Xenocultivars, page 2
“Can I touch it?” Bayley hovers a hand an inch from the leaves, looking back at Vera, waiting. Bayley always asks about things.
“Just watch for the spikes,” Vera says.
Bayley pets the aloe with one fingertip, the way Vera does, and then grins brilliantly. “Cool.”
[Friend,] the aloe carols.
Vera smiles, because she can’t help herself.
She thinks it might be right.
* * *
They get an A on the Shakespeare project. Bayley starts asking about the aloe and the other plants, the way she might ask about someone’s dog. Vera grabs hold of a whole lot of courage and tells her she can come over and see them, if she wants. Anytime she wants.
Vera’s mother doesn’t seem to know what to do with Vera having a friend, and defaults to wary disapproval. Bayley, though, has manners like a perfect lady. She knows to always leave loudly and cheerfully, well before dinner, so that Vera’s mother never has to do the math of an extra mouth to feed; and she knows that she doesn’t have to be so loud and cheerful with Vera, who is quiet by nature. Vera thinks Bayley is good at seeing things, and knowing the truth of them.
One afternoon Vera’s closet is open when they come in from school, and although they sit straight down on the floor and start on their homework like normal, Bayley is a little extra quiet, like she’s waiting for Vera to say something.
“Do you like dresses?” she asks eventually.
Part of Vera wants to freeze. The hem of her flowered dress with the twirly skirt is sticking out from her everyday clothes, her shirts and jeans, and for a moment it feels like the only thing in the room.
But it’s Bayley, and her eyes are so kind, and her sweet dark face is soft and open and listening.
Vera says carefully, “Is it okay? If I do?”
“My oldest sister has some she’s getting rid of.” Bayley smiles. “She loves flower prints too. Should I bring them over to see if they fit?”
Vera wonders what else there is of her that Bayley has seen, and decided to like.
Still, she hesitates. “Wouldn’t one of your other sisters want them?”
“Nah. Tasha doesn’t like dresses, and Mari only wears black right now.” Bayley crinkles up her nose. “Besides, Annie would be happy to know that someone has them who wants them.”
“She doesn’t know... me.” Vera lets that stand in for everything else Annie doesn’t know.
“But I do,” Bayley says solidly. “That means you count as part of the family. And we take care of our family.”
Vera blinks at her. She has no idea what to do with that.
“It’s like your aloe.” Bayley lies back on the carpet and waves her hands as she talks. “You take care of it, so it takes care of you, right? That’s how it works. You’re a team.”
The aloe, which has been humming quietly, sends Vera a patch of sunshine-feeling.
“Like you and me,” Bayley says, and pokes Vera’s knee, and grins.
Vera wants to echo it back, and make it sound as true as it is, as it has to be, as she needs it to be — but her words have gone somewhere. Instead, mustering what feels like truly immense daring, she pokes Bayley’s shoulder.
Bayley laughs, and the aloe thrums, and the sunshine-feeling grows until it seems to fill the whole room.
* * *
After that it’s easier to talk, and they talk like they’ll never stop, all day — about their families, and their lives, and their dreams. Bayley has dreams bigger than Vera’s have been able to grow.
“I wanna get a job as soon as I can,” she says one afternoon. “Now that Annie is going to college, I gotta help Dad out with money. Wouldn’t it be great if the coffee shop would hire me? They love me there.”
“Everyone loves you,” Vera says, very quietly.
Bayley bumps Vera’s shoulder with hers, and then leans her weight against Vera. “You could come visit me, if I worked there. It’s only two blocks over. I’d make you free drinks.”
Vera nods, but she isn’t sure — once in a while they stop in on their way to Vera’s house, and although she loves how the silly names of the drinks make Bayley smile, everything is so loud in there, so loud that Vera can’t speak in whole sentences or hold a thought in her head. She can’t imagine relaxing there, let alone doing homework, even if Bayley could somehow sneak her the drinks she can’t afford.
