by Sandra Smith
3
ANA
Clare told Lily and Dante about the men from GRIM who had visited their apartment and about being followed in the alley. She shared what she had learned from her limited Monitor search. She said she thought she was being followed whenever she went out.
“Aren’t you afraid, Clare?” Lily asked.
“Sort of. But I don’t think they’ll hurt me. My biggest worry is if they put Mama in jail.”
Dante’s eyes opened wide.
“I don’t see how they can,” she added hurriedly. “Mama doesn’t know anything. And the seeds are never in the apartment. They couldn’t arrest her.”
“So,” Lily prodded, still curious, “how do the seeds make food? And what kind of food is it?”
“Yeah,” Dante asked, licking his lips, “is it Sweeties?”
“I’m not sure,” Clare said, furrowing her brow. “I’m pretty sure it’s not Protein. It could be Sweeties. But it sounded more like Vitees. My friend said food is different now than before. She said food used to have a lot of names.”
“Like how?” asked Lily.
“Yeah, like how?” repeated Dante.
“Well, like now we have Protein, Sweeties, Vitees, Carbos, and Snacks. They had things called fruit and veg, vegTABLES, and meat, and—oh, I don’t remember. It’s hard to remember all of the new words. She promised to teach me more and let me write it down. It sounded really interesting. The food in those groups all had individual names, too, and came in different sizes and colors and shapes—”
“Shapes? What other shapes for food could there be besides square and round?”
“I don’t know—I don’t really get it. I tried to find out more about it on the Monitor, but that information is blocked.”
A secretive look spread across Lily’s face. “When will you see her again?” she whispered.
“Soon,” Clare whispered back. “I’ve been dying to, but what with GRIM on my tail, I’ve been waiting.”
Lily and Dante nodded. Dante placed his fist with the thumb up on the table in front of them. The two girls latched on.
On Sunday, Clare and Dante walked seven blocks to St. Vincent Catholic Church. They hurried down a side aisle, stopping four rows from the front. Clare prodded Dante toward the center of the long bench. Several minutes later, an elderly woman made her way into the pew, sliding in next to Clare.
As the congregation sang, the song flowing up around Clare seemed to her a beautiful painting and the individual voices were strokes of color making up the whole. She felt safe and at ease in church.
Dante squirmed through the long service.
“Why do you like church?” he asked as they walked home afterward.
“I like feeling close with God.”
“I don’t feel close with God in church.”
“You will, someday.”
“I think it’s boring.”
Clare glanced around. There was no one close enough to hear. “I first heard about seeds in church.”
Dante perked up. “You did?”
“Yes,” she answered. “The Bible talks about seeds. Father preached a sermon one day about a man sowing seeds. I didn’t understand it, but I noticed the old people were nodding their heads. Their eyes were kind of watery like they were about to cry.” She turned and looked at Dante. “Did you see the woman who came in after us?”
“Yeah. She always sits there.”
“Yes. She does. Her name is Ana.”
“You know her name?”
“Be quiet, I’m trying to tell you something. After the seed sermon, I asked the woman—Ana—about it. She smiled and explained a little about seeds. She asked if I wanted to meet later and learn more. We’ve met a couple of times since then, in different places.”
Clare grabbed his arm and stopped walking. She looked him full in the face. “Dante, she is my friend. Do you understand?”
His eyes showed confusion, but then the light of understanding flashed on. He nodded.
“You can’t tell anybody, not even Mama, and especially not strangers. Now keep walking. Someone might be watching.”
Once home, Clare took Dante into her room. “Let me show you something.” She opened her prayer book and there, among the thin pages, was another small packet. A high-pitched squeak slipped out of Dante’s mouth like air out of a balloon.
“How? When?”
“In church,” she said, “during greetings, right into my hand.”
He smiled broadly. “You are so smart.”
“And,” his sister added, “I slipped a letter into Ana’s Bible. I requested a meeting so I could ask more questions.”
“Can I come?”
“Of course. You, me, and Lily are now signed up for after-school tutoring at St. Vincent’s.”
4
LESSON AT ST. VINCENT’S
It surprised Clare that GRIM still followed her around. They had nothing on her. She wasn’t even sure why they had tailed her in the first place. How could they have known about the seeds? She expected they would soon close their case, and the shadows would disappear.
Until then, she, Lily, and Dante were making a game out of it. They spent many afternoons leading the man—whose veiled attempts to blend in failed miserably—on wild goose chases. It was particularly fun if he was on a bike. They’d pedal fast and go places meant only for children, ending with the GRIM agent panting for breath or covered in mud and swearing.
Most of the time, though, the kids carried on as usual: staying over at each others’ homes, riding around on their bikes, and watching the Monitor. They attended school, church, and after-school tutoring. But Clare didn’t let her guard down. There was no way she was going to get anybody in trouble.
