Gone to Pot

by Jennifer Craig

  I didn’t understand, but by then I was too befuddled to ask. I needed my glasses to see the dial on the timer and figure out how it worked, so I’d have to come back later.

  Swan pointed to the small levers that indicated the time for off and on. “Make sure these are tight. Sometimes they slip so the lights stay on or off all the time.”

  “I wish those ballasts didn’t make that noise,” I said.

  “Let’s go upstairs and see if we can hear them,” Swan said. She closed the flap, the cupboard door, and the door down to the basement. In the kitchen I could still hear the hum, faint though it was.

  “I can hear it up here,” I said. “Anyone coming in would hear it.”

  “Nah, people don’t notice house sounds. I wouldn’t hear it if I didn’t know it was there. Could be the fridge; anything. Gotta fly. I’ll come by tomorrow.”

  “Oh, before you go, should I use two-gallon or three-gallon pots? Marcus asked me what I wanted.”

  “I’d go for two-gallons. They’re lighter for you to carry and don’t use as much soil. Some people think the plants are bigger in three-gallons.” Swan started to move toward the front door. “But two-gallons do need watering more. You could try both and see.”

  I found a spare pair of glasses and took them down to leave in my secret room. The timer seemed quite simple, but the screws were too tiny for my thick fingers to turn so I searched for thin pliers. I practised setting the timer with the pliers. There. That wasn’t difficult. You can do it.

  11

  My other life took over on Sunday when I went for dinner with the family. I should have had a switch inside me, like the light timer switches, that turned to Real Jess on one setting and Criminal Jess on the other. As I drove to Jason’s house I switched to Real Jess.

  Nicholas and I had played a game on my previous visit, so he was waiting for me when I arrived, eager to do the same. We were to walk round the garden picking fruit from imaginary trees or pretending to dig for vegetables.

  “I can’t reach that pear, Nicholas,” I said, stretching an arm up toward the sky. “If I lift you up, can you get it?” I held him in the air and he grabbed at nothing. “What a beautiful pear; it’s almost ripe. Now, how about some oranges?”

  When our baskets were full we joined the family on the patio.

  Nicholas offered a make-believe squash to Jason who stopped poking meat on the barbecue, opened his arms, bent double to hold the pretend weight, and thanked Nicholas with enthusiasm. At least one parent encouraged his son’s imagination. Amy probably saw it as a disorder—reality avoidance disorder or some such nonsense.

  Jason and Amy had stopped talking about my living with them, thank heaven. They were engrossed in renovations of their laundry room, which they hoped to finish before they left for a month’s summer holiday on the Sunshine Coast.

  “Are you planning to get away, Mum?” Jason asked.

  “Just day trips,” I said. “Maybe next year.”

  “When did you last visit Britain?”

  “Hmm. Five, maybe six, years ago.” I took a sip of wine. “I don’t know anyone there now, except Vera, and she’s crippled with arthritis.”

  “You should go anyway,” Amy said. “Explore your roots.”

  “My roots were dug up years ago. Rotted by now. But I wouldn’t mind a visit to York and the Dales.”

  I could see myself on a luxury coach, sitting high, admiring the gentle heather-covered slopes of Wharfedale, the dry stone walls dividing fields into patchwork, the stone barns with slate roofs, the river Wharfe meandering by, the bleat of sheep, hikers carefully closing gates after themselves, the sweet smell of the heather—the sweetest smell in the world. Maybe my buddies would take me there next year.

  “If I was going to fly anywhere,” I continued, “I’d like to visit Lisa. She’s been saying I should go, but it’s such a long way.”

  “You could rent out your house if you go for a few months,” Jason said. “That would help with expenses.”

  “If I did go to New Zealand I wouldn’t have hotel expenses. Lisa has a spare room and she said that if I do visit she would take time off and drive me round. That would be nice.”

  “Does she ever talk about coming home?” Amy asked.

