The Monstera

A siren of some emergency vehicle blares in the near distance. I look up at the quartz clock. 12:32 p.m. The phone should’ve rung by now. Your mother should’ve called by now. She did yesterday. Actually, she has for the past few days. At least, I think. 

I blink back to the laptop screen that burns blue light into my eyes. The cursor flashes atop a black background in a textbox on Reddit, awaiting my answer to a request for my twenty-six-, forty-eight-, and eleven-year-old monsteras from my r/houseplants post. EDIT: I have a week left to live. Rehoming a collection of over 1000 monsteras. Free of charge. Freshly repotted. First come, first served. Pickup in Dallas. Final call. Day six.

So far, I’ve responded to 511 inquiries. 1,116 plants are gone.

u/artemisiaslays: The Swiss cheese, egregia, and cobra are still available. Can you meet for pickup at the Haskell Whataburger?

u/kattsmama1997: Yea. Wut time

u/artemisiaslays: As soon as possible.

u/kattsmama1997: Bet. Omw. Cu @ 3. Thnx 

A warning for the laptop’s low battery appears at the top right of the screen, and I’m suddenly able to peel my fingers off the keyboard. Sweet and spicy dust of salsa-flavored Sun Chips leave my fingerprints on the sleeve, heaviest on the spacebar and S, M, and O keys, and I think about the reruns of Criminal Minds and Forensic Files that we’d watch. You teased that I’d make a horrible criminal. Always a fucking idiot, you said. Vika’s shit for brains. 

Three o’clock is perfect. 

Plucking two purple latex gloves from a box, the stainless-steel refrigerator handle cools my palm. I remove two bags of Miracle-Gro Indoor Potting Mix and set them on the counter. There’s always so much Monstera misinformation. Orchid bark, succulent mix, specialty mix with extra perlite; it doesn’t matter. True plant people know that they’ll grow in literally anything. Hell, a monstera could grow in a garbage bag if it had the right amount of light and water. 

I grab three pots: two ceramic and one plastic, and shake chilled soil into each. Big Cheese, as you named him, came the day after the first slap, after yellow flowers. What kind of moron gives a girl yellow flowers? Four wilting yellow gardenias, at that. 

Not even wilting roses.

Sometimes … sometimes a person’s pushed past their limit.

Bath and Body Works wallflowers suffocate the apartment with an artificial floral musk that conceals the earthy potting mix. I pack what’s dumped into the pots firmly, smoothing down any clumps of new compost matter I added. A piece of ground bone like perlite rolls down the front of my cupped hand. It and a fingernail disappear into the soil with a press.

At the end of an episode of Forensic Files, I told you that they never give the murderer’s side of the story, even though it’s usually someone the victim knew. You laughed. Kid killers, affair partners, employees mad about not getting time off, you said. Who cares? They’re shitty people. 

But … not always? Things really aren’t as cut-and-dry as they’re made out to be. They can’t be. Not every killer was always like that. Surely?

The cobra from the first time we made pirozhki is potted first—our first I love you after resetting my arm. Its variegated body contorts to the left, and I scoop the remains of a mix bag beneath the plant for a boost. A tiny clump of something meaty sticks to the tip of my hand trowel. It’s not pungent, stopped by refrigeration, tea leaves, and flowers. I bury it deep where the roots are. No need to waste time fixing it. 

The egregia is next to be potted. She’s the rarest and the gift from my first blackout for mispronouncing debris. The bow atop the North Carolina present. Along with our Atlantic Beach detour, of course. Her deep, glossy veins are imprinted like those on your neck when you’d scream. The smallish perforations spotting her leaves are elongated from where I ripped them in a fall. She’s small so no trouble to pot—ceramic’s best. The metal trowel clinks against the granite countertop. I cup handfuls of the compost and soil around the monstera so she doesn’t wobble. I stop to wiggle my fingers around in the bag to mash anything too large to go unnoticed. Something slimy tangles around my middle and index fingers, but it doesn’t take much to break it apart. Thank God there’s no hair. Much too messy. 

What about that lady whose daughter was raped and killed, and shot the man in the courtroom? She was a killer, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a good person. Didn’t mean she was a shitty person. Sometimes … sometimes a person’s pushed past their limit. That was her daughter. What else was she supposed to do? What if he’d gotten off? The walls were closing in around her! She had clearly run out of better options. Somebody had to get justice for the little girl. 

Your Big Cheese is last. Good, since I only have a bag and a half left. Hefting him out of his pot, I set him in the new one, already lined with compost and dirt. As I scoop more into the sides, I notice the bones in this bag aren’t as grounded as the others. There are even more nail clippings than before. Eh, kattsmama1997 won’t notice them. Or maybe she just won’t care. She’ll be too overjoyed to have the monstera for such a steal. 

I throw the gloves away, wash my hands, and pack the plants into the hatchback. Come to think of it, none of the Redditors will notice. Not until after tomorrow at least. Your mother will have reported you missing by then. If I get lucky, they’ll make a Forensic Files episode about us. Of course, then I’ll be one of the shitty people you talked about. 

But that’s a problem for future Vika.