I Didn't Think You Would Turn Out to Be So Strange
a short story by Danila Botha
"He says, when I first met you, I didn't think you would turn out to be so strange." -Lydia Davis, Almost Over, What's the Word?
I walked up the stairs barefoot, the icy white and grey marble biting into my skin.
I’d lived in Toronto for too long, taking off my shoes when I walked into a house was as natural as wearing my coat wide open in the winter if the temperature was even one degree about zero.
The stairs were exactly as I remembered them, steep but not narrow, the landing small, the kitchen I passed on my way in beige and compact, the thick smell of leek and white bean soup on the stove, spinach and grated vegetable patties resting on a piece of paper towel on a white ceramic serving plate on the counter. I was never allowed to be too comfortable in other people’s homes, but in my grandparents’ house I could open the fridge. I still had to ask if I wanted to eat something, but it was okay if I peered in. I saw the plastic jugs of milk, the foamy fruit yogurts I loved on the shelf in the fridge, along with miniature cans of Coke, and red and golden delicious apples. I saw him standing by the glass patio door, his navy and white checkered shirted back to me as he stared out at his garden.
He turned around and smiled at me. My grandfather, his smile filling his face, his laugh making his belly shake. “Hello.” He was never a man of many words, at least when it came to small talk, but I always felt his love.
He was holding a cup of rooibos and had two syrupy, intentionally stale taigelach, he always preferred them when they were rock hard and chewy, on a matching floral plate. “Would you like some?”
I shook my head.
He opened the door, and the air smelled like the fertilizers his company made, like dust and industrial chemicals I couldn’t name, mixed with the heady sweetness of the flowers he was always cultivating. I passed his neatly trimmed gardenias, which were bushes technically, I’d known that and other facts about flowers and plants my whole life, whether I’d wanted to or not, but they were tall and trimmed like bonsais. I saw purple and white flowering Yesterday Today and Tomorrow bushes that I touched gently with my fingertips.
Behind him was a small cart of gardening supplies.
“Do you want to help?”
My grandfather had been dead for eighteen years. I’d had passing dreams about him before, but never like this. I’d been waiting for so long to have a conversation with him.
He’d had myelofibrosis, a type of cancer that slowly robbed him of everything, including the ability to speak and express himself.
In other dreams, he was doing things he normally did, reading something scholarly, about Judaism or agriculture or both, saying the Shema or Amida wrapped in his tallis and tefillin, humming or eating, but now he was talking to me.
He gestured to the soil, asked me if I wanted gardening gloves. I shook my head.
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