Why I Don't Write Children's Literature

GARY SOTO

Why I Don't Write Children's Literature

(
and other stories
)

ForeEdge

ForeEdge

An imprint of

University Press of New England

www.upne.com

© 2015 Gary Soto

All rights reserved

Frontispiece photo by Douglas K. Hill,

doughillphoto.com

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon
NH
03766; or visit
www.upne.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953855

Paperback
ISBN
: 978-1-61168-711-8

Ebook
ISBN
: 978-1-61168-712-5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Some of these pieces first appeared in the
Chicago Tribune
, the
Guardian
(
UK
), the
Huffington Post, Packing House Review, Readers Digest,
and
Santa Monica Review.

The author wishes to thank Peter Fong, Michelle Hope, and Carolyn Soto for their editorial suggestions.

This book is for Emily Klion, musician, theatrical producer, and friend.

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

In my effort at guerilla gardening, I manage a street median outside High Street Presbyterian Church in Oakland's Fruitvale District, where a strip of undernourished soil flows and bends up that long, severely littered street. As I am a member of this church with a mostly aged congregation, I would like the congregants to admire a beautiful lushness when they exit. God knows, in this area of Oakland, we have little beauty but plenty of dispiriting clutter — what's with that mattress leaning against a mailbox all about? And what
trucka
(truck) did that filthy sofa fall from?

I've enjoyed gardens small and large, public and private, new and old, kept and unkempt, native and non-native. My last jaunt was to view gardens within the old walls of the City of London — Noble Street Gardens; St. Olave, Silver Street; St. Alphage Garden; St. Mary Staining; Postman's Park; Christchurch Greyfriars; and the Barbican. Maintained by city workers and volunteers in lime-colored reflective vests, these pocket plots, stamp-size in relation to some of the world's gardens, benefit citizens, tourists, and civil servants, plus the frantic insect world. In short, they give pleasure. How could we frown at a moist bed of pansies, some red, some yellow, as they do their best to hold their faces up in the city wind?

I harbor inside me a wish to create a garden where passersby will slow, reflect on my anonymous handiwork, and believe the world a great place. Am I naïve? Litter, I find, still creeps along this Oakland street. Tire-marked french fries are pressed into asphalt. Condoms, with frightening bubbles locked inside, must be shoveled with a discarded plastic spoon into a plastic bag. This I do, not so much with disgust but relief that the young — and old — are practicing safe sex.

Why not plant daffodils, I asked myself, a common enough plant — though their springtime careers are as short as those of ballerinas. In October 2011, I bought sixty bulbs from American Meadows, generic types with names like King Alfred, Golden Ducat, Dutch Master, Tête-à-Tête, and Miniature Cheerfulness — yes, Miniature Cheerfulness, a daffodil that expressed my motive. I kept one sack of bulbs in the garage and another in the fridge, as required for money-back, guaranteed success. On a cool November day, my buddy David Ruenzel and I dug mole-like holes into dry earth. We scooted bulbs into the holes, sprinkled fertilizer on them, and covered them with a layer of potting soil. We didn't really know what we were doing; we just assumed that a buried bulb is a good bulb, provided it was set with its tip up. We watered them by hand, as recommended by the catalog, and poked wooden chopsticks into the ground to mark our plantings. And God favored our unselfish Christian effort because, in January, they began to appear. Up King Alfred, I sang, up Golden Ducat and Tête-à-Tête. And you, Miniature Cheerfulness, why are you teasing us with your lateness? In spite of the constant barrage of litter, the street became instantly more beautiful, eye candy for older men like me. But I realized immediately that sixty flowers is hardly any display at all. What was I thinking? The median needed the colorful madness of more.

The next year, for an annual fee of ten dollars, I joined the Northern California Daffodil Society, proof that I'm now entering another stage of life. The first meeting was at the Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore, and the members were debating a small point in their mission statement when I arrived. The debate was serious, I guessed, because none of the members greeted me. True, their eyes lifted to acknowledge my quiet presence, but no hearty hellos followed. Engaged with the issue on the floor, they were single-minded in arriving at consensus. Thus, I sat in a folding chair with my hands on my lap and did my best to suppress a yawn — the discussion reminded me of a heady English faculty meeting. As the matter came to a close, the members stood up, stretched, then locked their eyes on me. I was greeted by smiles and handshakes.

