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Wild Grapes, Wild Poison

Wild Grapes, Wild Poison

Last updated on: July 28, 2026 at 11:47 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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Wild Grapes, Wild Poison 2026-07-28T23:47:09-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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It started with a spat over poison ivy.

Jimmy’s boy came by to inspect the garden. The garden is getting exciting. The cherry tomatoes are ripening first, and the paste and slicing tomatoes are so laden with green fruit that the cages are toppling over. I have never had a crop like this. If even half of it ripens perfectly, it will be the largest tomato crop of my life. I showed him the tomatoes. I showed him the grape vines that are eating up the world: I keep searching the alleys behind apartment buildings for fencing to build a trellis, but I haven’t got one yet. I showed him the single eggplant that escaped the flea beetles, and the new crookneck squash that are taking to the soil. The sunflowers are open, which means my garden is alive with bees and birds: cardinals, blue jays, goldfinches. But Jimmy’s boy was not impressed. He was in a bit of a mood.

“I got poison ivy the other day,” he told me. “Now my legs are so itchy!”

He was wearing shorts, so I glanced at his legs, which were immaculate except for a few mosquito bites. There was no scabby rash at all. “Where did you get the poison ivy?”

“Right over there.” He pointed to the remainder of the tree my landlord meant to cut. Growing up the side of the tree was a wild grape vine: not a green grape vine I was growing on purpose, but the kind that grows naturally like a weed and produces small, dark blue grapes. I keep meaning to trim it back to make the front yard look nicer.

“That’s not poison ivy,” I said.

“Yes it is!” Jimmy’s boy insisted. “It’s poison ivy!”

“No, it’s wild grape.”

Jimmy’s boy doesn’t like to be contradicted, especially when he’s in a mood. “It’s poison ivy!”

“It’s wild grape,” I explained, trying to be patient. “Poison ivy always has three smooth shiny leaves per branch. That has only one leaf and it’s shaped quite differently.”

Jimmy’s boy was angry now. “It’s POISON IVY!”

“I can’t make it poison ivy. Not everything that grows up a tree is poison ivy. Poison ivy looks only one way, and it never looks like that. There are many ivies. Why do you think that’s poison ivy?”

“Because it’s POISON IVY!”

“But what EVIDENCE do you have that it’s poison ivy?”

He cussed, in the manner he’s often heard the big boys in LaBelle cuss. “Why are you talkin’ to me like you’re the gahdam f*ckin’ mayor? IT’S POISON IVY!”

That did it. “All right,” I said, retreating to the porch. “You’re being rude, so I’m going in for the night.”

Jimmy’s boy blushed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that you were talking like the mayor…”

“Good night!” It felt good to slam the door.

The next day he was back, remorseful.

We went back out to the garden: again, I showed him the tomatoes and the eggplant. He asked if he could have a hot pepper for his mother, and I showed him how to pick one. Then he found the bush beans and helped himself to a pocket full. He likes to eat them raw.

“Can we go for a walk?”

Yes, we could.

We walked around LaBelle, chatting, mostly about the names of plants. I was foraging a nosegay of herbs and weeds for the guinea pig as we past by the vacant lots: wood sorrel. Purslane. Lamb’s quarters. Plantain. I found a beautiful, feathery patch of Queen Anne’s Lace, and broke off some leaves for the bundle. “Remember what I taught you: Queen Anne has hairy legs. If you see a plant like this with a hairy stem that smells like carrots, it’s harmless and good to eat. But if you ever see a plant that looks just like this with a smooth stem and purple blotches? That’s poison hemlock, and if you eat it you’ll die. I haven’t seen any hemlock in the neighborhood, so we’re pretty safe.”

Jimmy’s boy sniffed the stem to get the carrot scent. He stopped at a house with an ornamental apple tree, and picked a hard green apple for the guinea pig. “Can we go past the Dodgers ‘ old house?”

The place was under renovation. When I saw the construction sign outside the property, I assumed the new owners would just bulldoze it, as they usually do with derelict houses. I was shocked when workmen appeared and replaced those dangerous, slippery front steps with fresh new ones. The whole porch was being replaced. I hoped they knew what they were doing when they got to the interior and found the roof with holes in it big enough to let a pigeon through. I didn’t think anything about it was salvageable.

After the tragic events of last summer, the neighborhood gossip pipeline has kept tabs on the Dodgers, so I’ve heard about their movements in spite of myself. I’ve always written about them carefully to disguise their identities, because they have a right to privacy the same as anybody, but the neighborhood gossips hold nothing back, so I know a lot. I know about the different placements and living situations, and the one that got arrested for a violent offense. I know that there’s little chance that they’ll grow up to break the cycle and have a rags to riches, triumphant Oliver Twist story. That’s now how generational poverty works. Around the valley, there are families which have been repeating the same tragedies, generation after generation for as long as anybody can remember. They are famous for their failures. All you have to do is mention a surname, and everybody knows there’s going to be trouble. “You know they’re not right. They’ve always been f*cked up. They ain’t good people.”

Their little children are, usually, wonderful people, as the Dodger children were, but that doesn’t last. I don’t know exactly when the change begins. I dread it. Somewhere in adolescence, the pattern starts to repeat again. I would gladly endure anything to make it stop.

Of course, Jimmy’s boy wanted to climb up on the porch and stomp on it to see if it shook like the old one did. He got on his hands and knees to smell that beautiful fresh new plywood.

I looked up at the oak tree in front of the Dodgers’ house. “There, look! THAT is poison ivy.”

Jimmy’s boy looked up with interest.

“A very hairy central vine growing up a tree or along the ground. Three pointy leaves per stem. The leaves are very shiny and bright, and in fall they turn bright red. They often have these pimples all over them but I don’t know what causes that. If you touch poison ivy, you’ll get a terrible rash. Most vines aren’t poison, but this one is.”

“But…” Jimmy’s boy stammered, remembering our quarrel the day before, “There are OTHER poison ivies. Sometimes there’s a thing that doesn’t look like that, but it’s poison.”

“Oh. Yes, there are a lot of poisonous plants in this world. Poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, poison hemlock, jimson weed, pokeberry. You have to know what they are so you won’t get hurt, but most of nature is good.”

In the beginning, when God created the Heavens and the Earth, the earth was a formless waste, and I don’t know why God made it that way.

Then the Spirit of God came to play over the waters, and things began to change. Day was made separate from night, the sea from the firmament, and then the world filled with life. In that world of life, God placed Man and Woman in a glorious garden with all sorts of plants pleasing to the eye and good for food, but in the middle of the garden was a poisoned tree. And so it has gone on, from generation to generation, Adam to Abraham, Abraham to Moses, Moses to Christ, Christ to Anno Domini 2026. For as long as Creation has existed, Creation has been laced with chaos and poison. You can dismiss the whole thing and call it all poison, and that’s wrong. But it is also wrong to claim the poison isn’t there. Creation is beautiful and nourishing. But it is also poison.

I can’t explain this mystery away.

Jimmy’s boy and I went back to the house, to feed the guinea pig.

Evening passed and morning followed. God saw that it 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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