AMONG THE GRAPEVINES, GROWING
Eliora Smith
I was gardening when it happened. I called it that, but it was a long way from a garden. That summer, the most I managed to keep alive was the few potted plants I brought with me. Those, and the grapevines, and myself.
But the grapevines didn’t need my help.
I used to have a marvelous garden, back when I still lived with my grandmother, full of happy flowers and thriving herbs and more zucchini than I knew what to do with. My grandmother raised me. She was always there for me, even before my mother died, before the depression hit, before any of it. She taught me almost everything I know: how to garden, how to cook, how to look things up, and how to fix just about anything that ever broke.
And she taught me how to be alone, too. How to be alone, and how to know you aren’t.
She used to talk to plants. She used to talk to everything—but only the plants talked back, she said.
I told her plants couldn’t talk.
“You just have to learn how to listen,” she told me.
I didn’t believe her.
I kept talking to her plants anyway, after she died. And they grew. Not as well as when she was taking care of them, but enough to share. And that, Grandma always said, was enough.
But it couldn’t last. With my grandmother gone and her savings spent on medical bills, I got less than a year in her house. Just enough time to finish off one last crop, and see the next year’s perennials begin to bloom.
Leaving was bittersweet. I grew up in that house. I had so many memories there, good and bad. I’d sat shiva there three times, once each for my mother and grandfather, when I was young, and then again for my grandmother. It was too many, and some days, in the quiet of the empty house, it was all I could think about.
And besides, I could always start a new garden.
So when I moved out here, I tried to do that. The place wasn’t in great shape—some of the plants in the yard threatened to overrun the house, and the wooden porch was unfinished and half rotten in a few places. But it was cheap, and it had a yard, and I wouldn’t need a roommate. Besides, there was something almost charming about it, like a house from a fairytale. Set back in the woods, tangled in roots and vines, like the earth was reclaiming it.
I was determined to make it mine.
I started off by hacking away at the vines—wild grapes, invasive bastards. My grandmother had taught me plenty about invasive plants. I started off hopeful, imagining myself a knight, my clippers a magic sword. I could do this. I could hack my way through the brambles to the castle beyond and rescue whatever poor soul lay trapped inside, sleeping away the centuries. The vines were thick in places, some of them an inch or more, and hard, like wood. I fought with them for hours, my muscles aching and my skin stinging as the sharp, broken pieces scratched at it. I heaved the corpses of branches off the side of my deck. I imagined them smothering the rest of the vines until they all lay, dead and dying, in the dirt. It was a satisfying thought.
I went inside, exhausted but victorious, and past ready for a shower. Before I peeled off my sweat drenched clothes, however, I put some potted plants out on the deck—five of the six I had saved from my grandmother’s garden. The sixth pot I left in my kitchen window. I needed a piece of my grandmother there, with me while I ate. Food nourishes your body, but meals nourish your heart, and food can’t make a meal unless you share it.
That’s what my grandmother told me, anyway.
Inside, I undressed and stepped into the shower. Hot water cascaded over aching muscles and gave cuts a fresh sting. For a few minutes, the world melted away. It was only me and the water. I felt new. Refreshed. Slightly raw—but stronger.
Finally, I forced myself to turn the water off. I stepped out of the shower stall, shivering and over-damp. Not so strong now. Just tired.
Tired, and alone.
Feeling empty, I went to my room. I lay on my bed, not caring that my wet hair was soaking the sheets.
When I woke up, the sun was shining.
Sitting up was hard. I felt anchored, somehow, to the spot. My skin stuck to the sheets in places. A little effort removed it, but what caused it to stick in the first place I had no idea. It was like being bound by pinpricks of hot glue. I rubbed at my arms. Everything felt strange, out of place. As if I was not quite myself.
But then, I supposed, it shouldn’t be too surprising. The first few nights in a new house always feel strange.
My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I had skipped dinner the night before. Food, though, seemed unappetizing, the very act of eating unpalatable. Impossible. I downed a bottle of water instead, even though it made my stomach slosh, and went about the rest of my morning routine.
I thought briefly that I should finish unpacking. My stomach sank as I imagined going through the boxes with their cold, practical labels. Everything I owned had been my grandmother’s.
No, it was too much. It couldn’t be approached all at once—a box at a time, maybe. But not yet. First, I would deal with the house. I had gotten most of the grapevines the day before; perhaps today I could finish. If I worked hard, maybe I could be planting by next week.
