Tomatoes and Marigolds

My sunhat served two purposes: to protect my fair skin from being burned and to hide from the world. The brim flopped down in front of my face and I felt that if I couldn't see the neighborhood kids looking at me, they must not be. While they all ran through the streets in swimsuits with popsicle juice running down their chins, tanned skin soaking up the last rays of summer, I sweat under my long sleeves and long pants and large floppy hats hiding my red hair and fair skin from the dangers of UV rays and toiled alongside my mother in our front lawn organic vegetable garden. I wasn’t just the freak on my street, not just the freak of my grade, I was the freak of my entire school.

I was pasty white with bright red hair sticking out in untamable curls. I was fed an only organic, mostly homegrown, vegetarian diet. While other kids had flowers and garden gnomes in their front yards, we had dirt mixed with a healthy helping of manure and lots of vegetables that needed to be supported by sticks and cages. Kids held their noses as they ran past our house and at school asked me if I pooped in my diaper because of the fragrant fertilizer smell.

Another school year was beginning next week. A new family was moving into the rental house next door. The moving truck had been parked outside since just after breakfast. I wanted to hide inside the house and watch from the side kitchen window and see who was moving in. But an organic garden needs a lot of attention and mom said that the first tomatoes were ripe for picking. So we were out front in the garden. I was inspecting the underside of leaves for signs of invasive bugs and mom was twisting the tomatoes off the vines. The tomato plants were supported by wire cages. The shiny red balls hung like Christmas ornaments. Mom planted rows of tomatoes between rows of marigold flowers. She said that the marigolds helped to keep away pests. Sometimes kids make fun of me saying that I eat flowers: why else would there be flowers in a vegetable garden? We must eat them. We don’t eat them. And if the marigolds kept away pests, I wasn’t sure why I had to look under the squash leaves for insects.

For dinner we ate tomato and basil with balsamic vinegar on toast. Later that evening my mom took a small basket of tomatoes next door. She came home and said that there was a girl who had moved in and she was in the same grade as me. She said she volunteered me to sit with her on the bus and show her around the first day of school next week. I told her I wished she would not volunteer me for things.

The rest of the week I hid under my large hat when I was outside. I caught a few glimpses of a pair of skinny pale legs that looked to be about the size of someone my age pacing back and forth from the front door to the side of the house where the garbage cans sat. She appeared to be carrying empty boxes to the trash. As the week went on, mom and I gathered more and more bright red tomatoes.

On the first day of school mom gave me a basket of tomatoes to give to the school secretary. This had been a tradition since I was in kindergarten. The secretary is the most overworked under appreciated person at the school, she said. She deserves a treat. And every year the secretary would gush over the size and juiciness of the tomatoes and I would hope that she would squeeze one too tightly and it would burst and she would ask my mother to never send tomatoes to school again. Maybe this would be my lucky year.

I stood at the bus stop away from the other kids. I didn’t have to wear my hat to school. Even my mom recognized that that was not cool. So I stood with my red curls sticking out all over and stared down into the basket of tomatoes.

“Rowan?”

I looked up from the red balls and there was a girl about my size with shiny golden yellow hair and skin just as pale as mine.

“I’m Mary. I just moved in next door to you. My mom told me to follow you to the bus stop and you’ll show me around school?”

“Oh,” was all I could say.

She stood next to me and we didn’t say anything else. We just waited for the bus and when it came, she sat next to me even though there were other empty seats.

“Hey, tomato head, who’s your friend?” called a boy from the back of the bus.

Mary turned around and said, “I’m Mary Gold and I’ve just moved here. Who are you?”

The boy slid down into his seat. He hadn’t expected an actual introduction.

It turned out that Mary was quite bold. She introduced herself to teachers and shook their hands. I slunk into the classrooms and sat on the peripheral trying not to be noticed.

