using her body as a planter

May 28

          It’s a hot day and she is sweating as she crawls in the garden on all fours, backwards.  It’s the time of year to plant the cucumbers; Mark loves them straight from the garden.  Ethel has perfected the art of being a human type of mechanical planter, doing two rows at a time.  Her toes dig holes in the newly-hoed soil.  As she crawls backwards, her knees splay to the side so that they don’t pack down the holes just dug.  The seeds are picked deftly from a little pouch hanging between her breasts, suspended from a string tied to both nipples.  Nimble fingers drop the seeds in the holes and cover them as she moves on, backwards.  Tugged by the string, her nipples occasionally squirt a little milk onto the ground, which is all right.  It’s turned out that Ethel produces a lot more than Elaine’s baby needs.  Ethel smiles as she imagines herself suckling the earth, her milk helping the vegetables grow.

          She finishes one double row and starts on another.  Her progress is interrupted by a Japanese beetle which lands squarely on her anus.  She whimpers and wiggles her hips, trying to fling it away.  But it’s perfectly happy where it is.  She grits her teeth.  What was a moment ago a pleasant feeling of warm sunlight on her most sensitive skin turns almost to agony as tiny claws dig in to explore it.  She steels herself to finish the rest of the row.  Finally it flies away.  She checks in the mirror later and there is no redness.

          Japanese beetles are this year’s pest.  Niles at the nursery says they’re attracted to chrysanthemums, so Ethel did not plant any this year.  He recommended marigolds, which repel them, but she is not fond of the smell.  He also recommends DDT, but Ethel doesn’t feel right about putting artificial chemicals into God’s creation.

          She stands up, not minding the dirty hands and knees and feet and toenails, surveying her domain, the flower patch and the vegetable garden, the empty pouch still hanging from her nipples.  Six rows of cucumbers, more than even Mark can eat when they ripen in September.  They can sell the rest out front.  People from the Cities come out here and quickly buy up everyone’s surplus.  Sometimes there’s almost a traffic jam, otherwise unheard of here.