“You know how some people have green thumbs? They can get anything to grow. Well, some people have black thumbs. It’s something about the chemical makeup of the body. Like the oil or acid in your sweat blights things,” I explained, not knowing if this was true. “Why, if I ever run my hands through dirt that’s been turned up, nothing will grow there for a full year.”

“God! That’s nothing to be proud of.” She jumped up, holding her belly, and glared at me. Then she disappeared through the door.

My mouth hung open.

Sam shrugged. “Don’t feel bad. I’ll tell her it’s a joke. Lotta just feels very strongly right now about growing things and it gets in the way of her humor.” He patted my arm. “Come on. I’ll show you the chickens.”

Outside was warm and green. Bright puddles and sheets of sunlight lazed across the shade. A chicken-wire fence drooped against some sticks poking up from the dirt. An old physics text held it down at the bottom. The chickens were balding; hysterical pink showed through stringy white feathers. They were harsh beasts. They scratched tiredly and aimlessly in the dust. Sam threw them a browning cabbage leaf; the chickens rushed for it and then turned away. Mechanical clucks. No telling what they thought it was.

At the far end of the lawn, Carlotta was bent over, digging with a broken shovel. She kicked it in with her bare heel and brought up black earth and weeds. We stopped a few yards away.

She moved a braid over her shoulder and glared again. “Just stay back there, Sally. Don’t even walk on this dirt. Aram, will you get that old screen door off the junk pile?”

She resumed digging. The handle of the shovel was broken off two feet above the blade. Her shoulder blades slid and arched beneath her T-shirt.

Sam dragged the broken screen door across the grass and dropped it beside her. Carlotta kept digging. Sam sat down next to me and we watched. From his pocket, Sam took out a pipe and a green plaid pouch. I lit a cigarette.

“One thing about this job is that I get a big discount on tobacco.”

I breathed in; the smoke tasted, strangely, like sunshine. Sam filled his pipe and lit it without taking his eyes off Carlotta.

“The thing that always bothered me about gardening is that it’s such a discriminatory operation,” Sam said. “You decide, ‘Well, those weeds are no good. Down with the International Dandelion Conspiracy. We’ll wipe them out and put in pure Aryan rutabagas.’”

He exhaled thick smoke. Carlotta stopped digging and tossed mounds of the shoveled dirt on top of the screen door.