen him fire his assistants on the spot for nicking the sheep with their shears or for not picking up the fleeces fast enough.

Only once have I caught a different glimpse of Grandpa, but he didn’t know I was watching.

I was passing by Grandpa’s greenhouse on my way home from an errand, when I heard singing and stopped to listen. I could see his shadow through the plastic, his uncombed hair, his hulking shoulders, and his hands busily pricking out lettuce plants.

“Where ‘ere you walk...” he began in a slow tenor. His hands kept working but his head tilted on the high note. “Cool gales shall fan the glade, trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade…” His voice grew louder with each line. He sang slowly, hitting each note like the rich bowing of a cello, while the shadow of his hands moved swiftly back and forth. On the last line, though, his hands stopped. “Shall crowd into a sha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ade.” His hands were poised mid-air, his shoulders thrown back. The scruffy shadow of his beard moved with each vowel. Full notes swelled inside the greenhouse and burst through the door into the clear air. Suddenly Grandpa dropped his hands and finished the song in a lilting allegro. “Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade.” I scuttled out of sight as the shadow strode to the door with the empty seedling trays.

But right now I’m supposed to tell Grandpa about the Brussels sprout, and I’m not thinking about his smile or his singing. I’m thinking about Sweep yelping in pain and cowering behind Grandpa’s heels, and the shearing assistant who couldn’t pick up the fleeces fast enough. I’m thinking about forked manure, tossed angrily into the pile, one forkful every second, and those untrimmed eyebrows hanging over glowering eyes.

I look up at Dad. “I’m not going,” I tell him. “I’ll run errands or something. But I’m not telling Grandpa.”

Dad looks slightly shocked.

“Lily! Do what I said!”

My eyes glaze and hot tears spill out. If protesting doesn’t help, maybe tears will.

“Lily! Seriously? I told you you were a baby. You’re not scared of Grandpa are you?”

Doug’s taunting face is more than I can take.

I turn on my heel and walk out the door. I’ll show Doug.

Grandpa and Grandma’s cottage lies ten feet from ours. It’s late October and the dark comes early. It’s seven, now, and pitch black. I shiver inside my thin sweater. I’m tensed like a coiled spring and I know it’s not just the damp cold. I place one foot in front of the other, each step leading me closer to Grandpa’s wrath.

I reach the peeling white door and knock. No answer. Maybe they’re already asleep. But Grandma has told me that my knocks are too timid. I need to knock loudly because Grandpa and Grandma are going deaf. I try again. Rap. Rap. Rap. The sound startles a dove out of a hawthorn tree on the edge of the path and sets my heart racing again. The door opens. It’s Grandpa.

“Lily! Come in!” Grandpa’s voice is thick with warmth and after-dinner contentment.

He’s padding to his low chair by the fire, cradling a cup of tea. The radio is blaring, but he stoops to lower the volume before sinking down in his chair again.

I look around for Grandma. Any buffer between me and Grandpa’s wrath. He’s smiling now, but looks can be deceiving.

“Are you looking for Grandma, Liebchen?”

“No, I just…I actually came to talk to you.”

“Ach, Lily, what is it?”

I’m staring at my toes and my face is hot. Grandpa has never seemed kinder, but now I’ll spoil it all. When he knows, he won’t look at me kindly ever again. I’ll be lousy, just like Sweep.

“Lily…” Grandpa’s eyes search my face.

I look up, directly at Grandpa, and the words jumble out so fast it’s almost like I’m pronouncing one long, foreign word.

“I didn’t eat my Brussels sprout at supper I hid it in a napkin and put it in my pocket because I don’t like Brussels sprouts and then I flushed it down the toilet.”

It’s quiet for a moment after I finish, and all I hear is the fire crackling and Grandpa shifting his feet on the wood floor. His head is cocked to one side and he seems to be breaking down my breathless, jumbled word into understandable phrases.

He looks up at me.

“You said you flushed your Brussels sprout down the toilet?”

I nod.

Grandpa’s eyes start to dance. Little lines crinkle at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. Suddenly he throws back his head and laughs. He laughs and laughs, his stomach heaving up and down.

I look at him and frown. I’m almost worried.

Grandpa takes one look at my face and starts to laugh all over again. He’s panting now, gasping for air.

The corners of my mouth turn up and I begin to smile.

“Oh, ha, Lily, I thought it was going to be much worse!” And he’s off again, laughing a deep belly laugh that fills the room with warmth.

Finally, he lets out a long sigh. “Is that all?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” I say.

“Lily. I’ll tell you something. Every time it’s Brussels sprouts for dinner, eat one. You don’t have to eat lots, but try to eat one. By the time you’re an old codger like me, you might even like them. And Lily. Don’t be scared of Grandpa. I’ve a feeling we’re going to be good friends, you and I.”

Grandpa stands up, walks over to me, and gives me a fierce, quick hug. His shorn beard scratches the top of my head. Then he plops back in his chair. Dad once told me that Grandpa isn’t a huggy sort of person so I understand.

I smile. “Ok, good night, Grandpa.”

“Good night, Liebchen.”

As I slip through the door and latch it behind me I hear a long sigh that ends with a chuckle.

I dance the ten steps back to our house with my heart pounding strong and warm. I feel feathery, like shackles have been released from my feet.

Grandpa and I are friends.