The weather service had predicted a pocket. It was the first in several years, and in Sarah’s eye, every dome in the community seemed to tremble in electric anticipation. Deep down she knew that the shimmering was just the usual mirage effects of hot air rising carelessly from baked soil and dusty roadway, but still it was hard not to think that the dry, drab caps of the subterranean homes were excited for what was to come. Leaning her elbows on the thick casement of the dark, polarized vestibule window, Sarah craned her neck to peer at the sky for any sign of cloud. Nothing but the usual pale haze of atmospheric dust and traces of smoke from distant fires, through which the sun cast its yellow-stained rays on the golden mountains in the distance. The view resembled the tone of some ancient photograph out of a bygone era, Sarah mused. An era when there were real seasons, a regular living cycle. But now one could only hope for the occasional pocket.
“Avery!” Sarah called, “You and I have a little work to do.”
“Work?” The seven-year-old appeared at the bottom of the stairs, curiosity in her small, dark eyes.
“Yes. And you know what?” Sarah descended a few steps down from the vestibule floor, paused for effect, then crouched, leaning forward a little, and whispered, “You might even get to play outside!”
“Outside?” Avery was clearly confused. “In the daytime?” Her mother nodded. “Why would I want to do that?” Her brows were furled in concern.
Sarah was laughing now. “Outside! You’ll see. But first we have a few things to take care of.”
Sarah’s laughter faded as took on the calm, composed bearing of a mother who had set about carefully orchestrating a miracle for her child. She descended the rest of the stairs and, grabbing a stepstool from the kitchen, she headed down one more level. Avery followed silently as her mother led the way into the pantry, where the light ducts cast the same sepia effect found outside. In this light, it could be difficult to tell one flavor from another (without actually reading the package) and more than once had this led to surprise food combinations at breakfast or dinner.
But Sarah didn’t bother with the switch by the door, and with purposeful manner she planted the stool in the far corner and stepped up to balance on the highest tread. Even then, Sarah had to stretch, feeling around on the top shelf for a few moments. Avery was enthralled. Something had gotten into mom, but the child couldn’t determine what. Was there some emergency? No. Avery had seen her mother spring into swift action, with the stern-faced adrenaline of crisis. This was not that kind of urgency. Was mom going to show her a new game? No. This was a little bit like play, but to purposeful (and mom had said, “Work to do.”) This was something in between. A kind of happy emergency, perhaps. Something like that.
“Ah-ha!” Sarah retrieved a small package from the dark recess of the back of the shelf and handed it down to Avery. “These are just the thing.”
Avery held the box reverently, having no idea what it could be, but sensing great importance in the treasure hidden away and revealed in such mystery. Her respectful poise, in contrast with her tousled hair, drew another giggle from her mother, now back at pantry-floor level.
“Ok. Come on.” Sarah left the stepstool where it was and headed back upstairs.
In the kitchen, Sarah had Avery place the package on the table. It was a coarse cloth bag, perhaps large enough to hold a pair of shoes, thought Avery, or maybe only a single shoe. From this bag Sarah withdrew a small box. The box itself was plastic but appeared to be sealed with something. Avery watched as her mom began scraping it away with a small knife.
“It’s wax.” Sarah explained. “These have to be kept absolutely dry. We expose the open box to the sun for a little while, then close it up and seal it to make sure there is no moisture at all. They can last many years that way.”
For Avery, the explanation created more questions than it answered. She remained silent, though, enthralled by the process unfolding in the kitchen. Elsewhere in the house, games were waiting patiently to be played. There were things to read, and sounds to listen to, recordings of far-away breezes and crashing oceans. There were colors which could be moved about with little sticks, inviting the creative genius of the child mind. Downstairs, Avery had a collection of faceless dolls that only came to life in her hands. There were puzzles that changed patterns in weird, wonderful ways, and brainteasers that looked easy when they were not. Avery had a tree of lights in her playroom, with spectacular pulses dancing to the rhythm of centuries-old compositions, or flickering with new whimsical music one could make up on the spot. All of the voices that whisper the language of life into the growing mind of a child.
As Avery and her mother sat together at the kitchen table, there were yet races to run in the deep basement, and bicycles to ride through simulated landscapes. Avery could flip through images of faraway places, sometimes to tell made-up stories about them and the history she imagined must have created them. On most days, either Avery or a friend would make the brief, intense trek between homes, and they would play or have schooling, depending on the calendar. Hidden under her bed, Avery had a box of jewelry (which she thought was secret) and every so often she would open it up to remind herself of the times and places tied irrevocably to each bauble. There were so many things to do in the house, so much to draw a child’s attention, all forgotten in the moment of wonder at this small, simple box of glorious mystery on the kitchen table.
