Where the Watermelons Grow

By: Cindy Baldwin / Narrated By: Sisi Aisha Johnson

Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins

Danged near wrecked me with a roller-coaster ride of emotions

I was just scrolling through Audible’s 2 for 1 Sale and found this audiobook, Where the Watermelons Grow, and I read the (Dratted) Publisher’s Summary, something I don’t like doing as they’re usually misleading. But seeing as how one of my FAVorite narrators was doing the honors here, I reeeeally felt I should check this book out thoroughly, see if it was worth going full bore half credit. Mental illness? I’m there. Sisi Aisha Johnson—oh I’m soooo THERE! I got it.

And what with continuing pandemic, continued political upheaval, and just coming off an early Malcolm Gladwell that rather rubbed me the wrong way, I chucked it out imMEDiately as my choice for our little audiobook club. Cuz I have no shame in admitting that I turn to Kids books when I want to find a sense of myself again. Maybe get in touch with a more innocent time.

Oh. My Good. Golly. GOSH!!!

Della is our little heroine, and let’s just check out this “more innocent” time that she’s navigating. She wakes up one unbearably hot and sweaty night when sleep is impossible, running numbers through her head failing to make her dozy, to find her mother in the kitchen, hunched over watermelon, flicking seeds out EVERYwhere, muttering to herself, absolutely seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Mama may be slipping back into a bad time, a time Della remembers from four years ago when Mama’s sickness sent her to the psych hospital for months.

So there’s that. But there’s also Papa worried about maybe losing the farm that’s been in his family for generations. Such a drought, been trying to get rid of pesticides to be certified as an organic farm, a strange rot hitting the crops. He sees that Mama is starting to lose it, but he doesn’t have the time, and neither does he have the wish to deal with it. Mama is a grown woman, so SUREly she’s making the right choices about taking her meds, taking care of the kids, getting work done?

So there’s that too. Add Della’s baby sister Miley being a handful and a half? Oh gosh, this innocent time is anything but as Della sees too much, hears too much, feels too much.

Right away I was in her corner and feeling soooo much as the story unfolded, as Ma’s decline continues. Della thinks her mother’s illness is her fault as the schizophrenia wasn’t apparent until right after her birth. But she thinks pretty much everything is her fault and that it’s up to her to cure her mom. Stories she tells little Miley to soothe and comfort the girl are tales about the Bee Lady’s ability to cure the many ailments of the community through special honeys. A huge cut? Cured with a smear of the stuff. Harsh words spoken between sisters that have left a painful distance between them? Cured with a honeyed drink. Surely the Bee Lady will have something that’ll cure her mom’s sickness.

But the Bee Lady doesn’t; what she does offer Della is something that’ll help Della. This is such a shock and disappointment to the young girl that she’s frustrated… and angry.

And I totally felt her. Throughout a LOT of this book, I was soooo angry. Mom’s not taking her pills; Dad’s becoming volatile and storms out instead of addressing problems; these family secrets must be kept, leaving all this heaped onto Della’s shoulders, her mom’s bottoming out, the care of her little sister, trying not to add to Dad’s burdens, trying to carry it all when she’d so desperately like a hug. It just angered me to no end what we adults do to children: We heap so much onto them, make them survive it all, and we think they’ll be okay, never acknowledging that tiny shoulders, forming spirits, can break. Children are so fragile, and their childhoods form their foundations, and we expect them to come out okay. I’ve worked with kids long enough to see this whole dynamic in action, and it just infuriates me to see the struggle, the flawed thoughts never addressed by grownups who should remember they’re grownups and act and speak accordingly.

Puff Puff…. okay, so got that out… I’ll go back to the rest of the book, shall I?

Well, it’s fortunate for Della in that she has a wonderful best friend, and her community is packed with warm and loving people. As Della begins to stumble, it’s not noticed. But as she begins to break, there are loving hands surrounding her, offering a mother’s hug when there are none of those at home, offering shoulders to cry on if she could just thaw and start feeling again.

And there’s the Bee Lady. And a very special honey, all for Della’s broken heart, to be licked from her fingers, to access strengths that are within her already. To make her ready to hear the really tough answers to the really tough questions that are haunting her as she tries to get herself through it all.

Sisi Aisha Johnson is fanTAStic! She does Kids fiction sooooo well, capturing their varied and constantly changing emotions, and in this audiobook she does it all with the good ol’ drawls and twangs of the South. And considering how GORgeous the writing is, it’s wonderful to have Johnson at the helm, delivering the beautiful writing, the stellar figurative language, and the heat, such heat of a Southern summer where the lack of rain has everyone, most of them farmers, praying and on edge. It’s “winter” here, but I swear I could feel the sweat rolling down my body, my clothes sticking to my person as heat overtook me—truly terrific writing!

Things start happening at the end, and there’s a part where Della finds a new wisdom, and I thought it was all gonna end there, which would’ve struck me as way too easy. Fortunately, author Cindy Baldwin takes things further, and we see that Della’s challenges are here to stay, so it’ll take a loving and self-loving vigilance to see her through the rest of her life. But with a plethora of townswomen lining up to stand in Ma’s stead, to serve as mothers for hugs when Life gets too tough, and to hear that Dad has seen just how young and fragile his children are? Ahhhhh, grand ending to a rough story.

This was a total hit for me, brought up a lot, was a lovingly crafted story of a reality many children have to live through. That Baldwin added poetry, and nature, and the love of those who see the harshness but will step in to support and to love was very much what made this a joyful listen.

It’s just that ya gotta ride that roller coaster throughout this book, white knuckling the high hopes, white knuckling the dashed dreams.

White knuckling the anger… all because you can’t step into this book to give a young girl a hug she so desperately needs…