Just a little green



I just started reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire, and so far I'm completely in love with the infant witch. At one point, Elphaeba's parents called her "little green," and my heart skipped a beat thinking about the green-skinned girl and the contrast of love and fear spewing from her parents' affections like stench from a cauldron, and Joni Mitchell's words ran through my head:

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there'll be sorrow

Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed
Little green, have a happy ending

My vegetable plants are the nearest things we have to pets and/or children in our family. (Except please don't regularly harvest your real pets and children.) I'm ridiculously proud of them. I'm happy when the cilantro looks tall and strong with new feathery stems popping up, when the tomato leaves are deep green, and when the squash flowers are bright and yellow and open. I'm disappointed in myself when they look yellow and wilty or when there's fungus growing in the soil or aphids circulating the pots. Aside from the cilantro, I'm not even thinking about the plants bearing fruit. I just want lush, green, photosynthesis-happy leaves. Green is natural.

Elphaeba is a complex, increasingly evil little outcast who will grow up to be even more complex, evil, and outcast: The Wicked Witch of the West. She muttered her first word, "horrors," over and over again. After her birth, she tasted blood before her mother's milk. Green is unnatural.

There's something deep and painful and appealing about her that I can't really name.

Call her green and the winters cannot fade her.