Chapter 12: THE SEED SOWER
by Shireen Jeejeebhoy
The room lightens as the sun rises in the east, awakening her. She’s getting used to the semi-darkness that the artificial light outside creates in her bedroom even in the deepest hours of the night. She hasn’t pulled the blind down since that first night. She wants to see the sun when it rises, like at home.
Aban’s muscles are sore in unexpected places from yesterday’s long walk in that...in that...what did he call it? She mentally shrugs. A deep, leafy pit. Oh yeah, he called it the backbone of Toronto, whatever that means. Not her woods anyway. The memory of her place brings with it the memory of her parents’ yoga sessions. She sits up abruptly without the aid of her hands, swings her legs over the sheets twisted on the edge of the bed, stands, and pads to the window. She lets her eyes drift to the sky, but the ground pulls her gaze inexorably down.
El is there, his back to her, sitting on the ground, meditating, like her parents. Her mouth distorts, and then she sweeps her mind free. Her mouth straightens back to neutral, and Aban simply looks at El.
And she sees that El is not in the lotus position.
He’s sitting on his knees, arms upraised, head up. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t sway. He is still. She watches for awhile, crosses her arms, scratches one leg with the other foot, until the call of the bathroom is too much for her to ignore.
Dressed in a grey T-shirt proclaiming “I Have the Power” and a fresh pair of khaki pants, she goes back to the window. El’s arms are down and out of her line of sight; his head is bowed. Shrugging, she makes her way down the dark stairs to the second floor. Opening the stairway door, she blinks at the sun streaming in through the uncovered living room windows across the large room at the front of the house and right into the hall. Attracted by the light, she walks into the room and crosses to one of the windows. She looks down at the cars passing by. She hears the labour of a big engine as it accelerates to her right, out of her sight. Her stomach rumbles. She looks around the empty room. Well, not totally empty. In the far corner, next to the other front window is a single green-fabric covered chair with a semi-circular back and four stick metal legs splayed out underneath. Beside it sits a tiny round silver-metal table with a flaring pedestal leg. A large round what-looks-like-a-paper-ball hangs over the table from a thin metal arm sticking out from a tall pole. That’s it? She turns slowly around three hundred and sixty degress to see if she missed anything. She didn't. She walks over to the ball and touches it. It swings gently, and she notices the lamp cord that snakes out from its bottom to a plug behind it.
Mom would have a lot to say about this.
Aban is glad she isn’t here.
She stares at the chair, and that lawyer’s words return to her – or was it El who said them, about how Grandma said she wanted Aban to get her own furniture. But...she’s never bought furniture. Aban hoofs it out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen, her sneakered feet squeaking on the wooden floor.
She stops in her kitchen doorway, heart pumping.
How will she make breakfast?
She always has toast. But where’s the bread? How does she get it? Back home, Mom makes out the list; Mom drops her off at Bernie’s Grocers while she goes off to do whatever she does; Bernie helps her get everything on the list; and then Mom picks her up. Sometimes she gets Eddie the cabbie to drive her.
She looks at the tiny empty table against the narrow window with a black phone its only occupant.
She has no bread. What will she do?
She scans the rest of her kitchen and looks back at the table.
A loaf of bread is sitting on top of a round wooden plate on the tiny table. A bread knife lies next to it. Confusion screws up her face. Did she buy this and forget? No, it wasn’t there a moment ago. She knows it wasn't. Doesn’t she?
Aban rubs her eyes. The loaf is still sitting there. She stares at it long, without blinking, in case it goes poof. But it doesn’t. It continues to sit there. She rubs her eyes harder, then her face. She drags her hands down her cheeks, dragging down her lower eyelids. The loaf remains, though looking a little blurry. Aban drops her hands and steps slowly into her kitchen up to the table, up to where the loaf sits to look at it without expression. Lifting her head, she takes a few steps to the left, past the avocado-coloured fridge towards the dark faux-wood cabinets near the stove at the end. She randomly opens a cabinet door. Empty. She opens another, leaving the first door wide open. Empty. She yanks on the cabinet door near the fridge. A single plate lies there next to a single glass and a single mug. She grabs the plate, and leaving that cabinet door partially open as she had the other two, Aban grasps the knob of the drawer in front of her. Her eyes glaze over the honey-blond faux-wood counter as she struggles to open the humidity-soaked drawer. Mom’s kitchen works. She uses real wood. Mom's doors and drawers don’t stick, she grumbles as she grasps the knob harder and jerks it. The drawer screams out, and she stumbles backwards, almost dropping the plate. She automatically suppresses her frustration and steps back towards the counter to look in the drawer. It has one knife, one fork, one spoon, one teaspoon, a kind of small, flat knife, one pair of scissors, and a cutting knife. Everything is only in ones around here. Weird. She takes out the normal knife and carries the plate and knife to the table. Aban sets them down and looks around for the jam. It’s not in the cabinets; she frowns at the open doors. Mom would hate those. Why are they open? She shrugs, goes to close them, and then sees the pukey-coloured fridge. Maybe the jam is in there.
