I GOT MINE down near Putah Creek beneath the railroad trestle. There's a whole hoard of them down there, all huddled together in a corner against the wall where they never get any sunshine. They're evil little things, thriving on darkness.

Dr. K was the one who recommended I try gardening. She said it would help revive my nurturing tendencies. She said I should start with just one plant, a finicky one that needed lots of care and attention. She told me to watch it closely, talk to it, touch it, give it fertilizer and water it always, smother it with love. She said after an incident a person often feels like striking back, and we can damage things if we're not careful. You need an audience, she told me, that will listen without reply. You need something that will change as you're changing, getting stronger every day. You need to see evidence of that change as it's occurring.

I went down by the creek to find my audience. I dug him up and put him in a plastic pot. At home I transferred him to clay. He was an ugly thing—all spiny with coarse stems and sagging leaves like the black-green hands of a witch. He had a thick purple bud that hung down in a teardrop between his leaves. I put him on my kitchen counter between the blender and the toaster, away from the window so he could only catch the weakest light. I gave him water and a little packet of plant food. I rubbed his leaves with my thumb like I was massaging a baby. And I started talking.

"I won't be home til seven tonight," I said. "I'm going to the gym after work. There's some almond chicken in the fridge— What's that? You don't eat chicken? Never mind then."

The next morning: "You know I slept fairly well last night. I've been waiting for a morning when I could say that."

That evening: "Looks like you'd prefer no light at all. Is that why your leaves are so dry? I'll stick you behind the blender, it's shady back there. I don't know how you do it. The dark still terrifies me."

The following day: "You know if I could just cut him once, cut him like he cut me, I think I would feel much better."

The next morning I took the knife I was using to butter my toast and made a shallow slice in one of his stems. A drop of clear liquid oozed out and that bud, which had opened into a brilliant blue trumpet-shaped flower, twisted into a snarl. I took this gesture to mean he didn't like being cut so I cut him again, digging my thumbnail into one of his leaves until it left a dark scar.


AFTER THAT MORNING we had an understanding. I began feeding him a mixture of high-voltage plant food mixed with water, squeezed out from a pair of my underwear into the hollow of his flower, which acted like a mouth. He gulped it down. He couldn't get enough. The dirtier the underwear the better. One time that flower curled up into a smirk and I got the idea that he was laughing at me.

"Shut up!" I screamed. I knocked him over on his side and lopped off four leaves and two inches of stem with a butcher knife. He shrunk away as I dusted dirt from the cutting board back into his pot. The way his leaves drooped and the moist bluntness of his severed stem made him look almost sympathetic, like he could see inside me and understand.

I went for my regular visit to Dr. K the following week.

"It's a gorgeous day outside," she said, leaning back in her plush grey armchair. "Don't you think?"

"I suppose," I said. "I was raped on a day like today."

"How is your plant?"

"He's fine," I said. "Flourishing, actually."

"Why are you calling him he? Are you certain he's a male?"

"Yes," I said. "Pretty sure."

"I thought most plants were male and female. It's how they reproduce."

"That must mean they can rape themselves then," I said. "How convenient."

Dr. K pinched her lower lip between two fingers and leaned forward. "Why do you feel the need to make jokes?"

"I don't know," I said. "I see some humor in it."

After the session I came home and fed him from a pair of red lace panties I pulled out from the bottom of the hamper. He was getting taller, and the severed end of his stem had hardened into a protective crust. As I leaned over him to wring out the last drips of moisture, he latched onto a piece of my hair and started pulling.

"Let go of me!" I cried, fumbling in the silverware drawer for my knife. I wheeled and lurched and when I finally broke free he was on the ground, his pot cracked open to reveal a smooth cone of dirt.

I left him there in the middle of my kitchen floor for five days. I watched the dirt fall away from its neat shape around his roots. I stepped on his flower once to see if I could leave a tread mark on his face. His leaves lost their natural curl and eventually flattened themselves, limp, against the linoleum.

"Do you want to live or do you want to die?" I said to him that Saturday. I sat down next to him on the floor in my pajamas and waited. He didn't answer so I pulled off one of his leaves and tore it into tiny pieces. Still nothing.

"It's not easy," I said. "You see that now?"


I CLEANED HIM UP the next day and moved him outside to a spot in my backyard. It's kind of a dim place, shaded for most of the day by a sprawling spanish oak. I replanted him there, in the far corner, against a new fence that the neighbors just put in. I give him a splash of water every two weeks, just enough to keep him wanting more. Beyond that, I stay inside and watch him through the window. In late afternoon, when the sun dips behind the tree, that's when it's most noticeable—how small and tired he looks against the reaching height of that fence. He might try, but he'll never outgrow it.


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