Kinship of Clover - Softcover

Meeropol, Ellen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597093815 ISBN 13: 9781597093811

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2017

Synopsis

***Named one of "the 7 best books from indie publishers right now" in 2017 by PBS

From the author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island comes a thrilling new activist novel that begs the question, “How far is too far?”

He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists’ devotion to activism might have him―and those closest to him―tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once–rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?

About this title

About the Author

Ellen Meeropol is the author of two previous novels, House Arrest and On Hurricane Island, as well as Carry it Forward, a dramatic program about the Rosenberg Fund for Children. A former nurse practitioner and part-time bookseller, Ellen is fascinated by characters balanced on the fault lines between political turmoil and human connection. Her short fiction and essay publications include Bridges, DoveTales, Pedestal, Rumpus, Portland Magazine and The Writers Chronicle. Ellen is a founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild and lives in western Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

The first time Jeremy saw the plants go crazy was at the cat’s funeral, held in the family greenhouse crowded with teas and herbs and medicine-plants growing in pots and flats, their vines spiraling up wooden stakes against the walls. The air was earthy and moist and candles―dozens of them, hundreds maybe―shimmered and the plants danced in the flickering.

Sure, it was weird to have a funeral for a cat, even a cat named after a deity, but Jeremy understood there were many strange things about his family. Like that someone killed Bast and left his body in a carton on the front porch because some people didn’t like cults and thought his family was one. Like that there were a bunch of adults and kids in the Pioneer Street house but they weren’t organized into families like in library books. He knew that Tim was his twin brother and Francie was his mother and Tian was his dad, but his parents had other kids with other grown-ups and it rarely seemed to matter much who went with who.

What mattered was that things weren’t going well for his family.

Even at nine, Jeremy realized that they were mourning more than Bast. The candles and chants were also for his little brother and sister who froze to death the year before in Forest Park. That was another thing about his family: they didn’t believe in dwelling on unhappy things. That―and because the small bodies weren’t found until summertime and then the cops put his father and Murphy in jail and Pippa had to wear an ankle monitor that didn’t let her leave the house―meant that Abby and Terrance never got a proper funeral all their own. So the family members who still lived on Pioneer Street gathered in the greenhouse. They sat on cushions in a circle on the floor, chanting and singing for Bast and their lost babies.

Jeremy leaned back against the leg of the potting table and stared at the candles and the plants. He loved how the leaves in their many perfect shapes and shades of green quivered in the light of the dancing flames. Then the leaves were moving too, undulating and twisting in time to the chanting and the music.

Jeremy poked his twin brother’s shoulder and pointed at the dancing vines. Tim shook his head and swatted Jeremy’s hand away. Recently Tim had been extra mean. He didn’t want to be a twin any more, he said, and he wouldn’t talk about it. He refused the identical clothes Francie brought home. Jeremy loved the tangible connections to Tim, so he wore undershirts or socks that matched Tim’s, items that didn’t show.

No way would Tim want to talk about plants that moved impossibly all on their own.

Jeremy watched the plants swing and sway and spin for several minutes before the next thing happened. When the stems and branches and leaves reached out to him, he was halfway expecting it. Green vines circled his arms and slid under his shirt and skimmed along his back. Soft stems tickled his neck with their delicate suckers. He thought he heard a broad, red-veined leaf whisper in his ear. “We have names,” it sounded like, but he knew plants couldn’t talk. Soon they were burrowing under his skin and inside his body and as he patted the cardboard box with Bast buried in it, his hands left fern-prints in the moist dirt.

Jeremy was surprised but not afraid. The plants felt familiar, comforting even, and they connected him to all the plants and animals growing on the earth, then and forever, and he liked it. He thought maybe he’d like to learn their names, for when the plants visited again.

They didn’t return for eleven years.

***

Eleven years later, Jeremy carried the news clipping about his father’s release tucked in his wallet between his UMass student ID and a creased photo of his little brother and sister. The article was three weeks old, from the Springfield newspaper’s Friends and Neighbors section, which was pretty ironic since their neighbors said a loud chorus of good riddance when Tian Williams was sentenced to prison. Nobody on campus asked Jeremy if he was related to the Francine Beaujolais mentioned in the article. Few people knew his last name and they were unlikely to connect the quasi-nerdy botany major with an ex-convict cult leader. Tian was released just before February break and Jeremy spent a few days in his parents’ apartment. His father was so different and his presence after ten years so unreal that Jeremy checked the article at least once a day for confirmation.