It was open now. The inside of the box smelled like starlight, rust, parchment and time. Sarah gently lifted the lid, revealing neatly placed rows of small envelopes. There were lots of them. Avery wanted to dump them all out, to read the labels, and figure out the pictures that were printed on each. However, the process was to be drawn out in a fashion more deliberate than all that. Sarah flicked through them with her thin fingertips for a few moments and, pulling one tiny packet from the bunch, handed it to Avery. “Do you know what this is?”
Avery looked it over. She could read the label, and the faded picture was clearly some kind of plant. Avery had seen other pictures of plants, of course, but she was having a very difficult time rationalizing what she knew about them with this little paper packet. Avery could feel the slight bulge of some lumpy contents, and a small shake elicited a dry rustling from inside – a fairy voice from a forgotten novel. She looked up at her mom, and asked, “Is this made from a plant?”
Sarah stifled a sob; her eyes began to tear up. “Radishes, honey.” She sniffed. “They’re seeds, baby girl. We are going to plant them, and if we’re lucky those ones will become radishes.”
****
The clouds were beginning to show in the sky over the hot, arid August morning. By afternoon, they were gone, but the brief spectacle of atmospheric moisture was the expected omen. Like fluffy trumpets, the herald angels of an impending climatic miracle. The pocket was coming, and soon. Mother and daughter watched the patterns developing, hoping to get the timing right. Avery claimed she remembered rain, once. Sarah doubted that she actually did. The girl had only been three back then, and it was a single, brief downpour. The temperature had not even changed, really. It had been well in the dangerous range of heat, foggy for a few minutes, and humid for several hours afterward. Just because Avery talked about how awful that part was didn’t mean she remembered it. She’d certainly heard others talking about it since, creating the memory she didn’t really have. But this – this was going to be different.
The evening before the pocket, Sarah led Avery out to the north side of the vestibule. “This spot will give our garden enough shade to keep it from drying out too fast,” she explained. “Even so, we will need to put some cloth down, and a cover after the pocket, to keep them going as long as possible.”
After the sun was completely down, a breeze started up. It was a cool breeze – another tell of the pocket’s onset, and a phenomenon completely novel to the child. Sarah and Avery removed their sun cloaks and began to dig. They turned the soil and prepared rows for the seeds. In other places, they prepared small mounds for those they had pre-germinated. They place small markers to identify which crops were in each tiny patch. Then Sarah unfolded a large cover, painstakingly pieced together from burlap sacks she’d saved from the bulk dry-goods delivered to the resource hub. This cover they laid carefully over the entire garden area, with stakes and rocks to hold it in place. But no seeds yet.
In the morning, Avery awoke to her mother’s gentle prodding. “Let’s go outside.” Sarah turned and walked out of the room. Avery could hear an odd sort of rushing murmur in the distance. In her sleepy mind, she wondered idly what the sound could be, while in her waking heart she could feel the pounding footsteps of ancient ancestors, running free in forests and green fields, buzzing with life. She rubbed her eyes, got out of bed, and a few minutes later met her mom in the vestibule. The girl reached for her sun cloak. “You won’t need that.” Sarah said, smiling. Avery was startled, but faithfully followed mom out the door.
It was raining. It was cold (by Avery’s standards), and the world smelled funny. They walked a few steps into the rain, and stopped there, a few yards from the front door. They both just stood there, as though the world had just now presented itself for their first scrutiny. Standing, together in the rain. Avery looked up, blinked her eyes. She reached her hand into her hair, now soaked by the cool, soft drops, and pushed it behind her ear. She turned her small, thin face up at Sarah, who pointed. Avery looked, to see that neighbors, down the street as far as she could see, were doing the same. Some were looking around, some were laughing, some were now hugging each other. Small children looked afraid, clinging to the legs of their parents.
Older people had gathered cups, tubs and even wheelbarrows, to capture some of the free water. A few seemed to be crying – in pain or joy – but the tears were masked by the flow of water coming in buckets from the dark, fluffy heavens. Avery turned back to her mother and started a squeal of joy that quickly resolved itself to a wordless song, and the dancing began.
