ARR 1988 - Flipbook - Page 20
did look happier and stand much straighter.
"I'll be darned. The plant man was right. You really did like the beer
and it's gonna make you well again."
She rolled up her quilt and stared a bit uneasily at the silhouette of the
plant in the darkened room. I don't know about all this, she thought. Maybe
it will drink up all my beer and then what'll I do? I can't afford to buy the stuff
for two of us! She pictured the scraggly plant growing more demanding of her
precious stock and she drifted off to sleep feeling somewhat ambivalent
about her role as the Good Samaritan.
During the days that followed Mary B. dutifully carried her six-pack
home to share with the plant which was definitely recovering from its brush
with death. Its stalks were turning a lovely green and its leaves were now
flat as if to gather in and absorb the diluted light that filtered past the
shadow of the building across the alley. Mary B. even washed her window,
inside and out, so that the plant could get all the light available.
One morning, to her surprise, she saw a tiny new shoot was bursting
open on one of the stalks and she stared in wonder at the new miracle. "I'll
be," she whispered. "You're having a baby and I didn't even know you were
in a family way. No wonder you were so worn out and bedraggled. Poor
thing."
A new idea hit her and she smiled, wagging a finger at the plant.
"Of course," she giggled. "That's why you liked the beer so much.
Pregnant ladies like a lot of weird stuff so why shouldn't you?"
She began to look at the plant with new eyes as the tiny bud broke
through its mother skin and spread its tender leaflet in imitation of its elder.
On the morning it was fully open Mary B. got up early and sat in her chair
to witness the birth. She was so overcome with emotion that she poured at
least half of her last can of beer into the plant's ever thirsty soil.
"You deserve it, dear," she said generously. "Now you just relax and
don't strain yourself. I'll take good care of you and your little one." Then she
took Scotty's picture down from the shelf so that he too could marvel at this
new event.
"I'll be darned," she whispered. "I never knew that plants had little
babies like that."
In exasperation with her mental lapses, she scolded herself gently. Of
course they have babies. How else could there be new plants if they didn't?
That night she lay awake a long time staring at the plant and reliving
the morning's experience. It will have to have a name now, she thought. I
can't go on calling it plant. Romantic, exotic names flitted through her mind
and she sounded each out softly, rejecting most, and finally, from the
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