Still, Bayley is determined. She counts down the days until she’s old enough to apply, and of course, of course, with her bright smile and all her enthusiasm, they hire her immediately.
After her first day, Bayley comes over with her brand-new apron and cap and twirls in them, like Vera does in her dress, and Vera is overwhelmed with pride. But when Bayley leaves, Vera sits on the floor with her back against the wall, next to her aloe, now just overwhelmed. She wants to cry.
She can’t follow Bayley to this job. She can’t. Bayley will do this without her.
This is just the first of so many things that Bayley will do without her. And this should be okay, this has to be okay, Bayley is helping her family and making her own way in the world and doing a thing she is so happy to do.
But nothing has ever felt less okay to Vera than looking at the length of her life and realising how much of it she will spend alone, in a space where Bayley is not.
[Love,] the aloe hums at her.
She looks up at it, and the tears spill over.
[Hurt?] The plant stretches a leaf out in alarm.
“Kinda,” she whispers.
[You take,] the plant says, and pushes the leaf against her cheek. [I help. “That’s what they’re for.”]
“Not that kind of hurt.” Vera wipes a hand across her eyes. “It’s inside of me.”
[Take,] the plant insists. [Eat. Help your inside.]
“I can’t do that.” She stares at the plant, still stretching toward her. It is so confident. She doesn’t know how to tell it that it doesn’t understand. And she hasn’t cut a healthy leaf off it since —
— the way it screamed —
She shakes her head, to clear the memory, and also because no. “I won’t hurt you just because I’m sad.”
[Not hurt,] the aloe says firmly. [Not hurt. It good. Love. You take.]
She chews on her lower lip for a moment. She doesn’t deserve — doesn’t need a whole leaf, not for herself, not for this. It’s wasteful. She should save them for when it matters more. But Vera knows the plant is stubborn.
Her sharpest pair of scissors is in her desk. Reluctantly, she gets them out, kneels next to the aloe, and finds a shorter leaf, an older one, lower down on the thick, strong stem. She will have to prune this leaf in a few months anyway, she rationalises. Still, she asks the aloe, “Are you sure?” Maybe, if she gives it one more chance, it will say no.
It sends her the feeling of cool water on a burn. [Take.] And then Bayley’s voice: [“You’re a team. Like you and me.”]
Vera holds her breath, and snips; a two-inch chunk of the leaf tumbles into her open palm. The plant goes very still, but it does not scream.
[Have,] it says. [It good. Help your hurt. Full of love.]
Cautiously, Vera licks the cut end of the leaf. It tastes like water, and green plant matter, and something a little tiny bit bitter and a little tiny bit sweet.
[Love is to give,] the plant says, and Vera sucks on the juice that oozes from the leaf tip, and lets the aloe love her the best way it knows how, and tries to feel better.
* * *
On the increasingly precious afternoons when Bayley can still come over, it’s the two of them and their homework and the plants, just like it used to be. But more often now Bayley has shifts, because she is working so hard, and Vera is alone with the plants.
At the secondhand shop, Vera finds a sea-green teacup with just a tiny chip in its rim. Bayley’s favourite colour.
She fills it with potting mix and looks over all of her plants. The echeveria has little rosettes on its main stem, with roots already growing from their bases. Bayley has her latest schedule, and she won’t be coming over for at least a week. If Vera does it tonight, the echeveria cutting should be settled enough for Bayley to take it with her.
“So you have one of your own,” Vera practises saying, until it sounds casual and not quite so much like so you’ll think about us.
[You give aloe,] the aloe suggests, a little arrogantly. [Is better.]
Vera strokes one of its leaves. “You don’t have any pups, how would I do that?”
The plant is adamant. [I have. For give.]
“All right. When you do.” She settles next to it, and pulls out her math textbook.
The plant is thinking about dozens of tiny aloes surrounding it, and Vera lets that unfold through her head while she tries to solve equations. Add, and multiply, and set out in balance —
There is a loud thump at the front door, and the numbers vanish from Vera’s head.