Children ran between houses, while parents walked casually down the lane. Some had never seen each other’s faces, and all greetings became happy introductions. Rivulets formed along paths and between houses, so the children responded by jumping across – back and forth, forth and back. A few were seen standing with arms and mouth wide, catching raindrops on tongues dry from years of oppressive futility, and smacking lips whose cracks were healing moment-by-moment. Sarah saw a little boy stop in a mud puddle and wondered how he knew to do it. It took several hours for the initial bout of frolicking to die down enough for Sarah to divert Avery’s attention to the garden. The pocket itself was expected to last two full weeks. There would be plenty of time to play later, after the work was done.
They planted seeds of several kinds. Sarah would pick a spot and poke a hole in the burlap with the slim blade of a long knife. Avery would follow behind, dropping seeds in the holes, following the labels they had set the night before. They planted green lettuce, bok choy, spinach and arugula. There were cress, sunflowers, and beans, which would be harvested as sprouts. Bulb greens of chives, green onions, and scallions. They planted an entire section of herbs – fennel, dill, oregano, chervil, mint, coriander, chives, parsley and basil – some of which might be ripe enough to harvest when the time came. And, of course, the radishes. In a time and place where all vegetables were dried, canned, processed into extracts or made into other things, Avery had been looking forward to these the most.
Her mother had described radishes to her a week ago in the kitchen. “They’re like water, honey,” she’d said, “only round, crunchy, and ruby red. Bright white on the inside, too, like a small light in a dark room. They don’t have a flavor, so they go with anything or everything. But also, they do have flavor. They taste like the fondest memories of loved ones and happiness.” After a pause, she added, “My mother showed me how to grow them, long ago, just like we’re going to do.” Avery was all-in for the radishes.
Once all of the other seeds had been placed into the ground, Sarah held her hand out to the rain for a few moments, rinsing her muddy palms. Then she retrieved something from her pocket, and held it out to the girl. “One more thing to plant, Avery.” In her hand was a small jar with what appeared to be a wadded-up scrap of cloth. “These are nasturtiums.” Sarah smiled at her daughter’s quizzical expression. “They’re a type of flower, honey.”
Avery looked at them in awe. “Flowers?” she asked, “we have flowers?”
“My mother gave me the seeds,” Sarah explained, “quite a lot of them, actually. Every year, I take a few out, and I get them wet. Yes, I know, we are not permitted to use house water on plants, but this is only a few drops. I do this because some seeds take a long time to germinate – err, to get ready to sprout. During a pocket, there is just no time, and we would never, ever have these if they weren’t prepared. So, every year, I take out a small number of seeds, start them with a tiny bit of water, put them in the refrigerator and wait. Most years, their time runs out and I must throw them away.” Sad notes hung in the damp air as the two women kneeled together by the garden, as if in melancholy prayer for the lost souls of the nasturtiums who had never made it. But Sarah continued. “This year,” she said, “we have a pocket. These seeds are ready, and I think the timing is right – they have a chance!”
With that, she poked the planting knife through the burlap, and dropped a seed through the hole, into the dark, warm, welcoming soil beneath. They took turns, planning the seven seeds in silence. Avery looked up at her mom, and started to speak, then stopped. Sarah understood instantly. “You’re done. Run play! Go see the neighbors, with no sun gear! Enjoy it while it lasts!”
Two weeks to play in the rain. Two weeks for the water from above to bathe the tiny sprouting vegetables. Allowing for another week or two of growth after, Sarah felt that there would indeed be a small harvest before the soil hardened to cracked concrete under the merciless sun and plants became impossible once more.
***
The pocket broke on a Sunday. Avery didn’t notice the irony of “Sun” for a “sunny” day, but she was astonished when the clouds parted to reveal a crystal clear, deep blue sky. Yes, the temperature was already rising, but the clean air, the dust-free lanes between the shining domes of the residential vestibules which dotted the community, the sparkle of the rooftops that could be seen on the resource hub and civic buildings in the distance – all of this was a new, uncharted world to Avery. She wondered: How long it would stay like this? Would the skies return to their normal brown color? Or would they stay this disconcerting shade of blue? Would this thing happen again? Another pocket – maybe this year? Further reflection was cut short by her mother’s low voice. “Come on,” she said, eying the retreating clouds. “We have work to do.”
Sarah led Avery to a trap door leading to one of the out-basements. Near the bottom of the stairs, Sarah had staged a largish roll of white plastic, and a stack of longish tubes. Avery’s questions regarding their purpose were answered when she and her mother began assembling them at the garden. They used these things to construct a pair of tents covering the garden plot, whose tiny plants were just beginning to break the surface.