  “She thinks of New Zealand as her home now.” I sighed. “I do miss her. I long for her letters, but she doesn’t have much time to write.”

  “I really must get you a computer, Mum,” Jason said. “But would you use it?”

  “I’m warming to the idea. They had some training sessions at the library to show us how to use theirs. It doesn’t seem too difficult. But it’s when something goes wrong I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Not many people do. That’s where nerds like me come in. To set you up and troubleshoot. You would like one then?” Jason smiled.

  I nodded.

  Swan had obviously talked to Marcus because when I came home from my now routine visit to the food bank, there was a stack of two-gallon plant pots and three bales of soil piled up near the back door.

  A rubber garden hose snaked across the floor from the new tap on the sink. I followed it into the cupboard where it ended up in a giant garbage pail. Another hose, attached to what I assumed was a pump at the bottom of the pail, ran out into the grow room and connected to a watering wand.

  Four pedestal fans were stacked in one corner of the room and a new gauge had appeared on one wall. I took my hat off to Marcus—he definitely wasted no time.

  All this activity suggested I should do something, but what? Should I fill the pots with soil? I felt useless, but I was so afraid of doing something wrong that I couldn’t do anything at all. I was just about to go upstairs and vacuum when the back door key turned and Marcus backed in dragging a couple of wooden pallets. He didn’t see me so he startled when I said, “Wow, you’ve been busy.”

  He turned around and leaned the pallets against the wall. “To put the plant pots on,” he said, nodding at the pallets. Then, to my astonishment, he added more words, “Plants get cold straight on the concrete floor.” I must have looked dumbfounded because he repeated, staring at me as if I were a particularly slow schoolchild, “Plants get cold when they’re straight on the concrete floor.”

  He went out again and came back immediately with another two pallets, which he dragged into the grow room.

  He wore shorts that allowed a view of solid, muscular legs with the bulging calves of a cyclist. Or a rock climber. If I had been thirty years younger…

  In the grow room, where he was arranging the pallets, one under each light, I said, “I was thinking I should fill the plant pots with soil. Right?”

  He looked down at me, his face in shadow from the utility light. I thought I saw his eyes gleam. “If you do that, I’ll bring the plants tonight. After dark.”

  “How many? I mean, how many pots shall I fill?”

  “Thirty-two two-gallons and two three-gallons for the mothers.”

  “Right,” I said. Mothers? I didn’t understand but I didn’t want to push my luck when Marcus was so surprisingly vocal.

  I could hardly eat my boiled spuds. What would the plants look like? I couldn’t tell the difference between a marijuana plant and a chrysanthemum. All I knew was that they smelled, but Swan had said it was a different smell from the one when people smoked. Would they live in my house? What if they just shrivelled and died?

  I changed into an old jogging suit and descended into the depths. Like so many packages these days, the damned bales of soil were hermetically sealed. Back upstairs for kitchen scissors. I cut open the plastic and revealed a solid mass of peaty earth that I attacked with a trowel. Much of it did go into the pots but even more fell on the floor. There had to be a better way of doing this job. Next time I would scrape the soil into a storage bin, loosen it, and then fill the pots.

  It was warm work bend
ing down shoveling soil into pots. I would have opened the door, but what if someone saw me? Eventually, after sweat began to drip off my face, common sense told me to open the door. The breeze was delicious.

  Between my door and the house opposite lay my small garden, my garage, the lane, another garage, another garden, and finally, a house with windows. Anyone at the upper windows would be able to see my door but not inside it. Marcus’s truck, when parked in the space next to the garage, would block even that view. I stopped worrying that someone would have seen him unload.

  A young working couple occupied the house directly across the lane and they were in so rarely that they wouldn’t see me. It was their neighbor who might cause trouble. I didn’t know her terribly well—just to say “hello” to—but Kate was a vigorous, single woman in her fifties who had a lot to say about a lot of subjects. If there was a report in the paper about the Health Cooperative, there was her name; if there was a picture of a group presenting a check to buy the community a mini-bus, there was her picture. If anyone would snitch on me, it would be her.

