by Ruth Ozeki
In the dim light Momoko crept around the shelves, shifting boxes from side to side, pulling out envelopes, and tipping out the seeds. “Dr. Wyche’s Kentucky Wonders?” she muttered. “Large Mottled Lazy Housewifes? Gollie Hares?”
“Phaseolus vulgaris.” Geek nodded. “She’s doing the bush beans.”
He followed Momoko around with a video camera, filming an inventory of the seeds and plants, trying to help her identify them. Sometimes she’d get the names right, and sometimes she wouldn’t. She got very upset when she forgot. One day she sat down on the floor of the storage room and started banging her head with a muddy fist.
“What is name? What is name?” Over and over. It was just some damn pea, but she couldn’t remember, and she just sat there in all that dirt, smacking herself until I grabbed her wrists and held them.
“Mom,” I said. “Stop. It’s okay.”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes. Her white hair was smeared with mud.
“What is your name?” she said.
“Cut it out, Mom.” I thought she was joking.
Geek helped me get her upstairs to Lloyd’s room, and he talked her down, but after that, Y brought Lloyd downstairs every day and sat him in a wheelchair in a warm corner of the greenhouse so he could help out for a few hours. She was a lot calmer then. Lloyd sat there triumphantly with a plank on his lap and a marker and a pile of labels, carefully writing down the names of things. His hand was so shaky you could barely read the letters.
One day Geek sent Phoenix to the storage room to locate some soybeans—Amish Greens or Beijing Blacks or Agates. Momoko was in there with a miner’s light attached to her forehead, and even though she was pretty deaf, she must have heard Phoenix come in. She raised her face, and the beam from the lamp cast shadows on her sunken cheekbones, illuminating her ghostly white hair. She scared the shit out of him. He stepped back, knocking over a shelf of lettuces or something, and she started cackling like it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. After that, whenever she saw him, she yelled “Boo!” But he’d get her back, pretending to talk without making any sound, just moving his lips. “What?” she’d say, cupping her hand to her deaf ear and shaking her head in frustration. “More louder, please!”
Mostly we all tried to keep her out of the storage house. She seemed happier poking around in the dirt, planting things, and nobody wanted her to start that head-banging business again. Every day was different for her. We tried to give her more good days than bad.
Geek set up his hammock in the corner of the greenhouse, and I took to hanging out with him in the evenings, after the kids and my parents had gone to bed. I’d lie there in the humid warmth, strung between two posts, watching him plant things. He had rigged up some drip-irrigation tubing to connect with an old glass beaker, which he suspended above the hammock and filled with ice cubes and a powerful blue drink made with rum and pineapple and curaçao. The system worked on gravity feed, and I’d swing in the hammock and sip the cerulean liquid from the tip of a miniature hose, controlling the rate of its flow with a nozzle. He had downloaded some old Hawaiian music off the Internet: “Sweet Leilani,” “Blue Hawaiian Moon.” The tropical lyrics tugged at my heart. The twang and wow of the slack-key guitar, the gentle sway of the hammock, the humid air—intoxicated by these, I could almost forget I was in Idaho. But never for long. Something always happened to bring me back.
She was in the living room with a handful of index-card labels and a roll of tape. She was looking around at the furniture, as if a secret were hidden under a cushion or in the upholstery. I watched from the doorway as she wavered, trying to decide. Then she darted toward the TV and labeled it RUG. My heart sank. She put CHAIR on the sofa. She had TABLE in her hand as she headed for the floor lamp.
I was thinking, So what if she’s losing her words? What do they matter? The names of things are arbitrary constructs, mere social conventions, as easily changed as the rules of a child’s game, and why should one encryption of reality, mine, be more valid than hers? But even as I thought this, even as my heart was aching with dismay and sadness, I couldn’t help but make the correction.
“That’s the lamp, Mom,” I said. “Not the table. The table’s over here.” I peeled the index card off the shade, but she dashed over and snatched it away from me.