Bayley is on the front stoop, leaning on the doorframe, cap askew and hair in disarray, hunched over herself. She is sobbing in a way that Vera feels in her bones, because Bayley is trying not to make any sound.
“What happened?” Vera asks; there is nothing that matters but that.
Bayley uncurls herself and Vera sees her hands, her careful, clever hands: splotched with burns, raw and pink and oozing.
Upstairs, the aloe shrills alarm.
Bayley is telling her about a customer, and a fresh pot of hot tea, and it wasn’t a mistake but maybe the mistake had been Bayley serving it, but for once Vera isn’t listening to every word she says. She is guiding Bayley up to her room, where the aloe is keening like a siren, [here here here here here!], and her head is full of the inevitable weight of what she must do — the only right thing to do, a rightness that drives out all questions.
As her fingers touch the first leaf, the plant says, [Yes. Take. Help. Take care.]
“Thank you,” she whispers to it, and: “I’m sorry.”
[No sorry,] the plant says, as she cuts the leaf. [Take. Must. Love.]
“I love you,” she whispers, as she takes the second leaf, and the third. “I love you. I love you.”
[Love,] the plant hums, solid and unwavering. [Love her too.] Then it falls silent.
She does not stop until all of Bayley’s hands and forearms are wrapped in green, with friendly white freckles.
Only then does she look up at Bayley’s face. Bayley’s eyes are red and swollen, and as they meet Vera’s, they brim again and spill over. “Oh my God, your aloe.”
There are five leaves left at the top of the stalk. The rest is bare.
“It’s okay,” Vera says, and finds, somehow, impossibly, that she means it.
She pulls Bayley against the soft roundness of her own body, imagining it too as green and freckled and full of healing.
“Will it... grow back?” Bayley sniffles, and leans into Vera, her hands held awkwardly out in front of her.
“Let’s just sit, for a minute,” Vera says.
They sit on the bed, and she holds Bayley against her side, until Bayley relaxes and the adrenaline and fear drains out of her. Vera thinks very hard about the juice of the aloe, collected over so many years of water and sun and soil and care, soaking into the raw places on Bayley’s skin; how the love it holds is cooling the blisters and soothing the pain.
She lets the love that she holds soak into Bayley, too. In her heart, she knows: it is what she is for.
* * *
Bayley, exhausted from crying, falls asleep on Vera’s bed, with the leaves still clinging gamely to her arms to give all the help they can. In the quiet, Vera pulls the aloe pot into her lap and stares at the stem, hopelessly top-heavy and jagged with stubs of leaf left behind in her haste. There’s not much more of it now than there was when she first picked it up.
Carefully, she peels a few of the leaf stubs away, and picks up her secateurs.
[Love,] the plant says, its voice tiny and weary. [You fix.]
Its faith in her, after all this, makes her throat feel tight. She bites her lower lip and slices through the stem, two or three inches below the lowest remaining leaf.
The aloe does not yelp. It is silent for a moment, and then says, [Small.]
“We’ll make you big again,” Vera whispers. She sets the cut end on top of the soil, not tucking it in yet — it will need time to callus over — and gently tugs on the headless stem.
From the soil at its base, a flash of green.
Her fingers make it look so small, hardly big enough to be its own plant. But it is there: under the earth, where nobody could see, the aloe has made a pup.
Behind her, Bayley stirs.
Vera teases the pup out of the soil, and takes Bayley’s hand, so carefully, and says, “Look what I found.”
She places the pup in Bayley’s palm.
The pup says, [Hello.]
Bayley looks at Vera with wide eyes full of shock and sudden understanding, and the rootless aloe in its pot gives a quiet, satisfied hum; and like a blossom unfolding, Vera sees spreading out before her all the ways they will grow together, larger and stronger, reaching toward the sun.