When I stepped outside, though, my heart sank. The vines seemed so much worse than when I’d left them. They had once more wound their way up onto the deck. They weren’t as thick as I remembered, but they were almost as prominent, twisting around the railings and creeping towards the outer walls of the house.
And at my feet, a broken pot, the plant inside it crushed in the grip of the vine.
I repotted the remains of the plant and moved it and the others inside. After that I went back to hacking at the grapevines, the sun seeping into my skin, giving my arms strength for the fight. The vines seemed to twist around my limbs, trying to stop me in my tracks. I fought with them for the rest of the week, barely eating, barely sleeping either, but drinking several bottles of water a day. Every day the plant seemed to come back angrier and stronger than before—and something strange was happening to my body. My arms ached. My entire core ached. I kept the blinds wide open whenever I was inside, soaking up the sunlight as though I was starving for it, but I rarely felt hungry—at least, not for food. My stomach seldom complained, and even when it did, its emptiness seemed far away, as though it was happening to someone else. But there was a hunger deep inside of me, a hunger for something I couldn’t understand that ran deep into my core and through my veins, filling every part of me. A loneliness, and a longing, and a weakness for lack of whatever was lacking. And there was—something—growing on my arm, tiny sprouts of green that grabbed onto things when I sat or slept.
* * *
One week later, I found myself outside in the almost-light of early morning. I was kneeling, naked, my legs pressing down into the ground. The damp of the dew sat, pleasantly refreshing, in my chest and on my skin, and my hands…my hands were buried in the dirt. The hunger that had been growing inside me for the past 2 weeks—the hunger which sat, not in my stomach, but throughout the whole of me—was beginning to wane.
I sank back against my heels, resting my hands on my thighs. I felt alone again. It was only then that I realized that, for a moment, the loneliness of the empty house had dimmed, replaced by a connection that I couldn’t define.
Leaves brushed against my skin. The vine had snaked a tendril out around one of my legs. I could feel it squeezing, firm and gentle at the same time, like the hand of an old friend. I lingered in its touch—then moved to yank my leg away. As I did, I found my legs held fast to the ground. And I could feel why: little tendrils of self had tangled themselves in the dirt, breathing in its nutrients. I pulled hard and the roots, still new and shallow, came out. And roots were what they were. This wasn’t a fungus or a skin disease, it wasn’t growing on my skin like a parasite. This was mine: my body and myself and my being. For a moment, the roots felt more a part of me then my arms and legs themselves.
I got to my feet, feeling displaced and strange within myself. I rubbed my hands on my legs, streaking the dirt across my tanned skin. Still bare—I had forgotten I was naked. Shame seemed foreign to me, but I glanced around, from habit more than nerve. The morning still held the wet grayness that comes when the colors of dawn have leeched away. Perhaps no one but me was awake yet. Either way, the yard was hidden by trees.
“We’re not friends,” I said out loud. My voice was out of place among the chirping of the crickets and the birds.
I stayed inside for the rest of the day.
* * *
Despite my attempts to stay away from the vine, my sleepwalking continued. Every morning I woke up with my hands in the earth, trying desperately to take my fill before I, in my waking state, denied myself. Trying desperately to soak up what sun I could before I shut myself inside.
But whatever I was taking in, it wasn’t enough. I was weak and exhausted, starving no matter how much I forced myself to eat. A hopeless, gloomy numbness settled over me. I had felt this before, or something like it: The feeling of isolation and grayness that cuts into your stomach until pain turns into apathy. I had felt it for most of my life. And mostly, I had learned to cope.
Perhaps that’s why it took so long for it to become unbearable, or perhaps it was just that the apathy of my renewed depression precluded any attempt to find a solution. I had plenty of tricks—self talk and socializing and keeping busy—but none of them worked. Not this time. Not when I couldn’t even leave the house. And so I fell back on the one thing that required little effort on my part:
I waited.
I began to isolate myself, to lock myself away from the sunlight and the greenery my body was screaming for. I woke up every morning in the dirt, then let the sickly grayness in my mind push away whatever had brought me there. I started keeping a blanket and a set of clothes out on the porch. Each morning I would numbly dress myself, with dead skin and fumbling hands, and I would go inside.
But my body was changing in ways I couldn’t ignore, and the strange new urges were growing stronger. The tiny sprouts on my skin had grown into leaves, and the skin itself was beginning to change color, it’s ordinarily olive hue becoming more prominent, brightening toward a deep spring green.
