Mom pulled into the driveway of a standard, small redbrick house with a green lawn and a nice garden out front. “This is Sharmin Aunty’s place,” she said, but I couldn’t help staring at the house next door. It was also redbrick with a beige garage, but it was twice as big as my aunt’s place and had a massive, overstuffed garden with weird winding paths and a large statue of...was that a rabbit? About four feet high and made of twigs and flowers, it was perched in the middle of the yard and surrounded by enough flowers to make the overpass look like a barren field.
Way. Too. Many. Flowers.
I imagined an overly nosy garden-obsessed retiree lived there. Hopefully they’d stay out of my and Gia’s hair this summer.
“Come, let’s say hello before we bring in your things,” Mom said, taking the path to Sharmin Aunty’s front porch.
“Sabina! Tahira! You’re here already?” Sharmin Aunty floated out the door, her long, flowy summer dress dancing in the breeze behind her.
My aunt (Mom’s cousin, not her sister) was a couple of years older than Mom, so probably in her early fifties. She’d always been theWhy walk when you can sashay?type. She’d worked in the lingerie department of a posh store in downtown Toronto for years, which was great because she’d kept me stocked with Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue fragrance with a new bottle every Eid since I was twelve. After her ex traded her for a Mercedes-AMG GT a year ago, it was no surprise to the familythat Sharmin Aunty promptly bought her own store with her divorce settlement. That had always been her dream. Though why she bought one in the middle of nowhere was anyone’s guess.
We did that desi kiss-on-both-cheeks thing, and then Sharmin Aunty took me by both hands. “Let me look at you, Tahira. So beautiful. I think you’re even taller than the last time I saw you. When your mother reminded me that you’re applying for college, I nearly fainted. The girl who used to rummage through my purse looking for lipstick is not allowed to grow up.” She put a dramatic hand to her forehead. “I feel like an antique. Now I’ll be taking makeup tips from you!” My aunty smiled at me. “Come, I’ll show you the main house first.”
“U-um,” I stuttered.
Mothers, of course, never felt secondhand embarrassment for their daughters. “Tahira needs to wash her feet. There was an incident at the nursery.”
“Of course, of course,” Sharmin Aunty said. “Let’s go to the flat first, then. Did you go to Wynter’s?”
“Yes,” Mom said, beaming. “We got you that fountain!”
We went back to the car, where there was much squealing, thanking, and insisting Mom was much too generous while I stood there, trying to hide my impatience to rid myself of manure.
After we finally grabbed my things and headed to the backyard, the total explosion of flowers that greeted us there didn’t surprise me. What was a shock was that the massive space behind the houses wasn’t divided into separate backyards. No fences at all. I could kind of make out some property lines between Sharmin Aunty’s yard and several of the houses on the one side because of different lawn-mowing habits, but there was no hint of a property line at all between her yard and the flower-vomit house’s yard. In fact, a stone patio with a low table and wicker outdoor sofas was positioned right between the yards, exactly where I would have thought a fence should be. Seemed my aunt was close to the garden-obsessed lady. Privacy was going to be in short supply here.
Also, I wasn’t sure what I’d expected from this “granny flat,” but I wasn’t seeing anything that resembled an apartment in Sharmin Aunty’s yard. There were two structures—a cool-looking wood and glass greenhouse on the neighbor’s side and, closer to my aunt’s house, a yellow shed with a red screen door and one window. It was...little. God, that couldn’t be the...
“Here’s the granny flat!” Sharmin Aunty said, wheeling my suitcase over the uneven stepping-stones leading to the yellow shed...er...flat.
“It’s charming, isn’t it?” she continued. “I bought this house from Joanne and Leeland Langston when they moved to a farm last year. Leeland’s mother lived in this flat for years—she’s in a nursing home now. She’s almost ninety-nine years old!”
“It’s so adorable!” Mom said.
In front of the teeny structure with a wide-open door was a little concrete pad with two old lounge chairs.
“I’ve been airing it out all day. Here, let’s let in some light.” She pulled open the window curtains. I had my sewing machine in one hand and a duffel bag over my shoulder, and I was pushing my dress form (whom I’d named Ruby) on her wheels. I put the sewing machine on a pine table a few feet into the room, put Ruby on the pine floor near a pine ladder, and dropped my duffel bag on the pine-backed sofa. The pine table on the pine floor was a bit much, but the pine walls, pine coffee table, pine chairs, and pine cabinets needed an honorable mention, too. As a whole, it was...a lot of pine. The place was more like a small wooden living room than a “flat.” Not that I knew what a flat was—but I’d expected something like a bachelor apartment.
“You or your friend can sleep here. It’s a daybed,” Sharmin Aunty said about what I thought was a sofa with, you guessed it, pine legs and many, many pillows. One of which had a wood-grain print. “It’s only a single, but there’s a loft with a bed up there.” She pointed to the pineladder / steep staircase thing at the end of the room leading to a platform that covered about half the square footage of the place.
“Just like when you used to sleep on the top bunk when you were a girl!” Mom was still being super enthusiastic.
“Bathroom is here.” Sharmin Aunty walked three steps to a sliding door on a heavy iron rail near the ladder. “I know it’s a bit snug, but I think you’ll be comfortable.”
“This will be fine, right, Tahira?” Mom asked.
I gritted my teeth and nodded. “It’s cute as a button,” I said. “Gia and I are tight; we’ll be fine.” I opened the duffel and pulled some clean clothes out. “I’ll just go...” I squeezed past Mom and Sharmin Aunty and went into the bathroom.
The bathroom was remarkably lacking in pine but was also teeny. All I needed was water and soap right now, and thankfully it had that. After scrubbing my feet red under the tap in the shower stall, I dried off with one of the towels from the shelf above the toilet and put on fresh socks and a clean shirt. I checked myself in the mirror. The shirt was another one of my own designs—a short-sleeved and collarless button-up. Down one side I’d appliquéd the lettersHOT, which stood for House of Tahira, the name of my someday fashion line. I tied the hem into a knot and returned to Mom and Sharmin Aunty.
“Tahira,” Mom said, pointing out the window, “Sharmin was showing me some of the improvements to the garden since I was last here. It’s quite a change.”
“It’s really cool,” I said, nodding. I couldn’t comment on any of the changes, though. This was my first time visiting. Between school, fashion show committee, photography club, and my evening sewing classes, I hadn’t had a chance to come up here with Mom before. Also, I was the last person to judge the aesthetics of a garden.
Sharmin Aunty led us outside. “All this is Rowan’s and Juniper’s doing. They’ll be thrilled I got the fountain we wanted.” She pointed to a patch of dirt over by the patio. “They’re putting a new flower bedthere. The ground is giving them trouble, though. The soil here is rich clay—great for growing but hard as sin to dig out. Come. Let’s get some chai on back at the house.”
“This couple, Rowan and Juniper, they own the house next door?” Mom asked as we followed Sharmin Aunty up the path.
Sharmin Aunty laughed as she slid open a sliding glass door into the main house. “Couple? Oh no. Rowan and Juniper are about Tahira’s age. Their parents own the house.”
