The Year of the Flood

Toby remembers Adam’s words about counting the days, to avoid descending “to a level that is too deep for any resurgence” (195), and keeps track of the time on AnooYoo Spa notepaper. On the top of each page there’s a pair of long-lashed eyes, one of them blinking, and a lipstick kiss. Toby likes them because they keep her company, and so next to them she writes the Gardener Feast Day or Saint’s Day. Underneath, she keeps track of her gardening: what she planted, what she harvested, and what phase of the moon it was.

Toby recalls how two days ago, when she was on the roof checking the rain barrels, she heard something that sounded like singing. When she scanned the field with her binoculars, she noticed a strange procession; all the people in it were naked, except for the man at the front, who was dressed. The rest of the people were of various ethnicities, and some of them had blue abdomens. This unusual color, plus the group’s “crystalline, otherworldly singing” (196), convinced Toby this was merely a hallucination.

Although the figures vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, Toby couldn’t help feeling overjoyed. She felt an urge to run after them, although common sense prevailed and she stopped herself from doing it, knowing how dangerous it could be. She remembered Adam One’s words about the human brain being very creative when one is “confronted by too much emptiness” (197).

Toby thinks back to the last Mole Day, when Pilar was still alive, the same year when Burt was arrested. Right after CorpSeMen took Burt away and Veena and Bernice had left, Adam One gathered everyone and told them the news. The Gardeners couldn’t believe that Burt was growing skunkweed in a Gardeners building without anyone noticing. Toby assumed this was because the Gardeners blindly trusted each other, and they never suspected that their fellow Gardeners were capable of any transgressions.

Adam One asked for volunteers to take in the families who no longer had a place to live—they couldn’t return to the Buenavista because it was taken over by CorpSeMen. He then asked Zeb to change into his pleebland clothes and look for information about the gro-op. Adam One assured Nuala that none of the Gardeners believed the rumor about her and Burt, but Toby thought it might be true, considering how “Nuala flirted with anything male” (199).

After Nuala left to sew some quilts for recently displaced families, Adam One asked Toby if she would like to take over Burt’s duties teaching Garden Botanics and Edible Weeds. Toby refused because she would then have to become a full-fledged Eve, which would be hypocritical because she still wasn’t sure if she believed in the Gardener teachings. Adam One reassured her that in their religion, “action precedes faith” (200), and since Toby had been acting as a believer, it was only a matter of time until her faith grew stronger. He suggested that she ask for guidance during an overnight Vigil, so Toby went to Pilar, who kept all the Vigil materials.

Pilar looked even sicker than before, although she assured Toby that it was just a stomach bug that would go away after a couple of days. Pilar instructed Toby on how to prepare the mix for the Vigil and gave her words of encouragement.

Toby settled in the tomato section of the Edencliff Garden for Vigil and drank Pilar’s potion. She sat in meditation position and waited; when she closed her eyes, she saw an animal. It was “a golden color, with gentle green eyes and canine teeth, and curly wool instead of fur” (204), and it yawned. Toby looked at the animal, knowing that it was “the effect of a carefully calibrated blend of plant toxins” (204), and then fell asleep.

The next morning, when Toby told Adam One that she saw an animal during her Vigil, he seemed very satisfied. But she didn’t have time to tell him the whole story because they were interrupted by Zeb, who returned after spending the night in the pleeblands. He told Adam One that he managed to get some information from Scales and Tails girls, but to do so he’d spent the night at the club and bribed them.

Zeb found out that Burt had used unoccupied apartments in the Buenavista Condos to create a gro-op where he grew not just regular skunkweed but a splice—a powerful, genetically engineered recreational drug. It sold for a very high price because “a lot of people who’d tried this would kill to do it again” (206). All of this was invented and controlled by CorpSeCorps, who were the wholesalers. They had paid Burt to stay quiet, but then he tried to cheat them and sell the drugs on the side. They hadn’t noticed anything until they got an anonymous tip from “a very pissed-off woman” (206).

Toby assumed that the woman was Veena: Rumor said CorpSeMen had paid Veena a lot of money for this information, and she used it to take Bernice to the West Coast.

Concerned that Burt might share secret information about the Gardeners, Adam One asked Zeb if Burt knew about “Pilar’s tissue samples [...], [their] contact in HelthWyzer, and [their] young courier with the honey jar” (207). Zeb assured him that Burt knew nothing of this and told Toby to forget what she’d just heard too. To Toby’s surprise, Adam One said that Zeb shouldn’t be worried about Toby, because “she’s going to be an Eve” (207), although she hadn’t given him a definitive answer.

For the rest of the afternoon, Toby prepared a scent combination—made of some chunks of meat, honey, and peanut butter—that would lure rats from the Fender-Bender Body Shop, which the Gardeners planned to use to set up new apartments, to the Buenavista Condos. It was Gardener policy not to displace “a fellow Species without offering them accommodation of equal value” (207). When the scent was ready, Toby sent Crozier and Shackleton into the pleeblands to carry out the task.