Summer had already begun to turn to fall when I finally gave in. I took my dinner out into the early evening, an hour or two before sunset, and sat amongst the vines as I ate. After a few bites I stopped, removed my shoes and socks, and dug my bare feet into the dirt.
The change was immediate. The loneliness and hunger of the recent weeks began to lessen. I looked at the grape vine, which was already beginning to grow around my ankles.
“We’re still not friends,” I said. For once, I half expected the plant to reply.
The vine said nothing, of course. But I thought I felt it loosen, just a little. After that, we spent the evening in companionable silence. It was the first genuine meal I’d had in months.
* * *
Time passed strangely, the weeks slipping by in moments and eternities, and soon the leaves began to change. The trees outside were beautiful, flame-tipped branches burning to bare cold bones, standing incongruously against the wet grayness of the sky and the thick, squelching muck of the ground. The grapevines were turning dry and cracking, their leaves dropping off and leaving them bare. The few grapes they had produced ripened, then fell to the ground and were eaten by the birds and other creatures. There was something stubbornly undead about the plant beneath, stripped now of some of its verdant and insistent greenness.
I was exhausted. I had started spending more time outside, but the days were getting shorter now, and the cold pricked at my skin and at my leaves and at my bones. Just as the leaves and the green overtook my skin they began to recede, the leaves dropping off and following me like footprints as I walked.
Sleep came every night like a quilt settling over me, wrapping me in warmth. In the mornings I still found myself outside, hands trying to dig their way into near-freezing earth, but I was weary when I woke, and going inside seemed impossible. Waking seemed to take an eternity. I pictured myself staying out there, lying on the ground until autumn turned and the snow began to fall, until I was blanketed and buried and asleep.
But I knew what to do with those kinds of thoughts, and so I pushed them back and went inside.
* * *
By the time Sukkot came I was too weak to do much. When I was younger, my grandmother and I had a sukkah every year. They were small, but the two of us would put one up, and eat dinner in it, and sleep in it if it wasn’t too cold out. The year she died, I was too caught up in bills and grief and paperwork to build one for myself. This year, though, I remembered. With my arms covered in leaves I couldn’t exactly go to temple for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, but Sukkot…Sukkot was different.
Sukkot was the harvest.
A harvest I didn’t have, because nothing could grow past the grapevines.
A harvest I couldn’t do, because I was too weak for picking anyway.
A harvest that I didn’t need, because I was barely eating and had no neighbors that I knew.
But a harvest that I was determined to celebrate.
I picked a few of the grapes that still sat on the vine, and collected some of those that had dropped onto the wooden porch below. They were small and sour and mostly made of seeds, but I ate them.
I couldn’t build a sukkah, but I slept outside anyway. I was used to waking up to the sky by then, but for Sukkot I decided I would fall asleep to it. I dug my naked feet into the ground and sucked on sour grapes. The vines wove a roof over top of me, twining with the leaves which remained on my arm, and through them I watched the stars until sleep claimed me.
When the week was done, I found it difficult to go back. My room seemed empty and isolating compared to the embrace of the vines, somehow both achingly vast and stiflingly small compared to the open air. The dimness of the starlight that filtered through the windows was off-putting. I tossed and turned, unsettled in my bed, unable to lull my brain into sleep. Finally, after an hour or so, I got up. One by one, I moved every potted plant that I had into the bedroom.
Only then, reluctantly, did my mind allow me to rest.
* * *
By this time, I was taking all of my meals outside. I couldn’t manage anything heartier than broth, but that didn’t matter: the damp ground and the sunlight and the company seemed far more important than the food, and even as I resisted the urge to sleep among the vines, the need for these things was one I couldn’t deny. So I sat outside, and ate, and talked sometimes—to myself or to the vine, I didn’t know. I had developed a sort of routine.
And then came the frost.
I woke one morning in late October with my body numb from cold. I was outside, and naked, as I had been every morning for months, but there was something different. I was…less than before, somehow. Smaller. I rubbed my arms with my hands, trying to warm myself up.
My skin was bare.
The leaves and bursts of green which had sprouted from me were gone—all of them. And the grapevines which ruled my porch, even the green ones, hung limply.
I dressed quickly, the cold biting at my skin. Looking down, I could see what had happened to my leaves. The ground around me was littered with them, an array of colors from burgundy to brown to green, leaves in every stage of their senescence.
I knelt, and picked up the vines. They were cold in my hands. There was no life in them. I squeezed my hands around them, shutting my eyes and centering my mind on the cold stabbing into my skin.
