A Green Plastic Watering Can

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

A head on a chest. An ear pressed right under a breast. Skin against skin, a heart singing its rhythm for a mind.

Emotions meeting thoughts.

Authentic resting on artificial.

June stroked Sophie’s hair. It was blonde now, curtesy of long days spent outside.

The sun reached in through the curtains to kiss the woman’s face.

June bent forward to do the same.

“Sweetheart, it’s morning,” said June.

“Mmm,” said Sophie, turning to lie facedown on June’s stomach. It tickled when she breathed.

“You have to wake up. It’s nine.”

They never slept with an alarm. June always woke at the right time. It wasn’t something she could control. It was how she had been printed. Punctual and Pretty, those were the words used to describe her line of Companions.

Sophie turned to lie on her back, head cradled under June’s arm. Sophie worked every summer to save up for a trip to London that hadn’t yet happened. There were problems with June’s passport.

People like Sophie had passports. People like June had warranties.

They had slept with the window open as was their wont from May to August, and now they could hear children running around on the streets below. Yelling for the others to keep up, to come this way, asking if anyone knew whether Laura would be free today.

“Listen to them,” Sophie said.

June smiled. “They sound happy.”

“They’re children on summer break—it’s impossible not to be happy.”

They lay for a little, listening to the kids laughing.

“I want one,” Sophie said.

“As do I,” June said, and she didn’t trust herself to say any more.

A woman putting on clothes. A ray of sun illuminating motes of dust in the air. An old school radio talking to itself.

Sophie had bought it in a secondhand store on fifth street. She liked thrifting and reading books printed on paper and listening to music on vinyl. She sewed her own clothes and she didn’t own a TV, let alone any neural implants.

In fact the only thing she’d bought from new was June.

“Would you mind switching the channel?” June asked. She lay in bed yet, covers half over her naked body. Her skin was caramel, her eyes blue, her hair red.

Incongruous, that was how she’d been described. The other Companions were blonde and pale, or tan with curls, ebony with kinky hair. She’d been due for a factory reset when Sophie had bought her.

Like a rescue dog, that was how she felt. And like a rescue dog she’d come to love Sophie more than she loved herself.

“In just a minute,” Sophie said. “I have to hear this.”

She stood in a pair of white linen pants, chest bare as she gazed out at the morning. The voice from the radio was tinny but still unmistakably that of Senator Giles.

“It won’t happen,” June mumbled.

“Yes it will, baby, just you wait. You’ve gotta keep your hopes up.”

She walked over to June, touched her cheek.

June looked away.

It’s a matter of principle, said the radio. It had two round speakers and a little antenna. It was brown. Not a matter of definition. Let’s say you have a sick bird. Are you gonna waste time determining whether that bird can abstractly compute its pain before treating it? So what if it cannot understand the pain, when we can feel the pain for it! The most humane emotion is empathy, so why are we disregarding the fact that we have empathy for them, and they have empathy for us? Why cannot we simply accept that we have empathy for each other?

“It’s gonna go through,” Sophie said, still holding June’s cheek. “Trust me.”

“Alright,” June said then, looking back at Sophie. “Maybe.”

“Not maybe. A hundred percent. All that’s left is for you to accept it too.”

She walked over to the radio. “On or off?”

“Off. I’d like to listen to the birds.”

Sophie smiled. “You’re beautiful. Inside and out, do you know that?”

A dark wasteland. A barren desert of black sand and skeleton shrubs. Bones lying scattered in the dunes.

A bird calling out overhead. A harsh white sun searing the woman’s eyes.

“I squinted against the light, and I finally had to cast my eyes down,” Sophie said, explaining her nightmare to June. It was the morning after the test results had come back from the clinic. “I looked down at my feet as I walked and walked. I stumbled over bones, and when I pushed myself up the sand cut into my palms.”

She had looked up at the bird circling her and as she watched it fell from the sky. Back curved, wings trailing after it, it tumbled out of the heavens to land at her feet.

Dead.

“No life could exist in that desert,” Sophie said, wiping her eyes. “Not even I. I fell to my knees. My throat was dry and my feet hurt. And then I saw it there in the sand.”

A tiny little stalk of green. Sprouting from the black sand. It had one leaf on it, and it grew before her eyes.

“I don’t know what it was or where it came from, but it was life in a place there shouldn’t have been any. I would have wept with joy if my eyes hadn’t been so dry. And then…”

It wizened. Crumbled and turned to dust.

Sophie clenched her stomach. Her face was pale. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For being a desert. For not being enough.”

“Don’t ever apologise,” June told her. “You’re enough, love. You’ll always be enough.”

Sophie buried her face in June’s neck, tears soaking through the shirt. June’s own tears fell quietly, landing on her lips. They tasted like salt—had been manufactured to have the exact saline content of real human tears.

June had dreamt that night too. She’d dreamt of a hospital, perfectly white and sterile.

