The Woman Who Tended the Sidewalk

II.

Every day after that I would see her with a tool or a watering can, toiling away at the sidewalk like a master botanist working at their garden. She carefully watered the caked dirt between the cracks on the sidewalk, scraped it and turned it like a farmer at their plot. Every day after that I would watch her. Instead of playing with the neighbor's kids, I would oversee the frail woman working her sidewalk with the intensity of a batter watching the ball before it's pitched and with the consistency of a well-tuned clock. Sipping at my lemonade, I watched her sweat and work, and wondered what she might be sweating and working so hard for.

We would have discussions, me in my slightly nonsensical young kid-speak, Mrs. Puckett in her slightly Southern old woman-speak. "Have you made much progress on the sidewalk?" I would ask her.

"Just enough, sweetie. Patience is a virtue, dear, and you'll see just why."

I waited. To be honest, my patience was beginning to wear thin, but I didn't have a better way to spend my gradually hotter afternoons, so I watched Mrs. Puckett tend the sidewalk.

My mom wanted me to stop. Probably, she thought the old lady was giving me odd advice, confusing me into thinking sidewalks were for gardens, not walking, but that wasn't it. I was just curious to see why she tended the sidewalk.

When school got out, it gave me more time to watch her. What I didn't know about Mrs. Puckett was just how frail she truly was. I saw her toiling tirelessly and I saw her get weaker. She was old and decrepit, and was probably just happy for company as she spent her last days farming the sidewalk.

One day, I got up to see Mrs. Puckett work again, but she didn't come out of her house. I waited for hours before running home, telling my mom that Mrs. Puckett hadn't come out to tend the sidewalk again. She grabbed her phone and made a call, and within minutes, an ambulance had rushed sirens-blaring to Mrs. Puckett's green-encrusted house. The same ambulance drove away just a little while later, sirens off. Even as a naive young girl I knew how foreboding that was. My mom stared sadly after the ambulance as it drove off, and I swear to this day I saw a solitary tear drip down her cheek.