Wild Greens

Wild Greens 4, no. 8 (June 2024)

Open Call (The Garden Issue)

Welcome to the June 2024 issue of Wild Greens

Mob Mentality

by Hannah Birss

The Genius of the Place

by Ben Nardolilli

Rumble in the Jungle

by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

Finally, she closed the book, laid it on the table, and walked out the door. She was careful to leave it as she found it; going into Papi’s room was a breach of trust, but opening his anatomy book to find out about male genitalia was a cardinal offense, punishable by the Three Belts: Papi and the two uncles, los tíos, who felt the need to contribute to Sol’s ‘education.’

You would think that living with three men, she would know something about what was down there. But she didn’t. She was clueless, tan inocente e ignorante como un ángel. The three fathers seemed to equate innocence with ignorance. The former she didn’t mind, but being ignorant made her feel like a donkey. Like when they talk about Nixon and she asks for clarification and the three fathers would look at her but never answer. Papi always felt bad for the President. Paco, the oldest, wanted juridical justice, and Moisés, the youngest, wanted the President to be protected by the laws of the land. Whatever that was. But today, Sol was tired of feeling protected about the taboo subject of sex and wanted some clarifications.

The first hint she had that there was something even different down there was when the four of them went to El Yunque, and they stopped at a secluded hillside to relieve themselves. She was the first out of the car but the last one back. They’d all laughed, a bit too nervously, when she asked them how they could pee so fast and not get their panties wet. 

“She is so sweet,” was Tío Paco’s pronouncement, which made her feel like a donkey not understanding what goof she had made this time.

However, now that she was on the cusp of turning twelve, she needed some answers. She wanted concrete visual images to answer all her questions about the difference between males and females. She could see women had big breasts, but men didn’t. Unless you were fat like Tío German—he had tetas almost as big as his wife. But the male arrangement down there was still a capital mystery. In her mind, as well as her panas, María Teresa and Luisa, this was more important and interesting than who was going to win the fight: George Foreman or Muhammad Ali. They wanted to see that fight, sure, but this was a more pressing matter to them that defined the difference between innocence and ignorance.

“My bet is on Cassius Clay,” Sol had announced when asked but was corrected. He no longer answered to this name.

“Muhammad Ali,” Luisa had said with an air of superiority.

That was last week at the pajama party when they poured their curiosity about anatomy over the nine-year-old 1965 Life magazine issue. That particular issue was banned in the neighborhood. Taboo.

“Mira esa porquería,” was the sentence passed by the matrons in the barrio. “I won’t keep it in my house.”

The controversy is from the revelatory and quite explicit photos of a baby’s birth. Though the girls by now knew babies weren’t delivered by la cigüeña, they had had debates about how it came out.

“The doctor cuts a hole through the bellybutton of the mom,” María Teresa had suggested before seeing the photos in Life. Though all three had felt unsure at that explanation, they agreed the doctor took the baby from the stomach. And the other question about how the baby got there was another story, also fraught with a lot of hullabaloo.

“No, the baby starts by the papá putting the seeds inside the mom, as Father Miguel said at the retreat last fall. The father has the seeds for the next generation, and the mother is like a flower taking the seed and making the fruit.” Sol said in her ‘I know more than you’ voice. Luisa was offended.

“Not possible. If that were the case, Mami wouldn’t be expecting another baby. She is old, there is no way Papi would put the seed inside her. HE doesn’t want any more kids!” Luisa had a solid, compelling argument that defeated Sol’s and Father Miguel’s.

The three girls were shocked into fits of nervous giggles when they finally had a chance to look at the magazine photos during the party. They had waited until María Teresa’s parents were sound asleep before they took out the copy and read it with a flashlight under the covers. Who would have guessed that babies came out from down there?

“I don’t think I want to have kids now,” said Luisa, and all three girls agreed.

“I think I’m going to get sick,” María Teresa added, and all three girls agreed again.

“I can’t look at these pictures anymore. Sol, you take it home and hide it. Your Papi won’t be looking in your stuff like Mami does. You keep it and maybe we can look some other time.”

“Yeah, you take it, Sol, my mom would find that magazine and in a second she would grab her chancleta,” Luisa added.

So, it was up to Sol to keep the worn magazine hidden from the eyes of her fathers. Easy task. Unlike her friends, Sol’s fathers would never break the sacrosanct privacy of her things. She didn’t know if they didn’t snoop because they trusted her, or they were afraid to find things that might be difficult to discuss. Like menstruation and brassieres.

