The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry

Nothing Wasted

Nothing Wasted Mother always kept something growing in our homes. Every navyorder to move made her worry about the seeds she'd started in rented yards. But there was alwaysone on her kitchen counter she could take with her—a jar of murkywater containing an avocado pit pierced through with a toothpick, lookinglike a preserved Sacred Heart. Last summer I stayed in her room in an old house in Puerto Rico, where she has dug herself in, in the middle of a chaotic garden that encroaches on windowsand doors like the end ofcivilization. On her bedroom window hung a cage with three doves; a female and two wary males. The peace of the nest had recently been disturbed by the egg she sat on, ensconced on a coconut shell half, hanging from wires. Her mates kept watch from perches across the cage, jealous of her attention. Fd fallen asleep to their cooing, then jumped up startled by the frantic beat of wingsagainst metal, and the unmistakablefinality of the eggbreaking. 72 I did not rise to face the loss—but watched her tiptoe in, reach to scoop up the pieces, then toss it out the window into the thickvegetation that would absorb it as nourishment. Then she whispered, sleep well, comforting me with her voice, like all the nights she tucked me into new beds, telling me about the new garden she would start as soon as the last box was unpacked, talking away my fear of the dark one more time. 73 ...