I’d like to look at two passages for this response: one in the beginning of the piece and one at the very end.
“I never had time to paint that fence back then, neither. But it didn’t matter none, cause Gracie had it all covered up with her flowers. She used to sit right here on this swing at night, when a little breeze be blowing, and say she could tell all the different flowers apart, just by they smell. The wind pick up a scent, and Gracie say, ‘Smell that jasmine, Pearl?’ Then a breeze come up from another direction, and she turn her head like somebody calling her and say, ‘Now that’s my honeysuckle,now’”(139-140).
“The storm is moved on. That fresh air feel good on my skin through the cotton nightshirt. Smell good, too, rising up outa the wet earth, and I can see the water sparkling in the leaves of the collards and kale, twinkling in the vines on the bean poles. The moon is riding high up over Thompson’s field, spilling moonlight all over the yard, and setting all them blossoms on the fence to shining pure white. There ain’t a leaf twitching and there ain’t a sound. I ain’t moving either. I’m just gonna stay right here on this back porch. And hold still. And listen close. Cause I know Gracie somewhere in this garden. And she waiting for me”(151-152).
I think these passages, and the several other passages about the garden in this piece, outline the way we cling to certain physical objects or spaces that attach us to someone we’re grieving, even if it’s not something we would normally be interested in or attached to for ourselves. I also think there’s something particularly potent about the source of attachment being a garden–a place where life is cultivated. Where the main character is dancing around her grief about her partner’s death and her grief about her own impending death, fixating on the garden makes it possible to stay connected to new life, to lush life, and to life that supports other life (growing food, in particular, as directly supporting health and vitality in human bodies).
The garden in this story, though, has started to become a space that doesn’t solely inhabit beautiful, lively things. The first introduction we get to the garden is through the “old weather-beaten fence [she] ought to painted this summer,” the fence that, in the past, “Grace had it all covered up with her flowers”(139). The comparison between the past and present aesthetic states of the fence is deeply revealing of the main character, Jinx, right away–she’s clearly struggling to maintain the house and garden in the same way that she and Grace did, and the lack of flowers is part of the deep grief she feels for Grace. She later states, “Gracie’s poor bedraggled garden is just struggling along on its last legs–kinda like me”(141). The garden holds many different kinds of grief.
The garden then becomes a place where “sassy little scoundrels” steal peaches from her trees, it’s no longer a sanctuary of sorts for Jinx and Grace(143). This incident quickly leads to a deeper realization–as has been true throughout the story, grief about the garden is really indicative of a deeper grief about Grace and about herself. She comes to the realization that “it wasn’t even them two kids [she] was so mad at. [She] was mad at time. For playing tricks on [her] the way it done. So [she] don’t even remember that Grace Simmons has been dead now for the past thirteen years”(143). Here, the garden gives us insight into the way that anger and grief work together.
In the final passage, whatever desire for action, for repair, that Jinx had is gone. There’s a contentedness in stillness, in stagnation. And while the garden is still a locale for grief and for death, there’s no resentment in it. It’s almost pleasant, calming.
Coming to Age 