The Greenhouse and The Letter

            It is Maureen’s seventh birthday. In fact, it is her second seventh birthday. The first was years ago and she doesn’t remember much of it. This birthday, she thinks, will be much different than that one. First off, they are living in the Barn now. Their family moved from Minnesota because Red, her father no longer wanted to run the mail delivery business he’s started there. Also, she now has a brother named Angus who was brought to them by stork. He is ten, maybe fifteen. They get along all right. Of course the main difference will be that none of her friends are here. They’re all in Minnesota still.

            Bonnie and Red (her mother and father) are occupied with something on the kitchen counter. Maureen has snuck enough glances to know that it is a cake. Her cake.

            Joshua, the Tiger Cat is asleep on the bed next to her. She sings him a lullaby and strokes his nose. Joshua Tiger Cat is a deep sleeper. As is Lulu, the stuffed rabbit. Lulu is sitting at the table with Angus and Kitty, the stuffed Hippopotamus. Maureen watches the table as she continues to stroke Joshua Tiger Cat’s nose.

            The Barn is one ginormous room. The kitchen is in one corner, the couch and TV in another. In a third corner is a ladder that leads to the loft where all the beds are. This is where Maureen and Joshua Tiger Cat are now situated. There were hundreds of thousands of beds up there. Rows and rows that seem to stretch on for miles. All with blue blankets and green pillows. Joshua Tiger Cat isn’t on the bed anymore. So Maureen walks over to a beam that spans the length of the Barn.

            When she is in the middle of it she looks directly below her at the table where Angus, Kitty, and Lulu are seated. Maureen notes that Angus has a bald spot. Lulu looks up at her and opens her mouth to speak but her stuffing starts to come out and Maureen can’t understand a word she is saying. Angus clucks to himself then leans over to gently push the stuffing back inside Lulu’s mouth. Kitty the Hippo just smiles and taps her toes on the table.

            Red and Bonnie are gone but now Neighbor is in the house. Her real, live pack mule, Hush-A-Bye-Love-Pony is tied to the ladder at the foot of the loft.

            “Hush-A-Bye-Love-Pony!” cries Maureen and she leaps from the beam.

            Neighbor is pirouetting around the birthday cake, which is now on the ground. She hums loudly to herself. She has a large nose and a gargantuan mass of curly red hair. It spins around with her, increasing exponentially in size. Maureen strokes Hush-A-Bye-Love-Pony’s nose and sings a lullaby.

            “Maureen, Darling” sings Neighbor.

            “Yes?” Maureen replies.

            “I have a present for you, Maureen,”

            “For my seventh birthday?”

            “Of course dear! What else?” Neighbor says exuberantly. She is sitting on Hush-A-Bye-Love-Pony, brushing her hair.

            Now it’s time for tea so everyone goes over to the table. Angus and Lulu and Kitty are still there so Maureen, Neighbor, Red, Bonnie, and Hush-A-Bye-Love-Pony pull up seats. Neighbor is holding a red, glass watering can. It clashes with the color of her hair.

            “It’s a magic watering can, dear! It was mailed here by a friend of yours back home!” then she lets out a stream of giggles.

            “And we have seeds, Hon” says Red. “Corn, pumpkins, peppers, papaya, poppies, parsnips, parsley… you name it.”

            “Aren’t those all lovely?” asks Bonnie.

            Maureen claps twice which means yes.

            Neighbor has to go so she takes Hush-A-Bye-Love-Pony and leaves with a wave of her hand. She left the watering can on the table. It is blue now because it’s sad to be left behind.

            Red and Bonnie have to attend to Angus, who has actually been gone for some time. They suspect he is moping in the woods over his lost childhood. Maureen figures this is a good time to put Kitty and Lulu to bed. When they are resting in beds up in the loft Maureen returns to the table for the seeds and watering can. It is time to try them out.

            There’s a pile of old gardening tools in the fourth corner of the Barn. They sit, gathering dust next to the pile of unopened letters that fall from the rusty mail slot. Maureen searches for her tool of choice. An old trowel catches her eye so she picks it up and surveys the Barn.

            Dancing around in swirly whirly patterns she digs seed-sized holes in the walls and floors and beams of the Barn. Then, with seed bags in hand she throws the seeds higgly piggly so they fall spot-on into the holes. Grade-A delivery.

