Elodie Barnes

W O R D S • I D E A S : E L O D I E B A R N E S

Tomato Seeds by Elodie Barnes

The air smells of raw earth and daffodils, and Elena is watching her mother fall in love.

It’s a strange sight. Elena’s mother is seventy and can’t usually remember her own name. She certainly can’t remember Elena’s. Her brain fell quickly, one day fighting and the next collapsed, spent, surrendered. She doesn’t remember when she’s eaten. She doesn’t know where she is although she mostly seems to be happy there. But the man has a shuffling walk and a kindly face that seems to attract her, and the staff have said that she remembers a name for him even if she remembers something different each time. Elena wonders if the man knows how lucky he is. At least he is not a void, a blank where a person should be.

She is watching them from across the garden. He is potting seeds outside a greenhouse, built for the residents to use, one of the many activities that the nursing home advertises to keep minds occupied and bodies active. Elena knows the seeds are tomatoes. Almost impossible to kill. Come the summer they’ll have a glut of them, and they’ll be giving them away to families who visit because half of the residents can’t stand them. But the man either doesn’t know this, or did know but has forgotten, or does know and doesn’t care, because he’s laying them in, one seed after another, tenderly covering them with compost as if he was putting a child to bed. Elena’s mother is standing beside him, her small body wrapped in a shawl and her eyes watching everything. His lips are moving. He’s telling her, over and over again, one pot after another, what he’s doing. Elena knows that her mother will still have forgotten by the time he’s reached the end of the row of pots, but she feels a wave of gratitude towards the man anyway. He has the kind of patience her mother needs.

Unsteady footsteps and the clack of a walking stick announce the arrival of her aunt. Elena doesn’t bother to offer her own arm; she knows through hard experience that it will be pushed aside, most likely with the aid of the stick. She waits until Helen has settled herself into one of the garden chairs that have been cleaned off, brought out, set up with much fanfare. It’s the first day that’s felt like spring.

“Freezing,” Helen grumbles by way of greeting, and Elena agrees even though it’s not freezing. No one but her aunt could have called it freezing, but there is still a slight nip in the air when the sun disappears behind a cloud, and they’re both sitting there in winter coats.

“How have you been?” Elena asks, and Helen huffs.

“Same as I was two months ago when you last came.” Shrewd green eyes look across the garden. The man has almost reached the end of the row of pots. “At least someone’s having a good time.”

“What’s his name?” Elena asks.

“Freddie. Your mother’s gone through Alfred, Ralph, Bob, Dick, Charlie, John, George and Billy. There’s a betting pool on what she’ll choose next if you want to chuck something in.”

“You shouldn’t do that.” Elena tries not to smile. She can’t really be angry with her aunt for trying to make the best of her younger sister’s state, however cruel it appears. “And I feel a bit voyeuristic.”

“Oh, please,” Helen scoffs. “This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks.” She reaches into her coat pocket. Fingers crooked and gnarled from arthritis manage to pull out an open packet of Maltesers. “Here. Might as well have a snack for the show.”

“The show?”

“She’ll get angry with him in a minute, when he’s finished the seeds. Always wants him to keep planting. It soothes her. She’ll start crying and stamping her foot, then someone will get her inside with a cup of tea and she’ll forget she was angry, and then she’ll fall in love with him all over again. It’s like a…what d’you call it? A romcom. On permanent loop.”

Elena is silent. She knows a lot can happen in two months and she should have been visiting every week, but the drive out from the city is a long one and she’s been busy with work. She takes a Malteser. Helen always has Maltesers. It’s something familiar. She wonders if her mother still steals them when she thinks Helen isn’t looking, or whether that’s changed as well.

“But you’ve got news.”

Helen’s statement startles her, and she doesn’t answer.

“She named you for me, you know.” Helen’s false teeth crunch happily through the chocolate. “Right from when you were in the womb I could read you like an open book, always better than she could. I even knew you were there before she did. Told her she was pregnant and she laughed at me, said she hadn’t been trying and she was far too old anyway. But I saw you in my dreams as a little girl with my eyes.” She looks pointedly in the direction of Elena’s stomach, buried under folds of wool coat. “So don’t try and fool me.”

“It’s complicated.”

Helen cackles, and the sound makes other residents turn and stare.

“Nothing complicated about it. Simplest process in the world.”

“No biology lessons, please.”

“Do you want it?”

She hesitates as the man reaches the last pot. The last seed is carefully laid in, the last sweep of compost drawn over the top. He is still explaining it to her mother. Or perhaps he isn’t. Perhaps he’s telling her a story, or telling her about his family, or telling her sweet nonsense. Her mother won’t remember anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. What matters is his voice.

