You ask me why I keep you here, locked up and away from prying eyes and hands and teeth. Do
you know what it’s like, down below?

Of course you don’t. I saved you almost the second you were born.

I watched for weeks while your father scaled my walls, trampling my radishes and tomato plants
and zucchini in his search for what your mother desired. He reached down and tore up heads and
roots with his bare hands, leaving nothing but dirt and scattered leaves behind. I followed him
once, and I peered in their window as he placed a bowl filled with my garden in front of your
mother.

She looked at the bowl, picked up her fork, and daintily placed one leaf in her mouth. Then
another, and another, until she left the fork forgotten on the table, grabbing great fistfuls of the
leaves. She chewed and she choked and she swallowed, and when she finished she looked so sad
I thought your father’s heart would break.

“More,” she sobbed, “I’ll die without it.” And there was something in her eyes that scared me,
that want, like she would eat my garden and then gobble up the whole world.

I never stopped your father. I was afraid of what would happen if I did, where your mother
would turn if my garden couldn’t give her what she needed. She grew round with what I thought
were my vegetables but turned out to be you. I watched their window night after night, and
finally one night there was a scream, and then there you were.

I crept to right below their open shutters and I swear, you smelled exactly like my garden, the
rich, warm smell of dirt. You were red as my prized tomatoes, and when you opened your eyes!
Green as the lettuce your father stole. Fed on my plants, it was like I grew you myself.

I saw your mother smell your earth scent and stroke your skin, now faded to look like
strawberries and cream. She lifted your little hand to her mouth, and bit lightly on your finger.
When you didn’t react, she bit harder, and there it was, that look in her eyes, and she pulled your
entire hand into her mouth.

Should I have left you there? I think, sometimes, that maybe I overreacted. That I didn’t see what
I know I saw. But instead I burst in and made them a deal: this tiny thing that was already
halfway mine for anything your mother wanted from my garden.

I thought she would say no. What woman trades her child for a mouthful of lettuce? But your
mother got to eat her way down to the bones beneath my home, and I got you.

And now you’re here, and you’re safe, and your body is whole and unbitten. You ask me to let
you go back down there, but how can I? When I’ve seen how that world would eat you alive?