'The Garden' by Miriam Guastalla

My grandma had bulging eyes and thick fingers.

‘Imagine the scene when I die. It will be like this: at my wake, you’ll string paper streamers from the ceiling, and they’ll remind you of my skin. As the evening wears on, they’ll droop, their edges will scrape along the top of the cream cake. Your father won’t notice. He will be on his second bottle of wine, red-cheeked, stroking the thigh of a friend of your mother’s, trying to get closer and closer to the top of her leg. She’ll be too polite to say no because he’s grieving. Your mother will be in a trance, her lipstick will have slid. She’ll be bilious and angry and drunk. I won’t be there to look after you, so you’d better appreciate me while I’m still around.’ 

Small does not mean meagre, weak does not mean vulnerable. As I help her to the bathroom, she clenches her nails into my wrists. The marks will still be visible this evening. I will trace them with my fingers as my father announces over dinner that he wants to pursue an affair, he just hasn’t picked the woman yet. My mother will be bending down to take a lasagne out of the oven as he announces this. When she comes up with the dish, there will be a violent glee on her face. She will be holding the dish with her bare hands. I will knock it immediately out of her grip and push her fingers under the tap. There will be lasagne on the floor. My father, still at the table, will let out a warbling yelp and then put his head in his hands.

My grandma has wet herself, it turns out. While I change her: ‘Your mother was never right for him. Never. She’s as mad as they come. She’s got worms in her brain. When I first met her, I knew it from the second she walked into my living room. Her tits were too big, that was the first thing. Your father has always liked smaller ones. Not tiny, but nothing much bigger than a fist. Like mine, you see?’ She wipes the side of her limp hand across her chest to pull the fabric of her shirt aside and leans forward.

‘That was the first thing. And the second thing was her walk. Pigeon-toed and knees-knocking. The first time I met her I told her to walk with her chin up and her feet wide. A narrow stride gives you narrow hips, I told her. And what man wants a woman sewn-up like that, with a pelvis that’s turning in on itself. All closed up. Knock knock. Nobody’s home. No man wants a woman like that. A wide stride is a door with a welcome mat.’

Now I am covering the smaller bedsore on her side with a dressing. Infection has an odour. The sore is getting smaller, but there is still a spread of redness around it that is vivid and hot to the touch.

‘Tell me about the garden, gran.’

I move to the second pressure wound. This one is larger. As I apply the saline, breath moves through her like a shot. She shuts her eyes quickly, but I’ve seen the fear in them. ‘I was telling you about your mother. This is what I didn’t like about her: she was desperate. A rangy little she-cat on heat. You could see it. But your father looked at her like she was a songbird that just hadn’t found its voice yet. He thought he was special and that with him she’d start to sing. But she had brine on her lips and a vinegar gut. Half-dead. Your father has his flaws, but he’s alive. Say what you like about him, but that can’t be denied. When I’m dead you should try to remember that. I won’t be here to remind you.’

My father will sit at the table with his head in his hands. My mother, at the sink with her raw palms under the flow of the tap, will look at him with curiosity, as though she’s seeing him for the first time. Her eyes will follow the line of his jaw, the line of the hair on his head. They will survey his torso, then they will slide back up to his face. She will be so fixated by her assessment of him that her palms will slip out from under the stream of water and stay hovering beside it. 

My father will blow his nose into a handkerchief that he keeps in his trouser pocket. He is the only person I know to blow his nose with a handkerchief. He has about fifteen in rotation. They were bought for him as a wedding gift by a friend of the family. Their corners are monogrammed, with small embroidered flourishes. They are white, yellow, or blue. My mother has made a section in their wardrobe for these handkerchiefs, between the section for pants, knickers, and bras and the one for socks and tights. On Sundays she does the ironing. She leaves the handkerchiefs for last, when the iron is already good and hot and she can do them in just a few strokes, with a squirt of water to moisten them. She does it with a loose shoulder and wrist. The nose of the iron dances around their corners. 

