Roomgarden
Anya Reeve’s Roomgarden offers a poignant exploration of botanical care as a subversive act in a dystopian future. Set in a world where gardening is discouraged, the narrative unfolds through the lens of two queer women, Sevda & Sonoka, who find solace and connection in nurturing a forbidden plant. Anya’s evocative prose paints the picture of a society where the simple act of tending to nature becomes a symbol of resilience and connection.
As she walked her approach Sevda looked up through the structure of the rain to another structure, lit from within and situated atop the otherwise darkening height of the nearest apartment block. A rectangular and free-standing room, made from a rigid material with the near-opaqueness and fibrous warmth of old rice paper. This was Roomgarden 391. It was where Sevda had first met Sonoka, three years ago, when they were both new arrivals. They had sat on opposite sides of the roomgarden: the inside of the room contained a rectangular perimeter of plants, and enclosed within that a smaller rectangle of minimalist benching pressed against the boxing. At that time Roomgarden 391 had been especially prodigious in the entangled darkness and sharp-limbed flowers of white jasmine. Sevda had noticed Sonoka’s hair first, which was very short, somewhat spiky and dyed a milky pink, and then the barbell silver piercing dangling at length from her right ear. Then she had noticed the woman returning her inquisitive look, followed by her slightly sideways smile, prompted from a natural shyness. They now shared one apartment and a quantity of other things, which both sat within and exceeded that physical space.
Standing on their balcony of an evening, the skyline was habitually punctuated with the softly radiating light of similar boxes; their papery panels folded illumination into hojicha brown cuboids above suites of apartments, or occasionally an overhanging cube attached to the side of a building, pink like a petaline lamp. Within these constructions, shadows gestured, and modulated their blurriness against proximity to the walls. The charcoal-smudge shades of plants at some distance to an external wall contrasted with those closer impressions: vines pressed against a near surface, for instance, would cut a crisper outline when viewed from outside. Muffled chatter and conversation, the ephemeral complaint of an infant, echoing laughter might all drift from familial or more generally communal roomgardens. Sometimes roomgardens were designated as stilled and quiet spaces of repose and introspection; it depended on the context and the residents. Sevda had once walked with Sonoka down an alley where they had giggled with mortification to realise the intimate progression of another couple’s date was happening in the projecting roomgarden above them: shadows lapped into the umber light over their heads, making a pearlescence of the respective silk and nap of their dyed pink and periwinkle scalps in the street beneath. Privately commissioned roomgardens, though, were outside the means of most young couples and renters, such commissions generally being the preserve of established families or the considerably luxurious statement of the highly-salaried young professional. Roomgardens were usually erected for collective benefit. Thus, for many, a roomgarden settled atop their apartment block and the various roomgardens situated in nearby public and commercial spaces comprised the likely extent of their garden experience. For gardens in their former, unenclosed sense no longer really existed in the cities.
The roomgardens were designed and maintained to promote a sterile and carefully managed environment. Particular cultivars and treated soils were approved; government-issued instruction manuals and publicly funded training schemes guided roomgarden workers and volunteers. Roomgardens were unilaterally registered and, at regular intervals, inspected. For it had been considered that, with the increasing incidence of pandemics, perhaps plants could be a vector for mass disease sometime in futurity. The suspicion calcified into policy: neatness was preferred; there would be no wildness in the cities, no unregulated growing of unknown plants in homes. One strand of dissidence was the Punkgarden motion—the young, the older and the old who hosted and attended recalcitrant parties and gatherings, at which unsanctioned wildflowers were exchanged, and guerrilla seed-pellets modelled with the fingers. Sevda remembered, in her early years, lying on the floor of an education-regulation roomgarden during her lunch break, listening through private cording to Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure. She thought of her Turkish grandmother’s recollections of Adatepe, a place Sevda had never visited. She had located the same unplaceable and melancholy wistfulness when Sonoka once remarked to her, with a casual acuity, ‘You know, I realised at some point after childhood that my parents named me after their own memory of a garden that no longer exists.’
Sevda had trained to tend roomgardens on a voluntary part-time basis at the earliest possible opportunity, for the foremost reason that it allowed her to see and nurture plants up close. She almost immediately began to regard taxonomical shapes like calyx and sepal as part of a dream-language signary. She found the allocation of distinct time out of her educational schedule, when she was still studying, soothing; she had also been drawn to the slow and patient methodology of care, and the calming sensation of handling the leaves and flowers. When years later she buzzed her hair down to a surface fuzz, which she bleached and then opted to dye periwinkle-blue, the subsequent texture of her palm running over her head reminded her of the flocked surface of sage leaves. It was a motion she enacted often, and which Sonoka had tacitly noted as one of her partner’s characteristic gestures. As soon as there was an opening in the volunteering roster for Roomgarden 391, Sevda had submitted her application. It was only a month after she and Sonoka had begun cohabiting that she began her new placement, and Sonoka would often come to meet her on the roof after returning from work, eyes appreciatively holding the sight of Sevda in her gardener’s gloves, pocketed beige cargo pants and white tank-top. Her shaved head was a blue down of frost in the sun.
But for all the satisfaction of her work volunteering after the obligatory hours of her daytime job, the imaginary of a garden in concept—as unroomed, expansive, and able to make its own wilful choices—would not leave Sevda. Rather, it increasingly pushed its foliage into her sleep and daytime restive thoughts. The querls of chlorophyll in her mind truly budded the day Sonoka mused with a smile, ‘I wish we could bring some of the plants from upstairs down here. Can you imagine jasmine growing up that wall?’ It was why Sevda was returning now, in evening rain, late but at last, from an errand about which she had not yet told Sonoka.
