by Ruth Ozeki
But Ocean was full of sleepy worries. “Mommy, I know who that was on the phone. It was Santa Claus, right?”
I rubbed her forehead. “Ocean, honey. You don’t believe in Santa Claus, remember?”
“I know,” she said. “But Poo does. It’s a good thing Santa found us all the way out here, isn’t it? In the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s not nowhere,” I said. “It’s Idaho.”
“Is he going to get here on time? We’re a long way from Pahoa.”
“Yes we are. Now go to sleep.”
We celebrated Christmas at Cass and Will’s house. We unwrapped presents under the tree in the living room, and the kids disappeared into Will’s office to try out their new games on his computer. Poo was busy shredding wrapping paper on the floor under the tree, and Momoko was attempting to retrieve some of it before he ruined it all, smoothing it and folding it, to use again in Christmases to come. I was looking at the gift I’d just unwrapped. It was a photo in a frame.
“I found a bunch of them,” Cass said. “Momoko had them hidden in your bureau drawer. She wanted to give you that one.”
I turned the little picture over in my hand. The frame was made of a light-colored maple, its beveled edges carefully oiled and polished.
“Will made the frame,” Cass added. “He’s good at carpentry.”
Will shrugged, embarrassed.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.”
Inside the small frame, behind the glass, was a faded photograph. Lloyd, as a young man—dressed in a V-neck cotton undershirt and an old pair of khaki trousers that must have been from his army days—standing on the edge of a vast tilled field. Above his head, balanced on the palm of his large hand, was a black-haired baby. Me, of course. He was holding me by the belly, like a model airplane. I was wearing a diaper and nothing else. Maybe I was flapping my pudgy arms and kicking my legs, or making cooing noises, but my face was lit with a bright-eyed infant rapture.
The black-and-white photo had browned over the years, but you could tell that Lloyd’s hair would have been paler than the dusty earth and his eyes would have matched the color of the sky, cloudless, above the horizon. Momoko must have taken the picture, and she had timed it well, catching my gaze when I was looking right into the lens of the camera. I looked very Japanese at that age—there was little of Lloyd apparent in my face, but that didn’t matter to him. He held me carefully, and it was easy to imagine my delight as he piloted my small body, cutting and banking through the blue, no, the sepia sky. He held the promise of an entire life in the palm of his hand. This was an awesome amount of power, but you could see he felt good with it. Looking at his face, you got the feeling that he was relaxed and happy. Handsome. And, above all, proud.
He had fallen asleep in his wheelchair, with a pad of paper on his lap and a pen in his hand. Someone had pinned a sprig of holly, tied with a bit of red-and-green ribbon, to the lapel of his threadbare bathrobe. It hung there, askew. I hesitated in the doorway, hugging the doorjamb.
“Merry Christmas, Dad.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at me.
“How are you feeling?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. As soon as I get out of here.”
A Christmas party was under way in the dayroom. One of the staff was playing an out-of-tune piano, and the patients were singing carols. I’d left the kids and Momoko there eating cookies and drinking sweet punch.
“Ready for the party?”
He groaned and covered his face with his hand. I went to his side to wheel him out, but when I reached down to take the pad and pencil from him, he tightened his grip. Then I caught sight of the words, centered at the top of the page in his spidery handwriting, FULLERS’ SEEDS. VENDIMUS SEMINA, and below that, “Mrs. Fuller and I . . .”
My heart sank. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Dad, I just don’t see how you’re going to manage.”
“Manage what?” He clutched the pad to his chest.
“Anything. Living at home, never mind keeping Fullers’ Seeds going.”
He turned the pad over. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“The doctor says you need to be in a nursing home. She says you’re not—”
“She’s a fool. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” He stared at me until I looked down, and then he picked up his pen. “It has nothing to do with you. You can take all those children of yours and go on home now. Go back to your tropical island. You’ve done your duty. I’m not dying. I’ll try to let you know when I am.”
