Green Thumbs for Mother
Eugenia swiped a dish towel in circles absentmindedly drying a plate, her face growing hot as her jealousy bloomed over her elderly neighbor’s garden. She stared out her kitchen window at the purple, pink, and yellow flowers trembling in the spring breeze. Flowers she’ll probably never grow.
The front door slammed, snagging Eugenia from her thoughts. “Harv,” she whispered, realizing her son had been gone from the kitchen for too long. She scolded herself for bitching so much in front of Harvey, especially when it came to Mrs. Percival and the old bag’s garden. But ever since Harvey was a toddler the wench gave her and her son hell about staying away from her precious garden. And to make things worst, every attempt Eugenia made to grow her own garden had failed.
Harvey’s footsteps stopped at the kitchen doorway.
Eugenia swung around to yell at her slow son, but paused. Harvey’s smile caused the twenty-year-old man to appear even more childlike. Eugenia’s eyes focused on the red stains on his shirt. “It wasn’t time to go finger paintin’, Harv.” She sighed. She loved her son, but sometimes she grew so tired. “And what’re you hidin’ behind your back? Let’s see it.”
Harvey shifted his feet. He glanced down and back up at his mother. “Happy Mudder’s Day,” he beamed, pulling his arms forward.
Eugenia froze at the sight of her son’s gift. “What’ve you done?”
Seconds later, her lips curved into a smile as she took the two wrinkled thumbs Harvey offered her with his bloodied hands.
Eugenia stashed the thumbs in the freezer, and sneaked over to the old woman’s place, entering through the back door so no one saw her. With no family, it might take months before the crone was discovered missing. After Eugenia and Harvey cleaned up the blood, mother and son hauled away Mrs. Perceval and the butcher’s knife used to sever her thumbs.
Two weeks afterward, Eugenia finally had a garden of her own. In her back yard, along the tall, wooden fence, purple, pink, and yellow flowers grew, fertilized by the corpse beneath the soil.