  Eventually two long lines of filled plant pots ran alongside the outer wall of the grow room. I carried them into the room and arranged eight on each pallet. The lights, of course, were off and the utility light lit the room. Now I needed to add water to the pots as I knew from experience with potting houseplants that new soil with perlite in it takes ages to absorb water.

  The large garbage bin was obviously meant as a reservoir so I filled it by simply turning the tap at the sink. So far, so good. Now, how was the water to reach the wand? With the pump, of course. I’m not good at mechanical things, so I was proud of myself when I discovered the switch for the pump, pressed the handle of the wand, and watched the water come out.

  Swan was right; it was easy to walk round the room and squirt water into the pots but then, as pools began to form on the floor, I realized the pots needed saucers. The storage area near the back door was void of saucers but I did discover two three-gallon pots. Marcus had said they were for the mothers but who were the mothers? I filled them with soil anyway and left them where they were.

  That was all I could do, so then I had to wait. I made macaroni and cheese from a package and ate it in front of the television, picked up my knitting, put it down again, washed up, turned the television to another station, then another, knitted three rows and finally, in exasperation, wandered into the front garden to do some weeding.

  It was like waiting for Christmas as a child and just as exciting, except I knew what the parcel would contain. At least, I knew it would be plants, but what would they look like? How big? I began to feel tender toward them before I’d even seen them; my little buddies to nurture and care for; little buddies who would grow up and look after me in my old age.

  A neighbor walked past and wished me a good evening. Both the houses on either side of me were rented: usually to students, usually young and transient, usually noisy. It wouldn’t occur to them that an old biddy like me would grow pot and if it did, they would probably want to help.

  When I thought my nervous system would collapse under the strain of anticipation, Swan knocked on the front door. “Marcus is at the back,” she said. “With the plants. I’ll help you pot them.”

  We both hurried downstairs and Swan opened the back door for Marcus. He held a plastic storage container in both hands, carried it carefully into the cupboard and placed it on the wide shelf he’d made. “Ta da,” he said unexpectedly.

  I recognized the smell of pot on both of them and I suspected that they were both high, even though they acted normally. I had never smoked pot—indeed, I had never smoked cigarettes after my first fumbling experiments as a teenager. What would it feel like to be high? I intended to find out some day.

  Marcus removed the lid of the container as Swan groped in it and lifted out a seedling about eight inches tall and bright green. “Meet Mary Jane,” she said. “Healthy, but unfortunately, like all Marcus’s plants, they’ve got spider mites.”

  “What are spider mites?” I put on my glasses to peer at the plant.

  “Nasty little sucky bugs. Once you’ve got ’em it’s a pain to get rid of ’em.”

  “Not a good start,” I said feeling my elation dwindle.

  “We’ll dunk them all in Riddit before we plant them,” Swan said. “Have you got the pots ready?” She looked into the grow room. “Great.”

  Marcus fiddled with the gray box. “I’ll put one light on so we can see what we’re doing.” A hum from one ballast announced a glow from the room as the light came on.

  There wasn’t much room for three people in the cupboard, but Swan squeezed past with a bucket and a bottle she pulled out of her bag. I stood like a bump on a log until she came back to organize us. “Here’s a bucket of Riddit. Marcus, you take each plant and dunk them. Then hand them to me and Jess.”

  “What about the mothers?” Marcus asked.

  “Oh yeah. Jess, which plants do you want to be mothers?” Swan looked at me inquiringly.

  “What’s a mother?”

  “They’re plants you don’t let flower so you can take cuttings from them.”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said.

  “Choose the biggest and the best,” Swan said and pulled out a plant. “Like this one. You keep them with the others until you switch. Then they’ll have to come in here.”

  “Switch what?”

  “Switch to the flowering cycle when they get twelve hours of darkness. But the mothers still need only six hours of darkness.” Swan lifted up a couple of plants before choosing another as a mother.