When lunch came I sat alone at my usual table. I learned early on in my school career that no one wanted to trade food with someone who brought salads and vegetarian sandwiches and homemade organic apple sauce. In first grade I traded a blackbean agave sweetened brownie for a homemade chocolate chip cookie made by someone’s grandma -- the kid spit out the brownie and screamed that I had tried to feed her poop. Since then it had been best to sit by myself. But today, May Gold, with her shiny golden hair sat down next to me. Not across the table, but right next to me. She emptied her paper sack and it turns out, her mom had made her a tomato and cheese sandwich, too -- with the tomatoes from my garden. But she had a shiny packet of chips to go along with hers while I had carrot and celery sticks with homemade peanut butter.

“Why are you sitting alone?” asked Mary.

“Just the way it is,” I replied.

A group of girls walked past and paused, “Do you smell something?” one asked. They turned and laughed at me. “Why did they say that?” asked Mary. “Because of the garden. They make fun of the fertilizer,” I said.

“I love your garden,” Mary said. “These are the best tomatoes I’ve ever had. And I’m so glad your mom keeps bringing us fresh vegetables. They are way better than the canned vegetables my mom always buys.” I smiled just a little bit. And for the first time ever, I talked to someone at lunch.

The next day I waited outside for Mary and we walked to the bus stop together. We walked to classes together. Mary liked to sit front and center and she pulled me from the sides of the rooms to sit next to her. Some kids teased us saying they couldn’t see the teacher because it was too bright to see past our bright yellow and bright red hair. Mary told them to wear sunglasses. We ate lunch together even though other kids invited Mary to sit with them. We rode the bus together and walked home together. Sometimes in the evening Mary’s parents would talk to my mom out on their front lawn. They probably wanted to stay over there out of the dirt and fertilizer of our front not-a-lawn. This was our routine for several weeks.

One day, about a month into school, it was raining on our walk home. We shared an umbrella and Mary was telling me a story about something that had happened at her old school. “Splat.” I got hit on the backpack with a ball of mud. Laughter came from behind us. Another splat, this time on the back of my legs. “What?” Mary turned around. I took off running home in the rain, getting splattered with mud from behind. There was a pair of boys behind Mary with mud covering their hands. “What is wrong with you? Why would you do that?” yelled Mary. The boys laughed and yelled, “Dirt Girl!” and scooped up more mud from the ground to fling at me. I ran straight home and straight upstairs to the shower where I washed off the mud and cried. I washed my clothes and my backpack. I went to bed.

At breakfast the next morning my mom asked me why I hadn’t told her about the school pests. She said Mary came over last night to see me but I was already asleep so she told my mom what happened. That morning I did not wait for Mary. She met me at the bus stop and asked why I didn’t wait for her. I just shrugged. I still walked with Mary all day but I didn’t say anything. No one else said anything to me either. I was embarrassed for myself and for bold, beautiful Mary to have witnessed my life.

That afternoon Mary came over and helped in the garden. At first I was embarrassed to have her in the dirt. My mom gave her one of my big brimmed hats to wear so she wouldn’t get sunburned. After a while I saw that Mary was smiling and asking questions and really seemed to be enjoying the garden. My mom told her that the yellow flowers were called marigolds, just like her: Mary Gold. Mary picked a tomato and a marigold and held them up and said, “Rowan and Mary, together in life and in the garden.” I smiled. My mom whispered to me that I had made a great friend.

As it turns out, people liked Mary. She was very smart and friendly and always stopped to help if anyone dropped their books in the hallway. And since I was always with Mary, I guess people started to like me, too. Mary joined the school newspaper and she kept telling me that people were asking when I would come to the meetings. I didn’t believe her, but one day I showed up and everyone said, “Finally, you came!” And sometimes people would sit with us at lunch. Actually, it became more than sometimes -- most days there were at least a few other people sitting at my once lonely table. Sometimes the table was full! And no one ever commented on my cheese and tomato sandwich -- maybe because now that two people had them, it wasn’t weird anymore.

As the weather turned cooler and we pulled the dead plants from the vegetable garden and planted the winter vegetables, I thought about the rows of red tomatoes and yellow marigolds. Not only did Mary and I resemble the plants, but she protected me and helped me to flourish, a symbiotic relationship. People, just like plants, need to be paired to grow. And even though the summer garden was gone for the season, Mary and I would continue to grow side-by-side and ripen into our teen years.