“We won’t be able to go inside these for more than a few minutes once it warms up,” Sarah said. “It will be extremely hot and humid, at least for a week or two. Then it will just be hot, the whatever’s left in here will be dead. I’ll keep an eye on it, and harvest just before that happens.”
Avery had already turned away to gaze at the purple mountains in the distance. “Mom…?” she asked, “what is that?”
The girl was pointing to an area of the plain some distance from the community. It was a patch of green, amid the dark sea of mud that was already starting to bake into the familiar tawny shade of the surrounding flats.
Sarah smiled. “I’d forgotten about this part. Or perhaps I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I don’t know.“ (Pause.) “Those are plants, honey. Keep an eye on them over the next few days.” She smiled and headed inside.
***
Early one morning, Avery awoke to her mother’s gentle prodding. “Let’s go outside.” Sarah turned and walked out of the room. The little girl rubbed her eyes for a few moments before she realized what must be going on. She got out of bed, and a few minutes later met her mom in the vestibule. Mother and daughter ventured out into the pre-dawn darkness, with flashlights and baskets. The soil that had been turned to mud during the pocket was now very dry, crunchy, and peeling up at the edges between cracks. Together they lifted the row covers from the garden.
They were met by a lush patch of green leaves, happily growing from the carefully curated oasis in the desolate ground of the community. Sarah and Avery harvested the greens, the bulbs, the sprouts, herbs and the much-anticipated radishes. Nearly everything seemed far enough along to eat. At the far end, amidst a small array of round, green leaves, were a few pale-yellow buds. The nasturtiums were just starting to open, revealing the deep orange flowers that were coming into being.
“Do we pick them?” Avery asked.
Sarah paused in consideration. “Well,” she said, “we have a choice to make.” Avery, cued into her mother’s contemplative tone, let a moment pass with no interruption. Sarah continued. “We could pick the nasturtiums now, and they would probably finish blooming in the house. We could even eat them.”
“Wait, you can eat these?”
Sarah laughed, “Yes, we can. However, there would be no seeds to replace the ones we planted.”
Avery was visibly trying to work out the importance of this. “Seeds… to grow more? You have more seeds, right?”
Sarah smiled, with a touch of sadness. “Yes, I do. However, once those are gone, there will be no more in this house. The line will be gone, and we will probably never see anything like them again. If we leave these plants here, the flowers may develop long enough for seeds to mature. Of course, they will dry out very soon in the heat. But if we put the cover back on, there’s a chance that the seeds will survive, even as the flowers are dying. Then we could dry them and store them for another year.”
Avery had been eyeballing the plants. “How come there are only five?”
Sarah hadn’t noticed, but her daughter was right: only five of the seven they had planted had grown. “Well,” she explained, “not all of the seeds will grow. You plant them, and some make it. Others just don’t. That’s why the plants have so many – so there will be a better chance for new plants to start from their seeds.”
Avery nodded, still thoughtful. “How many seeds are in each flower?”
“Mmm… three or four, I think.”
“So,” Avery had obviously come to a conclusion, and now offered a plan. “How about this: We cut one plant, and we’ll have the flowers from that. The other four plants all have several flowers on them, so there should be…” (wheels turning) “I don’t know, but a lot of seeds!”
“I see at least four flowers on some of the plants, and that one has six.” Sarah walked through the arithmetic out loud, for emphasis. “That means there are more than sixty seeds to come, if there are any at all, probably more. Would you like some flowers?” Avery nodded vigorously; Sarah continued. “I say we pick two plants, and we can each have a bouquet.”
“A what?”
Sarah laughed. “A handful of flowers, in a vase. You’ve seen pictures.”
They continued laughing lightly as they replaced the row covers, and the eastern horizon began to glow.
The two women were carrying the baskets back to the house, when Avery spotted the color off in the distance. Sarah saw it, too, and paused, turning to her daughter. “Do you know what that is, Avery?”
Avery stared in the warm twilight air, straining to see detail, but could only make out some areas of purple and a few yellow blotches. “The green patches – are those flowers, too?”
“Wildflowers, honey.” Sarah sat down on the ground, gesturing to Avery. “The seeds stay in the ground, waiting – sometimes for years. Just waiting for Spring.”