Like tonight, walking across campus to the radio station in the middle of the night. He tried to picture his parents in their apartment twenty-seven miles to the south, but no images came. He paused in the well-lit protection of a campus bus stop to unfold the fragile folds of newsprint, and read the short paragraph yet again.

After serving almost ten years at the State Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction, city resident Sebastian Williams was released on parole. Williams was convicted in June 2005 of multiple charges, including criminal negligence in the deaths of his daughter and a male child associated with a cult located on Pioneer Street in the Forest Park neighborhood. Neither Williams nor his common law wife Francine Beaujolais was available for comment.

Even with the stop, Jeremy was right on time for his program and the DJ on the board was running predictably late. He glared at her through the glass and pointed at the wall clock; she held up her index finger, signaling him to chill. Sure, it was only a college radio station in the middle of the night―probably six students listening out there and five of them sucking on a hookah―but even so, people should take pride in their work and stick to the schedule.

Why should he care so much? His radio show started as a six-week community education project about endangered species for his fall semester biodiversity class. He aced the course, but when it ended he didn’t want to stop. The station manager said no one else wanted that time slot, so he trekked to the dingy studio at the edge of campus at 2:00 a.m. every Wednesday morning to broadcast a half hour of lament into the empty winter sky.

The DJ finally finished. Jeremy sat at the control board, switched on the mic, and started the Missa Luba CD. Each week he chose different music to play softly in the background, ranging from Erik Satie to Billy Bragg. His dad had played Missa Luba a lot when he and Tim were little, before their family fell apart. The combination of joy and despair in the Congolese rhythms matched his mood these days. He took a deep breath and launched into his introductory remarks.

“You’re listening to Plants in Peril,” he began. “There are three stages of peril: Threatened means that the species is vulnerable, declining in numbers. Endangered means that the numbers are critically low, and if nothing is done, the species will soon be extinct. Extinct species . . .” He paused to swallow, to soothe the sharp ache in his throat. “Extinct species have completely disappeared from the earth, with no hope of recovery.”

Each week he varied the approach, listing plants alphabetically or by continent, by when they were last observed in nature, occasionally showcasing a favorite Order or Family. Tonight was special; he had researched background details about the extinct instead of just a list of names to read.

Jeremy knew the show was peculiar even before his brother visited and listened to a broadcast, stretched out half-asleep on the sagging studio sofa. “That was truly weird,” Tim said as they walked back to the dorm. “Why would anyone listen to you read the names of plants they’ve never heard of and will never see?”

“That’s the point,” Jeremy said. “If I don’t say their names, no one will remember them.”

“That’s creepy,” Tim said.

Jeremy shrugged. I don’t want them to die alone, he thought but didn’t say.

“You’re pathetic,” Tim added. That was a brother for you and besides, Tim was a business major, so you couldn’t expect him to care about the universe of vanishing vegetable matter.

“Begonia eiromischa,” Jeremy continued, “was discovered in 1886 in Palau. But its forest habitat was cleared for agricultural cultivation and no sightings have been reported in over a century.”

Even after six months, he was amazed by the way his voice was transformed by its journey from microphone to soundboard, altered by radio waves and electronics and headphones, and returned to his ears exposed and new. The first week of the program he had been astonished to hear alien emotions threaded through his words―sentiments that he hadn’t known he felt and barely recognized. Now he listened to discover his feelings and in the past three weeks, since his father’s release, he heard his voice sounded poised at the edge of tears.

Tonight, the tears threatened to spill over.

“Bigleaf scurfpea, or Orbexilum macrophyllum, was formerly found in Indiana and Kentucky.” He savored how the Latin names balanced on his tongue, draped across his teeth, and fell from his lips. He didn’t speak the language, but he was fluent in its elegies. “Next we have Thismia americana from Illinois. Last seen in 1916 and declared extinct in 1995.” He felt a particular kinship with this plant and his voice thickened with sorrow. Thismia was declared extinct the year he and Tim were born, delivered by midwife into a greenhouse filled with his family and growing plants. He grew up playing in the foliage, digging in the soil while the women of the family watered and harvested the plants and dried the leaves for tea. His drawings of spearmint and raspberry leaves, of Camellia sinensis sinensis and Camellia sinensis assamica, had decorated the walls of their house and of the nearby Tea Room. Studying the plants came much later, a concession to his mother’s demand for a major that could lead to a job.

