Something Rotten, Something Buried

Mike knows where to find me: out back behind my cabin, in the garden he helped me build. After I mentioned wanting to upgrade from in-ground gardening and showed him the galvanized tubs I picked out, he insisted on constructing above-ground wooden planters. He made one before abandoning the project.

The squash’s palmate leaves swallow my ankles as I stand in the berms—sneakers sinking into the loamy soil, machete in hand, sweat running into my eyes. I can only take my gaze off this for a moment. Behind the garden gnomes, he stands at a safe distance, holding two shopping bags, presumably stuffed with the toiletries—and other evidence of my life—I’d left over at his house.

“Your stuff is on the porch,” I shout over to him, and gesture up to the stuffed trash bag nestled into a rocking chair. The empty chair next to it rocks gently in the breeze, overlooking the backyard enclosed by evergreens and reddening maples, the garden, my fight with the living, thrashing vines.

I had packed all his things two weeks ago after the phone call. We both deserve better, he said. I told him I didn’t hate him, but couldn’t speak to him again. I needed no contact going forward, especially seeing as I couldn’t bring myself to hang up the phone—leading to an hour-long breakup in which I was embarrassingly vulnerable. After, I immediately rushed around the cabin, grabbing his toothbrush, tearing our pictures from the log walls, gathering the trinkets he’d gifted me from his trips abroad. Everything that reminded me of him got thrown into a trash bag, which got thrown into my closet.

Now, as I continue to hack into the writhing tendrils sprouting up from the soil faster than I can cut them down, Mike drops my belongings into the empty chair. Suddenly he appears at my side, holding something out to me. My key.

I reach out for it, distracted, not noticing the vines reaching out for me, curling under my gloves and around my wrist, until I’m hit with the sensation of my skin burning away at its touch. I yelp and Mike helps wrench me free. I need to take better protective measures—it’s getting worse, harder to fight.

I stake the weapon into the ground and we step away a few paces to where it won’t reach us. I finally turn my full attention to him, look into his eyes.

“Hi,” is all he says. So softly. And I melt.

Knowing he was coming over after I asked not to see him again, I had prepared a whole mental list of things I had unresolved anger over. An attempt to ensure I would stand my ground, maybe even tell him off if I felt bold enough. I didn’t expect him to open his arms to me. I didn’t expect myself to fall into them, to cry into his chest, to lose any footing I imagined I’d have. Once again seeking comfort in him for the hurt he’d caused me.

“I’m sorry. I’m an asshole,” he says into my hair, “I don’t like the way things ended. I want to make it up to you. I want to fix things.” He rubs circles into my back, and I revel in his words, what I’ve longed to hear for so long.

“Start by grabbing the shears,” I pull myself from him. “And glove up. Tuck your sleeves into them,” I say, rubbing the raw, acid-burned spot on my wrist, “This thing has gotten even nastier.”

*

Mike helps me fight back the vines, while apologizing, or rather, explaining himself. It’s easier to attack with two people. I’m not sure if I could’ve done it alone.

We slice and snip the tops off the vines, and they ooze white, pernicious sap. Limply, they flop to the ground, for a minute, before healing over the point of injury and pushing themselves back up.

“Change is difficult for me. You’ve been doing so much more lately. And have gotten so obsessed with your garden.” –Wasn’t it our garden?—, “The distance is hard, but I need to feel like a priority.”

While he speaks, his shearing slows. I wish he could wait until a calmer moment to dive into this. But we’re already in the thick of it, so I try to respond without losing speed.

“You are a priority.” Before, I would drop any plans I’d made just to see him; I texted him throughout the day when I thought of him, including unreciprocated good morning and goodnight texts; I was ready to drop my entire life to move in with him after we spent the last month together for the first time, as a trial run. Then the mental list pops up, of all things I’m still angry about—I push it down. I’m getting defensive. I shouldn’t invalidate his feelings. “I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel that way.”

“I make such an effort for you, and I don’t feel like it’s equal. You need to put in more effort.”

“I—ok. Sorry, I thought I did.” Regulate, don’t get defensive, listen. Ask neutrally and curiously, “What can I do to show you I care? What kind of efforts are you looking for?”

Thrash—slash—slice. I tear through the flashes of green, their false promises of death extending with each resurrection. My palms wear sore from gripping the knife.

“Why are you always asking me for specifics? If you really cared about me, you would just know.” He uses a familiar tone, one for scolding a child, “My needs change. I’m a human being, that’s how it works.”

I’m sweating, panting, trying so hard to push through.

“I—don’t know. I care. I want to be better. But I don’t know what to do. I try to listen to what you want, and change, which also ends up being wrong.”

“I’m always there for you when you’re upset,” –Are you sure?— “but you can never solve my problems. It feels like you don’t see or understand me.”

We finish quickly, which is good because my body turns heavy and I don’t have much strength left in my arms. You don’t see or understand me. I didn’t realize I had been so awful. I had made the person I loved more than anything, feel unloved.

We dig out the weed's root bulb—thick green cords wrapped around themselves into a monkey’s fist knot, covered in the buds of burgeoning tendrils that freeze once exposed to the air. It will stop. For now. But they keep coming back.

***

After waking up in Mike’s arms, after a prolonged goodbye kiss, I brew dandelion root tea to sip alongside one of the homemade cinnamon apple muffins I bought from the farmer’s market last weekend. They’re starting to stale. I have a bad habit of saving special treats for too long, letting them spoil before allowing myself to indulge.

