Vine of the Earth

In the predawn hours, Edward waited on the stained padding of his cell bed, anxious for the buzzer. For that daily scream, always prompt, always clear, would announce the beginning of his day and reunite him with his dearest. He was no longer a young man, and it had taken thirty years for the raging fires of his heart to die down to the sleepy hues of sunset. And even as his bones creaked under the hanging folds of his chestnut skin, his body warmed under rays of anticipation as the morning hours clicked on, the blood of an old scorpion heating on the sands of the desert. Soon, my dearest, he thought, imagining delicate lovely limbs leaning toward him, bending under the water spray of his love.

The weed was all Edward had. He’d spotted the precious thing alone in the cracked floor of the concrete along the eastern wall. At first he thought it a mirage, a trick of his cataract-plagued eyes. After twenty years in other prisons and ten in the one that now caged him, his eyes had assured him, with the exception of black, white, and gray, that there were no other colors in the world. They are all gone, they’d said, guiding his hand to a trash receptacle in the corner, into which he dropped a tattered bible. And yet on that glorious day, his dearest had appeared before him, a minute emerald forest. As he looked upon her sacred greenness, he was reminded of things he thought were forever washed away: the chartreuse-backed frogs in his mother’s yard; the algae floating gently on the lakes of his youth; the iridescence of the scales of bass as they swam by his strong legs; and the pine needles sprinkling the snow. Most of all, the paradise rising from the ground reminded him of the soft grass on which he held his first love. And though his dearest was not his first, she would surely be his last.

And she had been waiting for him all this time, he reasoned, to bead her petals with adoration and respect. Eagerness filled him as he counted down the hours until he could be with her again, images of her supple clovers caressing his gray beard. Together, in the nurturing soil hidden below their roots, they would proliferate; their lovemaking an act the earth itself had blessed and given its permission to take place. But not yet, my dearest, Edward thought. We must be careful because they are watching us always. We must keep our love hidden. Be vigilant, sweetness.

At last, the buzzer sounded and white lights flooded his cell and the entire floor. Earnestly, Edward struggled to his feet. The silence of the cell block was quickly poisoned with bitterness and sorrow, and Edward could hear the other men groaning and cursing assaults on their ears and eyes. Ready, the old man feebly stepped out of his cell, the only one smiling.

The herd of men shuffled miserably to the showers, and then the mess hall, each man inwardly preparing for the wars of the day. For the inmate population operated like Balkanized states, the delicate balance between them ensured by endless scuttles in the gladiator rounds of the prison yard and atop steel cafeteria tables. Like war clans, they battled ruthlessly over territory and influence.

But in the Great Room, an enormous glass box with the words, “Freedom is Work,” engraved above the entrance, the populace became one. The men assembled under the watchful eyes of cameras that never grew sleepy, awaiting the signal. At length, a siren blasted through the silence and the men poured into the maze of machines like thick liquid. The hum of the underground factory cocooned the inmates; their bone marrow, teeth, and eyelashes pulsating, keying to the vibrating flecks of granite under their feet. They drank deeply of the five-hour shifts, intoxicating themselves with the sweetness of rote activity and tedium; the everlasting drones of the prison corps hive their only deliverance from the flesh burns of private purgatories.

Before the advent of his dearest, when his spirit lay in a heap of crushed stone, Edward had toiled in that same manner, his mind folded into the titanium pegs of the contraptions. Now, as he assembled sneakers in the Great Room, he could behold his dearest with elegant subterfuge as she waved joyfully from across the wasteland room. Now, he could raise his head above air choked with acrimonious fog and witness her triumph in this open pit of hell. The miracle that no one else had noticed her glory was, Edward felt, an avowal of the holiness of their union. And as he straightened the crooks in his arthritic fingers, he smiled assuredly; certain that one day a brilliant Bird of Paradise would erupt from her tender beast, and together they would fly away.

A whisper broke through Edward’s furtive revelry. “Pssst! Hey old man! You made it to another one, huh?” said a cross-eyed inmate as he fastened a flap of leather to a vice.

Edward looked at the man uncomprehendingly. As his dearest grew more beautiful and strong, especially over these past several months, he found it increasingly difficult to find interest in the concerns of men. “What?”

The other man hoisted an armful of rubber, dropping it into a bin. “Happy fucking New Year.”

Indeed, thought Edward. For rot and ruin were the only measures of existence left to any of them. Still, these were obsessions he had long since abandoned, fixations that led only to madness. My dearest has ended my decay, he thought gratefully. The old man looked at his secret green, wondering how long it would be before he could truly be with her, his blood chilling at the thought of peering into the crack and finding her gone without him.

Morowa Yejidé is a literary fiction writer and a native of Washington, D.C. She was educated at Kalamazoo College, where she received a degree in International Relations, and was accepted into the international exchange program at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. She has also been published in numerous international publications in Japan and Korea, including the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis and the ISTEC Journal for her work on National Science Foundation initiatives in technology. She is the winner of the 2007 Chistell Writing Contest for her short story, "Precious," which will also appear in the September 2008 issue of the Istanbul Literary Review. Ms. Yejidé won the Urbanite Magazine competition in 2005 for her non-fiction piece, "Wolf Outside My Door." Web Site

Email: Morowa Yejidé

Return to Table of Contents