We used to live across town, away from all the trees. The yards were meadows, rice pastures, and Curtis grew a vegetable garden and asked me to care for it while he was on a trip. When cucumbers grow too much, they're just full of seeds. I didn't look at them once until the night before he got back. Then I remembered. There was a plant the size of my arm. I found a machete, cut it up, and buried it in the compost pile. A neighbor watching would think I had killed my absent husband in the dark.
Curtis didn't hear about this until years later; I told it as a story at dinner parties. He couldn't believe it: "Why wouldn't you just tell me you forgot?" I think it's my mother. She buried things too. Absent-minded, it seemed like she left some pot on the stove once a week, and rather than tell my father about the ruined oatmeal and pan, she'd bury them in the backyard. Maybe it only happened three or four times, but I always thought if you took a metal detector to our old house, you'd find them everywhere.
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