My father will blow long and hard. 

‘What will she look like?’ my mother will ask. 

‘Who?’ my father will say. 

‘The new woman.’

My grandma knows I am about to move to the third sore, and I can see her muscles tense in response to this knowledge. I roll her slowly onto her front. The third sore is on her lower back. This one is a stinging, ripe red and has a white and yellow centre. 

‘Why don’t you tell me about the garden.’

‘But it’s true that your father is not innocent in all of this. He had everything he wanted as a boy. I fed him too well, I think. He had meat and gravy and good vegetables, green ones. And if he was still hungry at the end of a meal, I’d give him more.  It made his appetite too big. It made him greedy. Never satisfied.’

As the saline solution goes over the wound, she is quiet for a moment. 

‘Never satisfied,’ she repeats. 

My father will look at my mother, dabbing at his nose with his handkerchief. It will be one of the blue ones. 

‘I don’t know exactly. I imagine she’ll be quite beautiful. Not too beautiful, but beautiful to me. She’ll have a kind face, the type of face you might have if you’ve worked with children, or if you’ve worked in a library.’

My mother will move away from the sink. She will draw a chair from under the table and sit down. 

‘Will she be slim?’

My father will shake his head. ‘No, but she won’t be large, either. She’ll be the kind of person who doesn’t need to diet, but who just naturally pays attention to what they eat. Someone who can stop at half a slice of cake. Someone who just naturally prefers brown bread to white.’

‘And will she be a drinker?’

Here, my father will laugh as he shakes his head. ‘Oh, no, of course not. Now, that’s not to say she won’t drink. But it’s to say that she will drink rarely, only on special occasions. She’ll favour something like a sherry or a dessert wine. Something you drink just a little of because it’s sweet and strong.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘She won’t mind me drinking, but she’ll keep an eye on it. If I’ve had two glasses of beer, she’ll reach out a hand – a soft hand – and lay it on my wrist before I go for the third. It’s not that she wouldn’t let me have the third, of course, it’s just that she wants me to think of my health. She wants me to live a long and happy life, you see.’

My mother will reach for a bottle of white wine and pour herself a large glass. My father will follow suit. 

‘Will she be a good lover?’

Here, my father cocks his head and bites one lip. ‘Now, this is interesting. This might surprise you, but no, she won’t. I will be – as you well know – enthusiastic and hard-working in that department. I will be diligent.’

My father will look a little sad. My mother will nod. 

‘But she… well, it will be somewhat disconcerting. It will feel like she almost disappears when it comes to the act. Something will happen in her eyes and I will know she has slid into some strange lack of presence. I will find it perturbing. As a result, we will not have a full and abundant sex life.’

My mother will raise her eyebrows a little, then nod her head again. 

We are heading for the fourth sore. This one is at the very base of the spine, just at the top of the buttocks. I can hear that she is crying. This one is entirely raw. She should have surgery, but she doesn’t want to, so convinced is she that she will die tomorrow, which, in fact, she will. 

‘When I’m blue-lipped I’ll be dead but I also won’t,’ she says, her voice strained, and muffled by the pillow. ‘I’ll be flipping and somersaulting in space. I’ll be scooping jam from the jar with my middle finger.’

‘Does it hurt?’ I ask. 

She shakes her head, but her torso is rigid. I am removing the old dressing as slowly as I can, trying to peel away the tape in small, gentle, but decisive movements to minimise the pain. The old dressing is wet with yellow infection. 

‘Your mother will look up into the sky to try to see me, but she’ll be blind to my beauty. I’ll be too fast, too splendid, splayed out like the very best bird. She’ll know that she can’t see me, and she’ll be raving. She’ll press her nails into her palm so tight that they’ll pop out the other side. She’ll spill her fresh tea in her own lap. She’ll curse my name.’

The infection in the middle is a little lake of opaline milkiness, yellow-edged. It is as I apply the saline that she lets out a moan, a rich and scraping one. 