I helped myself to coffee in a Styrofoam cup and, after a few minutes of mingling, returned to my folding chair. I was given a paddle to hold up if I wished to bid on heirloom daffodil bulbs, some of them forty dollars a shot.
Costly little babes
, I thought. When the auction was done, however, I came away with Polly's Pearl, Goddess Chispa, Earlicher, Bravoure, Golden Dawn, Fragrant Rose, Storyteller — bulbs that meant nothing to me at the moment but indicated to the other members my willingness to open my wallet. I was ready to join their enchanted lunacy! What was twenty dollars to me? Forty dollars? Sixty dollars? (These specialty bulbs were devalued as soon I returned home. I told my wife that I got them for a dollar each, not wanting to give her permission to go wild with jewelry purchases.)

The bulbs would go into my personal garden and prove to be colorful showstoppers, friendly depots for bees and, yes, prizewinners in February's show. Once a radical Chicano poet with shoulder-length hair, I would earn six ribbons for my daffodils, including Best in Show for Small Grower! These ribbons would be kept in my desk drawer, out of the light, for I wouldn't want them to fade. I might want to have them framed someday.

But that success was months away. After the meeting in Livermore, I scanned the Internet for more affordable varieties from American Meadows, fifty-per-bag assortments. For the street median, it didn't matter if the bulbs were the princely sort, with pedigrees; I was interested in a massive display that would shock neighbors and bystanders and give hope to Presbyterians. That fall I dug in the median alone, nearly two hundred small holes. My gopher-like ambition grew as I clawed at the resistant earth. My fingernails became dark moons of grit, my neck sunburned, my eyelashes covered in dust. Dime-size sweat dropped from my face into the dry dirt. With a shovel, I cut short the lives of bitter weeds, warning them not to come back. Next time around I would be armed with Roundup, a true gangster.

One day a Mini Cooper pulled up to the median and honked. A young woman craned her head out the window and yelled, “Hey.” Having responded many times in my life to “Hey,” I walked slowly to the car with a trowel in my hand. Bending over with my hands on my knees, I saw a young woman with a very short dress, bare legs, and white panties similar to the daffodil called Ice Follies, $13.95 for a bag of eight. I caught myself assessing her Ice Follies, then swiveled my eyes back to her face, mouth red as Flanders poppies, eyelids blue as hyacinth.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

“We looking for the cannabis,” she said.

Two cars passed, honking, the drivers maddened at the back end of the Mini Cooper, which was jutting into the street.

“What?” I responded. “What's that?” I winced in confusion, thinking,
Jesus, maybe I need a hearing aid — like my wife says I do.

“We're looking,” she began again, as another car swerved around us, “We be looking for the canna — ”

That's when her friend, a girl as tall as a giraffe in that squat car, leaned over and said, “Daddy, the cannabis club. You know it? Suppose to be off Thirty-fifth.” Her dress was very short too, but her panties were pinkish, like the dazzling beauty called Pink Charm, $6.98 for a bag of eight.

“A cannabis club!” I said, chagrinned not by the question but by the fact that the women in the car were not actually lost and I, a citizen volunteering for the betterment of Oakland, was not going to be able to help them hook up with some righteous medical marijuana.

“Oh, I don't know about that,” I answered, standing straight up and backing away. My trowel, I realized, was bright as a chrome handgun. At that point I should have scratched my old man's scalp, maybe even smacked my lips to suggest that my dentures were at home in a jam jar.

The Mini Cooper pulled away, the sassy women laughing. As I returned to work, the sky was dark and heavy, promising rain. The newly planted daffodils could use a natural shower, I thought, an autumn blessing.

It stormed that evening and all the next day, rain tapping on my roof, rain tapping roofs all over Oakland. Four months later, at the beginning of February, my daffodils began to emerge, the flirty Pink Charms and Ice Follies the first to swagger in the cool spring air. From the right distance, even the ever-present litter resembled flowers.