Sonoka at first was bewildered and wide-eyed when Sevda carefully peeled open the small envelope and emptied a round and glossy brown seed into her open hand, positioned by the gentle hold of Sevda’s own. (Before this act, Sevda had taken the precaution of drawing every blind in the apartment, cognisant of the opposing towers.)
‘How—? Where did you—’
‘Sonoka. I will not resent you if you do not want to take this on. I have brought to our home—somewhat recklessly and selfishly, I admit—an errant dream of mine, which I have hope might be a shared dream. But if you only say the word, I will take this elsewhere, and you can forget the whole foolish scheme. I will understand completely, and you will not see the kernel of this wish again. I will lose no quantity of my love or affection for you. I respect your choice—whatever it may be.’
Sonoka nodded, gaze still fixed thoughtfully. Sevda noticed the way the shadows were caught, like soft gauzes, around her partner’s face, setting a brilliance in her eyes. Then Sonoka looked up and affirmed, ‘The dream is shared.’ Sevda grinned and brought her lips to Sonoka’s, her fingers seeking furrows through the layers of milk-pink hair: ‘Thank you.’ Then she wrapped her arms around the form before her—stood barefoot, in a long and slender white slip, a memorable image of selenic nightblooming—in gratitude.
Sonoka held Sevda lingeringly; a tender brace. ‘But, Sevda,’ She drew back slightly, her arms remaining knotted around the other woman still dripping from her excursion. ‘What’s the plan? What does it need? And where will we keep it, so that it’s safe?’
Sevda disentangled herself to go back to the hallway of the flat, and reached into a pocket sewed into the inside lining of her waterproof jacket. She extricated a wad of grey paper with white printed text, not dissimilar to a xeroxed typescript, which she brought back to Sonoka. Sonoka scanned the text, noting to the left of the front page the shape of a plant composited from varied text symbols. Sonoka’s brown eyes flickered from left to right, as though caught in a looping glitch, as she absorbed the details of suggested watering frequency and eventual projected extent of growth.
‘We’ll need to keep it inside for the first few weeks—maybe two, or three,’ Sevda explained, attempting to keep her tone slow and controlled despite feeling a subtle thrilling of nervous excitement in her sternum. ‘Then after it’s grown into a steady seedling, it will need to be moved out onto the balcony.’
Sonoka chewed her lip. ‘Okay, so… it will be quite exposed. I couldn’t say for certain nobody opposite would report it—’
‘Yes, but I was thinking, maybe we could construct something. A small reflective box, or we could use a material with high transmissibility… or even just a screen of some description. I’m sure we could camouflage it—’
‘Mm, and we’ll need untreated soil. Perhaps… the woods a while up the canal? I suppose we could just take our usual route beyond the cautionary signs, but this time with trowels and carrier bags hidden in our backpacks.’ The light of excitement was now, from a whorl, unfurling a mutual corolla in Sonoka’s eyes.
‘Yes. Yes, you excellent woman,’ Sevda replied with an admiring smile.
At 5.31am that Sunday morning, they stretched their limbs into mist. All along the canal was suffused with a quiet that radiated off the stilled water; the air was a blue ghost who, through the compulsion of strong dreaming, would respirate warmth once more in due course. But not yet. To Sevda, things seemed to possess a quiet within their very fabric at this hour: the unpermitted leaves of ivy that began to appear the further they walked, for instance—she could not imagine that they had ever known noise, or anything but their present motionless status. A suspended life which seemed sempiternal. So, too, were the unoccupied roomgardens, which in the earliness of the hour emitted no sign of the life they usually held. They seemed empty and unreadable where they clung sporadically to the walls and roofs; more opaque than usual. Like the casings of words without their sense. Their rate of incidence became fewer and fewer. The rare calling of birds broke the reverie of silence into a new reverie of sound as the two figures passed, backpacks strapped over their shoulders, into a small lunula of fenced-off woodland.
‘I think here’s good?’ Sonoka half-asserted, half-questioned, as they came to a clearing where the loam looked promising. The two women settled to the earth, metering dirt with their metal instruments into plastic wrappings, remarking with delight when they espied an auspicious woodlouse in their turnings.
That same day, it was potted; it was done. Sealed in soil, like a pact. With a patient collusion they took turns to water the surface, day following day. The routine began to feel like a ritual and, eventually, almost unremarkable.
Sevda was startled from her sleep by a cry: singular, short, surprised. She bolted down from the mezzanine to see Sonoka poring over the pot, frozen, gripping one of her wrists. A single curlicue of green had begun to poke its head above the surface, barely a stub.
They were both motionless, as though afraid that a single movement might cause it to retreat. Then Sonoka did something which surprised Sevda: she began to weep.
‘How will we protect it? What if it fails, or doesn’t grow strong?’ Sonoka’s face rippled with nuances of emotion, counted amongst these a conflicted but profound joy. Sevda drew one arm around her partner on the floor, and with the hand of the other, felt her hair with reassuring strokes. Her fingers passed through and within the very matter of the flower, the matter of that which she had learned to cherish.
‘I don’t know,’ Sevda admitted, looking at the dirt’s outleaning hope. ‘But with everything we are, we will do what we can.’
Text - Anya Reeve www. anyareeve.cargo.site
Illustration - Mellow Yue Li @mellowmeadow7