“I don’t know,” she eventually answers.

“Does he?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Better decide sharpish, pet.”

“I’m too old as well.”

“Not forty yet, are you?”

Elena shakes her head. She’s a long way off forty and her aunt knows it. But her mother’s lip is starting to tremble. She can see it from here, and so can the nurse who is keeping an

eye on the garden from the open French doors. It both fascinates Elena and appals her, the way the love in her mother’s eyes is so quickly replaced by hurt and anger and betrayal when the last pot is finished and there are no more. Her mother doesn’t understand. Her mother wants the man to keep planting forever.

“Are you going to say anything to her?”

Elena shakes her head. “Not today. Not until I decide.”

Her mother doesn’t know who she is anyway. Her mother won’t understand that she might be a grandmother. Her mother has completely forgotten that she’s even got a daughter, and Elena thinks that should upset her more than it does. Instead it’s a simple practicality. Occasionally, she’s even grateful that it was her mother and not her aunt. Helen’s body has betrayed her, not her mind, and Elena can cope with that even though the thought feels like a guilt-laden worm in her chest. Helen and her mother had formed the double-act of her childhood, each filling in what the other couldn’t provide. When she’d fallen off her bicycle, failed an exam, been dumped by her first boyfriend, her mother had swiftly provided a bandage and picked her up off the floor. Helen had sat with her and mopped up her tears. Helen had always mopped up her tears, and she knew it was unfair that she felt closest to Helen because of it. She knew she would be devastated if Helen ever forgot her name.

Elena watches as the nurse gently leads her mother inside. The man watches, resigned. He slowly gathers the spilt compost into a pile, sweeps it off the wooden table into his palm, tosses it back into the open bag. He starts to carry the pots into the greenhouse two at a time, one in each hand. The few steps there and back take him several minutes, but he’s patient. He knows not to rush himself. Elena watches the entire operation and wonders whether her mother will have calmed down by the time he’s finished, whether he knows how long it takes, whether he’s timing it so that there’s no real interruption to their love story. She thinks he is, and Helen nods.

“If he wouldn’t do that for you, don’t bother with him.”

Elena knows her aunt isn’t talking about Freddie.

Late that night there is a storm. It’s not the thunder that wakes her; that hasn’t started yet. Nor is it lightning, because that will only come a step or two behind the thunder. It’s the rain that wakes her, tired as she is after the drive and the nursing home and time spent with one woman who remembers nothing and another woman who remembers too much. The first heavy, splattering drops on the window rouse her from sleep. Get up, they’re saying, there’s

something coming, be prepared, and so she prepares herself. She gets up and makes tea before the electricity folds under the impending weight. She fetches a cardigan and puts it on over her pyjamas. She lights a candle, and she takes up her place on the windowsill with the curtains open to the weather. A thin pane of glass rests between her and the storm; she can look, but can’t touch. She traces a line down the window with her finger. On the other side a raindrop mirrors her movement. Perfect synchronicity. She was born in a thunderstorm, and she wonders if that’s why.

But it was Helen, not her mother, who told her that. It was Helen who told her that a woman’s body is seventy per cent wave and raindrop, river and sea and storm. It was Helen who told her to turn off the lights to see the lightning, because lightning is electricity and the heart is the biggest conductor of electricity in the body. She hears the first growl of thunder, far away beyond her reach, and wonders idly whether the mother has forgotten the daughter because the daughter still believes everything the sister said.

She doesn’t have a sister. Her baby will be all hers, and she doesn’t know if she can be enough.

She thinks of the adoring look in her mother’s eyes as, just as Helen predicted, she had calmed down and fallen in love with Freddie all over again. So easy. So simple. Nothing complicated.

She hears a faint pounding in her ears. It’s her heartbeat, distinct from the approaching thunder and the driving rain. She often hears it during a storm, as if her body is being born all over again, but now for the first time she can hear a tiny echo.

She wonders if her mother still has something to teach her, even if her mother no longer knows her name.

Two weeks later, she returns to the nursing home. There are swathes of daffodils now. The first cotton buds of blossom are showing on the trees. She doesn’t need her thick coat, only a jacket, and that, she thinks, is the difference that two weeks can make. In another two weeks the daffodils might be gone altogether. In another two weeks the blossom will be out, and tiny leaves will be everywhere like daubs of green paint, and the same loveliness that blooms every year will begin all over again. In another two weeks her jeans will be tight. She sits outside and waits for Helen, waits for the familiar clack of the stick, waits for the twisted body to lower itself into the garden chair. She wonders how many weeks it will be before Helen won’t be able to refuse the helping arm. She wonders how many weeks before she will come and find her aunt in a wheelchair.

