The Angel, The Garden, and the Sylph

I came out in the morning, to find the garden a mess.

The sandbox was unlidded– apparently, it had been unlidded all night. When the sandbox is left unlidded, Charlie the cat uses it for a litter box. This is especially irksome because she never uses her litter box for a litter box. She does her business in the bushes, unless the sandbox is open.

Besides the sandbox being open, the bag of diatomaceous earth I keep to kill the lanternfly nymphs was torn open on the top step, and one of the strawberry runners had been ripped out of the ground. The Sylph, who likes to tell fibs, always grins at me and tries to swipe strawberries when she comes to visit. I’ve told her a hundred times to ask me before she takes something. I told her I’m growing food for all of us to share, but if she steals, there won’t be enough to go around.

I thought about that angel who’s supposed to guard the Garden of Eden with a burning sword, and wished I had a sword of my own.

For reasons I’m not going to hash out publicly, I knew it wouldn’t work to talk to The Sylph’s parents. Those children are feral from dawn until the street lights come on, and nobody looks after them. I told Adrienne to write the word “NO” on paper, and tape it to the sandbox. Later, when the Artful Dodgers came by to play, I told them the backyard was grounded, because somebody had broken the rules and been untidy while my back was turned. I gave them freeze pops, and sent them on their way. The Sylph asked for two freeze pops and a scissor to cut the plastic open. She didn’t look a bit guilty, which irked me.

I would like to welcome all of the children, all of the time. I have great fun when I show them the garden and teach them how to help me tend it. Far more often than not, they live up to the trust I place in them. I don’t know what to do about the odd day when they don’t.

I didn’t have the time to think about the garden that afternoon, because another neighbor had an emergency.

One of the Baker Street Irregulars, a little girl I’ve called the Autistic One, who is the Sylph’s age, has health problems. For the longest time they thought it was severe autism, but she’s been re-diagnosed. She suffers from a genetic disorder that’s caused physical, intellectual and behavioral issues. Lately, she was having mysterious nose bleeds. Just now, Grandmother couldn’t get the bleeding under control. I bundled her into Sacre Bleu while Grandmother held a tea towel over her nose.

“You’re a medical curiosity, aren’t you?” I bantered, as she played with the hem of the tea towel. “You keep those doctors on their toes!”

The little girl tends to scream at the top of her lungs, wordlessly, like a bird of prey, when she’s feeling stressed. Going to the emergency room while your grandmother pinches your nose with a piece of terrycloth is stressful. She shrieked for two miles.

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEE!” exclaimed the Baker Street Irregular.

“Is there a pterodactyl in my backseat?” I joked, hoping it would keep her calm.

“SCREEEEEEEEEE!”

“You’re a dinosaur!”

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“You’re a funny dinosaur!”

Grandmother already looked exhausted as I dropped them off at the double doors of the emergency room. They ended up staying there for several hours and then taking a bus home.

I ran errands up and down town after that adventure.  It was nearly sunset when I got back home, where the Sylph was waiting for me.

“Do you know so-and-so?” she asked, naming the disabled Baker Street Irregular.

“Yes, I know her.”

“Well. When I was walking by, I saw her get away from her family! She ran into your yard and tore up a strawberry plant and opened the sandbox and played in it, and she broke open that bag of powder you use on the sunflowers, and she threw the powder around!”

“No, you didn’t,” I said, gritting my teeth. “You didn’t see her do that.”

“Yes I did!”

“You didn’t. Because that little girl was in the hospital.”

The Sylph’s smile dropped just a little. “When?”

“Earlier today. As a matter of fact, she was in my car. I drove her to the emergency room. She was bleeding. She’s been gone all day. Is there anything you want to tell me, before I go out back?”

“No. No! I didn’t know you had an emergency room IN YOUR HOUSE!”

The Sylph ran away as I stormed around to the garden.

The word “no” was still taped to the sandbox, but a handful of sand had been smeared over it. Someone had left a pink plastic dune buggy, the kind you ride in and propel with your feet, parked next to it. The bag of diatomaceous earth was torn further open than it had been in the morning, nearly in half. Its contents were spread all over the concrete steps like a thick snowfall, and there were two distinct sneaker prints in it. The Sylph’s.

Diatomaceous earth is an irritating substance. It gets into the exoskeletons of insects and dries them out, which is why organic gardeners use it for pests, but it also dries your skin. It can’t be vacuumed or swept easily because it makes such a fine powder– and if it gets in the air, it can irritate Michael’s asthma. I scooped up a few handfuls and applied them to the lanternfly nymphs swarming all over the sunflower stalks. And then, with itchy hands, I got the hose.

The powder turned to a thin milk, and ran out over the sidewalk.

It was so cruel; that was what got to me. I could nearly tolerate The Sylph’s constant mischief, but not her crass selfishness in trying to blame it on a child who was already suffering.  The Baker Street Irregular was on handfuls of medication and seeing a therapist, but no one could make it stop. She yanked out her own hair and picked at her skin and screamed like a monster, and people often treated her like a monster. I’d overheard the names she was called in the neighborhood. Everyone knew she was different. The Sylph, an able-bodied child, had taken advantage of that to try to get me to lift my ban on the sandbox. And she wasn’t even ashamed of herself. She was only scared because she got caught.

I turned the hose on the garden, watering the soil until it went from gray to chocolate brown.

What do you do when people won’t behave?

What if you’re certain that God has called you to be generous and welcoming with everyone around you, but the people you welcome just won’t behave? What do you do when one poor and helpless child who needs you acts so cruelly with another? What if you’re absolutely sure that Christ is present to you in your neighbors, and you’re trying to honor that Christ, but one little Christ pulls stunts like this and won’t cut it out? What do you do when you’re so angry that you’re just about ready to slap that little Christ in the face?

The little Christ in question ran into the yard just then, with Jimmy’s Boy. They asked to drink from the hose, and I let them. They admired the size of the zucchini bushes and the purple flowers on the snap peas. As they drank, I said that they were welcome to come back and play in the sandbox tomorrow– but only if they were honest with me. I didn’t mind so much when they made mistakes or got into mischief, but they mustn’t bear false witness against their neighbors. Tell the truth and shame the devil.

The Sylph gave me that grin again, and said she was going to steal and eat all the tomatoes.

“Sylph, do I have to ban you from my yard for a whole month?”

Is that what I have to do?

Do I have to ban the children from the garden? Do I have to build a wall around the garden? Top the wall with barbed wire? Hire a sentry? Place an angel with a burning sword in front of the garden so none of these traumatized urchins ever eats the fruit again?

When they left, at dusk, I coiled up the hose, and went to have a talk with God.

I grumbled to God, all the thoughts that I’ve just been grumbling to you. I can’t say God answered, not in the way I wanted God to answer. Not with permission to be cruel. Not with a scolding for my wanting to be cruel. Not with strict, precisely worded instructions on exactly what to do just now. Only with the smell of clover, and a bright sunset, and the smell of rain on the air. Only with the the irony: that when I was The Sylph’s age I wanted to be a nun who worked in an orphanage, and when I was a grown woman I wanted to be a mother of a great big army of children, and now at forty I was left to my own devices in a rickety rental house in Northern Appalachia, mothering children who weren’t mine. Only with the Great Commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Only with the mental image of that angel, guarding paradise with a burning sword, not admitting any of us traumatized urchins who would mess the place up. And a funny notion that perhaps the angel stands aside just a little, whenever you can find a way to show mercy.

No answers, just mercy.

And it was night.