A passage from Like Flowers growing out of cement craks
I keep walking around the garden, inebriated by the touch and smell of freshly cut grass. Feeling the sun’s gentle warmth on the flowers of my skin, I hear the west wind blow, making the house’s bones sing. The earth softly trembles beneath my feet as buried memories burst forth from the ground like erupting volcanoes. I pass under my favourite tree, a giant weeping willow, bountiful and eccentrically dishevelled. In its crying branches, undulating like snakes, hide monsters with long teeth, waiting for older people to pass by, to jump on them and eat them. Behind the leaf curtains, I see my sisters, brothers, and cousins at the ages of six to twelve, running behind a football towards a couple of poplar trees, lifelong lovers they use as goalposts. I see my grandmother, Carmel, standing at an easel, painting the house and garden with oil on canvas. She is wearing a straw hat and a multicoloured flower dress. I see my mother sunbathing on a rattan lounger styled with flower cushions, an open book facing down in the grass. I see banquets set up with exquisite food and wine. I hear a band playing gypsy jazz. Maybe it’s a wedding, maybe mine. I see guests drinking and dancing or staring with wide eyes at a resplendent double rainbow. I see children running in the orchard, between chestnut, walnut, hazelnut, apple, pear, apricot, cherry trees, and stalks of red rhubarb, and in the summer, beds of wild strawberries. I see us picking up ripe fruits and wearing cherries as jewellery. I see sledges racing down the hill. I see snowballs flying. I see snowdrops announcing spring. I see webs of rainbows and hear laughter soft like cotton. I see kids collecting autumn leaves with lawn rakes twice their size. I see kids hunting for chocolate eggs scattered by bunnies or flying bells, counting them and sharing them with the little ones, too young and too slow to find any. I see teenagers hiding in the woods, playing guitars, singing and smoking their first cigarettes. I see us wearing all kinds of antique clothes discovered in antique trunks and suitcases stored in the attic, dressed up like animal-headed ghosts or people from old black-and-white photographs and oil paintings. I see us playing games of travelling adventures. I see the steps where we take the same family picture, all placed in the same order every year, between hydrangeas and fuchsias, whose flowers look like miniature ballet dancers.