“Damé!” she said. “No!” Her voice was hushed. She pressed it back onto the dusty fabric surface until it stuck. She stepped back and looked at it, once again satisfied. The lamp was a table. All was well.
I took a deep breath, trying to realign myself to this new groundless-ness.
She gave a dark little chuckle. “I gonna teach him lesson,” she said.
“What?”
Her voice was low, conspiratorial now. “You know that Nix? He is very bad boy. He play some tricks on me, moving all the labels. So now I trick him back. I move them first, then she think he did it.”
“She? Who is she?”
“His mommy. When she catch him, boy, oh, boy, she get plenty mad!” Dumbstruck, I stared at her. She flipped through the remaining labels in her hand, studying them, then looked up at my face, as though seeing me for the first time.
“Who are you?” she asked blankly.
She wasn’t joking.
I left her there and walked out to the porch. The coast was clear of children. I lit a cigarette and smoked for a while, then crossed over to the greenhouse. When I got closer to the building, I heard Ocean’s high-pitched chatter, interspersed with Geek’s voice, explaining something. They both looked up at me from the hammock where they were rocking. Chicken Little was cheeping on the ground below, scruffy and preadolescent, her first pinfeathers poking through her baby down.
“Come in,” Geek said. “Join the party. You look like you need a drink.”
“I was looking for one. Is the bar open?”
“It can be.” Geek vacated his place in the hammock for me. I climbed in next to Ocean. She sniffed the cigarette smell on my clothes but decided not to say anything, and I was grateful. She snuggled in next to me, happy to have me there.
“Hello, my sweet Puddle,” I said.
“Hi, Yummy Mommy.” At least she knew who I was.
Geek handed me an end of narrow hose. “I’ve improved the system,” he said. “I’ve added a splitter, so two people can sip simultaneously.” He sat down in a beat-up lawn chair next to the hammock and rested his feet on the edge, rocking us gently and sipping his branch of the hose. Ocean clamored for a taste, so I let her have a small one.
“I was just reading to Ocean about a hero of mine,” Geek said. He held up an ancient-looking book. “Luther Burbank, the inventor of the Russet Burbank potato. This is his autobiography.”
“Oh, him,” I said, vaguely recognizing the book. “He was a plant breeder or something, wasn’t he?”
Ocean frowned. “He was a wizard,” she said, correcting me.
“That’s right,” said Geek. “The Wizard of Horticulture. He was brilliant.”
“Like Geek,” Ocean said, always the little flatterer.
“No. I’m just an amateur. Burbank was the real thing. He invented hundreds of plants. The Shasta daisy. The spineless cactus.”
“What’s the point of that?” I asked. Geek’s delivery system was like an IV tap, and the rum was entering my blood. “A cactus is supposed to have spines.”
“He thought the pads would make good cattle fodder in the desert. He reported that he had to pull thousands of cactus spines out of the cactus pads with pliers, but in the end he succeeded. It took him years.”
“Ow!” Ocean cringed. “What’s a fodder?”
“Food,” Geek said. “Parmahansa Yogananda told this story about Burbank in Autobiography of a Yogi. He said Burbank would talk to the cacti to create what he called ‘a vibration of love.’ He would tell them that they had nothing to fear, that they didn’t need their thorns because he would protect them. Apparently it worked.”
“Wait!” cried Ocean. “That means
he lied! He pulled out all the spines and told the poor cactus he’d protect it, and when the cactus finally believed him, he went and fed it to a cow!”
“You’re teaching my daughter to lie to plants?” I asked, holding out my hand. “Give me that book. Where’d you find it?”
Geek passed it to me. “On your father’s bookshelf.”
It was a dusty old tome with a green cloth cover. The Harvest of the Years. I opened it to the first yellowed page and read the opening paragraph aloud.
“ ‘Back of every plant, every shellfish, every burrowing rodent or ravaging animal, and back of every human being, there stretches an illimitable and mysterious heredity. . . .’ ”
The words were familiar. Ocean was studying my face, listening intently, so I read on. “ ‘. . . The newborn child has a heritage of tendencies and inclinations which furnish the foundation or groundwork from which he must build his house of Life.’ ”
I closed the book.
