payment page
I opened my swollen eyes and saw in front of me a pair of large, calloused feet; my gaze lifted to the swollen legs, the age-distorted body clad in a tight cotton nightdress, and then the shadowed Indian face surrounded by stubby white hair. And there was no rage in the face now, now that the garden was destroyed and there was nothing any longer to be protected.
This description of Miss Lottie comes after Lizabeth’s destruction of the marigolds. Earlier in the story, Lizabeth describes Miss Lottie comically and even mockingly as she bends awkwardly over her flowers, shaded from the sun by a shabby man’s hat. Lizabeth calls out Miss Lottie’s “creaky knees” and calls her a “witch-woman.” She leads the children in taunting songs. But now, after the emotional storm has passed, she describes Miss Lottie with details that acknowledge the old woman’s aches and pains. Even the detail about the too-tight nightdress is telling, suggesting that Miss Lottie is so poor that she cannot afford clothes that fit and must make do. Lizabeth suddenly sees—really sees—her neighbor as a woman who lives with joy and suffering, beauty and need. She can see her this way because the innocence of childhood has ended.
The witch was no longer a witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility. She had been born in squalor and lived in it all her life. Now at the end of that life she had nothing except a falling-down hut, a wrecked body, and John Burke, the mindless son of her passion. Whatever verve there was left in her, whatever there was of love and beauty and joy that had not been squeezed out by life, had been there in the marigolds she had so lovingly tended.
As Lizabeth sits crying among the ruined flowers and looks more closely at Miss Lottie, she finally sees her not only as an authentic human rather than a caricature to be mocked and feared but also as someone to admire. She “dared” to create beauty against the odds, and she succeeded. Lizabeth, shedding the naïve view of the other children, realizes that she has destroyed not just flowers but the “verve,” the spirit and energy, of an old woman whom she, later in life, has come to admire and empathize with. Miss Lottie found a way to nurture life and beauty despite the “ugliness and sterility” around her.