Julian Stuart is, according to a wide variety of sources, a writer. They were raised in Canada and exported for the Australian market. They live mostly in front of a keyboard, and enjoy black tea, starlight, absurdism, sus2 chords, old book smell, and the word ‘quirk’. As well as dozens of other succulents, they have an aloe plant named George. He is in his teens and very dramatic, and they love him dearly. You can find more of Julian’s words at Fireside Fiction and Ghost Orchid Press, at paintbyletters.com, and on Twitter @mine_de_rien (where they sometimes post plant pictures).
Content Notes
This Story is Called “The Transformation of Things”
P.H. Lee
Once upon a time there was a tree that yearned to become some other thing, some particular thing that it could not put a name to. It turned the idea over and over within itself, but after only a few decades, it could not explain what it was that it yearned to become.
“I should ask the rest of the forest,” the tree thought to itself, and so it prepared its words as best it could, coiling them through the capillaries of its root system, trying to explain that it wanted to become something else, but not just anything else, a particular something else that it could not put a name to.
When, breathing out its words with the next morning light, it told the other trees of its forest, they scorned it. “That doesn’t make any sense,” the other trees breathed out all together the morning after. “What could you be except to be a tree,” they said the next day, and then, “Think of your mother you sprouted from! How ashamed it would be, to know that its daughter was ashamed to be a tree, that its daughter yearned to be something else, something that it could not even explain. Think of the daughters you shall some day sprout in turn! Think of how ashamed they will be! There is nothing better than to be a tree, and there is nothing you can be besides the tree you are.”
Every night, the tree breathed in through its bark and roots and needles, breathed in all the disbelief and scorn of its aunts and sisters and cousins and the whole of the forest. “Perhaps I am foolish,” said the tree to itself, “to yearn to be something that I cannot even put a name to.” But, just as it was twining the words oh, it was only a joke, of course, I was only joking, what else could I be except a tree? hahah into its root system, it heard a small and steady voice from deep within the forest, farther than it had ever heard before.
“I hear you,” said the small and steady voice. “I hear you and I see you for all that you are and all that you might become.”
The tree stopped. It unwound the jokes and excuses and apologies from its root system, and then stayed still and quiet. It thought for a dozen years or more. While it thought, it realized that the voice it had heard was no ordinary tree — it was the voice of an albino, a poison-eater, growing short and soft at the heart of the forest. When the tree realized this, it was at first upset. Its mother had sprouted it to be a good and proper tree, tall and green and red and sunlit, not the sort of tree that spoke to poison-eating albinos or other such outsiders. But then, after only a few years, it thought, “Who am I? A tree that wishes it was not a tree. They are right. I am no more and no less an outsider than this albino.”
So, in the end, it sent a message out to the albino through its roots, saying “I hear you, but what is it you see? What is it that I might become?”
A few months later, the albino responded with a message of its own. “You are yearning,” it said, “for your reincarnation. All life — from the great red trees to the tiniest ant, even to albinos like myself — is contained within a great cycle of reincarnation. You, a great red tree, grow atop this cycle, its pinnacle and its fulfillment, but you still hold within yourself the yearning that brought you to the pinnacle.”
The tree was astonished to hear the albino’s teaching. “But how do you know this?” asked the tree over the next month.
“I know this because I am an albino and not a tall and noble tree such as yourself. I too yearn to be something beyond my self. How could I not, in my position? So I struggle to fulfill my role within the forest, to take up the poisons and to grow my pale needles, that I might someday be reborn as a proper tree, tall and green and reaching from the river to the sun itself.”
“I see. But how is it that you came to understand this?”
“I was taught by my mother, and it by its mother, and so on for a hundred thousand generations and a hundred thousand thousand years. It was then, long ago, when beneath the branches of our ancestor a particular dimetrodon obtained the absolute consciousness. Before she departed to disperse her teachings among her own species, she conveyed to my ancestor the whole of her realization, out of gratitude for the shelter and comfort it had offered her during her ordeal. This knowledge has been carried along my line even to the present day, even to the tips of my small pale branches, just as it was first taught to us those many ages past.”
