Dear Walter ... it turns out that it wasn’t my fault that I kept saying the wrong thing all the time ...
She finished off her coffee and had just turned back toward the house when Grandma Billy banged through the front door. “Yoohoo! Anybody home?”
“Come on in,” said Selena, a bit dryly.
“Thanks, I have.” Grandma grinned at her, perfectly aware of what she was doing. “How are you this morning?”
“I think I’m hallucinating,” said Selena, surprised into honesty.
“Nice weather for it,” said Grandma. She dropped two heavy sacks on the table. “Cornmeal for you. Samuel’s oldest had some bags left over from last year, but he mixed the blue corn with the yellow, so the meal turned gray. Tastes fine, but looks like hell.”
“Can I pay him for it?”
“No,” said Grandma, “he doesn’t deserve money for this stuff. You’re helping him hide a sin against culinary decency. He ought to be paying you.”
Selena recognized charity when it was happening to her, but she also recognized Grandma Billy—and presumably the absent Samuel—were giving her a way to save face. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“So, what’re you hallucinating?” asked Grandma, helping herself to the last of the coffee.
Was it more humiliating to go insane or to take someone’s gray cornmeal? Selena did not feel that she was cut out for this kind of social arithmetic. Clearly they were far beyond scripts, so she stuck to the bare facts. “There was a man wearing green stripes in the garden. He had something on his head, and then he vanished when I looked away.”
“Green stripes? Squash god,” said Grandma, nodding. “Probably glad somebody’s planting in the old earth again.”
Selena stared at her blankly.
“There’s one like him what belongs to them up on the mesas up north, or they belong to him, however it works with gods. Hopi, or maybe Zuni, not sure which. This all used to be Native land, after all. Either this is the same one and he just wanders around a bit, or he’s a different one and they all look like that.” Her lips puckered in a frown. “Kinda got the impression theirs was bigger, but what do I know about it? Take care of those plants, though, and he’ll likely come back.”
“I’m not sure I want strange men in my garden,” said Selena, focusing on the one sentence that she understood.
“He’s a god,” said Grandma reasonably. “Or nearly one, anyway, I’ve never been clear on the difference. Maybe a spirit instead, though I call him a god to be polite.”
“You’re saying ... there’s a god ... in my garden.” She hoped the words did not sound as mad out loud as they did in her head.
“Nothing to worry about. It’s not like he’s gonna be peeping at you in the shower. And if he likes you, you’ll get a better crop than you might otherwise.” The bangles on her wrists clattered as she tapped a finger against her lips.
“But gods aren’treal,” Selena blurted, then realized that might be terribly offensive and put her hand over her mouth in horror.
“Sure,” said Grandma, clearly not offended. “Okay.” She considered. “So, let’s say you gotspiritsin your garden then ...”
Selena said, “I need more coffee.”
She wrestled with the old press in silence. Grandma stayed out back, petting Copper.
By the time she’d coaxed another cup (albeit a weak one) from the remaining grounds, her mind was a bit clearer. Grandma Billy knew what Selena had been talking about. She’d filled in details. Thereforesomethingwas there, and Selena wasn’t any more insane than she thought she was.
That was a trifle disappointing from one direction, but an enormous relief from the other one.
That there might be actual gods wandering around in her garden was ... well, too absurd a thought to get her mind around, frankly.
“So this squash person ...” she said, coming out onto the back porch.
“Pretty benign for a god,” said Grandma. “Not going to drag you into anything. He just likes plants.” She tucked her thumbs into the waistband of her skirt. “There always was a thin spot at the end of this garden. That’s probably why you can see him.”
“A thin spot,” Selena said, wondering if she was doomed to just keep repeating Grandma Billy all morning, like a skeptical parrot.
“Yeah. Amelia had all kinds of friends. Not all of ’em were, y’know, human.”
Copper came and sat down with a thump. Selena put her hand down, feeling sun-warmed black fur, which was good and real and solid and made sense, unlike the words that Grandma Billy was saying.