“I don’t get it,” Ocean said. “There’s too many big words.”
“It just means that you’ll probably be like your mom in some ways,” Geek said.
“Oh, goodie.” She snuggled in closer to me.
She did not inherit her good heart from me. Or her sunny nature. I tipped her pretty little daisy face up to mine and gave her a huge kiss, then I handed the book back to Geek.
“Phoenix’s dad is a plant breeder,” I said. “Maybe it’s my tendency to end up with guys who prefer vegetables.”
“If so,” Geek said, handing it back, “you should keep the book. Maybe you can learn something about your heritage and inclinations.”
“You want to know what my heritage has taught me? If you’re a cactus, you’d better hang on to your spines.”
“I believe that,” Geek said, looking at me closely. “But Burbank said that the secret of improved plant breeding is love.” He started making the hammock rock in a wider arc, then dropped his voice like a mesmerist and started to speak in a thick German accent. “You haf nussing to fear,” he murmured. “You vill no longer need your defensive thorns. I vill protect you.” He looked deep into my eyes. Ocean giggled.
“Right,” I said, looking down at the heavy book in my lap. “Like it’s ever that easy.”
pests
“Check this out,” Lilith said, draping herself along the curve of Y’s spine as she read over his shoulder from the computer screen. “ ‘Political Pests—A Proactive Defense.’ ”
“Perfect,” said Y. “Sounds like an invitation.”
“I don’t know,” Geek said. He was surfing at the next computer. There were only two in the Liberty Falls public library, but at least they had high-speed access. “We promised Yumi we’d lay off the actions, remember?”
“Screw that,” Lilith said. “That was only within Power County. This conference is in Pocatello.”
Frank was sitting with Charmey on the floor behind the computers. Hearing talk of an action, he looked up.
“This is major,” said Y. “All the industry heavies are going to be there. And check it out, the dude giving the keynote? His name is Elliot Rhodes. E. Rhodes. Is that perfect or what?”
“Erodes!” Lilith said, drumming on Y’s back. “I say we pie the fucker.”
The librarian frowned from across the room. Geek typed in the URL for the Potato Promotions Council and pulled up the schedule for the conference. He whistled. “Check out the dude’s bio. He’s doing NuLife for D&W.”
“What’s D&W?” Frank asked. It had been months since they’d done a good action, and all this planting was for shit.
“Duncan & Wiley,” Geek said. “PR firm that spins for Cynaco. They specialize in damage control and crisis management, only they call it ‘solution imaging’ and ‘media intervention’ and ‘constituency building.’ Obfuscating crap. These days it’s all about building fake grassroots organizations as fronts for the corporations and participating in stuff like this Potato Promotions Council. They’ve spun for everyone from big tobacco to the petrochemical conglomerates, and now it’s the gene giants. Basically they suck.”
“We going?”
Geek shrugged. “Don’t see how we can pass it up, do you?”
This suited Frankie just fine. When he had first signed on to travel with the Seeds, he felt like he’d been tapped by an elite squadron of resistance fighters. Now he found himself living in a trailer with a pregnant girlfriend, parked in someone’s driveway. Taking care of old people. And if Ashtabula was bad, Liberty Falls was the pits. There were almost no paved roads to skate on, and the ones that weren’t dirt had been surfaced with some kind of crushed gravel, like out of the fucking Flintstones. Everything around the farm was dirt and dust, fields and fields of it. At least in Ashtabula there were parking lots.