Nov 28 2022
Pocket Spring
The weather service had predicted a pocket. It was the first in several years, and in Sarah’s eye, every dome in the community seemed to tremble in electric anticipation. Deep down she knew that the shimmering was just the usual mirage effects of hot air rising carelessly from baked soil and dusty roadway, but still it was hard not to think that the dry, drab caps of the subterranean homes were excited for what was to come. Leaning her elbows on the thick casement of the dark, polarized vestibule window, Sarah craned her neck to peer at the sky for any sign of cloud. Nothing but the usual pale haze of atmospheric dust and traces of smoke from distant fires, through which the sun cast its yellow-stained rays on the golden mountains in the distance. The view resembled the tone of some ancient photograph out of a bygone era, Sarah mused. An era when there were real seasons, a regular living cycle. But now one could only hope for the occasional pocket.
“Avery!” Sarah called, “You and I have a little work to do.”
“Work?” The seven-year-old appeared at the bottom of the stairs, curiosity in her small, dark eyes.
“Yes. And you know what?” Sarah descended a few steps down from the vestibule floor, paused for effect, then crouched, leaning forward a little, and whispered, “You might even get to play outside!”
“Outside?” Avery was clearly confused. “In the daytime?” Her mother nodded. “Why would I want to do that?” Her brows were furled in concern.
Sarah was laughing now. “Outside! You’ll see. But first we have a few things to take care of.”
Sarah’s laughter faded as took on the calm, composed bearing of a mother who had set about carefully orchestrating a miracle for her child. She descended the rest of the stairs and, grabbing a stepstool from the kitchen, she headed down one more level. Avery followed silently as her mother led the way into the pantry, where the light ducts cast the same sepia effect found outside. In this light, it could be difficult to tell one flavor from another (without actually reading the package) and more than once had this led to surprise food combinations at breakfast or dinner.
But Sarah didn’t bother with the switch by the door, and with purposeful manner she planted the stool in the far corner and stepped up to balance on the highest tread. Even then, Sarah had to stretch, feeling around on the top shelf for a few moments. Avery was enthralled. Something had gotten into mom, but the child couldn’t determine what. Was there some emergency? No. Avery had seen her mother spring into swift action, with the stern-faced adrenaline of crisis. This was not that kind of urgency. Was mom going to show her a new game? No. This was a little bit like play, but to purposeful (and mom had said, “Work to do.”) This was something in between. A kind of happy emergency, perhaps. Something like that.
“Ah-ha!” Sarah retrieved a small package from the dark recess of the back of the shelf and handed it down to Avery. “These are just the thing.”
Avery held the box reverently, having no idea what it could be, but sensing great importance in the treasure hidden away and revealed in such mystery. Her respectful poise, in contrast with her tousled hair, drew another giggle from her mother, now back at pantry-floor level.
“Ok. Come on.” Sarah left the stepstool where it was and headed back upstairs.
In the kitchen, Sarah had Avery place the package on the table. It was a coarse cloth bag, perhaps large enough to hold a pair of shoes, thought Avery, or maybe only a single shoe. From this bag Sarah withdrew a small box. The box itself was plastic but appeared to be sealed with something. Avery watched as her mom began scraping it away with a small knife.
“It’s wax.” Sarah explained. “These have to be kept absolutely dry. We expose the open box to the sun for a little while, then close it up and seal it to make sure there is no moisture at all. They can last many years that way.”
For Avery, the explanation created more questions than it answered. She remained silent, though, enthralled by the process unfolding in the kitchen. Elsewhere in the house, games were waiting patiently to be played. There were things to read, and sounds to listen to, recordings of far-away breezes and crashing oceans. There were colors which could be moved about with little sticks, inviting the creative genius of the child mind. Downstairs, Avery had a collection of faceless dolls that only came to life in her hands. There were puzzles that changed patterns in weird, wonderful ways, and brainteasers that looked easy when they were not. Avery had a tree of lights in her playroom, with spectacular pulses dancing to the rhythm of centuries-old compositions, or flickering with new whimsical music one could make up on the spot. All of the voices that whisper the language of life into the growing mind of a child.
As Avery and her mother sat together at the kitchen table, there were yet races to run in the deep basement, and bicycles to ride through simulated landscapes. Avery could flip through images of faraway places, sometimes to tell made-up stories about them and the history she imagined must have created them. On most days, either Avery or a friend would make the brief, intense trek between homes, and they would play or have schooling, depending on the calendar. Hidden under her bed, Avery had a box of jewelry (which she thought was secret) and every so often she would open it up to remind herself of the times and places tied irrevocably to each bauble. There were so many things to do in the house, so much to draw a child’s attention, all forgotten in the moment of wonder at this small, simple box of glorious mystery on the kitchen table.
