Name: Mai Bennett
Age: 15
School: Holy Faith Secondary School Clontarf, Dublin 3
Mum's Garden
Birds don’t land on our fence anymore.
It’s cold for a May day. What was it that Mum used to say? Oh yes, “April showers bring May flowers”. She knew all about that kind of stuff. She was a great gardener. She could bring bulbs to life with her fingertips. She sang the newly bloomed to sleep each night, and showered them in springwater each morning.
Flowers don’t listen to me.
I’ll never be as good as her. I have so many questions I’d ask her if she was still alive.
I cup soil in my hands, feeling the earth. Mum used to say that to be a good gardener, you must be one with the earth. And I think that when she died, a bit of the earth died with her. I sprinkle the soil over a dahlia bulb. “Please grow,” I whisper. Mum would have been proud of me. She was always kind to her plants. She wrote them poetry and harmonised the words with her ukulele. She was a great singer, too. When I sing, all the birds fly away.
I’ll never be as good as her.
There’s a squawking sound as a pigeon crash-lands on the pavement. It flaps its grey wings, to little effect. One of its eyes stares at me.
Birds haven’t flown into the garden since Mum died. So, the butterflies go off in my stomach. I scoop up the pigeon, being careful to support its soft head. “You’re going to be okay. I promise you, you’re going to be okay,” I assure it. It coos softly and before its lights go out. It stops flapping. Its beak is slightly open and drooling. Its eyes are open wide, staring at nothing and everything. But it’s dead.
My heart stops. I hold the corpse in my hand.
“I’m sorry. If that means anything to you. I’m so very sorry.” Mum would be so disappointed in me. I want to cry. But I shouldn’t cry. Mum wouldn’t want me to cry. When she was dying, she made me promise not to cry over her. But she made me promise to look after her garden, too. But I couldn’t do it. I can’t believe I let the pigeon die. Mum wouldn’t have let the pigeon die. She would have taken it inside and fed it on a spoon until it was strong again.
I bite the inside of my cheek, then bite my lip. My nails are too short to bite. I’ve been keeping them short ever since I had to take over Mum’s garden. The sun shines in my eye, and I blink away the tears. Her ashes and gravestone are at the end of the garden, beside the compost heap. She wanted to become part of her garden once she was dead. I carry the corpse to the stone.
In loving Memory of Alyssa, died Thirteenth of December 1993. May she return to the earth.
I don’t talk to her enough. I really should. She would have done it for me.
“Mum, I’m sorry.”