The imperious dismissal felt like a slap. “I am leaving,” I said. “Believe me. I’m just trying to help you understand, is all. The doctor was real clear. They’re not letting you out of here unless you have someone at home to take care of you.”
He grew pale hearing that. His voice wavered. “They can’t. They have no right. . . .”
“You can barely walk,” I said, feeling righteous and calm. “You can’t make it up and down the stairs by yourself, or even to the bathroom. And Mom can’t cook or clean anymore. She barely even remembers what a stove is.”
“Your mother’s memory is fine. We have a system. . . .”
“The doctor says it’s Alzheimer’s. Cass has been bringing you food for months now, even before this last attack.”
“Cassie Quinn’s a good girl. She was just helping out. Besides, she’s a neighbor.”
A good girl. I hated him even more for saying that. “She told me you can’t even change your bag by yourself.”
The words punctured his hide. His head dropped and swayed, and he raised his swollen hands from his lap. “My fingers,” he said, spreading them in front for me to see. “They’re too thick.”
“Dad,” I said coldly, pressing my advantage, “changing a colostomy bag is more than neighborly. It’s what a nurse does.”
“Your mother tries to help me,” he said. “But she can’t remember.”
“You live too far out for social services. They can’t send health-care workers all the way out to the farm.”
He fell silent and thought for a while. “What . . . ?” He couldn’t finish the question.
“The doctor suggested a long-term managed-care facility.”
“A what?”
“Managed care.”
“Sounds like a prison,” he said, trying to joke. “Maximum security . . .”
“It’s not like that, it’s—”
“No!” He put every last ounce of strength he had into that word. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again and searched my face, he saw his future as I saw it, and the vision horrified him. “Please,” he begged, so humble now. “I can’t go to one of those places. I won’t survive. . . .” His words started coming faster, frantic, while his fingers plucked at the folds of his bathrobe. “Everything’s going all wrong, Yumi. You don’t know what it’s like. They won’t leave me alone. Always pushing and poking. I can’t get a good night’s sleep. They keep trying to make me eat. And the food . . . I’ll die here, I know I will. I have to get back home. It’s my only chance!”
“Oh, Dad! For God’s sake!” The exasperation in my voice stopped him short. “What am I supposed to do?”
Tears were pooling in his eyes, and a thin line of spittle leaked from his lower lip down the stubbled chin. He wiped it off. His hand trembled. He hadn’t shaved.
“Stay,” he said.
“I can’t. I’ve got a job and classes to teach, and the kids have school. . . .”
The fight leaked out of him. He bent his head, and the knob of his spine protruded from the neck of his robe. He stared into his hands, as though the key to his failure lay in the lines of his upturned palms. “Not for me,” he said. “For your mother. If I can’t take care of her, they’ll put her away. She won’t have her garden. Her seeds. They’re all she remembers, Yumi.”
I felt like I’d been punched. I got to my feet.
“All right,” I said. “Only long en
ough to get you out of here. Then you’ll have to figure something else out.”
He raised his face, but I couldn’t see his expression. I was already standing behind him, kicking off the brakes on his wheelchair and shoving him forward.
guru
FULLERS’ SEEDS
M. and L. J. Fuller—Seedsmen
Liberty Falls, Idaho
Vendimus Semina
Since 1984
To Our Customers:
As you know, Mrs. Fuller and I make it a policy only to sell open-pollinated seeds, which we encourage you, our customers, to grow and save and multiply as you choose, in accordance with God’s Plan.
We have been hearing recently about some very worrisome developments in the world of the Agricultural Sciences, concerning what is called Genetic Engineering, and Mrs. Fuller and I would like to share our thoughts on this troubling new trend.
In the past forty years, scientists have made rapid advances in this field of genetics. They have made many discoveries about DNA, and they have learned how to splice genes from one of God’s creatures to another. They are now able to create novel life forms that have never before existed on God’s earth. Scientists now appear to understand the innermost workings of Life Itself. But do they? Is this something mankind can ever know?
