Cultivation

SALLY LIPTON DERRINGER

              for my sister

In the photographs in the old black album, we pose
like trees at the Botanical Garden. The hems of our lilac-strewn
dresses make perfect circles, anchored by the weight
of our hoop slips. We’re blossoming

ladies-in-the-making, learning the etiquette
of proper posture and clean white gloves. We stand up straight
as oaks, tummies in, and point, white-fingered like magnolias,
at asymmetrical wisterias, weeping willows, unsculpted birch.

We carry stiff straw pocketbooks laced with artificial
flowers but they’re empty; we’ve had to leave our Silly Putty eggs
and pink Bazooka gum at home. Our budding faces, bangs pruned
short, cheeks watered clean, are serious; we’re absorbing

all this information for the future, the way seedlings soak up
what they need to grow. We’ve years to go before seventh grade
biology, stamen and pistil, flowers’ sex. Each spring we return
more ladylike, quieter, more refined. At eight and ten, we’re ready for

the Japanese meditation garden. We’re allowed to trade tight Mary
Janes for paper slippers, acting as if we understand what we’re supposed
to do. Our father, just this once, hasn’t told us what’s expected; we have
to figure it out for ourselves and it feels strange, but good.

Miniature versions of what we’re on the verge of, we’re doomed
to be stunted like the dwarf peach: never to branch upward
and outward, just flower politely, pre-arranged, on cue; all 
dressed up, and nowhere in the world to go.

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