“Vanvoorstia bennettiana, a.k.a. Bennett’s Seaweed.” He paused to blow his nose on the bandanna stuffed in his jeans pocket. “First collected in 1855 in Sydney Harbor, Australia. Declared extinct in 2003 due to habitat loss secondary to trawling. Dredging. Infrastructure development.” His voice rose with each assault of civilization and broke on the last word. “Settlement. Tourism. Recreation. Fisheries. Agriculture. Sewage.”

He rummaged through the sketchbooks in his backpack. Somewhere he had a pen and ink drawing of Bennett’s, one of the first assignments in his Botanical Drawing course. He could picture the algae: rusty reddish and lacy, the deep veins so heartbreakingly delicate, so vulnerable. The Kyrie ended and the on-air silence surprised him. He quickly located the dog-eared page in the IUCN Red List and read aloud from their comments on the vanquished Vanvoorstia: “There is no reasonable doubt that the last individual of this species has died.”

He couldn’t help how his voice turned the last word into a keening. Or how the wail in his mouth vibrated with the vines that sprouted without warning from the control board, from his backpack, from the stack of CDs on the table, from his own fingertips. The vines weren’t real―he knew that―they couldn’t really be Vanvoorstia bennettiana or Rafflesia borneensis―but they were perfectly accurate and they looked real. They felt real too, as they curled around his wrists, tucked shiny leaves into the crook of his elbows, pushed small sucker mouths into the skin of his upper arms. One thick shoot sprouting lacy algae leaves slithered up his arms and looped twice around his neck, snug but not tight.

The studio door opened a few inches, startling Jeremy. His time couldn’t be up already. The manager was rarely in the studio this late, but there she was, hair sticking out as if she’d been rousted out of bed. Did she sleep at the station? She spread her arms in a what’s-going-on gesture. Jeremy smiled and gave her a thumbs up, it’s-all-right response before returning to his notebooks. Somewhere he had an image of the Saint Helena Olive flower―miniature white trumpets with fuchsia gullets―that he drew from a photograph of the precious last living specimen. There it was!

“Nesiota elliptica was a small tree endemic to the island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic.” His voice deepened and his words became a requiem. “Threatened by timbering, plantation development, and the introduction of goats into their habitat, the last wild specimen died in 1994. A few cuttings survived in cultivation.”

The ruby-throated white trumpets budded and their annihilated blossoms flowered from the bones of his knuckles. He cleared his throat and pushed the words through, one by one. “Despite extensive efforts to rejuvenate the species, the last surviving St. Helena Olive seedling succumbed to a fungal infection in December 2003 and the St. Helena Olive Tree was declared extinct.”

The door opened again and this time a security guard followed the station manager into the studio. The manager’s face and her wrap-it-up gesture left no room for discussion: the program was over. He stumbled over the station identification, then punched in the underwriting message and two PSAs before switching off the mic.

Exhaustion and something else―relief maybe, mixed with sorrow―flooded over him. He stood and rubbed his eyes with both hands, surprised to find his cheeks wet. The station manager took the headset.

“That’s enough for tonight,” she said, her voice kind. “This program is over.”

“Were you listening?” he asked.

“No.” She took his seat at the control board. “The night shift security guard at the University Ave post called me. He was worried about you.”

Jeremy glanced at the guard. It was strange, given the circumstances, but he was pleased that someone listened, even if the guard was only moved to rat him out.

The security guard gripped Jeremy’s upper arm and led him outside. “Sorry, man,” the guard said, “but your roll call of extinction was majorly scary.”

“It’s okay.” Jeremy tried to twist away. “I’m fine now.”

“Sure. But I’m taking you over to Health Services. They’ll check you out.”

“Not necessary. I’m fine.” And he was. The vines were gone, and the tiny white trumpet flowers.

The security guard looked dubious.

“Really,” Jeremy said, giving the guard his best smile and a fist bump. “I’m cool.”

The guard tightened his grip on Jeremy’s arm. “Okay, you’re cool, but you’re still going to Health Services. We got liability, you know?”

***

The nurse practitioner had hoped to devote the last three hours of her shift to her backlog of paperwork. Shaking off fatigue, she waved the guard out of the exam room and hesitated in the doorway. Wondering how her new patient came to have café con leche skin with such blond curls, she smiled and introduced herself as Patty.

Jeremy liked that she used her first name, and that she didn’t wear a white coat, just a mustard-colored sweater the exact shade of a cat his family had when he was little. He liked that they sat next to each other on chairs instead of him perching on the crinkly paper on the exam table. She asked questions, her voice all silk-spoken and cushioned with concern like his mom’s, before everything went ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1597093815
• ISBN 13: 9781597093811
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272