Outside, my bags still occupy the rocking chair, but now the other one is empty. I don’t want to deal with it. Instead, I grab the hose, unrolling it out to the garden beds. Already, the vines sprouted back up, thorns protruding from their tough skin. It used to take weeks for them to grow back, then days. Worse, now they seem to sense me—wiggling excitedly as I walk nearer, then slowing to a halt as I step back.

Am I going crazy? This doesn’t feel natural. I’ve occasionally caught myself wondering if its more than some rapid-growing toxic weed—some monster lurking beneath my crops, a mass of tangled roots and burs and peat. Some evil creature who spawned from the decaying and decomposing organic material, who exists to leech the nutrients from my crops, withering them, stealing them from me.

No, no. It’s a simple garden, though it feels cursed with these growths. I fight much harder than should be required. But I do. I grab my machete, I duct tape my gloves to the sleeves of my jacket to ensure there are no gaps, I take a deep breath. I fight.

***

I wash my hands, then re-bandage them. The grazes on my forearms and thighs sting from the iodide. One day soon, maybe I’ll learn how to sew to repair the gashes in my clothes. This is starting to take up all my energy. I’m exhausted, the rest of today’s chores feel overwhelming.

But I must finish prepping the previous harvest. Especially since there may not be another. I’ve been slowly sacrificing bits of the garden, digging up the root bulbs wherever they pop up, unearthing the crops they were buried beneath. Plus, it’s nerve-wracking to imagine stepping into the center of the garden, putting myself in such a vulnerable position, unable to escape if the vines were to burst up all around me.

Usually, pumpkins are fun to prepare, ripe with memories of making jack-o-lanterns as a kid. But today, I can’t escape the stress. In the quiet, in the adrenaline crash after the morning’s chaos, all my thoughts come tumbling back. Why does my brain turn off around Mike? And how did I so instantly turn right back into an anxious, pleading, pathetic mess, asking how I can change myself into what he wants so he won’t leave again?

I stab the serrated knife into the thick rind and saw a circle around the twisted stem. I pull off the top and with it, a stringy clump of seeds and fibrous guts. With a butcher’s knife, I cut the pumpkin in half, then scoop out its insides.

I don’t like him blaming me for why he hurt me. I still haven’t even forgiven him for breaking my heart, for leaving me—let alone everything leading up to it. My rose-colored glasses fell off and I can’t put them back on. How am I supposed to trust him again? How am I supposed to feel safe and secure in our relationship? So super glad that he explained how it’s my fault, though.

I realize I’ve been mindlessly scrapping into the same, emptied spot. Deep through the orange flesh, aggressively digging into the rind again and again. I need to calm down. Focus.

I meticulously pick each seed from the sticky pulp pile, setting them aside for roasting. The pulp too, will be blended up and used for squash bread. Every part gets used. Flesh for canning, rinds for pickling—nothing wasted.

It’s satisfying, to care for the Earth and have it care for you in turn, to revere and honor its bounty. Yet, I don’t feel good about it. There’s still a heaviness, an emptiness, in my chest. This isn’t right. I don’t think I can forgive him. My love has been corrupted into something so ugly. I kind of hate him.

So leave. But I can’t. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to lose him—he’s been my best friend for years. I might not be ok without him. And everything is so crazy right now, my backyard could swallow me up at any moment—who else would even notice if it did?

Out the back window, through the golden afternoon haze, the tendrils are again at their full height, whipping around violently. Without me. I haven’t even filled the pit from earlier back up yet. One tendril reaches out and snatches a rabbit—one of the sweet little thieves who likes to nibble the broccoli leaves—and, quickly, pulls it into the earth. With nothing more than a shrill shriek, it’s just. Gone.

After a moment frozen in horror, I stomp my way out the back door again. I can’t keep battling this thing. I grab the machete and rush in without taking the protective measures I did earlier. The sharp barbs tear through my already ruined sleeves, the vines grasp at me, burning my skin on contact. The pain fuels my rage further as I slash wildly, gutturally screaming. At the pain. At all of it. My throat is sore, and I am bleeding when I finally dig out the bulb.

I can’t keep doing this. I need it to stop. I keep digging.

I keep digging as air the grows crisper and colder and my wounds scab over. I keep digging as the crickets sing around me, unaware of the dangers hidden beneath them. There has to be something down there. I pull up my crops to turn the soil beneath them, all the beauty I worked so hard to cultivate. I tried for so long to preserve my garden, what I hoped it could’ve been. But the reality is that it’s already gone. This isn’t worth it anymore. I viciously tear life from the earth, like a monster myself.

There. I find it, three feet under where the sweet potatoes used to be. Still pulsing, throbbing beneath the moonlight. A fleshy, writhing mound of thorns and bark and gnashing teeth, tendrils pumping like arteries. I look down at it, this thing that has been torturing me, destroying me, taking over my life and livelihood—a vulnerable, exposed thing.

I lift my arms above my head and bring the shovel down hard, the sharp tip piercing the heart.

It’s softer than I expect, and gives easily. Frothy, milky sap flows from the puncture wound and seeps into the loose soil around it with a soft sizzle. Then, it’s quiet. It’s over. I look around, at this pit I’ve dug myself into in my own backyard, with everything I was growing uprooted and scattered around me. It’s finally over.