Maricela & Mario

Maricela & Mario

Fan fiction based on the book “Seedfolks” by Paul Fleischman

Written by Ryan Biner

After the excitement of the impromptu harvest festival in the garden, people started to come less and less often. The weather was getting cold, the leaves were getting crispy, and the biting wind off Lake Erie kept most of the neighborhood inside. The boy who grew pumpkins was the last to gather up the efforts of his summer. On a cold October day, he delivered one pumpkin to each person who had toiled in the garden that summer. On Halloween, Gibb Street was lit up with orange cackling faces.Â

When the snow blew in, we lost sight of the garden, but it was never far from my mind. I remembered the hot July day when the humidity rose and then descended in an intimidating thunderstorm that knocked out all the power on the street. I remember the old black woman telling me that the garden didn't need electricity to run - that the sun and rain and wind provided the energy for our plants to grow. That the same forces that sprouted our garden had guided the dinosaurs and squirrels and fish and butterflies, as well as my ancestors in Mexico and my momma and poppa.

My baby kicked inside my belly when those words ran through me.

Before that day, I cursed what grew inside me for what it had robbed me of - my beauty, my youth, my independence, and all the reckless things a 16 year old girl finds herself doing. But on that day, I wished for the first time to give birth to a healthy child. The day the first snow covered Cleveland, God delivered me a beautiful baby boy, almost as if He had plucked him straight from the frosted soil just before the snow had a chance to erase all signs of life in the empty lot.Â

His name is Mario and he is my reason for living. Had it not been for the garden and the thunderstorm, I might still look upon my son as a blight.

This is something that I cannot imagine now as I feed and clothe and change him. I am his world - all that he knows about life and love and yet his chubby grinning face has no clue that I wanted him to die inside of me.

This is why I took him to the garden on the first day of Spring.

Since the garden and the rain and the old black woman had connected me and my baby to all things ancient and perennial, I wanted Mario to feel the soil and feel rebirth. The melting frost had made the ground wet and soft, easy for digging. I brought a trowel, which Mario used to dig nearby as I planted the first radishes of the season.