Growing Up

Dad pushed himself back from the table. Looking down at the space he had made between himself and the table he started to speak, but then stopped himself and sighed. He looked over the round kitchen table at my plate. "Don't you like it?" he asked. I just shrugged and pushed the noodles around with my fork. Dad got up heavily, took his dish and walked past me into the family room.

He paused in front of the enormous potted plant that now took up most of that drab little room. Looking up at the canopy it formed above his head, he reached into the branches and plucked a brown leaf in a quick motion. I saw the edges of his mouth turn up slightly. He let the leaf fall to our floor and continued into his room. I heard the TV turn on and looked back down at my plate. I slid forward in my chair and let my feet touch the ground. I collected my plate and put it in the sink, watching the noodles slide slowly into a little pile near the drain.

Dad came out of his room with his small hand shears and started pruning his plant. He took enormous care in this, looking for any errant growth or sign of fatigue. After 10 minutes or so he stuck his thick finger into the soil, took it out and moved it under his nose. He inhaled deeply and went back into his room, returning with a small watering can. He walked past me in the kitchen and filled the can in the sink. Returning to the plant, he poured the water around its base in practiced motions, careful to let each dose absorb before administering the next. When he was done he looked up again into the plant's branches, glanced at me, said goodnight and went to bed.

Every night went like this, I'd come home from school, let myself in and wait for Dad to return from his job. He'd get home, ask me how school was and start dinner. We'd eat in near silence, then he'd watch TV or take care of the plant. When Mom left the plant had been small enough to fit in the corner behind his chair, but in the weeks and months that followed I watched it grow at an alarming rate. Dad was constantly fertilizing, pruning and repotting the plant, and his work paid off.

The plant soon became too large to keep behind the chair and was moved to the main part of the room. A few months later it became so large it blocked the television, so Dad moved the TV into his room. That was ok, I didn't like watching TV with him anyway. He always laughed in places that weren't funny and sighed anytime someone said something he didn't like. I preferred to stay in my room and look at magazines.

One night I awoke to go to the bathroom, which was directly off of the kitchen, and stopped in front of the plant. It was a nice plant really, tall and proud, its branches healthy and heavy. I could still hear the TV coming from Dad's room, but I could also hear him faintly snoring through the door. I looked at the plant again and undid the snap on the front of my pajamas. With my eyes still trained on Dad's door, I took out my penis and peed a little bit into the pot...not a lot, just a little. I quickly shuffled to the bathroom and finished peeing.

Every night for the next few weeks I repeated this act, growing bolder as the weeks went on and my sabotage went undetected. Dad was starting to notice changes in the plant however and his concern with the plant's health increased. The once luminous leaves had started to brown around the edges, slightly at first, but now it was noticeable.

Dad checked out several books from the library to try to diagnose the problem and started brewing up remedies in the kitchen. Fish parts mixed with vinegar, diluted bleach solutions to spray on the leaves, ground mint on the soil to deter pests...but none of his cures had any effect. He became increasingly desperate until one morning he emerged from his room to find 5 or 6 leaves on the floor around the pot where the plant resided. He reached up quickly to touch the plant, horrified when another leaf fell to join its siblings. Still every night I repeated my ritual and every morning he awoke despondent.

He stopped going to work, calling in sick with imagined symptoms that seemed to mirror those of the plant. Weak limbs, no appetite, hair loss-his boss said it sounded serious and agreed to give him a few days to recover. None of this deterred me though, and the plant’s condition continued to worsen. Now whole branches were dying and breaking off and it looked like the plant's days were numbered. I returned home a week later and found Dad sitting on the floor, his shoulders shaking. He was surrounded by the fallen leaves and branches of his plant and I felt the corners of my mouth begin to turn up slightly.