More human than human, that was the Companion tagline. So why did she feel like a plastic plant?

A red brick wall. A large window overlooking Brooklyn. A plastic plant in the window sill.

June had a routine. She got up and made the bed. She brewed a pot of coffee. She took the plastic plant over to the sink and emptied it of yesterday’s water. She put it back in the windowsill, picked up her green plastic watering can, and watered the plastic plant. She made sure not to spill. She then stroked one of the plastic leaves, poured two cups of coffee, and went across the hall to Miss Kendra’s apartment.

She did this every morning, no matter what. She’d had a similar routine in her childhood.

Her remembered childhood, that is. Every Companion of her line shared that childhood. Shared the same memories of playing in the garden, of going to prom, of learning to swim, of a first crush, a first kiss, a first heartbreak. Only after she’d left the store did June’s memories begin to branch out from her “sisters’.”

Still she shared many qualities with her sisters. Same cheekbones, same fingers, same voice.

No right to vote. No right to a driver’s license.

No right to reproduce.

An apartment across the hall. Bookshelves overflowing with ancient literature. An enormous flatscreen that had never been turned on. An old woman with wrinkles and misty eyes.

“Are you alright, June darling?” Kendra asked.

June poured two cups of coffee, handed the old lady one. “We got the test results back from the clinic.”

Kendra noted the tone in June’s voice. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

June crossed her legs tightly, folding her hands in her lap. “So we’re not… we can’t…” she sighed. “Sophie is not able to and I’m not… human. So I’m not allowed to even if I can.”

Kendra frowned, set down her cup of coffee. “You’re not human?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Man was made by God. I was made by men with machines.”

Kendra roared with laughter. “Made by God! Honey if you were made by men with machines I was made by men with dicks! Ain’t nothing holy in the way babies come to be. It’s a sweaty, sticky, and smelly affair. The idea of man might have been made by God, but every instance of man you see walking the street ain’t have nothing to do with the divine. We are pushed out of our mothers along with all her shit. That you were pushed out sans shit doesn’t make you less human—it simply makes you cleaner.”

“I don’t wanna be clean,” June said, looking at her hands. “I wanna be… dirty.”

Kendra raised an eyebrow. “I’m assuming you don’t mean what I think you mean.”

June struggled as she said, “I don’t wanna be sterile. I don’t wanna be…” she gestured feebly, “this. I don’t wanna be plastic. I wanna be human.”

Kendra took a sip of coffee, wriggled around. Her back ached something mean. “Being human is not all it’s made out to be.”

June perked up. “You’re human,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“Why? What makes you human?”

Kendra scoffed. “Why? Hell, I don’t know! I breathe, I hurt, I do bad things. That’s very human, isn’t it? Bah, it’s a stupid question. What makes a person human is irrelevant. It doesn’t interest me. What interests me is what makes a person them. So tell me, June: what makes you you?"

June shrugged. “I’m 5,9 I’m twenty-seven years old, I’m a female—”

“No!” Kendra waved her hands. “I don’t care about your statistics! I want to know about you, June. You’re a piece of the enormous puzzle that is this life. Nobody else can fill that hole you’ll leave when you die. So tell me what makes you you.”

June hesitated. “Well, I’m the result of years of research and progress. I came to be—”

Kendra slammed her hands into the table. “No! Does it matter how we came to be? Does it not only matter how we chose to act? To live? What is a human? We’re just evolved monkeys! Sentient mammals with opposing thumbs! To Hell with us!”

It was quiet in the apartment for a minute or two.

Then came a quiet voice. “I like to cook. And to dance. I like the smell of morning air.”

“Yeah?”

“I like listening to Sophie’s breath when she falls asleep before me. I like waking up before her and feeling her warmth. I like it when she lies on my chest so that I know she can hear my heart beating.”

A balcony. A girl standing on her own there, overlooking the traffic. A solitary tear trailing down her cheek.

She gazed up at the sun. She gazed down at the street. She held her hands in front of her face.

And she went back inside.

A tiny table on that same balcony. A home cooked meal. An evening warmth touching the skin of two women. Two pairs of eyes catching each other. Two smiles.

“Busy day today,” Sophie said, drinking from a crooked glass.

“Oh?” June’s glass was short and blue. They didn’t own two identical glasses.

“The shop is bustling with young lovers wanting to buy flowers.”

“Summer is romantic.”

“It is with you. You know I love you, right?”

June nodded.

“And you know I think you’re perfect.”

June laughed a little. “I think you’re perfect too.”

“And you know,” Sophie said, absently putting a hand over her stomach, “that I’m sorry that we can’t… that I can’t—”

“Don’t,” June said. “If anyone should apologise it should be me. I’m the… the…”

She looked up at the sky as she searched for the word.

“I’m the plastic plant,” she said at last. “And you’re the real flower.”

