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dgdg okok pko m mj j If the story is the one I think it is, it's by Eugenia Collier. In it, an old woman in a poor neighborhood plants marigolds in her front yard, only to have the neighborhood brats destroy them. The children act out of their fear and resentment of Miss Lottie: "For some perverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place . . . ." Only the narrator, "Lizabeth," fells shame afterwards. Then that night she overhears her parents talking--her father has evidently lost his job--and realizes how bleak and grim their life, which until then she had taken for granted because it was no different from the lives of everyone else in their community, really is. In an attempt to strike out at these circumstances, she runs back to Miss Lottie's house and uproots what's left of the marigolds. Only when Miss Lottie comes out of the house does Lizabeth see her as someone eliciting not fear but compassion: "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." The story ends, "[Miss Lottie] never planted marigolds again. Yet there are times when the image of those passionate yellow mounds returns with a painful poignancy. For one doesn't have to be ignorant and poor to find that life is barren as the dusty roads of our town. And I too have planted marigolds."
If the story is the one I think it is, it's by Eugenia Collier. In it, an old woman in a poor neighborhood plants marigolds in her front yard, only to have the neighborhood brats destroy them. The children act out of their fear and resentment of Miss Lottie: "For some perverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place . . . ." Only the narrator, "Lizabeth," fells shame afterwards. Then that night she overhears her parents talking--her father has evidently lost his job--and realizes how bleak and grim their life, which until
If the story is the one I think it is, it's by Eugenia Collier. In it, an old woman in a poor neighborhood plants marigolds in her front yard, only to have the neighborhood brats destroy them. The children act out of their fear and resentment of Miss Lottie: "For some perverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place . . . ." Only the narrator, "Lizabeth," fells shame afterwards. Then that night she overhears her parents talking--her father has evidently lost his job--and realizes how bleak and grim their life, which until