Seeds

Content warning: Allusions to teen pregnancy and child loss

***

The tree, like most things, is Beth's idea. It is August, late summer, too hot for TV and too cool for bathing suits. School starts again next week, fourth grade. Now is the perfect time, Beth says, to plant a tree.

"They need sunshine to grow, Annie," she adds, holding her watering can in front of her like a Halloween bucket. The two of them stand at the edge of Beth's unmown backyard, out where the grass makes their knees itchy, out by the fence that's missing one of its boards. Out where Beth has yanked away the weeds and clawed a tiny hole in the ground. "Easier to do it now and not later when it's cold."

Annie runs her fingers over the apple seeds she was given. They are still sticky with fruit juice, slick with Beth's lingering saliva. Annie has her doubts about this whole tree thing but recalls how Beth won best speller in their class this year, how she was the only one who knew the word "doctor" ended in an "or" and not an "er." Maybe she knows what she's talking about.

Still, she can't bring herself to drop the seeds in the hole at her feet. Not yet.

"How do we know it's easier?" she asks, then reminds Beth of Mrs. Barnes, their second-grade teacher who used an incubator to hatch a half-dozen chickens over the course of February. 

"Those were eggs." Beth speaks slowly, enunciating every word. "These are seeds. Not the same."

Annie can't argue with that.

"And anyways," Beth says, adjusting her sun hat, "Jane told me it works like that. She knows this stuff."

Jane. 

Squinting in the afternoon sunlight, Annie glances over her shoulder at the house, at the second-story window facing them, the room with the blinds drawn and the lights off. Jane's room.

Though she's spent most of the summer frequenting Beth's house while her parents tend to her newborn brother, Annie can count on one hand the number of times she's actually seen Beth's big sister since school got out. Like a poltergeist, Jane's presence around the house has been reduced to sounds: the slamming of her bedroom door, the gurgling of the bathroom faucet, the weeping. Always the weeping. Long gone is the girl who drove them down to the ice cream parlor when she only had her permit, the girl who once told Annie she thought of her as a second sister.

Now, in the soupy August heat, not for the first time, she thinks back to her last patchwork memory of Jane: the three of them nestled on the couch sharing a bowl of oversalted popcorn, Jane the babysitter sandwiched in the middle with one arm wrapped around each girl, Annie and Beth staying up past their bedtime watching James and the Giant Peach after Jane and her scruffy boyfriend Bobby, who'd shown up halfway through the movie, had wandered upstairs to Jane's bedroom. How long ago was that? When had everything changed?

"What does she know about growing a tree?" There's that edge to Annie's voice, the one that always seems to surface now whenever they talk about Jane. "She stays in her room all day. Has she ever growed a tree before?"

Beth says nothing. Jiggles her watering can. The liquid inside makes a dull sloshing sound. A thin stream spills over the top and down the side of the can. She lifts her head to the baby blue sky and says, "Jane said it takes nine months for seeds to grow."

Last year, one of their classmates brought in his Chia Pet for show-and-tell day. The thing was shaped like a ceramic hedgehog, but instead of tiny quills it had a network of curly green clovers running from the top of its head to the base of its back. The boy was quick to tell the class that the hair was made from chia seeds and not Play-Doh. When Annie asked how long it had taken for that to grow, he replied, "Um, two weeks, maybe?" with a shrug.

Two weeks. Now, nine months seems like a long time to wait, too long for anything to grow successfully.

"That's why I want to plant it now," Beth is saying. "Today. That way it'll be ready for us by the time fourth grade is over." She double checks the math on her dirt-stained knuckles, mouths the names of the upcoming months, nods her head when everything adds up.

Annie closes her sweaty hand on the seeds, feels their dampness. "When did Jane tell you that?" she asks, forcing herself to speak in the most neutral tone she can muster. After all, it's not Beth's fault that her sister has stopped talking to Annie. Annie isn't sure whose fault it is.

"A few weeks ago," Beth says.

Annie tries to do some double checking of her own, but she's never been good at math, not like Beth. She doesn't know what difference a week or two or nine months makes. Before she can figure that out, Beth adds, "Jane also said you have to watch out for it and take really good care of it. She said bad things can happen if you don't."