Charmey seemed happy, though. Every morning she would stand on the Spudnik’s step looking out at the bare fields where the tractors were working and rub her hands over her hardening belly and breathe deeply. She said the country air smelled crisp and fresh, but the dust got in Frank’s throat and made him cough and spit. They should just pave the place, he thought. Keep the damn dust down. Watching her trundle up to the house to fix breakfast for the old man, Frankie felt his heart sink. He could just picture them, years from now, stuck here with a pack of squalling kids and laundry flapping on a line. His third foster home had been like that. It was a bad scene. That foster mother had been doing way too many drugs, and her boyfriend finally beat her up so bad that Frankie’s social worker couldn’t ignore it any longer. They took him away, and her real kids, too. He felt bad for her kids, entering the system, but he was glad to be out of there.
Charmey was curled up on the floor of the library next to him, flipping through maternity magazines. Now she yawned and gathered up a stack of books and handed them to Frankie. “Who has the library card?”
Frankie looked down at the books in his arms. Home Birthing. What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Introduction to Midwifery. It was too much. He’d gotten used to the idea of making love to her, even with the baby growing inside. What he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around was the fact that now the baby was going to have to come out. Charmey and Lilith spent hours on the Internet studying images of women giving birth. They tried to get Frankie to watch.
“See?” Charmey said, squeezing his hand. “It is not so bad.”
Frankie gulped and nodded, but his mind was screaming. Not bad? It was fucking gruesome. The women were huge, panting and heaving like dogs, their eyes bugging out over these gigantic stomachs while bright red babies inched out from between their legs. Aside from the blood, there was mucus and tissue and slime. Charmey leaned in close to the screen, her face rapt and glowing, studying every detail, like this was a beautiful thing. He looked away. He couldn’t bear to imagine her like a flayed animal, bucking and screaming in pain. He wanted to protect her from this, not participate in its coming.
“C’est magnifique!” Charmey sat back and looked at Frank. “Ooh la la! Look at this face!” She took his hand and ran it across her belly. He tried not to flinch.
“What’s important, Frankie, for you as the coach, is to stay calm,” Lilith said, scrolling to yet another birth site and double-clicking.
He’d heard this before. Stay calm. Keep your sense of humor.
Time her contractions. Offer her encouragement, reassurance, support.
Distract her. Take her mind off the pain. Help her stay focused.
Massage her, unless she doesn’t want to be touched.
In which case don’t touch her.
Breathe.
He would never remember all this, and it was depressing to know in advance that he was going to blow it. This was a feeling he had grown up with. He figured he’d be lucky just to make it through without throwing up.
He carried Charmey’s books to the front desk and dropped them in front of the librarian. The librarian read the titles, raised her eyebrows, and gave him a long look.
“Are these f
or you?”
Frankie hesitated. Charmey had disappeared into the stacks again. “They’re for my girlfriend.”
“Congratulations,” the librarian said. Frankie looked up, surprised. The librarian was smiling and her voice was friendly. “At least I assume you’re the happy father-to-be?”
“Yeah,” he said, watching as she ran the bar-code reader across the books’ spines. “I guess so.”
At that moment Charmey came up beside him. “Oh, yes!” she said. “We are so happy.” She gripped his arm, and her eyes were blazing.
garden of earthly delights
There was no mistaking that Mr. Potato Head. The same demented, walleyed stare, the tin skullcap, the screwy electrical coil spiraling crookedly out from the top of his head. It was the potato from the cover of the magazine section come to life in the main conference room of the Sheraton in Pocatello. It was shouting antibiotech slogans and forcing its way in, just as Elliot was taking the stage to deliver the keynote.
Elliot seized the microphone. “You see,” he said smoothly, gesturing to the blundering spud and his cadres as they were hustled away by hotel security. “This is precisely why your industry needs our help with pest control.”
He couldn’t have done better if he’d planted the potato himself. With a warm-up act like that, “Political Pests—A Proactive Defense” was a resounding success. The presence of the enemy seemed to galvanize the growers, underscoring the subtext of Elliot’s message: that their industry was under attack, and they needed D&W’s crisis-management services. He made a note to suggest to Duncan that they start paying protesters to show up at events like these. If he could find out who they were, some members of this group might even be recruited. There was nothing like a good confrontation to get the blood pumping.