Some say that it is entirely appropriate for us to engage in Genetic Engineering. God made Man in His Own Image, after all, so it is only natural that we should strive to emulate Him. In fact, say these apologists, it would be an insult to God not to use the intelligence He bestowed upon us to its fullest potential. But even up to, and including, the very Act of Creation?
We believe this is mere rationalization, one that should sound familiar to all of us, and not just to the pomologists amongst our readers! For, having eaten the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, now mankind knows sorrow and death; and here we must ask: Is our answer to that original transgression, once again, to defy God’s Will and to set our sights on the Tree of Life Itself? Do not forget, the Lord put a flaming sword at the entrance of Eden, to keep Man away, “lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever” [Genesis 4:24].
Having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, we should know the difference between good and evil, but we do not. We are not gods. Scientists do not understand Life Itself, and when they meddle in its Creation, they trespass on God’s domain. Beware of the ungodly chimera they manufacture in their laboratories!
It is our nature and our sorrow to confuse Man’s mortal hubris with God’s Divine Will. Mrs. Fuller and I hope that there are enough of you out there who share our views, and who will choose to cultivate wisely this Garden that we were given, rather than to turn it into a wasteland.
“Amen,” intoned Geek.
He put down the catalog and looked around the group. It was New Year’s Eve, and the Spudnik was parked in a truckstop off I-80, near Ogallala, Nebraska, where they’d stopped to score some fuel before turning south. Luckily, they’d found a Kentucky Fried Chicken that was just about to dump their fryers, so they topped up the tanks, ate dinner, and settled in for the evening. Geek was reading through some material that they’d picked up at an organic-farming collective in Iowa, when he’d come across the catalog.
“Seeds, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Y was standing on one foot in the middle of the Spudnik, facing the dashboard, doing Vrikshasana—the Tree pose. His hands were raised over his head, palms pressed together, index fingers aligned and pointed toward the roof. The bare sole of his foot was pressed against the inner thigh of the leg he was balanced on. “I don’t know, Geek,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed at a spot near the transmission. “What are you thinking?”
Geek held up the catalog again. “L. J. Fuller.”
“What about him?”
“He’s the one!” Geek looked around the room for support. “You don’t think this dude’s amazing?”
Frank shrugged. He was holding a skein of yarn looped between his two hands, and Charmey was winding the wool into a ball. Lilith was knitting a sweater. The air smelled of wet wool and incense and sodden fried chicken.
Geek jumped to his feet, rocking the Winnebago. “Seeds, it’s time to wake up!” he yelled. “We have found our guru! ”
Y lost his balance and his foot hit the floor with a thud.
Lilith put down her knitting. “Geek, what are you talking about?
“Our master. Our guru. This is him. The one we’ve been waiting for! A humble seedsman, but a visionary. A born leader of men.”
“Get real.”
“No. I mean it. He’s perfect.”
Y moved into Warrior One—Virabhadrasana, lunging forward on one leg and raising his arms overhead into a V. “Dude’s a major Christian. All this God shit is way too heavy for me.”
“But that’s the whole beauty of it! Don’t you see how amazing this is? He’s an icon! Totally salt of the earth. The American farmer making a lonely stand, defending his seed against the hubris and rapacious greed of the new multinational life-sciences cartel. In Idaho, no less! It’s Mr. Potato Head’s cloning ground, his place of origin!”
“So?”
“So I don’t know. It’s mystical, that’s all. Like some sort of friggin’ harmonic convergence. Liberty Falls? Power County? Like, can you believe how wild that sounds? What a mind-fuck!”
“What’s your point, man?” Y asked, coming into Mountain pose, then sitting down on the floor.
“I just have a feeling, is all. I think we should check this dude out.”
“I thought we were going down to someplace warm.” Y lowered himself onto his back now for Shavasana—the Corpse pose.
“Trust me,” Geek said. His eyes were blazing, his voice hushed and urgent. “We must go west, Seedlings. I have a feeling. We’re heading for something dynamite!”
His words hung, twitchy and volatile, in the close air. Suddenly Charmey threw down the ball of yarn and scrambled toward the bathroom. She slammed the thin door behind her, and they listened as she started to retch.
