The Famous Carrot Story

My mother would laugh until she cried every time she told the Carrot Story. 

She’d always start it the same way:

“Of all my girls, Sarah was always the most willing and cheerful when it came to helping around the house.  ‘Sure Mom’, she’d say, no matter what I asked her to do. Mind you, I might have to call her again in ten minutes, or twenty, and another time still, because she could easily get distracted along the way.”

That was me. I was always making or writing or drawing or looking for something. Still, I would do anything if it meant I could hang out with my mom. Before you say ‘aaww’, understand that by ‘hang out with’ i mean tell the whole week’s stories to, quickly, before the chance goes away, with as much detail as I could  get in there so she really understands everything that happened. I needed her to be able to picture that dog, to go with me everywhere I rode my bike since last Saturday.
On this day, my mom was cooking. And she would give me little jobs to do while I was hanging out. Wash this bowl, get the can of broth out of the pantry.

“Peel me a carrot.”

Once, she had shown me how to chew a carrot down to the heart, so you can save the best part of the carrot for last. When you do it right, it gets these little spiny things on it, and the heart of a carrot is really where the taste is stored for the whole carrot. 

“To the heart?”

“No, just the skin.”

I pulled out a couple of carrots and she chose one. I put the others back and got the peeler. 

I remembered that I wanted to tell her that Mike from across the street gave me a stack of one hundred (100!) 45s. I didn’t know all the different types; there was a lot of country and western, which was new to me and I knew she didn’t like. I had started listening, but it was all new and each record had two songs on it and so far the ones I like the best are “Dream Lover”, “Dock of the Bay”, “Spiders and Snakes”, and “Delta Dawn”.

Mike’s dad was the local child molester, so I wasn’t allowed to go in the house, but Mike let me climb all over his pickup truck; I leaned how to hop over the side of the bed to land on the ground and thought I was every bit as cool as Starsky and Hutch.

They had a couple of dogs everyone thought were mean because they lived under the boat in the backyard and barked at everybody. I knew that Merle - he was named after Merle Haggard, who sang on some of the new records - didn’t mind if I came to visit as long as I didn’t stay too long. The other dog wasn’t mean either, but he wasn’t as smart as Merle.

I had ridden my bike over to the water tower earlier that day, and I had found a little pond with tadpoles in it and I sat there a long time. The weeds were so tall I was pretty sure no one could see me or my bike, and I could watch the construction on the new wing of the hospital. I was looking forward to watching the tadpoles become toads.

I had also ridden alongside Mr. Parks while he took his walk. He said he had seen me playing baseball in the street earlier in the week, and that I threw pretty good for a girl. He told me he walked up and down the street - about two long residential blocks to a dead end - seventeen times each way because his doctor said he needed to walk for his heart.

I asked him if it was ok with him if I put my vegetable garden right next to their fence on the side of the garage that spring. My mom had said I couldn’t did up the yard, but if I could find a place that was out of sight I could grow some vegetables.

I told her I was gonna grow lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots cuz those are the ones I like.

“Right”, she said. “Where’s the carrot?”

I stared down at my left hand, palm open empty as a promise. I was genuinely shocked it wasn’t there. I clearly remembered getting the carrots out of the fridge, putting the others away, getting the peeler…

I sucked my breath in as the shock of realization shot through me.

“I ate it.”