When G-ma turns 80, she passes care of her garden to Mir, with a warning. Never take money for its fruits before they're ripe. When she was a girl, G-ma's father promised his crop to the bank. Locusts ate their wheat. The bank ate their land. They came then to this smoggy river city for work at the valve company that once hummed at the neighborhood's heart. Mir's parents died young. She grew up playing hide-and-seek in the garden with G-ma and with grief. They eat, preserve, and take to the market what they grow.
Mir loves working under the sky, loves the chlorophyll and pollen spice of sun-cupped leaves and blossoms bobbing under bees. G-pa raised these beds with stones dragged from a dry creek on the valley floor. Perched on those stones, G-ma sips her tea and dispenses advice. "Find yourself a man with a strong back." She winks. "Preferably one with a fine looking backside."
Even in drizzle or humid heat, it's better than her old job at the drive-thru. This scratchy, backbreaking work doesn't pay half as well as minimum wage, even, but she'll take the rasp of leaves and the crunch of soil over orders and machines. Train wheels sing over the valley. Weekends, as the early sun delves their skinny street with houses gapped like neglected teeth, she loads G-pa's pickup, which still somehow runs even though he's ten years gone. G-ma's market stall is known for her unusual varieties. In a tall, wooden library catalog she saves heirloom seeds that go back to her people in the old country. Fawn pole beans hint of honey butter. Brilliant peppers burn with sugary fire. There's a whale skinned squash that smells faintly of some distant sea.
The chef from this fancy downtown restaurant, Finn, rolls up to Mir's stall. Flashing a milk-fed smile, he asks what happened to her grandmother.
"Retired," Mir says. "Mostly, at least."
"You're the new boss then?"
Mir shrugs. She idly tosses a squash, which G-ma never would have allowed.
"I'm crazy about your produce. Will those purple beans you grow be coming soon?"
"When they're good and ready. I'd say a few weeks."
He pulls out his wallet. "What will you take to give me first pick of your crop?"
"We're a strictly first come, first served operation," Mir says. "Early bird gets the worm, right?" The squash slips her grip and shatters, spills its oval seeds at her feet.
Then G-ma gets sick. Bills pile on their roll-top desk. When Finn comes again with that pearly grin, Mir decides to accept his advance. "But what if something were to happen to my crop?" she asks.
Finn's teeth crack a yellow carrot. "What could happen? Will you take a check?"
As soon as the back bills are paid, pests and wilts invade the garden. Voles burrow into roots. Rabbits and a groundhog munch through her greens. Mir curses aphids, beetles, slugs, and a blight that creeps through the beans for which Finn's so keen. He calls for an update. Mir doesn't pick up.
She accidently answers while furiously scrubbing her nails at the basement sink. While turning her compost pile, she grabbed what revealed itself to be a dead possum decaying under the rotting vegetation.
"You said those beans would be ready this week," Finn says.
"They'll be ready when they're ready," she says through a lather of caustic soap she hopes will take off several layers of skin. Because she doesn't want the skin that touched that possum ever to touch another part of her body.
"What about our deal?"
"The deal is you get first crack at my crop."
"Just bring me what you can."
Mir doesn't like his tone.
She salvages gnawed beans, pocked greens, scarred tomatoes. If she hadn't promised them to Finn, she and G-ma would eat what they could salvage.
Finn wrinkles his nose over the crates she brings to his kitchen door.
"I can't use most of this," he says, picking through it. "I expected better."
Humiliated, she watches him wheel a few crates into the kitchen, his knotty spine visible through a tight black t-shirt.
The next weekend she takes what she can to market, but business is slow. Which is weird. Sure her harvest is poor, but even the chattier regulars skip her stall. Finally, she engages Mary, who cooks legendary meals for her circle of artist friends.
"What's up, Mary? I know I've had a bad month, but I haven't seen half my people."
Mary's conspiratorial eyes meet Mir's.
"That chef is spreading it around maybe you don't have your grandma's mojo," Mary says. "But I don't believe the weasel. Give me a bag of kale and a dozen or so tomatoes. What happened? Looks like someone used them for target practice. But they'll cook down just fine."
Mir fumes. Driving home, crates bang around the truck's bed as she takes turns too fast. She throws on an old dress of her mother's. G-ma catches her in the kitchen, digging bills out of their money jar.
"Where you off to, all gussied up?"
"Dinner," Mir says.
In the sleek, climate-controlled restaurant, Finn's maître d' eyes her faded yellow sundress when she replies that no, she doesn't have a reservation. She accepts a seat at the bar. She orders a glass of Bordeaux and bruschetta starter. On the platter she notes the purple brindle of G-ma's tomatoes, her basil's subtle licorice.
Mir listens to the austere room, to the low murmur and clink of happy diners.
"Do me a favor," she says to the bartender. "Let Finn know Mir's here."
The bartender ducks into the kitchen. Finn's face appears behind foggy glass. He spots Mir's acid smile and ducks.
"Finn's kind of busy," the bartender says. "He said to offer you a complimentary dessert."
When Finn peeks again, she gives him a little finger wave.
Little man, she thinks. Her pasta primavera arrives. In each perfect piece she tastes the delicate flavors G-ma tended across generations. She declines dessert. She puts what's left of Finn's money under her plate.
She thanks the bartender. "The service here is exemplary," she says.
With the last of the wine on her tongue she goes, eager for the prismatic spray of water through leaves. She drags her green hose between unruly beds. Water darkens those fossil-studded stones, laid like the ruins of some long lost civilization, as Mir moves dreaming of seeds unsown.