It was open now. The inside of the box smelled like starlight, rust, parchment and time. Sarah gently lifted the lid, revealing neatly placed rows of small envelopes. There were lots of them. Avery wanted to dump them all out, to read the labels, and figure out the pictures that were printed on each. However, the process was to be drawn out in a fashion more deliberate than all that. Sarah flicked through them with her thin fingertips for a few moments and, pulling one tiny packet from the bunch, handed it to Avery. “Do you know what this is?”
Avery looked it over. She could read the label, and the faded picture was clearly some kind of plant. Avery had seen other pictures of plants, of course, but she was having a very difficult time rationalizing what she knew about them with this little paper packet. Avery could feel the slight bulge of some lumpy contents, and a small shake elicited a dry rustling from inside – a fairy voice from a forgotten novel. She looked up at her mom, and asked, “Is this made from a plant?”
Sarah stifled a sob; her eyes began to tear up. “Radishes, honey.” She sniffed. “They’re seeds, baby girl. We are going to plant them, and if we’re lucky those ones will become radishes.”
****
The clouds were beginning to show in the sky over the hot, arid August morning. By afternoon, they were gone, but the brief spectacle of atmospheric moisture was the expected omen. Like fluffy trumpets, the herald angels of an impending climatic miracle. The pocket was coming, and soon. Mother and daughter watched the patterns developing, hoping to get the timing right. Avery claimed she remembered rain, once. Sarah doubted that she actually did. The girl had only been three back then, and it was a single, brief downpour. The temperature had not even changed, really. It had been well in the dangerous range of heat, foggy for a few minutes, and humid for several hours afterward. Just because Avery talked about how awful that part was didn’t mean she remembered it. She’d certainly heard others talking about it since, creating the memory she didn’t really have. But this – this was going to be different.
The evening before the pocket, Sarah led Avery out to the north side of the vestibule. “This spot will give our garden enough shade to keep it from drying out too fast,” she explained. “Even so, we will need to put some cloth down, and a cover after the pocket, to keep them going as long as possible.”
After the sun was completely down, a breeze started up. It was a cool breeze – another tell of the pocket’s onset, and a phenomenon completely novel to the child. Sarah and Avery removed their sun cloaks and began to dig. They turned the soil and prepared rows for the seeds. In other places, they prepared small mounds for those they had pre-germinated. They place small markers to identify which crops were in each tiny patch. Then Sarah unfolded a large cover, painstakingly pieced together from burlap sacks she’d saved from the bulk dry-goods delivered to the resource hub. This cover they laid carefully over the entire garden area, with stakes and rocks to hold it in place. But no seeds yet.
In the morning, Avery awoke to her mother’s gentle prodding. “Let’s go outside.” Sarah turned and walked out of the room. Avery could hear an odd sort of rushing murmur in the distance. In her sleepy mind, she wondered idly what the sound could be, while in her waking heart she could feel the pounding footsteps of ancient ancestors, running free in forests and green fields, buzzing with life. She rubbed her eyes, got out of bed, and a few minutes later met her mom in the vestibule. The girl reached for her sun cloak. “You won’t need that.” Sarah said, smiling. Avery was startled, but faithfully followed mom out the door.
It was raining. It was cold (by Avery’s standards), and the world smelled funny. They walked a few steps into the rain, and stopped there, a few yards from the front door. They both just stood there, as though the world had just now presented itself for their first scrutiny. Standing, together in the rain. Avery looked up, blinked her eyes. She reached her hand into her hair, now soaked by the cool, soft drops, and pushed it behind her ear. She turned her small, thin face up at Sarah, who pointed. Avery looked, to see that neighbors, down the street as far as she could see, were doing the same. Some were looking around, some were laughing, some were now hugging each other. Small children looked afraid, clinging to the legs of their parents.
Older people had gathered cups, tubs and even wheelbarrows, to capture some of the free water. A few seemed to be crying – in pain or joy – but the tears were masked by the flow of water coming in buckets from the dark, fluffy heavens. Avery turned back to her mother and started a squeal of joy that quickly resolved itself to a wordless song, and the dancing began.