On Tuesday afternoon, the children rode their bikes to the church. It had taken a lot of convincing Mama to let Dante ride that distance, but Clare’s insistence and promises to keep him close won her over. Mama was pleased with the kids’ eagerness to attend free tutoring.
Once inside, Clare spotted Ana right away. She hurried to a table near the back of the large room. Lily and Dante followed.
“Hi, Ana,” Clare called.
“Well, hello, dear,” the woman answered. “This must be Lily and Dante,” she said, smiling at the children.
Clare made introductions and they sat down at the round table. She wasn’t sure what to expect. She had told the others that Ana would explain how seeds became food. What she had read on the Monitor had increased her curiosity more than ever, but additional searches had yielded little. She was hoping today would be the day all her questions were answered.
In her fantasy, they would arrive to find a table stacked high with old and dusty books: books with pictures and stories that would solve the mystery to which she’d been given only crumbs like the pigeons in the courtyard outside.
One lonely book sat atop the table. Clare’s heart sank.
“So,” Clare said slowly, “what will we be learning today?”
Ana smiled. “Today, you’ll learn about plants.”
“Plants!” Dante cried. “I already know about plants.”
“Oh, do you, Mr. Dante? Tell me what you know about plants.”
“Well,” he said, hesitantly, thinking. “Plants are green, and . . . they usually grow outside, but Mama used to have an inside plant. It died.”
“Very good. Can you name the parts of a plant?”
The two girls sat quietly, their faces betraying their eagerness to answer should Dante fail.
“Um. Leaves?”
“Yes.”
“And . . . roots?”
Ana clapped her hands. “Very good, Dante.”
Lily raised her hand.
“Yes, Lily?”
“Isn’t that one part called the stem?”
“It sure is,” Ana said.
“Um,” Clare interrupted, “why are we talking about plants? I know this is after-school tutoring, but I thought . . . ” She stopped talking.
&n
bsp; “Yes?”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I thought you were going to teach us about the seeds?”
Ana smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I surely am.”
Clare was confused. Not only had the discussion so far been about plants, but she had noticed that the book on the table was a Bible.
Ana reached out and picked up the Bible. She opened it to the very beginning. “Gather close, children.” The children scooted in.
“Clare,” she said in a strong teacher voice. “Please read for us Genesis, chapter one, verses eleven and twelve.”
The children looked at each other, perplexed. Lily pushed the plain black book closer to Clare.
Clare cleared her throat and read, “Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.’ And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruits with the seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw it was good.” She stopped reading and looked up.
“Well,” said Ana, looking from face to face. “I think there might be some words in this passage that you don’t know—yes?”
Dante looked eagerly at the older girls. They were nodding their heads. He joined in.
“Veg-e-ta-tion?” Clare asked. “It sounds sort of like the ‘vegeTABLE’ word you told me about that time.”
“Yes,” replied Ana, “very good. Vegetable,” she pronounced correctly, “and vegetation are word relatives. In this case vegetation means all kinds of plants and trees. What else?”
“Fruit?” Lily offered. She was thinking of the discussion she’d had some days before with Clare. This was one of the words that had come up.
“Ah, yes, fruit,” Ana said. “Well?” She looked at them sternly. “Take out a piece of paper!”
They snapped to it and bustled into their bags for paper and pencils.
“You may draw pictures,” she said to Dante. “Fruit is another part of the plant.” She paused while the girls scribbled down what she’d said. “Let’s all draw a picture.”
Ana drew a plant, labeling the parts. It was something the older girls had done in school. “Fruit,” Ana explained, as she added a large blob to her drawing, “is a part of the plant people nowadays have forgotten about.”
Lily’s forehead wrinkled. “No one ever mentioned that before,” she said.
“I’ve never seen a fruit on a plant,” Dante added.
After the children added fruit to their plant pictures, Ana asked Lily to read the Bible verses Clare had read earlier. Afterward she asked them what was inside of the fruit.
“Seeds,” Dante hollered so loud the three females shushed him at once.
The children felt as if they’d discovered something significant: seeds came from fruit, which came from plants. Even though they couldn’t remember having seen anything like a fruit, they all knew about plants. Plenty of bushes and trees grew in the city—or at least on the outer edges of the city. But they still were not sure what any of this had to do with food.
Clare was finally brave enough to pose the question.
“So what’s this got to do with food?”
Ana looked at her blankly.
Clare tried again. Maybe the old woman hadn’t heard her. “What does seeds coming from fruit and plants have to do with food?”
Ana faltered. “What do plants have to do with food?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” the three children said, nodding.
“Oh dear,” Ana said, speaking only to herself. “It’s worse than I thought.”
5
DANTE DISCOVERS FRUIT
Ana was about to explain what apparently the children lacked in basic botanic knowledge when they realized the room had emptied.
“Oh,” she said. “It looks like our time is up. We’ll have to pick up the question next time. In the meantime, do try to study your new words. I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. I’ll see you in a couple days.”