“A flower without pollen.”

“And yet able to bloom.”

“Oh, sweetie.”

June’s hand lay on the table between them. Sophie took it in hers, soft and warm. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “We’ll figure something out.”

June almost didn’t realise tears were gliding down her cheeks.

Sophie rose and shuffled around the table. She embraced June, pressing the other woman’s head against her chest. “We’re together so it’ll be alright.”

June grabbed hold of Sophie’s shirt, wept quietly into her breast.

“Maybe we can get a dog or something,” Sophie joked, but June’s tears only flowed harder.

Two empty coffee cups on a table. An old woman lounging on a couch. A woman that would never age, seated on a chair. A mood lying heavily on both of them.

“You could adopt,” Kendra suggested.

June swallowed. Nodded. “Sophie could.”

“You’d still be the child’s mother even if the paperwork says otherwise.”

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

“You know what I think it is? It’s yourself, June. Your problem is not the system defining you as sub-human. Your problem is that you believe it. So what if your child won’t be birthed by you or Sophie? So what if it legally will only have one parent? So what if it will have two mothers, one from a womb, one from a petri dish? It will be loved and it will learn to love, and that’s the only thing that matters.

“Humans come in all shapes and sizes and dispositions. The only thing we have in common is that we love and that we hate. As a parent all you can do is teach them the one and shelter them from the other. And do you know what, June?”

June shook her head.

“That’s true both for children born of flesh and children copied from it. I don’t care if the child comes with a birth certificate or a receipt. If it has the capacity for love you better damn well love it.”

Kendra swirled the coffee dregs, laid those foggy eyes on June.

“Let’s say the bill goes through,” said the old lady.

”It won’t,” said the woman not allowed to be human.

“Let’s say it does. Will you be ready for it, June? The people who love you the most are already telling you what that bill tries to tell you. So why can’t you accept it? A passport won’t make you human. A driver’s license won’t make you human. A social security number sure as hell won’t do anything for you if you still walk around believing yourself to be a plastic plant that doesn’t need to be watered.

“So water yourself. And absorb the sun. You’ll always be real so long as you believe it yourself.”

June poured the water out of the plastic plant.

Not a single drop fell into the sink.

She stuck her finger into the plastic.

It was moist, but not wet.

She set it in the window sill. She made sure it got enough sun.

And she watered that fake plant with real water. And it seemed to grow.

She smiled a real smile on a fake face.

She was a plastic girl. And still she felt the sun on her face.

The tears she cried were confused and joyful.

A radio on low volume. A girl watering a plastic plant, pretending not to listen. Another girl sitting on a bed, elbows on her knees, staring at her shoes.

A little white bird landed on their balcony. It twittered. When it realised the two girls weren’t listening it quietened. It tilted its head.

The radio said something.

The girl with the watering can froze.

The girl on the bed held her breath.

The radio said something else.

The girl dropped the green watering can. It landed on the hardwood floor, slowly dripping, soaking her socks.

The other girl did not notice. In fact she didn’t notice anything but the first girl’s face.

They stood and stared at each other. Neither said anything.

Then, “I guess that makes it official.”

“It didn’t tell me anything you haven’t already told me.”

“Did it tell you something you haven’t yet told yourself?”

A silence. A thought. A smile. “No. No it didn’t.”

The little white bird whistled once, then flew away. It did not understand the magnitude of what had just come to pass.

Over in Kendra’s apartment June poured a cup of coffee. Kendra studied her.

“Do you wanna know how I know that bill going through was the right thing?” Kendra asked.

June looked up.

“Because it ain’t changed you. It ain’t made you different in any sort of way. You’re still June with the red hair who brings me coffee each morning. I don’t know what it means to be human, but I know what it means to be happy, and by God you have not stopped smiling.”

A day.

A week.

A month.

Half a year.

A tiny brick apartment in Brooklyn. An evening summer sun. A warm breeze through an open window. Plastic leaves swaying on a fake plant.

Two girls staring at each other. Two foreheads pressed together.

“It’s still too early,” June said.

“The book says some can hear it already after three months.”

“The book doesn’t know about… doesn’t know how it is with people like me.”

A hand interlacing with another. A soft kiss on a cheek.

“Let me listen, love.”

A bit lip. “What if… what if it isn’t real?”

Two hands clasping a face. Two eyes staring into a soul. Two hearts beating in separate chests. One was birthed. One was made.

Both exist in this moment.

“Do you love it?”

“With all my being.”

“Then it is real. Then you are real.”

Birds chasing each other outside. Clouds drifting lazily by. Slow traffic in the street.

One girl lifts up the shirt of another. She kneels before her. She puts her ear to the stomach of a sentient mammal with opposing thumbs.

To the stomach of a human.

“What do you hear?”

A brief silence. Then a smile. “I hear the meaning of our lives.”

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump-

thump.