The morning after that, my mom took me to the park. I gathered up a bunch of wildflowers, the kind Mrs. Puckett liked best with the bell-shaped blooms, and made a little bouquet with them. We walked together back to her house, where my mom told me that if I put the flowers down, Mrs. Puckett would see them from Heaven and be happy, and that she would love to see something so pretty by her iron gate.
As I bent down to give the house my flowers, I noticed something in the crack of the sidewalk. Growing there were a lot of small green plants, with little round leaves. They looked very young, and in my grieving mind, I decided that if Mrs. Puckett liked them well enough to care for them, then I would like them well enough too. Without a word to my mom, I set the bouquet down and walked through the gate to Mrs. Puckett's yard, where her garden tools were still splayed out on the grass. I picked up her watering can and walked it to the outdoor spigot off Mrs. Puckett's home.
"Jenny, what are you up to?" My mom asked, understandably concerned.
I walked along back to her, lugging the large, full watering can with me. "I've gotta tend the sidewalk."
YOU ARE READING
The Woman Who Tended the Sidewalk
Short StoryWhen I asked her what she was doing gardening in the road, the old lady shot me a sly grin and bent down with effort to hand me a glass of lemonade. "I've gotta tend the sidewalk," she whispered. This made her proud, to know that she was the one ten...
