Generations of Leaves

by Lyndsie Manusos

Yaiya mows the lawn in the rain. Her daughters watch, dry and preening to each other from the kitchen of the house. What are we going to do with her, they say. Her daughters, which although haughty and often embarrassed by their mother, are holding hands because at least they can rely on Yaiya to mow in the rain for the foreseeable future. They don’t say it aloud, but they fear the day the mowing will stop.

Yaiya mows the lawn in the rain. Her grandchildren watch from the long window on the stairs, each of the seven sitting on their own step, possessive of their space. To them, Yaiya is a force of nature. Yaiya has hunted and gobbled them up since they were babies. They count down the minutes until dinner, because that means dessert comes after, and Yaiya prepares special sundaes with crystal glassware from her own wedding day. What else am I going to use this for, Yaiya says. Yaiya, who doesn’t have a drop of Greek blood in her but is louder, loyal, and more Greek than in her in-laws (according to her in-laws). Yaiya, who never lets a soul walk out the door hungry. Yaiya, who, when she married into the family in the 50s, was expected to wear black, serve, and be silent. Instead she told the men to serve themselves. Her hair was cropped short. She wore red lipstick. She wore a yellow dress. That was how she cut her teeth on Greek.

Yaiya mows the lawn in the rain. Her husband, Papa, watches from the boathouse, where he’d put gasoline in the lawnmower at sunrise, because he knew Yaiya would mow, and he knew the rain would come. He had laid her windbreaker on the seat of the mower when he left, but she hung it up on a nail in the wall. She never put it on. Because Yaiya likes to feel the rain on her shoulders. She likes to feel water on her skin. Yaiya, who had sent Dear John letters to three other men when Papa proposed, and then made him wait at the altar for two hours, because for a moment she was unsure, and then she was very sure. Papa, who remembers the first boat they bought together, and how they made love in the tiny cabin. The cabin, which was no bigger than their bodies entwined.

Yaiya mows the lawn in the rain. She is seventy-five years old, and her yard is the feast that she’ll continue to serve. No matter the weather, Yaiya mows. Because that is what a yard needs. Her yard, which is bigger than her house by far, with patches of tulips and azaleas, and a crabapple tree that still produces fruit, although somewhat malformed. Her yard, where there are Easter eggs still hidden, too well, from hunts past. Where, years ago, she held up her firstborn grandchild by the stone sundial amongst the daisies, and thought my, my, the sun must surely point here. Her yard, where in the rain, she is able to cry freely on the mower, and after she can blame her swollen eyes and cheeks on allergies. Her yard, where she is careful to mow around the patch of dirt on the hill, where generations of family pets are gently interred.

Her yard, where, if she were to tell her most intimate secrets, her greatest sins, she’d whisper them to the stems, the thorns, the leaves of her gardens. She’d only let the blooms judge her; nothing and nobody else would serve.

Lyndsie Manusos’ fiction has appeared in [PANK], SmokeLong Quarterly, CHEAP POP, and other publications. Her collection of short stories, Everything There Is to Love on Earth, was a semi-finalist for Black Lawrence Press’s 2019 St. Lawrence Book Award. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA in Writing program, Lyndsie now lives in Indianapolis with her family. She writes for Publishers Weekly and Book Riot.