"Bad things?" Annie looks at the seeds in her hand as though they might spontaneously catch on fire. "Like what?"

Beth turns and trains her gaze on the apple seeds, too. "Like you can lose it."

Annie makes a face, blinks. "How can you lose it? It's a tree. It's not going anywhere. Where could it go?" She imagines one of the apples from their tree, oversized like the peach in the Roald Dahl movie, rolling away, moving on its own. Weightless. Free. The thought is so ridiculous that she starts to laugh.

Beth doesn't.

"Put the seeds in the hole, Annie," she says.

Annie doesn't.

She's so busy laughing that she doesn't realize that Beth has snatched the apple seeds from her hand until Beth is already bent down and scooting the discarded dirt and weeds back over the hole's opening. She works diligently, her expression hidden under the shadow of her sun hat.

"Sorry," she says as she places her palms on her knees and lifts herself back up. She wipes her dirty fingers on her shirt. "I wanted you to help with the tree, for us to do it together, but I didn't know if you were gonna."

Annie watches in silence as Beth crouches, grabs her watering can, and releases a light stream of water on the tamped soil. But Annie doesn't quite believe her friend. This tree thing, it wasn't even Beth's idea in the first place, was it? It was never for them to do together. It was always something for Beth and Jane. Annie is just a replacement, a fill-in since Jane never wants to do anything together with them like she used to. It's just like at home with her new brother—she's always getting pushed to the side.

Again, Annie looks at Jane's window. Still dark, but she swears she can still hear her weeping, even from here. Annie thinks she should be the one crying.

She takes a step forward. "No, I'd still like to help," she tells Beth in a voice she doesn't recognize. "I want to water the tree too."

Beth looks at the watering can in her hands. Above them, the clouds drift past lazily. A crow swoops down into the shade of the neighbor's tree. Slowly, Beth grips the sides of the can with both hands and holds it out to Annie.

"Just a little bit," she says. "They don't really need that much water."

"Okay."

The watering can is heavier than Annie anticipates, and she nearly drops it. A tiny backlash of water jumps out and rolls down her arm. She repositions, clenches the handle, approaches the hole.

Then she tips the can forward and watches the soil darken. Listens to the clap of water hitting the ground. It's a satisfying sound. So satisfying that she grabs the bottom of the can and tilts it up, pleased when even more water trickles out. Beth's voice comes in the background like static, like she's underwater: "Annie, I think that's enough. Annie, you're giving it too much water. Annie, please stop!"

But she can't stop. She doesn't want to stop. She understands why Jane weeps so much now, how good it is to let the water out. Annie only wishes that Jane—Jane, with her so-called knowledge of planting trees, with her boyfriend and her too-good-to-talk-to-Annie-anymore attitude—would open her window and look out and see what it is they're doing back here, the way they're treating these precious seeds. 

And then it happens.

When the can is empty enough for Annie to maneuver with just one hand, she turns around and sees Jane—for the first time in a week? a month? she realizes only now that it does make a difference—standing there at the window, the blinds peeled back like a hangnail. The room behind her is dark. The sun is sinking behind the house. But even out here, all the way at the edge of the backyard, Annie can recognize what she saw in her own mother in the past year before her brother was born: the porcelain glow of Jane's skin, the way her breasts have grown, her stomach. And she might not be good at spelling or math, but Annie thinks she finally knows more about something than Beth.

The watering can is heavier in Annie's hand now than it was when she started using it. Behind her, Beth is throwing herself around in the soil, moving frantically, breathing frantically, pressing her T-shirt to the ground in an attempt to soak up as much water as she can to save the seeds.

Looking at the window, Annie imagines Jane out here with them now, the way she was when she babysat before: sandwiched in the middle, the mediator, the one who was always forced to be the adult. Jane would know what to do. Annie can picture it now: Jane standing there with them, telling them everything would be alright, her shadow moving with the beat of the sun, stretching over the hole, covering the soil and the seeds and everything else hidden below the surface.