Aban grasps the fridge handle, but the door doesn’t open. She yanks at it, and she and the door fly to the left. Only her grasp on the handle keeps her upright. What kind of kitchen is this? Slower this time, but once again she automatically shoves her frustration down. She takes back her footing and pokes her head around the door.
A fresh litre of organic skim milk and a jar of jam await her. She grimaces at the skim, shuts the fridge door hard, and starts banging open and closed all the cabinet doors, all the stiff drawers, in search of the chicory Mom makes. Nothing. Only a jar of instant coffee and a box of Darjeeling tea. She returns to the fridge, takes out the jam, and heaving a sigh takes out the milk too.
Soon jam is on a slice of bread -- she’s too tired to look for a toaster -- and milk fills that single glass, and she’s eating. Finished, she dumps the plate and glass in the sink near the fridge, leaves the bread cut side to the air on the wooden plate, and leans over the table to look outside.
El is rising from his knees, easily, smoothly, without aid of hands or arms.
Spooky.
He’s been sitting on his knees all this time, yet he moves without stiffness. Mom and Dad can’t do that.
El disappears underneath her and reappears with a canvas bag slung over his left shoulder. He buries his hand in it and throws out something from it. She wonders what it is. She squints as he repeats the motion. It can’t be. It’s summer time, and the whole of Ontario’s in a drought. They won’t grow. There’s no water. Even Toronto has been put on water rationing, or so Mom said on Canada Day. Mom and Dad thought it was hilarious. Snooty Toronto having to live like the rest of Ontario.
He’s still at it though. He had begun from where he was sitting in the horizontal middle of the backyard, close to the small deck at the back door, and is now crossing from side to side moving to the back row of brown-tipped evergreens, throwing out seed from his satchel. His stupidity insults her.
She runs out her kitchen, down the stairs, jumping the last two steps, skids around the newel post, runs the length of the house, and bangs open the back door.
“What are you doing?” she yells at him as she leaps down the back deck steps.
El doesn’t pause.
His natural, swinging movement is his only answer. Birds land behind him and hop and peck the seed that lies where the grass has withered into the ground and the soil has been packed and hardened down near the deck.
“What are you doing, I said?”
El answers, “I’m sowing the garden.”
“That’s dumb. It’s too hot, and we’re in a drought, you know. Didn’t you hear you can’t use water for gardening?”
“True,” El says as he continues to spread the seed onto the packed soil and dead grass, onto the thriving weeds and patches of struggling grass.
“Everyone knows seeds don't grow in drought. You need the proper balance of light and water and the proper nourishment for them to grow. That's what Mom says. Now is the time to conserve. I use Mom’s special mixture of compost and manure with some peat moss to prepare the soil before I even plant anything. And that’s in the Spring. Also, with a lawn you hafta poke holes in the grass first before putting on a thin layer of top soil and organic fertilizer. Then you can throw seed on it. Mom says so.”
“Yes, everyone does it that way.”
“Well everyone knows what’s right. What makes you so different?”
El glances up at her with a friendly smile and continues throwing the seed out of his bag. He is off the packed soil and into the weeds now. And the seed thrown from his hand nestles in amongst the creeping charlie and clover that somehow have found water to remain green.
“Okay, this is stupid. Mom's been gardening for, like, a gazillion years, you know. I've been gardening my whole life. And this year we only planted on the two-four weekend, you know. It was useless after that, everyone saw that. First, we had, like, no snow, and you need snow for plants to, you know, like, grow. Crops -- seeds -- need snow 'cause the melting gives seeds enough water to grow. And then we got no rain for, like, months. If we planted anything, they’d've died, and the township told us, like, in June, we couldn’t use water to garden anymore, not even vegetables. Mom believes in natural plants, you know, plants that used to grow in Ontario, not those fussy imports like roses, but they didn’t do too well neither. Seeds aren’t going to grow now. Everyone knows that! Why do you think you’re so different? This is stupid,” she exclaims, stamping her foot on the last word.