“What’s wrong with her?” Geek asked.
“It’s the KFC,” Lilith said, tossing her knitting onto the table. “The smell kind of kicks off her morning sickness.”
third
I have thought often lately that if it had not been the potato it would have been something else, for I was determined before that time to find the vulnerable spot in Nature and make her my co-worker . . .
—Luther Burbank, The Harvest of the Years
the promiscuity of squashes
She called it her “seed money,” not knowing that the idiom already existed in English. For Momoko it simply described the small amounts of cash she earned from her mail-order seeds, carefully culled, to send to me over the years.
At first she must have worked alone. As I remember, Lloyd had always been a bit disparaging of my mother’s garden. It wasn’t that he disapproved of seeds per se, but he was a large-scale potato farmer, a monoculturalist, so you can imagine how nervous all that diversity must have made him. Over the years, as he watched her garden grow, Lloyd thought her frivolous for planting what seemed to him to be a confusion of flowers, fruits, and vegetables.
Of course, it hadn’t always been so. In the beginning, when the potato operation was still small and he needed her help in the fields, Momoko grew mostly functional foods, which appeared on the dinner table. This he could understand. He could appreciate a bit of greens or a squash now and then, and he approved of her economy. But after the potato operation grew to a scale where he needed hired help and her labor was no longer necessary, and then I was born, and then I left, somewhere during this time and thereafter, Momoko’s garden began to change. She began to branch out, and soon there was an extravagance of blooms, in sizes and colors and shapes Lloyd had never seen. And vegetables whose names he did not know. And fruits with strange pips.
You can imagine his unease, growing denser every year, in tandem with the
garden’s lush perimeters. Pressed, he could not say why. Of course, no one was pressing him to do or say much of anything, especially not Momoko. Not since the night in February when they woke to the groan of the stair, lay side by side, listening in the dark to the sigh of the porch door closing, complicit in the mounting silence.
“Go,” she said. “Bring her back.”
But he hadn’t.
That night Momoko more or less stopped speaking to him. She moved into my bedroom, where she lived for close to a decade. After his heart attack she took care of him, preparing his meals and bringing them to his bedside and later, when he was better, leaving them on the kitchen table. But she didn’t eat with him. She didn’t talk to him, more than was absolutely necessary. She closed herself inside my room and whispered and stared up at the stars.
Under his window, her garden grew.
In ’77, after bankrupting his neighbor, Lloyd recovered his fields and enough of his health to enable him to farm and prosper for the next several years, until 1980, when prices bottomed out and he took a beating like everyone else. Still, he thought as he struggled along, he was doing better than Unger, who by this time was dead.
But his luck didn’t last for long. In 1983, when I was graduating from college, he had a second heart attack, and a bad one. Knifelike, it cut cleanly through his ties to the world. He leased his remaining acreage to Will and gave up on spuds.
The potato habit was a hard one to break, and the transformation happened slowly. One of the things Lloyd loved about potatoes is that they stayed alive. I remember going with him to the cellars at harvest, when the crop was being loaded in, and he swept his arm across the vast tumbling mountain of tubers.
“Look, Yumi! They’re alive. Living and breathing.” Then he explained how cloning worked and how every potato was capable of creating endless offspring out of chunks of its living flesh, and I felt so proud, like I was a little chunk of his. I can see why he was excited. In a very real sense a potato plant is immortal—the Russet Burbanks that Lloyd, and all of Idaho, grew were literally chips off the old block of Luther’s original. There is something divine in this potency, but it needs care and protection. Unlike grain, Lloyd would say dismissively, which can be stored indefinitely, there is an art to storing potatoes. They come out of the ground at about fifty-five degrees and are transported to the cellar, where the temperature is slowly lowered, half a degree a day, until it reaches a careful forty-five. The breathing rate of the potatoes slows. Usually they can stay that way for almost a year before they start to wither and die. Of course, that is the problem with living things—they have a life span that cannot be exceeded.