Papi’s anatomy book had been a great disappointment, it didn’t reveal anything illuminating about down there. However, there was a picture of an aboriginal dude with this thing spreading a few meters between his legs. The text, however, had been in English and she could understand only every other word. Instinct told her that the photo was not a normal condition. But she learned that the thing was called a penis. Yet, the size could not be real. The fathers’ have taken her enough times to Luquillo Beach and wore swimming trunks. If they had that thing down there, well it would have been obvious. The book, after all, was called Aberrant Conditions and Their Causes.

Sol wished she could read more of the text and swore to the Blessed Mother that she would pay more attention in Sister Michon’s English class. She hated English. English was strange and difficult, and she didn’t see the point of learning a language with so many consonants that no one around her used anyway, except the tourist. In Turabo, there were no tourists, and when visiting San Juan, she was not to talk to any of them. So, what was the point? Though Sister Michon had said that, eventually, there would be no more Spanish on the island. “Your kids and your kids’ kids will all be Anglophones,” she had pronounced in class and Sol had been skeptical and raised her eyebrow. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing. But it would have been handy to know enough English to make sense of the medicine tomes Papi had in his room.

Picking up her princess phone, she called María Teresa. María Teresa was the only one in the clan, like herself, without a party line. A small advantage of having fathers who were physicians. They needed the privacy of a direct line. Telegraph ladies were known to snoop in conversations. Sometimes even interrupting chats with unsolicited advice. And this conversation needed to remain a secret.

“Well?” María Teresa answered instead of saying, “Hola.”

“Nada, nadita, nothing.”

“Well, your Papi or your Tío Moises must have another textbook.”

Peep-squeak could be more than annoying sometimes.

This is how they devised the plan. They needed to find the boys’ gang of Mario, Julio, and El Payaso unaware. It was a daring plan. The girls in town (by the mysterious convention of town rules. Those rules that dictated the segregated behavior of the population) were forbidden to go to the river. With its slimy rock bottom and schistosomiasis threat, it was out of reach for them. No swimming or fishing in the river unless chaperoned by a court of adults that needed to include at least three adult male relatives. Not even the old tías were to be found alone at the river.

Much to their chagrin, the girls knew that this rule didn’t apply to the boys. The guys went to the river. They pretty much went everywhere without a chaperone. El barrio was theirs to roam, free of gossip. And el Río Turabo was theirs every Thursday, right after their basketball practice (boys also had sports in clubs after school, another one of those mysterious rules; if you were a girl, you needed to be feminine, and feminine girls avoided sports).

The plan was simple. Sol, María Teresa, and Luisa needed to tell a little lie about their whereabouts. They told their families that they were going to each other’s houses. Sol had no problems; the fathers didn’t get home from the court and the hospital until way past her bedtime. And Esperanza, the housekeeper, was too tired to care.

“When they get into the water, we can steal their clothes and hide them. That way, when they come out of the river, we can get a good look.”

The plan was simple and thrilling. Though, Luisa complained that it wasn’t very exciting or imaginative. Hadn’t they seen something similar in a movie? But since she couldn’t come up with an alternative. They decided to go for it.

The girls sat behind the lava rock that looked like a sitting dog, which was crawling with lizards. The boulder offered a good hidden spot where they could hear the guys clearly.

“What the hell are they talking about?” whispered Luisa.

“The fight and the basketball game,” Sol whispered back, “Next week it’s the United States versus España, right here in el Coliseo, Tío Moisés wants to take me.”

“I hope Spain wins,” said Luisa. She loved anything from that country and still had family there, though she was as Boricua as the rest of them.

“Who cares,” added Maria Teresa. She hated anything about sports.

“How boring,” said Sol, grabbing one of the lizards off the rock. Anolis krugi, she thought, one of her favorites.

Sol peeped over the rock still holding the lizard. She could see the brown-blond hair of el Payaso gleaming with water as he splashed around like the clown he was.

“My bet is one hundred to fifty. The USA will beat Spain by double.”

“Pal Carajo, no fucking way.”

The boys, unaware they were being watched, were cussing up a storm.

“I think it is time,” Sol said to her friends. But she felt sick. How was she going to confess this sin? She looked at her friends. María Teresa looked nervous but excited. Luisa, however, was chewing the ends of her braid, a clear sign she was freaking out. The day was cloudy and a bit cold, and María Teresa passed three flashlights to them.

“Now, when the boys get out of the water, use these and aim the light at the target.”

Sol burped and tasted bile. She wasn’t as interested in finding out what was down there as she thought. What they were doing was wrong. Now she felt sick, really, really sick.

“I think I’m going to vomit,” she managed to say before puking all over Luisa’s sandals.

“¡Cabrona!” Luisa screamed, which, of course, alerted the three boys in the water.

“¿Quién anda ahí?” El Payaso’s voice sounded nervous.

The girls gathered their stuff quickly and dashed. They knew that the boys in the water could not only see them but would instantly know who they were if they saw even a hair.

