Harvest

The tugging on my nightgown jerked me awake. I flung the covers aside and tore at the cotton gown in a terror, expecting to find a spider, a lizard, I don't know what, but not that thin green shoot, snaking up from the blistered skin of my right thigh. I thought it was a vine, at first, but the stem firmed up and turned woody and gray, and in just a few minutes of helpless watching, the plant became a sapling. A maple. Or an oak.

I was scared, of course. Afraid to touch it. I felt the tender skin at the base of the little tree, peered into the space between the raw, jagged edge of coral flesh and the wood. I could see nothing but the wood going down, down. I grabbed at the thing and pulled, but the pain made me cry out. I might as well try to wrench off a toe. I began to shake and weep, my hands pressed tight to my mouth.

My mother hurried in from the living room, where she'd been staying on the sleeper sofa. She said "Aha!" like she'd just found her lipstick at the bottom of her purse, shushed me, sat down on the bed to smooth my hair, and promised to fix everything. Then she was off the bed and out of the room again. When she returned, she had a cup of hot lemon tea and a small pot of salve.

"Where did you get that ointment?" I asked her, as she stirred honey into my cup.

"Never mind, just drink your tea." She handed it over, smiled. "I will always be your mother."

I sipped and shuddered while she rubbed the ointment all around the thin, pliable trunk. "It won't always hurt," she said, and that's when I realized she had planted it.

The knowledge that she had done it—that planting this tree in my thigh was probably the purpose of her trip—threw me back into myself, into a dizzy, silent freefall I hadn't taken in a long time. I stayed in that haze for a few hours, and then I managed to haul myself from the bed. I wanted to put some kind of day together, so I hobbled around the kitchen and made a nut sundae.

I could barely walk with a tree fast growing from my leg, and I was afraid to leave the house. My mother called my boss to tell him I'd taken a terrible fall and was in intensive care, and she'd phone him with regular updates. Then she shooed me back to bed. What else could I do? I had to give myself up to her.

I did ask. When she brought me a tuna sandwich and more tea, I said I wouldn't eat until she told me why she'd planted the tree. She just laughed, pecked my cheek. "I'll just leave your dinner here and you can eat when you're ready." I let it sit for almost two hours. Then I couldn't take it anymore. Usually I don't mind hunger, but the tree seemed to be draining me of all reserves.

For days I lay in my bed, my right leg out of the covers to make room for the branches and new leaves that sprang from the bark by the hour. I never knew how much inactivity tries the body. I did some light stretches, mostly on my left side.

At some point I realized that the neighbor's dog barks every forty-five minutes, exactly, from the time his owner leaves in the morning until she returns. This didn't surprise me as much as it might have. Perhaps my mother made that happen, too. I decided to make use of his habit. When the dog barked, that was my cue to shift my position. The tree was getting heavier.

I discovered, too, that the sun doesn't just take on varying shades of white and yellow at different times of day—it has a range of weights and smells. In the...