By Monya Baker

The lucky bamboo skulked in their bedroom reminding Anabel of her failure. She should have thrown it out the day after she brought it home, the day she’d felt happy and bubbly presenting it to Zoe. They’d been together two years, long enough to make clear Zoe would never put a couples picture on her screen saver. But nothing could be less objectionable than lucky bamboo. Impersonal, unremarkable, less than ten bucks at Trader Joe’s, for god’s sake. Finally, Anabel thought, a perfect choice. 

But no, Zoe said to her, what if some intern seeking performative enlightenment pointed to that generic O-shaped vase and said he was glad she could bring her whole self to work? Never mind that Zoe was about as Asian as Trader Joe’s. And the company was hot desking. Zoe couldn’t cart in pointless bric-a-brac. Not happening, she said. Unsaid, because unthought: sweet gesture. 

Zoe plopped the vase sideways on the dresser as she turned toward the door, then paused in the frame. Her shoulder blades tensed and relaxed under her jacket, and Anabel imagined Zoe flicking away any residue of Anabel’s gift before heading to her fancy new office.

As the days got longer, and Anabel returned from work to a bright, empty apartment, the bamboo’s leaves lengthened, gathering dust. Who knew plants could do that? Shouldn’t living things have a sort of innate radiation (—) a green-body force field that dust would respect and avoid? 

Apparently not. Still, it seemed wrong to take a dust rag to a living thing like it was your great aunt’s lampshade. Anabel blew on a blade-shaped leaf, but the gray fuzz didn’t budge. It had gone beyond dust into grime.

A procession of crumpled Kleenexes sprawled on the windowsill, a week’s worth of Zoe’s last-minute lipstick blots. Anabel grabbed the latest and rubbed a gray blade until its real color broke. She stopped when a patch of sunlight fell on her thumbnail. There were what, a couple dozen leaves on the plant? Was she supposed to stroke each one with Zoe’s abandoned kisses?

“I should think not.” It was her grandfather’s voice. Dead seven years, kicked it two days before her high school graduation, which she’d gone to because he would have been proud, which her mother had skipped because of an argument with the crematorium. She still heard him sometimes, offering his oddly formal, unsolicited advice. Lately, he’d been telling her to quit the dead-end assistant job at the architecture firm and take that unpaid internship, to quit the claustrophobic one-bedroom with Zoe and take the rent-free, attention-drenched spare room at Aunt Bertie’s.

“Nice to see some smartening up, dear.” This time, the voice was her grandmother’s, who was still alive and liked to disguise her advice as teasing.

Anabel sat on the bed. This room was small even for a single person. From here, without standing up, she could open a dresser drawer or close the window. It was manageable when tidy, but Zoe brought clutter.

“What if I put you in the shower?” She wiped a third blade green. “Or gave you a bath in the sink?” 

“It’s my body, so you can’t make me eat broccoli.” This time it was Maddie, her four-year-old niece, someone who did not have a habit of piping up in Anabel’s head.

Today must be the 110th day Zoe was late. I didn’t ask you to wait, Zoe would say, in lieu of apology. You are so boring when you complain.

“Who’s boring?” Her baby brother Luke chimed in.

A hoax. A prank. Maybe inside the vase there was a flea-sized speaker-bug-camera spy gadget installed by an asshole at Trader Joe’s. Or by the creepy landlord. Or, please no, by Zoe.

Anabel stood and looked into the clear plastic tube that kept the bamboo stalks watered and upright. Nothing. The cheap slate-blue porcelain was smooth. “I’m putting you in the shower.”

No reply. She sat again. The bamboo’s silhouette looked like a woman’s head covered in fat ponytails, or an upside-down octopus, or a many-fingered hand. She opened the window, and traffic noises poured in. Three pale leaves shone against shadowed ones. 

“Let’s get you under the tap.”

Even when everything else looked like a skid row sidewalk with the street sweepers on strike, Zoe insisted the sink sparkle. Anabel had learned that leaving a coffee mug in the sink was not a good way to make a statement. Can’t you see that’s grimy and gross?

The faucet sounded like people babbling, like her mother installing Aunt Fifi on the pullout sofa when child Anabel was supposed to be asleep, or all the cousins’ voices by the barbecue and her grandmother’s voice cutting through them all. “Where’s Anabel got to? Go find her.” She heard her Aunt Becky’s voice, her perfect sister Yolanda’s voice, her pothead cousin Chad’s voice, her dead sister Laura’s voice. Everyone’s voice, it seemed, but Zoe’s.

The bamboo had lost its gray grime; pale green gleamed out. Anabel wiped the vase dry and carried it back to the bedroom. The dresser hadn’t seemed so grungy before, but there was a bright oval shining where the bamboo’s vase had stood. She couldn’t bear to put the bamboo back in its place, facing a windowsill of crumpled Kleenex.

Her purse was on the dresser. Her phone was in her purse. Aunt Bertie’s number was in her phone. Instead of putting the bamboo down, Anabel picked her purse up. She slipped on her black flats, held the plant to her chest, and stepped out.