The vines rustled.
I opened my eyes and got to my feet. The wood burned like ice, freezing against my skin—I hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. Whatever it was, it was coming from under the porch. I started to clear away the plants. It was slow work—even uprooted, the vines were heavy and tangled. The cold didn’t help either, my hands were numb after only a few minutes. And whatever was rustling beneath the vines was still there, pulling. We must have been working against each other at least half the time, but I kept going, my body screaming at the tension. My muscles ached, and my breathing grew labored, the cold morning air making my throat raw. Finally, the vines were clear.
On the ground where they had been, there was a woman.
She looked up at me, shaking, and wrapped her arms around herself. “Well?” Her teeth were chattering. “You gonna stand there staring, or are you gonna get me a blanket?”
* * *
Half an hour later we were sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in blankets, two now-empty bowls sitting in front of us. For the first time in weeks, I actually wanted food.
“So,” I said.
“So,” she said. A moment passed in awkward silence. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been a plant for the last few months. My conversation skills are…rusty.”
I nodded and leaned back, drumming my fingers on the table as I tried to process what was happening. Everything that had happened since I moved into the house was catching up with me. It was like watching something on TV. I didn’t totally fit inside myself anymore, nor was I entirely certain that I wanted too. “So,” I said again, finally. “Care to explain why I woke up this morning to discover that the grapevine which has been taking over my life had turned into a naked woman?”
“Did you expect me to transform wearing clothes?”
“You were a grapevine,” I exclaimed, exasperated. “The lack of clothes was not the part of this morning’s events that confused me!”
She bit her lip, utterly failing to hide her laughter. “You’ve done pretty well so far. I’d kind of like to see how far you can get with this.”
I glared. “This is not funny. I have not left my house since August.”
“All right, first of all, that is not true, because you’ve been coming outside all the time. Second of all, let me state once again that I have been a plant, and so I am sorry if my emotional reactions are a little out of whack.” She took a deep breath. “Just…give me a minute.”
I folded my hands and waited, staring at her through the silence. She closed her eyes and ran a hand over her face, thinking. For a few torturous minutes, she said nothing. It was strange. There hadn’t been another human in this house since I’d moved in, and I hadn’t been going out. Aside from some music and internet videos, the only voice I’d heard since I got here was my own. And for the most part, I’d been okay with that.
Now, though, the silence between us was oppressive. It took everything I had not to break it. But even though there was plenty for us to talk about, I had no idea what I was supposed to say, let alone how to say it. I was getting that feeling again, like I didn’t fit inside my body, like my mouth and my brain weren’t actually connected. Like this couldn’t possibly be happening, it had to be made up, and everything I said was just lines in a film.
Only nobody had given me the script.
Finally, the woman spoke.
“You know how, in movies and stories and stuff, werewolves change shape every month? The details vary, but basically, when the moon is full, they change. And there’s nothing they can do about it. While they’re wolves they can’t control what they do. It’s like this…wildness in them, and it just comes out. Man’s inner beast.”
I nodded.
“Okay, well…this is kind of like that. Except it’s not so much ‘every month, with the full moon’ as it is ‘every summer, from last thaw to first frost, whenever the hell that is,’ and it’s not so much ‘man’s inner beast’ as it is…grapevines.” She gave a weak smile. “I’m like…a werevine? And now you are too, so, you know. Congratulations. Welcome to the club.” She stuck out her hand.
I didn’t take it.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“No, I definitely can. Look, no offence, I get that you’re kind of freaking out right now, but could you maybe…hurry up? ”
“Oh, I’m sorry, is there a to-do list I’m keeping you from?”
“Yes, actually. We have to figure out what to do about this place, for one thing.”
I sighed. “Okay. I get your point. The house is…an issue.” I frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t get it. You seem to know what’s going on here. If you knew you’d turn into a plant—and I am trying so hard not to think about that sentence—but if you knew, why didn’t you tell someone? I mean, not the truth obviously, but it was your sister that dealt with everything after you disappeared, right? That’s what she told me. Why didn’t you arrange something so that she wouldn’t sell your house? Or think you were dead? Because I don’t know if you’ve ever had a family member die, but it sucks. And if I was your sister, and I thought you died, and then I found out six months later that you were still alive? I would kill you.”