When the kids arrived back at Clare and Dante’s place, they headed straight for Clare’s room. Though small, the apartment had three tiny bedrooms. Actually, Dante’s room wasn’t a room at all. Mama had found office cubicle partitions at a local thrift store and walled off a part of the living room for Dante. Since Clare was almost a teenager, Mama didn’t think it was appropriate for the two children to continue sharing a room. All three of them had decorated the dividers with butcher paper and drawings of dinosaurs; Dante was proud to “move in.” Clare loved the newfound space in her room formerly occupied by Dante’s small bed. Someday soon she hoped to get a desk or bean bag chair. For now, she delighted in the fact that she had a space in the world to call her own.
The children took out their drawings, flung themselves across Clare’s bed, and contemplated what they’d heard from Ana that day.
“Have you ever seen a plant with a fruit on it?” Lily asked Clare.
“No, and we never learned it in school, either.”
“I have,” said Dante.
“You have??” the two girls exclaimed. “But you’re only in second grade.”
“No, I mean, I’ve seen a fruit.”
“You have??” they said again.
“I didn’t think I had, but after a while I remembered something.” He jumped off the bed and darted out of the room. He returned carrying a box of Juice.
“See?” he said. “In this picture. There are trees. And see these little colored things? I think that’s supposed to be fruit.”
The girls took the box from him and squinted their eyes, looking closer.
“I think he’s right,” Lily said. “There are definitely some colored circles here. They don’t look like leaves.”
“Hmm,” said Clare, looking up. “I guess I never noticed that before. D’ya think?”
Dante smiled, pleased with his discovery. “I found fruit,” he sang. “I found fruit.”
“Still,” his sister said, “it’s only a picture; it’s not real.”
Her skepticism wasn’t enough to dampen Dante’s mood.
“I still want to know how seeds make food,” Clare said. She tried working it out. “Okay, we know that seeds are found in fruit, and seeds make food, but how do seeds make food, and where is this fruit that holds all these seeds? And why is it against the law to have seeds? That must be why we never see plants with fruit, because the seeds would be everywhere. Arrghh,” she screamed. “My head is going to explode!”
“Oh no,” Lily shouted, “her head is going to explode! Quick, Dante, let’s soften the explosion with pillows!”
Dante and Lily piled pillows onto the struggling Clare until they all exhausted themselves with laughter.
6
ANA’S REFLECTION
How long had it been, Ana thought to herself, since real food had appeared on store shelves? She counted the years and thought of the children. It had easily been gone for the entirety of their short lives.
And the backyard gardens had disappeared even sooner—especially in cities. Why, urban gardens had been an oddity even when she was a child. It didn’t take much reflection to understand how the children had no concept of food originating from plants. The only function of plants they knew was purely ornamental; the only concept of food was something chopped, pressed, cut, and wrapped tightly in plastic, and neatly packed in square boxes. Food so unlike the original source that it bore no resemblance to a plant and held little of the original nutritional value.
Of course, the current food was supposedly pumped full of vitamins and nutrients, but was it the same? And what else was it pumped full of to give it the shelf life needed to be sold from Stores?
Ana shook her head, thinking about the way things were now, compared to the old days. She wondered if humankind could ever make its way back. The old woman walked slowly to her bedroom. She pulled out the top left drawer of her dresser—the one with the false bottom. She lifted the folded cl
othing out of the drawer and set it aside. Carefully, she slid the thin wooden board out of its place to reveal the tiny square compartments. Her eyes gazed lovingly at the seeds filling each section. The larger seeds—beans, corn, and peas—occupied the cubicles. The smaller seeds—tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, basil and such—were tucked into the paper envelopes.
Ana wasn’t sure how much longer she would be around to secretly grow the herbs and vegetables she raised each year, eating some of the treasured produce, but more importantly, saving the seeds. Besides those she had grown herself, she stored seeds from other Seed Savers who met once a year to exchange seeds—a traveling Noah’s Ark of food.
Seed Savers, a secret society whose initial goals were to salvage seeds and skills before they were lost, had hopes of changing the policies and politics governing the nation’s food supply. Someday, the people would come to their senses about food, and when that day arrived, there would be pure seeds left with which to begin again.
Ana thought about the children. She knew she was putting them in danger by giving them seeds and teaching them, but what kind of a future was she passing on if she didn’t share her knowledge and her seeds?
7
“GOOD FOR FOOD”
The children arrived early for their second tutoring session and immediately spied Ana sitting at a table reading her Bible. They rushed over to her.
“Oh, there you are,” she said as they yanked the chairs from the table. She closed the Bible and set it aside. “How is everyone today?”
After a few minutes of chit chat, she proceeded to quiz them on the definitions of words such as “vegetation” and “fruit” and asked for examples. They easily came up with examples for vegetation, but were still stumped by fruit.
“We’ve never seen a plant with fruit. We looked, but there wasn’t anything like this on any of the trees and plants around our apartment building,” Clare said, pointing toward her sketch of the fruited plant she’d made at their last session.