“Mierdita,” Luisa shouted before erupting in a fit of giggles.

They reached the Betances intersection where the large guanabana tree stood, and all three placed their hands on the trunk to catch their breath.

“I guess I’m relieved I didn’t see Mario’s stuff,” María Teresa said between bouts of mellowing laughter.

“Or El Payaso’s,” offered Luisa.

“Yuck,” all three agreed.

“I guess innocence can be bliss.”

“But never ignorance,” the three shouted and shook hands before leaving for each other’s houses; their rebellion paused for a moment from an unnatural fill of remorse.

Garden Poem

by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

Garden Gifts

by Scottie Robinson

The gardens are in their mid-summer glory! The purple phlox are taller and more plentiful than I can remember. The rudbeckia lends its splash of bright yellow everywhere. The pink beebalm and bouncing bet stand proud. And the first lemon lily has awakened to the day. This month has sizzled with heat topping 95 degrees and dragged with drenching humidity. Sitting in the garden under the shade of the table umbrella, I feel sluggish. But the hummingbirds are energized! 

I hear the whirr and see three of them cavorting amongst the phlox. They all have iridescent golden green crowns and back feathers, but the one with the brilliant red throat distinguishes himself as the sole male. While he continues to sip nectar, the two females engage in a playful chase, soaring up into the tallest branches of a birch tree. Soon, the high flyers zoom back to where their friend is feeding. The trio then zips to a neighboring clump of beebalm, where I notice that their bellies are slightly concave as if practicing the cat/cow yoga pose. 

Suddenly, the male hummingbird swoops ten feet into the air and dives down. Swinging in a wide arc back up, he dives down again, landing very close to the other birds. This typical courtship behavior lasts for less than a minute, and then off he zooms. A light breeze sends the sweet fragrance of phlox my way as I sit simmering but feeling grateful for the rare and wonderful sight I have just witnessed on this sultry afternoon.

Bug Boy

by Bran Winkler

He looked me up and down and changed the music. It was a buggy tune, befriended by his jitter legs. The bounce in his steps made the quiver in his torso undetectable. We’d spent the afternoon walking downstream. We took our shoes off; our rubber-soled turtles were left to bask in the sunlight. Moon pebbles and spongy dirt filled in between our toes and pressed firmly into our arches. We scanned the water for glimmers of light, watching our step to avoid them.

In another river, these glimmers would be of the Sun catching the geometric scales of a herring; or when mica shifts, exposing their bright minerals to the surface. But in Stony Run, they are cracked pieces of glass and other sharp metals. Little sun flares, clustered under the current, wait patiently to erupt into an explosion from the pressure of a foot. Like lava, the blood runs murky and hot and is carried away in the current. It’s an odd sight, watching the blood of your being, swept away by a current and knowing that it will never stop moving. Its continuation to gestate, to permeate. To inhabit other bodies of water, always tumbling, swirling, circling.

Jamie threw his hand in the water. I thought maybe he dropped something. When he retracted his hand, muddy and dark, like it had been pulled from the remnants of a dark star, cradled between his thumb and forefinger was a Mudpuppy. It writhed in his hand as he offered it to me.

“I don’ want it,” I said, shying away from the creature.

He shrugged and smiled at the apprehended salamander. Panic lived in its long eel tail as it flicked from side to side, reminiscent of the arm of the metronome my piano teacher would place before me during class. Methodical in nature, its rhythm ever present, always consistent. Eyes like black marbles, gazing at me humbly. We walked downstream past the run-off point. We walked till the ache in my feet was so severe I was tempted to look to ensure I hadn’t stepped on any broken glass or other disposed articles.

We went through a tunnel that was carved into the side of a hill. Its entryway, made of brick and stone, was long mossed over. This century-old ruin was now home only to dwellers of the nocturnal and scoundrels like us. More beer bottles and soggy bags of potato chips lay weathered on slabs of concrete. 

Halfway through the tunnel, Jamie squatted on a rock and unsheathed a utility knife from his fanny pouch. The knife’s black grip was scratched and rusty. Its arthritic joints creaked at the hinge. Jamie tapped his knife past the viscous surface on the wall and chipped away at the stone. The contact rang through the tunnel, a summoning for Jamie to hold a sermon for any lingering blights or wood nymphs. 

Jamie’s thin, nimble hands were awkward and gangling compared to the frame of his body. His squat posture articulated his spine and mirrored the drawings of early hominids in anthropology texts. Jamie had a young face, boyish and round, but his torso was toned and gaining mass. His body was maturing into a man’s, yet it was visible it knew nothing of it. He stepped back to admire his work and revealed he’d carved our initials, perpetually entwined by a mire knot.

Take Me to the River

by Holly Rose