7

“GOOD FOR FOOD”

The children arrived early for their second tutoring session and immediately spied Ana sitting at a table reading her Bible. They rushed over to her.

“Oh, there you are,” she said as they yanked the chairs from the table. She closed the Bible and set it aside. “How is everyone today?”

After a few minutes of chit chat, she proceeded to quiz them on the definitions of words such as “vegetation” and “fruit” and asked for examples. They easily came up with examples for vegetation, but were still stumped by fruit.

“We’ve never seen a plant with fruit. We looked, but there wasn’t anything like this on any of the trees and plants around our apartment building,” Clare said, pointing toward her sketch of the fruited plant she’d made at their last session.

“Oh,” Lily said, “remember what Dante found?”

Ana looked at the children, her eyebrows raised in question.

“Well,” Clare hesitated, “I’m not sure that was real.”

“Yeah,” cried Dante, “tell her, tell her: I found a picture of fruit—on the Juice box!”

Clare smiled apologetically at Ana. “On the Juice box, there was this picture of trees and on the trees were these colored circles . . . Dante thought it looked like fruit.”

Ana nodded, her eyes glistening. “Yes,” she said, “Dante is right. Those are fruit.”

“Yes!” Dante shouted.

“So,” Clare ventured, “last time you were about to explain the connection between plants and food.”

Ana smiled, nodding. “Oh yes,” she answered. “A very important point, to be sure.” She picked up the Bible and handed it to Lily. “Your turn, dear. Genesis 1: 29, please.”

Lily opened the floppy book. Clare helped her locate the verse.

“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’”

A moment of silence followed the reading.

“I don’t get it,” Clare finally said. “What is ours for food? The seeds?”

“Can you read it again, please, Lily?” Ana instructed.

Lily read again, “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’” Lily paused, “It sounds like you can eat the plants and the fruits from the trees.”

“Bingo!” Ana said.

Dante laughed. “People can’t eat plants.”

“How can you eat a plant?” asked Lily.

“Aren’t they poisonous?” said Clare.

“Maybe we should read a little more. Lily, pass the Bible to Clare. Clare, Genesis 2:8.”

“Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food—”

“That’s good,” Ana said. “Stop there.”

“Wow,” said Dante, “if the trees are good for food, the fruit must be okay to eat.”

“Okay, okay,” Clare said, “but that doesn’t say the plants are good for food.”

“Dear, the plants are good for food—but it’s not the way you’re thinking—just wait, I’ll teach you.”

Lily had taken the Bible back and was quietly rereading the last verse.

“Anything the matter, Lily?” Ana asked.

The girl looked up. “It says here that the Lord God planted a garden? It sounds like my last name.”

“Oh yeah, I noticed that, too,” said Clare. “And I’ve seen that word on the Monitor.”

Dante was barely listening now. On the paper in front of him he had drawn tree after tree, each bearing round fruits of various colors. In the sky was a big face.

Ana gazed at Lily. “Lily Gardener, what a marvelous name. ‘Lily’—a most beautiful and fragrant flower. And ‘Gardener’—one who tends, or takes care of a garden. A garden,” she said, “is a place where plants and trees are planted and cared for. It can be a flower garden or a vegetable garden. A place of beauty and rest, or a simple plot for food-bearing plants. A garden is intentional,” she said with finality.

“Is it sort of like a park or a botanical reserve?” asked Clare.

“Yes. The botanical reserves are what we have left. I’m not sure when the word ‘garden’ fell out of favor. I think it was around the time seed saving was outlawed. It was better for the corporations, agribusiness, those who wanted society to forget the concept of growing food by and for oneself. They took away our means to do it, made laws forbidding it, and changed the language to erase our memory of it.”

The children were silent. Then the girls began scribbling furiously in their notebooks, writing down everything Ana had told them.

Dante simply began adding letters across the sky of his picture. G-A-R-D-E-N right between the tops of the fruit trees and God’s face.