“Freezing,” Helen grumbles by way of greeting, and Elena agrees again even though it’s mild and there’s been no rain since the storm.

“How have you been?” Elena asks, and Helen huffs.

“Same as I was two weeks ago when you last came.”

Today, Freddie is transplanting seedlings. His large fingers are gentle, plucking the tiny stalks from their seed pots and placing them carefully into a larger one. Each one has a perfectly formed leaf or two, no bigger than a thumbnail. Each one already has delicate, straggly roots that reach blindly for their new home. Her mother is watching. Her mother is listening as he tells her what he’s doing, over and over again. Her mother is smiling, and it makes Elena smile too.

“It’s a girl,” Helen says, and Elena looks at her.

“It’s barely a tadpole at the moment.”

“It’s a girl,” Helen repeats. She reaches into her pocket, and with some effort pulls out the usual packet of Maltesers. She hands it to Elena. “You’ll have to open them.”

Elena tears off a corner, and tips some chocolates into her aunt’s waiting hand before helping herself.

“I haven’t called him yet,” she confesses. She knows he wouldn’t endlessly plant tomato seeds for her, and Helen shrugs as much as the arthritis will let her.

“You should tell your mother.”

“She doesn’t know who I am.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Helen’s tongue noisily sucks chocolate from honeycomb. “It’ll make her happy anyway.”

Elena approaches carefully, while her mother is still watching Freddie. He smiles at her and then returns to his tomatoes; Helen has told him who she is. Her mother doesn’t acknowledge her.

“A friend’s come to watch too, love,” Freddie says, his voice gently nudging in her direction, and her mother turns. Elena can tell she’s a little annoyed at the interruption, but her mother has always been polite and mostly still is.

“A friend?” she queries, and Elena simply smiles and nods. “Oh. Nice to see you, dear.”

Elena watches as another little seedling is tenderly cradled in its new pot. Preamble will make no difference. A tiny part of her mother is going to be born again, but her mother won’t understand that. Best to keep it simple.

“I’m pregnant,” she says. “I wanted you to know.”

Freddie smiles, but keeps his eyes on the pots.

“Oh,” her mother says again. “That’s lovely, dear.” She points to one of the seedlings, its leaf shivering in the slight breeze. “Jack and I have children too.”

“Fifty of the little buggers,” Freddie chuckles, and hands her mother a seedling. “In there, nice and gentle now.”

Elena watches as her mother places the plant in the hole that Freddie has made. Her touch is almost reverent, and she fusses quietly as she tucks the compost over the roots. She looks at Freddie for reassurance, and he nods.

Elena is about to turn away when her mother speaks again.

“If it’s a girl you could call it Elena.” Her mother’s eyes shine. “Such a pretty name.”

Back at the garden table, Helen rests a wrinkled hand on her knee. They watch in silence for a while as her mother and Freddie go through the same routine. There is the frown, the confusion, the collapse of the face into tears. A different nurse comes this time, and her mother is led away to be soothed with tea and as many reassuring words as she can understand before it all begins again.

“She told me to call it Elena.”

“She calls me that as well. She remembers in her own way.”

“She called Freddie Jack.”

Helen swears, and then cackles. “Lost again.”

Freddie starts to carry the new pots into the greenhouse, two at a time again, one in each hand. His shuffle is more pronounced than last time. She wonders what her mother would do without him. She wonders if, after a few days, her mother would even remember.

“I’m scared.”

“Me too, pet. Facing death’s no easier than facing life.”

Freddie picks up the next two pots, and Elena feels a lump in her throat. She doesn’t have an answer for that. Helen was always the one with the answers.

“Remember what I taught you,” Helen says, patting her knee clumsily. “You turned out alright, didn’t you? Teach her the same and you’ll both be fine.”

Elena remembers the storm, and the thrumming of rain through her blood. Their blood, now. She’d sat up all night with the thunder that never came near and the lightning that was only a spark on the horizon, and she’d whispered all she knew about rivers and seas and hearts and electricity. She’d done it to remind herself, but the echo of her heartbeat had only got stronger. She smiles.

“I already am.”

Elodie Barnes is a writer and editor. Her short fiction and poetry has been widely published online, and she is one winner (alongside Erin Calabria) of the 2020 Sundog Lit Collaboration Prize. She is Books & Creative Writing Editor at Lucy Writers Platform, where she is also cofacilitating What the Water Gave Us, an Arts Council England-funded anthology of emerging women and non-binary writers from migrant backgrounds. She is currently working on a collection of short stories. Find her online at elodierosebarnes.weebly.com.