            Maureen waits for something to happen. The plants aren’t growing. They sit, stagnant in their little seed holes, looking shriveled and lifeless. Maureen waits for something to happen some more. Nothing does. She notices the watering can sitting on the table. It is red again and still glass. Maureen grabs it off the table and begins watering the seeds willy-nilly. It sounds like rain. She feels like something is about to happen, Things are going to change. The seeds glisten in the midday sun that shines in through the windows of the Barn.

            It happens fast, like the blink of an eye. The seeds sprout and grow and grow until the whole barn is a forest of corn, parsley, petunias, poppies and papaya trees. The walls fade into nothingness and the “P” forest grows even larger. Kitty, the hippo, floats in a stream a couple feet away from Maureen. Lulu is holding her right hand and pulling her forward toward Kitty. They need to leave now. They’ve got one more letter to deliver.   Maureen sits atop Kitty and holds on tightly to Lulu as they float down the stream. They all watch the banks where the papaya trees are thickest. Maureen realizes that she has left the watering can back at the Barn. But where is the Barn? No matter, they don’t have enough time; the man in the caves is waiting to deliver the letter.

            Quickly now, they’re sailing, but the faster they go the longer it takes. They figure the man in the caves is close. But how close, they don’t know.

            Everything is silent, like they imagine it would be before an earthquake. Earthquakes don’t happen here though. Maureen doesn’t worry.

 Kitty and Lulu are getting impatient. This delivery is not nearly as simple as they had hoped it would be. The quiet is eerie and they wait for something to happen.

            Now the shores are lined with pomegranate trees. They’re stronger than the papaya trees and grow like weeds. They eat everything in their path, the blood of their prey filling their seed-choked fruits. No other plants stand a chance. “Expect maybe the corn. The corn might stand a chance,” says Kitty. Maureen and Lulu nod their heads in agreement but none of them actually see any corn.

            Meanwhile, Kitty has decided that she no longer wants wet feet. Luckily for the three travelers, there is a grassy island a mile or so down stream. They watch it intently as they approach. There is nothing on it but grass and it isn’t a large island. In fact, it is really quite small. Kitty can’t fit on it at first but they find a nice beach on the east side of the island where they can enter.

            As it turns out, the island isn’t even really just grass. It’s where the cave’s they’ve been looking for are. Maureen thanks her lucky stars that they stopped when they did. They could very well have passed it and spend the next hundred years looking for those caves.

            Kitty is happy her feet are dry and Lulu is happy they are no longer near the forest. It doesn’t take them long to find the caves. There they are, white and majestic and surrounded by fields of corn (‘I was right!” exclaims Kitty, “the corn won in the end!”). Lulu, Kitty, and Maureen stop to look at the sun setting over these fields. The caves are dark on the outside and light on the inside just like Maureen’s birthday cake. Lulu and Maureen enter holding hands.

            The man in the caves is in the caves. He’s back there, hiding away in his room. They’ve got to find him and get him the letter.

            “You find him, Lulu,” says Maureen. She’s nervous.

            Lulu smiles but doesn’t say anything. Her bunny phase is over and she’s taken on the role of a tortoise. Tortoises never talk. Maureen walks further into the caves. They’re glowing. It makes Lulu walk faster and Maureen decides that she’s never in her life seen a tortoise move that quickly.

            The man can be seen through the window of a house in the back of the cave. Maureen notices that it looks alarmingly similar to her old house. Not the Barn, but the one before that. He’s moving through the house, dancing?

Maureen is sitting in the living room of the house. Her couch is there, a little older than the last time she saw it, but it’s hers, no doubt about it. Then he’s in the room with her. Maureen watches him. He’s got the letter in one hand. All of its corners are smashed. He’s been picking at them nervously with his yellow fingernails.

Now Red and Bonnie are there too, and they’re holding Angus in their arms. He’s just a babe bundled up in an orange blanket.

The man hands the letter to Bonnie who hands it to Red. She remembers when the stuffing came out of Lulu’s mouth and doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her. It would be quite a problem because Angus is just a babe and cannot push it back in. She would lose all of her stuffing. ‘

Red reads the letter to the room full of attentive ears. It contains only sad news. Neighbor has died. As the news sinks in the trees and corn and caves blur and fade. In no time at all the man with the letter and the yellow fingernails is gone as well. They’ve got no choice but to return to the Barn. After all, there’s a second seventh birthday to attend.