This Garden, My Grave
J. Valencia-Cheng
Have you heard about the pauper’s grave?
They say that there are these roots—more so a mixture of silver string and thick tendrils surrounding the entire grounds, twisted and knotted around the markers that only detail the numeric tag painted on a wood plank. But there aren’t any trees except for off in the distance—only mushrooms and flowers that always bloom out of season. Coquelicots and red spider lilies, those petals and leaves that likely hold the blood of the buried, sit at the head-plank of each mound. Those pale white, bloated, oyster mushroom-esque growths—the few that poke their heads out of the ground—are more populous than the gravesites themselves. They never grow on the graves, but wall them off from invaders.
The police don’t ever bother to come, less about the fear and more so the bureaucratic nuisance—just about no one does, and so the bodies that are buried there have no one to care for them, to let them know that their families are still looking for them. The only constants are that the mushrooms grow all over, and those wild flowers that line the dredged-up makeshift walkways, no matter how many the interned pull when the overseers care enough to do so.
Each day after a new body is buried, without fail, there are more mushrooms, coquelicots, and spider lilies.
* * *
At that bar, I can barely see anyone’s faces—I may just be that drunk off my ass. I don’t have a drinking problem, so getting to the point of the world spinning around me, as if Atlas decided to do that spinning basketball trick like a Harlem Globetrotter, well... there’s something seriously wrong with me.
How many did I have? I thought—no, I know it was one.
Maybe I need fresh air.
Now... is this asphalt? How’d I get to be laying on the ground? My body aches. And that red stuff I’m lying on... some kind of bed of... flower petals??
Someone’s yelling out at me, grabbing at me, though I’m too tired to hear it. I remember my cheek digging into the ground, my teeth aching, and my back hurts. Did I get hit by something, or am I dreaming? This sleep paralysis demon is digging its taloned heels into my back, keeping me frozen and affixed against that bed of flowers like prey.
Too many questions, too tired... I can barely think, nor care to breathe.
I’ll go back to bed when I’m home. Though, I have a feeling that I won’t get much sleep tonight, either.
“Hey, kid, you still dreaming? It’s about time to get up.”
My eyes try to flutter as their eyelids squint shut; it’s the same every night, that dream. Still, I’ll toss and turn, shift and back myself into the wall, until I’m comfortable in this makeshift bed again. Mr. Turner can go suck a lemon.
I feel the nearby tree trunks and their branches sway against the summer wind outside, each in their distinct patterns. That faint twang of string, a solitary game of cat’s cradle, between my fingers as they unconsciously flex themselves. Willing myself back into the ground takes all my mental energy to concentrate on fighting off my body’s insomnia. I wish I didn’t have to wake up; that way I can dream of something different, something that matters instead of some jumble of made-up memories.
“Hey, you hear me? Wake up, boy!”
“I hear you just fine, old man,” I grumble loudly while turning away from the wall, his voice echoing through into my bedchamber. “There’s nothing going on today either, right? So, what’s the point of getting up? It’s not like we can leave.”
“Turner said there’s someone stomping around outside; could be interesting to listen in,” Andy replied in their matter-of-fact way.
None of us are exactly close to each other, but it’s not like we’re distant. The three of us are just stuck here together until we—rather, until I find the energy to finally move along.
“So it’s another body to feed Eden. Whatever, I’m going back to bed. We get so little sleep in the first place.”
“Don’t you young folk care about anything other than sleep?” Mr. Turner snipes back. “If you weren’t so damn lazy and obsessed with those dreams of yours, maybe we’d’ve figured out how the hell we got here.”
“If you can tell me about what you think the beautiful-ass Garden outside looks like, I’ll stay awake long enough to listen. Until then, I’d rather rest until I’m finally dead asleep.” I sigh, tossing until I lay flat on my back. My fingers trace at the edges of the bed and catch some more of those web-like roots in my grasp, choosing instead to play tug-of-war with them.
It is oddly noisy today; almost sounds like rain outside. There’s yelling, stomping, and water—no, the earth is too salty for it to be water leaking through this roof above us. It’s been who knows how long since we’ve seen the outside world. One of my hands presses against the low ceiling above me, though I’m not sure if it’s to force it open or brace it to keep myself inside.
“Andy, tell the old man that there’s nothing we can do but wait.”
“I... can’t hear him anymore.”
Their voice comes in a far-away whisper, and my fingers tangled in mycorrhizae feel a sudden limpness in their connections as I receive the message. I can’t feel Andy, nor Mr. Turner nearby; their thoughts mute, their presence all but evaporated, an obvious sense of absence like exposed holes from unraveled knitting. Calling out into those voids of space that they left behind creates no sound, nor a response.
Something strikes at the ceiling above me, piercing through the debris and the ceiling enough for outside light to leak through a crack, along with the water.
They always say getting pulled into the light would be warm, welcoming; it’s some cause for celebration. Yet, I think I was content to stay in the garden. When the ceiling – a door—swings open to that blindness, it was so artificially cold, and the only warmth came from those scarce briny droplets.
***
“How could this have happened... Oh Lord, my baby boy!”
“Ma’am, please, if you could just-”
“The ONE thing y’all can do after what you’ve done is let me see that it’s him!”
The excavation of the slipshod crate finally concludes with a pair of gardener's shears cutting off the last spindles of roots and bloody petals and bits that cradled the coffin in the dirt. Some of the weeping onlookers crowd around to see the door as those stocky enough, or with some with that grief-filled strength, heave it open on the spot. Others stand off to the side with shaking hands shielding them from such a sight, unable to bear witness to this unfortunate resurrection.
You don’t need to see her face to know that she’s the mother. You only need to hear the immeasurable estrangement in her choked voice reach past the chain-link fence out to someone—anyone who understands the pain of the mud-soaked roots’ reclamation.
Jarod "J" Valencia-Cheng, They/Them/Elle, is an MFA in English candidate on the Creative Writing track at The University of Kansas. Valencia-Cheng focuses on speculative, literary, and slipstream narratives centered in marginalization and structures of power.