Children ran between houses, while parents walked casually down the lane. Some had never seen each other’s faces, and all greetings became happy introductions. Rivulets formed along paths and between houses, so the children responded by jumping across – back and forth, forth and back. A few were seen standing with arms and mouth wide, catching raindrops on tongues dry from years of oppressive futility, and smacking lips whose cracks were healing moment-by-moment. Sarah saw a little boy stop in a mud puddle and wondered how he knew to do it. It took several hours for the initial bout of frolicking to die down enough for Sarah to divert Avery’s attention to the garden. The pocket itself was expected to last two full weeks. There would be plenty of time to play later, after the work was done.
They planted seeds of several kinds. Sarah would pick a spot and poke a hole in the burlap with the slim blade of a long knife. Avery would follow behind, dropping seeds in the holes, following the labels they had set the night before. They planted green lettuce, bok choy, spinach and arugula. There were cress, sunflowers, and beans, which would be harvested as sprouts. Bulb greens of chives, green onions, and scallions. They planted an entire section of herbs – fennel, dill, oregano, chervil, mint, coriander, chives, parsley and basil – some of which might be ripe enough to harvest when the time came. And, of course, the radishes. In a time and place where all vegetables were dried, canned, processed into extracts or made into other things, Avery had been looking forward to these the most.
Her mother had described radishes to her a week ago in the kitchen. “They’re like water, honey,” she’d said, “only round, crunchy, and ruby red. Bright white on the inside, too, like a small light in a dark room. They don’t have a flavor, so they go with anything or everything. But also, they do have flavor. They taste like the fondest memories of loved ones and happiness.” After a pause, she added, “My mother showed me how to grow them, long ago, just like we’re going to do.” Avery was all-in for the radishes.
Once all of the other seeds had been placed into the ground, Sarah held her hand out to the rain for a few moments, rinsing her muddy palms. Then she retrieved something from her pocket, and held it out to the girl. “One more thing to plant, Avery.” In her hand was a small jar with what appeared to be a wadded-up scrap of cloth. “These are nasturtiums.” Sarah smiled at her daughter’s quizzical expression. “They’re a type of flower, honey.”
Avery looked at them in awe. “Flowers?” she asked, “we have flowers?”
“My mother gave me the seeds,” Sarah explained, “quite a lot of them, actually. Every year, I take a few out, and I get them wet. Yes, I know, we are not permitted to use house water on plants, but this is only a few drops. I do this because some seeds take a long time to germinate – err, to get ready to sprout. During a pocket, there is just no time, and we would never, ever have these if they weren’t prepared. So, every year, I take out a small number of seeds, start them with a tiny bit of water, put them in the refrigerator and wait. Most years, their time runs out and I must throw them away.” Sad notes hung in the damp air as the two women kneeled together by the garden, as if in melancholy prayer for the lost souls of the nasturtiums who had never made it. But Sarah continued. “This year,” she said, “we have a pocket. These seeds are ready, and I think the timing is right – they have a chance!”
With that, she poked the planting knife through the burlap, and dropped a seed through the hole, into the dark, warm, welcoming soil beneath. They took turns, planning the seven seeds in silence. Avery looked up at her mom, and started to speak, then stopped. Sarah understood instantly. “You’re done. Run play! Go see the neighbors, with no sun gear! Enjoy it while it lasts!”
Two weeks to play in the rain. Two weeks for the water from above to bathe the tiny sprouting vegetables. Allowing for another week or two of growth after, Sarah felt that there would indeed be a small harvest before the soil hardened to cracked concrete under the merciless sun and plants became impossible once more.
***
The pocket broke on a Sunday. Avery didn’t notice the irony of “Sun” for a “sunny” day, but she was astonished when the clouds parted to reveal a crystal clear, deep blue sky. Yes, the temperature was already rising, but the clean air, the dust-free lanes between the shining domes of the residential vestibules which dotted the community, the sparkle of the rooftops that could be seen on the resource hub and civic buildings in the distance – all of this was a new, uncharted world to Avery. She wondered: How long it would stay like this? Would the skies return to their normal brown color? Or would they stay this disconcerting shade of blue? Would this thing happen again? Another pocket – maybe this year? Further reflection was cut short by her mother’s low voice. “Come on,” she said, eying the retreating clouds. “We have work to do.”
Sarah led Avery to a trap door leading to one of the out-basements. Near the bottom of the stairs, Sarah had staged a largish roll of white plastic, and a stack of longish tubes. Avery’s questions regarding their purpose were answered when she and her mother began assembling them at the garden. They used these things to construct a pair of tents covering the garden plot, whose tiny plants were just beginning to break the surface.