“Wow, judgmental. I didn’t know, okay? I’m new to this too. Everything you were going through this summer? A year ago, that was me. I didn’t change fully until this past spring—I’m guessing it takes a while for whatever this is to fully take root, so to speak. But once it does…well, things become clearer, I guess, when you’re a plant.” She leaned back in her chair, and I saw her mask slip, just for a moment. Then it was back, a wry veneer of humor obscuring whatever she was really feeling.
“Besides,” she said, “How do you think I feel? My sister didn’t exactly wait a long time before selling the house. I mean, I know no one had heard from me for a while, but come on, my hypothetical dead body was barely even cold.”
I bit my lip. “People cope with grief in different ways, okay? And anyway, what about bills? Someone has to pay the bills, and I’m guessing you weren’t pulling in a lot of money under that porch.”
She huffed. “Yeah, people tend to prefer landscapers who can actually, you know, leave the house. And hold shears.” She took a deep breath, like she was trying to center herself. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you.” She paused. “Actually, that’s not totally true. I don’t know if it’s me or the grapevines—very aggressive plant— but…I’m kind of enjoying this. A little bit. Sorry. But there are a lot of things we have to talk about, and if we can’t have a civil conversation about the living situation, we’re kind of screwed. It’s not like we can really take this to court. So.” She stopped, taking another deep breath.
“You bought this house. I get that. And I guess since I stopped paying the bills, probably I have no legal right to it. But on your own…I mean, I know what it’s like trying to figure this out without help, and it’s hard. Plus, between the fatigue and the six-month cycle and everything else, I’m guessing you aren’t going to have a much easier time than me, money-wise.”
She was right. I was burning through what I’d gotten from selling the old house way too quick.
She kept talking. “I don’t want to have to leave, and I don’t really want to risk this same thing happening next year with someone else. I mean, I lucked out. You could have been a creep. But you’re not. You seem like…I don’t know. Maybe we could be friends. And maybe, if we work together, we can make enough to keep the house. Find ways to cut costs during the summer. Something.”
I stared at her, my mouth hard. “You almost killed my grandmother’s geranium.”
“You tried to hack me to death. Besides, geraniums are tough little bastards.”
I didn’t smile.
She sighed, her face softening. “I’m sorry. The vine…it wants to live. It wants to thrive. I had a garden, too, you know. But after the change…I’d rooted it out by the time you moved in. I couldn’t control it. But I’m sorry, anyway.”
I dropped my accusing gaze. I couldn’t look at her.
“So, what?” I asked. “We both stay? Try to live together? We know literally nothing about each other.”
One corner of her mouth curled up, a little half smile, like her mouth had snagged on a secret. There was a brightness behind her face, a light shining through the cracks in her mask. “I know you talk to plants. You’ve been doing it since you got here. I know you’re strong. Stubborn, too. Didn’t matter how many times you woke up outside, you kept going back in. I know you grew up surrounded by people you cared about and people who cared about you and now that’s gone, and you have no idea what to do with yourself. I know that you think apples smell better than anything, and I know that sometimes when you talk, if it’s safe enough, you start to sound like a fairytale. I know the stuff you went through this summer wasn’t that new to you—the plant thing, maybe, but not the rest.” She reached out, and trailed her fingers over my arm.
“I know that you have sunshine in your veins and earth in your heart. I know that your heartbeat feels like a rocking chair and that when you breathe at night it’s like waves lapping at the shore.” She grinned and ran her tongue over her teeth. “And I know that you talk in your sleep. It’s kind of hilarious, actually. But also adorable.”
I could feel myself blushing. I rolled my eyes and looked away, unable to stop myself from smiling. But I let her keep her fingers on my arm, anyway.
“That’s what I know about you,” she said. “So what do you know about me?”
I shook my head, just a little. “You never talked back,” I said quietly.
“Not even once. But you felt me. I know you did. You might not have changed completely yet, but, honey…I’ve been there. You start to change, after it happens, and all of a sudden you can feel things. Things that were always there, maybe, but they were too far under the surface for you to touch. Like your blood is always pumping in your veins, but you only feel it when you take your pulse. You felt me. So what do you know?”
I shook my head again. “I don’t know how to...” I trailed off. Then, tentatively, I reached out the hand she wasn’t holding. I hooked my finger around hers, curling around it like a vine. “That’s what I know,” I said quietly. “And I know you still haven’t told me your name.”
She smiled. “Laura,” she said. She drew her hand from mine, then stuck it out for a handshake.
Her grip was firm, her skin soft and warm. I could feel the sunlight through her fingers.
“Nahal,” I said.