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The Princess of LaBelle

The Princess of LaBelle

Last updated on: May 14, 2026 at 11:34 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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The Princess of LaBelle 2026-05-14T23:34:40-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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a carrot growing in the ground

image via pixabay

The Princess first came to LaBelle last summer, and stayed for months.

She was a tiny little girl, barely bigger than a toddler, the granddaughter of a friendly man who lives down the street. Every single day she would wear some emblem of royalty with her clothing: a plastic crown from the dollar store, or a pair of gauze fairy wings, or a pink satin dress-up princess dress over fuzzy pajamas. She never left the house without her regalia.

I knew The Princess’s name, because she was constantly getting into trouble. She liked to run away bolting down the street faster than her grandfather could dash after her. She liked to double back when he was nearly at her heels, and lock herself in the house. He would pound on the door calling her name and threaten to call the police if he didn’t let her back in. Sometimes, she would unlock his car door and play in the driver’s seat. She thought it was great fun to beep the horn until all the neighbors were sick of it.

The Princess went away when the weather got cold, and I missed her.

She was back in town this week.

Jimmy’s boy is a little less than twice The Princess’s age. He is cautious around girls, as all Appalachian eight-year-old boys are, but The Princess has a bike to ride, and that meant she’d be company. We’ve both been lonesome for company since the Artful Dodgers disappeared. The two were zipping up and down the sidewalk, her with training wheels and him without, when Jimmy’s boy stopped to knock at my door. I came out to the porch and formally met The Princess, instead of just waving to her in passing.

“Would you like a popsicle?” I asked her.

Jimmy’s boy protested that the popsicles weren’t free. He had brought a great big unopened box of them to my house the day before, saying he was selling them door to door for a dollar each. I’d stuffed them in the freezer to keep cold until I could return them to Jimmy and his wife, who probably didn’t appreciate that their dessert had gone missing. I didn’t know if the boy had gotten their permission before raiding the freezer for his enterprise. Of course, Jimmy’s boy had forgotten the popsicles when it was time to go back home for dinner. But he hadn’t forgotten that he wanted to make money. “She owes me a dollar!”

“This is called a free sample,” I said, unwrapping an orange one. “She’ll pay you for the next one she takes.”

The Princess enjoyed her treat while Jimmy’s boy sternly reiterated that that was the last one she could have on the house.

I started organizing and tidying up the porch, showing Jimmy’s boy where I’d planted petunias and pansies in front of the sunflower seedlings. “The pansies are the ones that look like a face, and the petunias are the ones that look like trumpets! Once they get a little bigger, you can pick a couple for your mothers. I’m also going to make that crate over there into a planter to grow even more tomatoes. Tomato prices are going through the roof. It’ll be expensive just to eat this summer. I already planted twelve tomatoes and I’m going to plant even more, to feed the neighborhood!”

“You should open a shop with price tags!” said Jimmy’s boy.

“No, I’m not going to sell them. I’m going to give them to people– and make lots of sauce for the freezer.”

“You’re just going to go around giving people SAUCE?”

I burst out laughing at the mental image of me, dressed up like the tooth fairy perhaps, sneaking onto people’s properties to leave them a mason jar of homemade sauce. “I believe we should help our neighbors. We need to work together to make sure everybody eats this summer! I’m going to give the neighbors fresh tomatoes and store up sauce for the winter. Here, bring the wheelbarrow over here and let’s plant carrots.”

It was late to plant carrots, but there’d been so much happening this month and last that I’d forgotten I ordered the seeds. I’ve never even successfully grown a proper long carrot like the kind you find in the grocery store. I’ve only managed to grow fat carrot stubs that look like radishes. I wasn’t planning on trying carrots again at all, but Jimmy’s boy insisted. I filled two planters a third of the way with compost, then ripped open the bag of potting mix that was in the wheelbarrow. The children took turns shoveling potting mix into the planters, with their hands or a spade or a bucket from the sandbox. I stirred the potting mix and compost together, and then I got out the carrot seeds.

“You can plant the Kyoto red carrot, since you’re wearing red,” I said to the Princess, “And Jimmy’s boy can plant the Bambino carrot. Just sprinkle these tiny seeds over the soil as if you’re salting your dinner!”

The children each took pinches of seed, and salted the jet black potting soil.

I gave a tour of the rest of the garden: the potatoes in their containers. The tomatoes in the ground, and the tomato seedlings ready to go into the planter. The hot and sweet peppers. The summer squash. The mysterious volunteer winter squash that was growing out of the compost from when I composted those pumpkins from the art class. The eggplants and broccoli. The lettuce. Those notorious strawberries, some nearly ripe. The grapes creeping up the six-foot stakes I put in the ground, until I get the money to put in a proper trellis.

“I’m going to plant popcorn as soon as it’s a bit warmer, probably this weekend.”

Jimmy’s boy wanted to know if the popcorn seeds looked like white, fluffy popcorn kernels. I tried to explain that it wouldn’t be quite that exciting.

Somewhere in all of this, the Princess started squealing. “I have a loose tooth!” she said excitedly. “I have a loose tooth! Miss Mary, Miss Mary, I have a loose tooth!”

I looked around in time to see her spit a small object into her hand.

“Did you just lose a tooth?”

She grinned, showing off the brand new gap in her lower incisors. In her hand was the tooth, a bit bloody.

“That means you’re a big girl now! I bet you’ll get a quarter from the tooth fairy! Oh, run and show your grandfather!”

The little girl sprinted off.

Now the center of attention, Jimmy’s boy launched into a complicated story of the time he had to have a tooth pulled at the dentist, and the twenty dollars he found under his pillow.

“Do you believe the tooth fairy left it?”

He gave me a cynical head shake.

“Well, don’t spoil the fun for the Princess. Let her go on believing if she wants to.”

All around, the late afternoon sun was bright, and the shadows were long and strange on the ground. The wind rustled the tall green clover. The earth was warm on the cusp between spring and summer, all possibility and wonder. The strange and terrible life I’ve led was a gift after all, and I was at peace.

Evening came, and life was good.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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