“We won’t be able to go inside these for more than a few minutes once it warms up,” Sarah said. “It will be extremely hot and humid, at least for a week or two. Then it will just be hot, the whatever’s left in here will be dead. I’ll keep an eye on it, and harvest just before that happens.”
Avery had already turned away to gaze at the purple mountains in the distance. “Mom…?” she asked, “what is that?”
The girl was pointing to an area of the plain some distance from the community. It was a patch of green, amid the dark sea of mud that was already starting to bake into the familiar tawny shade of the surrounding flats.
Sarah smiled. “I’d forgotten about this part. Or perhaps I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I don’t know.“ (Pause.) “Those are plants, honey. Keep an eye on them over the next few days.” She smiled and headed inside.
***
Early one morning, Avery awoke to her mother’s gentle prodding. “Let’s go outside.” Sarah turned and walked out of the room. The little girl rubbed her eyes for a few moments before she realized what must be going on. She got out of bed, and a few minutes later met her mom in the vestibule. Mother and daughter ventured out into the pre-dawn darkness, with flashlights and baskets. The soil that had been turned to mud during the pocket was now very dry, crunchy, and peeling up at the edges between cracks. Together they lifted the row covers from the garden.
They were met by a lush patch of green leaves, happily growing from the carefully curated oasis in the desolate ground of the community. Sarah and Avery harvested the greens, the bulbs, the sprouts, herbs and the much-anticipated radishes. Nearly everything seemed far enough along to eat. At the far end, amidst a small array of round, green leaves, were a few pale-yellow buds. The nasturtiums were just starting to open, revealing the deep orange flowers that were coming into being.
“Do we pick them?” Avery asked.
Sarah paused in consideration. “Well,” she said, “we have a choice to make.” Avery, cued into her mother’s contemplative tone, let a moment pass with no interruption. Sarah continued. “We could pick the nasturtiums now, and they would probably finish blooming in the house. We could even eat them.”
“Wait, you can eat these?”
Sarah laughed, “Yes, we can. However, there would be no seeds to replace the ones we planted.”
Avery was visibly trying to work out the importance of this. “Seeds… to grow more? You have more seeds, right?”
Sarah smiled, with a touch of sadness. “Yes, I do. However, once those are gone, there will be no more in this house. The line will be gone, and we will probably never see anything like them again. If we leave these plants here, the flowers may develop long enough for seeds to mature. Of course, they will dry out very soon in the heat. But if we put the cover back on, there’s a chance that the seeds will survive, even as the flowers are dying. Then we could dry them and store them for another year.”
Avery had been eyeballing the plants. “How come there are only five?”
Sarah hadn’t noticed, but her daughter was right: only five of the seven they had planted had grown. “Well,” she explained, “not all of the seeds will grow. You plant them, and some make it. Others just don’t. That’s why the plants have so many – so there will be a better chance for new plants to start from their seeds.”
Avery nodded, still thoughtful. “How many seeds are in each flower?”
“Mmm… three or four, I think.”
“So,” Avery had obviously come to a conclusion, and now offered a plan. “How about this: We cut one plant, and we’ll have the flowers from that. The other four plants all have several flowers on them, so there should be…” (wheels turning) “I don’t know, but a lot of seeds!”
“I see at least four flowers on some of the plants, and that one has six.” Sarah walked through the arithmetic out loud, for emphasis. “That means there are more than sixty seeds to come, if there are any at all, probably more. Would you like some flowers?” Avery nodded vigorously; Sarah continued. “I say we pick two plants, and we can each have a bouquet.”
“A what?”
Sarah laughed. “A handful of flowers, in a vase. You’ve seen pictures.”
They continued laughing lightly as they replaced the row covers, and the eastern horizon began to glow.
The two women were carrying the baskets back to the house, when Avery spotted the color off in the distance. Sarah saw it, too, and paused, turning to her daughter. “Do you know what that is, Avery?”
Avery stared in the warm twilight air, straining to see detail, but could only make out some areas of purple and a few yellow blotches. “The green patches – are those flowers, too?”
“Wildflowers, honey.” Sarah sat down on the ground, gesturing to Avery. “The seeds stay in the ground, waiting – sometimes for years. Just waiting for Spring.”
By Kelly Boston • Fiction, Stories 0