By Audrey T. Carroll
No one knew how long the old lady had been in town. Longer than any of them, they
imagined; they certainly couldn’t remember a time without her. They didn’t even know her real
name. Everybody just called her Mamó.
The plant tower had had appeared overnight. No one had seen it assembled. It was simply
there: the size of a full-grown man, wooden shelves like ladder steps hosting meticulously
arranged glass jars. Each jar was filled with water, a snaking root floating below a leaf. Everyone
assumed that Mamó had been the one to set it up on the dirt beside her mailbox and in front of
her wildflower lawn.
No one took the plants, at first. Mamó had to put up a sign with jagged handwritten
letters. There was no explanation, no direct conversations with her, just the simple
Take. Plant. Enjoy.
So they took. They planted. They enjoyed.
Each cutting became something different, unlike any plants anyone in the town had seen
before: basil patterned like peacock feathers, fuchsia aloe, daisies as wide as bricks. Some came
to her door wanting to know more. She never answered, of course. As far as anyone could tell,
she only came out between dusk and dawn, and all she ever did was check her mail and set out
more plants. Others stayed away, convinced the rumors that she was a witch were true, and
witches in cottages were not to be trusted—anybody who’d ever heard a fairy tale knew that.
There were whispers about why she was doing it at all. Older folks thought she was lonely. They
could swear a woman used to live with Mamó, back before her hair was all white, but then she’d
vanished. Died, maybe. Grief did strange things.
The neighbors kept receiving the gifts; Mamó kept setting them out. Soon, the whole
town was overrun with them, greenery spilling out of windows and flowers growing wild in the
fields. The average neighbor would have trouble clearly describing Mamó if asked. And yet she
shaped the land all around them, plants identical to the ones in her home populating the town
again. It became easier to breathe, and she asked nothing in return. But sometimes, during full
moons, she would walk alone in the dark and watch her progeny thrive.
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of the What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024) and Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She serves as a Diversity & Inclusion Editor for the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and as a Fiction Editor for Chaotic Merge Magazine. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.
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