‘Why don’t you tell me about the garden.’

‘She’ll curse my name.’ Her hands are in arthritic fists. Her fingernails are in her palms. She begins to whimper. ‘She’ll curse my name.’

I suspect she might faint with the pain. It has happened before. ‘Tell me about the garden.’ 

She takes a muddy breath. ‘I was never allowed in the garden.’

I feel her relax a little underneath my hands. I’m dabbing the saline around the edges of the wound. 

‘I was never allowed in there. Only once. She was heartbroken. The man she’d been bringing round had stopped coming, and this made her pinched and brittle and sometimes weepy. I was wary, I kept quiet – light-footed on the stairs, stirring dinner so that the spoon wouldn’t hit the sides of the pot. And then on one of those days I woke up and something was different. Softer.’

She takes a few quick, rough breaths. 

‘That was when she invited me into the garden. The first thing, when I went in, was the honeysuckle, which was all syrup, sticking out its pink tongues. Then I saw the hollyhocks, a wall of them, wide-eyed. They stare, hollyhocks. They’re profligate, almost rude. She’d planted thyme and lavender along the footpath, and I rubbed the leaves on my fingers – the smell made me greedy. I ran my hands up the leggy verbena. I felt its stringy skin. I loved the lupins – tidy, like columns – and I loved the dianthus, all soft, with shredded edges. Like velvet. My mother told me not to put my fingers inside the foxgloves, so I didn’t. Pestilent, she said. And I was protected, because she told me what I could and couldn’t touch. I was her protected daughter. I wanted to keep every petal in that garden. I wanted to keep it all for me.’

As I reach the sorest edge, she stops. 

‘Tell me more.’

‘The cherries were red and sour. I swallowed the stones. Maybe I’d be wide-striding one day, wide and tall and big and brave, like a tree.’

The heat around the sorest part seems to move under my fingers. 

‘There was only one thing I didn’t like in the garden. I couldn’t bear it. That was the smell of the lilac. I leaned into those purple flowers and at first the smell was wonderful – heady but delicate, like the feeling of sinking into something soft. It smelt kind. Like love. I leaned in further and sniffed strongly, and I tried to feel every bit of the smell, to hold it in my nose so I could really take it in. For a moment I felt like I’d captured it, as if I could have drawn it, or made a model of it out of clay. And then it went. And then I never wanted to smell that smell again. I never wanted to have it, if it was going to leave. And since then, I’ve not leaned in to smell it ever again. I cursed that lilac.’

At the wake, my father is drunk on the bottle of dessert wine he bought for himself. He is red-eyed and swaying, staring around the room with a fixed gaze and a liquored overbite. 

My mother, hands bandaged, has made triangle-shaped sandwiches and a leg of pork. She has assembled plastic wine glasses and arranged them on top of a doily, on top of a tray. A small village of sausage rolls are warm in each other’s embrace on the dish. For dessert, there is a fruit salad and Quality Streets from the tin. 

The vicar has approached my mother and father. I cannot hear the conversation, but I see my father’s temper ripple. I can see an unreasonable idea swilling in his rigid jaw. The vicar has his hand on my mother’s arm. He is asking her a question. I watch as she leads him towards the kitchen. My father opens his sticky mouth, addressing no one in particular: ‘Does anyone know a good librarian?’ and then, getting no response, he tries again but louder:

 ‘DOES ANYONE KNOW A GOOD LIBRARIAN?’

I know that when the day fades and the guests have gone, I will go into the garden. Using my mother’s secateurs, I will cut stems of lupin, dianthus, and verbena. But there will be something missing, so I will stand on a garden chair and climb into the boughs of the tree. I will find and cut a dense, purple clump, and I will slide it in amongst the others. Then I will lie down on the grass with the stems on my chest, noticing how the lilac scent arrives and then leaves, over and over again. 

Miriam Guastalla writes short stories and is currently working on an essay collection. She was shortlisted for the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize 2025 and her work has been published in Extra Teeth.