Yvette GreenMY CABBAGE PATCH DOLL*My first dilemma that I remember is learning where babies came from. I had seen babies at church, at the park, and from people visiting our house. I'd never had much use for them…babies I mean. They cried, belched, pooped and dribbled. To my five year-old mind they served no purpose but to make grownups act silly. One summer day, my Aunt Ola Mae brought a baby to our house. She told me his name was Steve. I mumbled hello and immediately dismissed him and set out to do more important things, like retrieve my wagon from my neighbor. As I marched over to where my wagon was, I heard the screen door shut and saw my mom and my aunt come out and sit on the back porch. Mom called me to come over. My mind groaned; here we go with the my-how-you've-grown-you should-start-acting-more-like-a-lady-instead-of-a-tomboy. "Come see the baby," she said. She opened up the blanket, and there was Steve staring up at me, wide-eyed and long lashed, grinning like he was overjoyed to see me. His hand reached out unsteadily to touch me, but I stepped back real quick, determined not to get any baby stuff on me! He looked at me curiously for a moment, then started kicking and smiling like he had the most amazing secret. I asked my aunt where he came from. She said from a special cabbage patch. Since we had a large garden across the street I wondered very seriously when the other babies would be ripe enough to gather. My Dad had supervised and did the majority of the planting, and anything he did in my world was wonderful, so it came as no surprise that he grew babies, too. Anyway, my mom told me to come closer. I reached out a tentative finger towards Steve. He took it and started moving it up and down slowly, once again grinning like he was overjoyed to see me. At that moment when our eyes met, baby Steve became a person, a living, breathing human, not some sort of drooling, nasty little bugger. His smile was so full of laughter that I broke into a smile also. Something in that touch had bonded us. Steve kept holding my finger, and to his credit he didn't drool. Since he was kicking up a storm, I moved the blanket down and was shocked to see Steve was missing his other arm. I involuntarily pulled away, but he held fast to my finger. I stayed beside him all the time wondering where his other arm was. Then it came to me…his missing arm was in the cabbage patch! Didn't Aunt Ola Mae say he came from a cabbage patch? And didn't we have a large garden with a cabbage patch, too? I decided I would find Steve's arm myself. Babies had now moved up one rung on the ladder of importance in my world, and I was going to set right what grownups probably didn't see, that Steve needed two arms. That next evening, I walked across the street to our garden, a very large garden to a five year-old. There were two very long rows of cabbages, so with a martyred sigh, I set about my task. I was peering under the leaves of about the fourth cabbage when the sweet aroma of apple tobacco made me look up and smile. "Hi, Daddy", I said. "Hey Besso, what you doing?" Very seriously I said, "I met Steve yesterday who came from a special cabbage patch, but one of his arms is missing, so I'm out here looking for it." Dad removed his pipe and seemed to be overtaken by a coughing fit, which made tears come to his eyes. "You alright, Dad?" "Yes, baby, I'm okay. Come here, got something to show you." He picked me up, and we went back across the street to the front porch. Dad called into the house "I found her," and sat me own beside him. Just then, Mrs. Dot, our next door neighbor came outside. Mrs. Dot was huge which made it difficult for her to sit down. "Evening Mr. Otis, Besso." We returned the greetings. While they talked, I walked over to the garden hose to get a drink of water (this was before it was deemed unsafe to do so) came back, sat between them. While waiting for Dad to tell me to go play 'cause this is what I was usually told when grownups sat around, he held out his hands to me and said: "What kind of bean is this?" "Stringbean," I said proudly. "And what do they grow?" "Stringbeans!" He asked the same question about the cucumber, cabbage and lettuce seeds and I answered correctly. Then Dad said, "Now do you think any of these seeds can grow babies like Steve?" I thought for a moment. "No", I said, "but Aunt Ola Mae said-" Dad interrupted and said,"Sometimes grown folks say things to put an end to questions before they start to be asked." "So what happened to Steve's arm and where did he come from?" I asked. Dad said, "Steve has a defect which he came into the world with. You remember the tomato plant that grew tomatoes that always curled at the end? They were still tomatoes, just shaped differently." I cut in saying, "They tasted real good, too!" "Right, you smart little girl. I don't want you to treat Steve special, I want you to treat him regular, like your other cousins…and er…Steve came from his mother's stomach, just like Mrs. Dot's baby will come from her stomach." "Not soon enough!" exclaimed Mrs. Dot. I looked at Mrs. Dot with new understanding as to why she got big for a while, then small. In the year following my great revelation, Steve was growing, crawling, walking, and was always underfoot. We fought, played and tolerated each other as kids do. His differently-abled body never got in the way of his accomplishments, which were many. Years later when I lay on my back, paralyzed from my neck down from a spinal cord operation, I opened my eyes one morning and looked into a pair of long-lashed, large eyes looking like he was overjoyed to see me. When I tried to talk and liquid escaped my mouth, he gently wiped my mouth with his kerchief, and also the tear from my eye that accompanied it. He took my finger, moved it up and down, and with that I've-got-the-most-amazing-secret-smile, kissed me on the forehead and said, "You're going to be alright".
*First published in I Could Feel My Stomanch Doing the Lambada (Inglis House, 2006).
|