The next day, when Toby was giving a class on Affective Herbs, she noticed that Ren “had been swept into Amanda’s all-too-attractive orbit” (210). Toby knew that Ren was easily influenced and worried that she would always be “under somebody’s thumb” (210). That morning, Ren seemed especially eager to give the right answers, as if she felt guilty and desperately wanted to please. Toby assumed it was because Ren realized how badly she’d treated Bernice ever since Amanda came into her life.

The class was interrupted by Nuala, who told Toby to see Pilar immediately, and Nuala would take over Toby’s class. Pilar, Nuala explained, “has chosen her time” (210), and Toby realized that Pilar had lied about having a stomach bug.

When Toby came to Pilar’s cubicle, “she was so sad she was angry” (212), so she accused Pilar of lying about her illness. Pilar explained that she was diagnosed with cancer: Katuro took her tissue samples and smuggled them to the lab at HelthWyzer West. Since the Gardeners didn’t trust hospitals, Pilar took “The Death Angel” (213), one of the amanitas, mixed with some willow and poppy to ease the pain.

Toby confessed that Pilar had been her family among the Gardeners “more than the others” (214). Pilar told Toby her will: all the materials she had assembled—the bottles and the potions—were to be passed down to Toby. Pilar also asked Toby to become Eve Six so that she could take Pilar’s place. Toby promised that she would do everything as instructed, and although she tried not to show it, she felt like she was being orphaned again. Toby thanked Pilar for all her teaching and sat next to her until she stopped breathing.

Pilar’s last wish was for Toby to tell the bees about her departure, so Toby went straight to the hives. She felt very silly explaining to the bees what had happened to Pilar and announcing that she would be their new Eve Six.

After Toby calmed down, she went to tell Adam One that Pilar had died. Adam One seemed to know everything already, and he asked her not to tell anyone that Pilar took the potion, because “final self-journeying is a moral option only for the experienced and [...] the terminally ill” (217). Toby agreed to take charge of Pilar’s medicine bottles, silently promising herself to get a metal box with a lock for them.

Afterward, Adam One called a general Gardeners meeting where he shared a different version of what happened. He said that Pilar died tragically after making “a species identification error” (217). Toby felt outraged that Adam One disparaged Pilar’s knowledge but didn’t say anything. Adam One also announced that Toby was now a new Eve Six, as this was Pilar’s wish. He informed everyone that Pilar would be composted in Heritage Park; she’d asked for an elderberry tree to be planted on top of her, for the sake of some “foraging dividends” for the Gardeners in the future.

Zeb and Toby were sent to choose and prepare a spot for the composting. Zeb had two Heritage Park groundsman suits; he wore one and gave the other to Toby. They took some tools and put them in the back of the Gardeners’ truck with a Heritage Park logo on it. Zeb explained that there were a number of ex-graphic designers among the Gardeners, and they repainted the car as needed.

On the way to the park, Zeb suggested that they stop to get a Happicuppa in the mall. At first Toby resisted, but then she gave in and enjoyed every sip of her Happicappuchino. As they drove through the park, filled with families seated at picnic tables, they found a good spot for composting and started preparing the grave.

They composted Pilar’s body that same afternoon. Nuala and Adam One marched the Gardeners’ choir throughout the park to distract the attention of passers-by, while Zeb and Toby did all the work. One boy, wearing a pleebrat T-shirt, didn’t seem interested in the choir and instead watched Toby and Zeb. Zeb assured Toby that the boy knew Pilar and had been told they would be there.

Toby felt that as time passed and she learned more, the Eve Six title was “eroding her, wearing away the edges of what she’d once been” (224). When she joined the Adams and the Eves of the Garden, she learned a lot about the sect: They had a biweekly meeting, secret from everyone else, where they discussed all pressing issues. Toby learned that they had a laptop, although they assured her that they used it mostly for storing important data.

During the biweekly meetings, they talked about how frightened everyone was after Burt’s arrest. They had to check their fear in public, but they were worried that Burt would reveal information about the Gardeners to the CorpSeCorps. So the Adams and the Eves prepared rapid-evaluation plans in case of a CorpSeCorps raid.

Then one day Burt’s body, without the vital organs, was discovered behind Scales and Tails. A heated debate followed about what to do with the body. Some said that since he was an Adam, he deserved to be illegally composted in Heritage Park; others objected, saying it was too dangerous because CorpSeCorps might be using Burt’s body as bait. Adam One suggested that they think about what to do overnight and reconvene in the morning. But the next day, Burt’s body was no longer behind Scales and Tails—according to Zeb, he became a victim of “the early-bird garboil collectors” (228). Afterward, Adam One made a speech, describing Burt as “a victim seduced by the spirit of materialist greed whom they should pity rather than condemn” (228). He urged all Gardeners to be watchful and to report anything suspicious, but months went by and nothing unusual happened.