“An abundance of words does not equal an abundance of wisdom.”
Aban almost screams, she’s so frustrated with his puzzling words. “What do you mean? You’re always talking in riddles and saying weird things. Can’t you just talk English already?”
El bends to throw a handful or three of seed amongst the fallen pine needles at the back fence. Then he straightens and goes to one side of the yard to ensure even the furthest edges have been seeded.
“Aren’t you listening to me? You have to stop! They won’t grow! It isn’t raining! You’re wasting seed, and the birds are eating them all!!”
“Not all, just the seed on the packed earth.”
Her mouth drops open, “You know that? So why’d you put seed there?”
“It is not enough to talk; it is not enough to feed with bread; and it is not enough to rely on human dogma.”
“Dogma?” Aban juts out her lower lip to send air up her forehead in exasperation. “Whatchya talking about? Can’t you use real words?”
“You have the power,” he says.
“Huh?”
He looks pointedly at her chest. Aban looks down and reads it too. Oh yeah, she’d forgotten she'd put on this shirt. She stares down at it while El returns to seeding the edges of the yard where the full heat of the sun never hits, where blades of grass struggle, their bottoms brown and their tips still green. Aban watches him, breathing heavily. Why can’t she get through to him? Why can’t she stop him? She's so uncomfortable. She doesn't like what he makes her f--
El replies, “Your grandmother tended this garden. After her death and the drought, the weeds took over, the grass withered, and the trees turned brown. A garden needs a gardener. Seeds and plants need someone to care for them even when all seems futile, when there is no water and no food. The gardener must plant in faith and wait for the growth.”
“I bet Grandma wouldn’t have been planting seed this summer.”
“Your grandmother was zealous for the vulnerable, the oppressed, the trusting, and those whose children faced the hardest hunger, the harshest conditions in which to grow. She would have been beside me, sowing the seed with me, her whole heart with them.”
“Well, that’s just stupid. Mom wouldn’t have. Mom understands Nature better. Yeah, I’m with Mom if Grandma was like that. She was always getting me to think wrong so I argued with Mom, you know. It’s stupid.”
El snaps, “The measure you give will be the measure you get. Nothing is stupid that is thought out beforehand and walks forward in the strength of those thoughts. But when you confuse good thoughts with bad, when you rationalize bad thinking into good, then your garden will die.”
“Well, I think your garden will die. You’re not growing anything from that seed. It's not gonna rain, you know. And it’s too hot here.”
“It isn’t raining -- now. But see the shelter the trees behind provide? See how they keep the sun off the grass when it is at its hottest? See that not all is brown? See the green here and there? There is water where you cannot see it. So do not worry about the future Aban, about what the weather will or will not do tomorrow. Be concerned only about today, of being the good gardener. For only the nations strive without ceasing, only the people who cannot see and cannot hear busy their minds with revolving thoughts, only those without questions have no thought for today and tomorrow.”
“Well, today is hot and sticky and there’s no water. And those seeds need water when you plant them, you know. They’re not, like, weeds. They suck nutrients from other plants. You can’t just get round that.”
“No. You’re right Aban,” El says as he crosses to the other side, the north side, where the weeds are and finishes seeding at the edge of the rickety peeling painted fence with its close-together vertical boards.
Aban stuffs her hands in her pockets and looks down at the ground where she’s standing, absent-mindedly scraping it with the toe of her shoe, dirtying her shoe more if possible. No matter what she says, it doesn’t seem to move him. It’s like he doesn’t care what she thinks. He doesn’t listen! She doesn’t see that he pauses and turns around to study her, that he draws his brows down and shakes his head sadly. She sees only what's under her feet: weeds and seeds. She stops her foot as she realizes what she’s scraping into the hard dirt. She feels bad for the seeds, not having a chance.
El lifts the bag off himself and turns it upside down to shake it out, ensuring every seed hits the ground and doesn’t stay in the canvas. He tucks it under his arm, rubs his hands together to clean off errant seed shells, walks back to the porch and the house, and pauses inside the door, holding it open for her. Aban follows reluctantly then brushes past him, her feet quickening, taking her upstairs and into her own living room, slamming the door behind her.