  “Where will I put them? Will I have to remember to take them out of the room every day after six hours?” I was thinking I’d be sure to mess that up.

  Swan laughed. “No, Marcus will fix you up with fluorescent lights in here. That’s where you’ll put your cuttings, too.”

  “Where are the three-gallons?” Marcus asked.

  “By the back door. But I haven’t watered them,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” he said and made for the back door.

  After a couple of false starts we formed a sort of chain gang. Marcus dunked a plant head first into the bucket, handed it into the grow room, and either Swan or I planted it into one of the prepared pots. It was easy to scrape out a hollow in the damp soil with my hand, gently spread the roots and then pat the soil back.

  Before long thirty-two plants reached up to the lights. Marcus planted the two chosen as mothers into the three-gallon pots and made room for them before turning on the remaining three lights. After a few moments he arranged a fan beside each light and turned these on. I understood why we needed so many electrical outlets.

  “What are those for?” I said.

  “It gets too hot under the lights if you don’t have fans on. Particularly in the summer,” Swan said. “Keep an eye on the temperature here.” She pointed to the new gauge that I’d noticed earlier. “It should be eighty to eighty-five degrees when the lights are on and no less than seventy degrees when they’re off. And watch the humidity too, though there’s not much you can do about it. Should be fifty to sixty percent.”

  We stood in a row to admire our handiwork. “Awesome,” Swan said.

  Marcus moved forward and lowered each light until it was about eighteen inches above the plants. “Raise these as the plants grow,” he said looking at me. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, but this time it was his strong arms that attracted me. What a pity he was so inarticulate, because he was quite gorgeous.

  “We’ll come by tomorrow to make sure everything’s okay,” Swan said.

  “Is there anything I should do?” I said.

  “Just make sure everything’s working. You’ll need to water about every third day,” Swan said, “and you feed them every other watering. Have you got food, Marcus?”

  “Not yet.”

  “That�
�s okay. They get food from the soil the first two weeks,” Swan said.

  “I’ll set the lights.” Marcus moved to the gray box. “When do you want them off?”

  I must have looked blank because Swan said, “They get six hours of darkness. That means the lights are off for six hours and there’s no hum. When would you like that to be?”

  I thought for a moment. “The evening would be best as that’s when I usually have visitors. Say, five to eleven?”

  “You want them off when it’s hot inside, so that’ll be fine.”

  “It’s only ten o’clock now,” Marcus said. “I’ll set the timer tomorrow.”

  “Yes, no point in having them off for an hour tonight when they’ve only just gone on,” Swan said making a move to the stairs.

  “I’d like to put saucers under the pots,” I said, looking at Marcus. “Is that okay?”

  “China ones? Like under tea cups?” His expression was serious.

  Was he teasing me? “No, plastic ones. Made for plant pots. So they don’t drain on the floor.”

  “I’ll get some.” Without another word he went out the back door.

  “Seeya,” Swan called after him. At the top of the stairs she turned to me and said, “You’ll get used to him.”

  “I am. He’s stopped shrugging at everything I say, which is a blessing.”

  “He likes you,” she said. “He thinks you’re funny.” Then she was off.

  I returned to the basement with an old stool that I took into the grow room and sat down. There, before me, lay rows of black pots each containing a small plant with leaves that looked like how a child would draw a leaf: serrated edges and marked indentations running from the center line to the edge—not at all like chrysanthemums.

  The room smelled fresh, like a greenhouse, which, I suppose, it was. Oscillating fans swept a breeze over me every few seconds and the little plants fluttered when it was their turn. One little guy was being blown by two fans and didn’t have a respite in which to stand up. “Oh you poor luv,” I said, and moved one of the fans back a bit and re-positioned him before sitting down again. I should have said ‘her’ as Swan told me only female marijuana plants flower. Maybe I shouldn’t call them ‘buddies’? ‘My girls’ perhaps? Or the ‘choir’? No, they all budded so buddies is what I’d call them.