"Kali's body felt larger. A new space seemed to have opened up somewhere between her ribcage and her pelvis, full of a nothing hole that was sucking all sensation from extremities into it, making it disappear. After a couple steps staring blankly at the circles of yellow street lamps, Kali lost her breath, her body collapsing from the inside out.

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She braced herself with a hand against a eucalyptus tree with peeling bark and leaned over staring at her sneakers. She felt waves of vomit threatening to make their way up her throat. Kali took deep breaths, feeling the discomfort spread and make her limbs numb.

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Kali loved eucalyptus trees, they grew all over her neighborhood. All over California, really. The Tasmanian blue gum tree, invited to the state's landscape in the 1850s, littered their campus, too. The tall sticky trees with round growths at the base housing new buds to protect them from fire or failure. Despite this, the trees are tinder for fire. Under siege by residents and environmentalists, much of the state seeks to clear them away and replace them with a less hazardous tree, fearing more widespread wildfires.

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Her mother used to make Kali gargle oils infused with eucalyptus when she was sick. To clear the sinuses, to clear the mucous, to allow her to breathe. Her mother used to make Kali steam with oils infused with eucalyptus when she was sick. Kali's face inches from hot water in a glass bowl, her head covered with a towel to keep the steam in. To clear the sinuses, to clear the mucous, to allow her to breathe.

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California has been at war with this tree, but at this moment, Kali was relieved it was still here. She leaned against the soft bark of the gum tree and inhaled the aroma secreted by the leaves, calming her into deep, sinking breaths."

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"Kali and her Mom slid into the car.

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Kali's mom always wanted to be called something different. Mummy, Ama—she wanted to be the mom she grew up with, wanted to be called the same.

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But Kali, Kali wanted a Mom. Like everyone else in school.

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Kali crawled into the middle of the backseat, leather sticking under her palms. The middle is the perfect spot: you can see everything from there. What's ahead, what's above, the world sliding by at 60 miles per hour. Kali used to pretend that instead of us moving along the road, the world was moving under her, the earth rotating at warp speeds to spin us into the right place. The big middle seat bump under Kali's sandals brings her knees up high so she can lean on her elbows and cradle her chin in her wrists, pretending to drive.

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She felt something on the seat beneath her and pulled out a small notebook. For Kali, the best part—and the most important part—of riding in the car was the job to be done: sitting, and sitting hard.

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A few years ago Mom gave Kali a tiny notebook. Longer than it was wide with bright blue lines, a silver holographic cover, and a pink plastic spiral. She used to say something about not wasting the outside when it is inviting you. They walked to a small field, or maybe it was a meadow. All the cartoons with the soft-looking, pale green grass shimmering with bits of pink flowers called them meadows. She took Kali's hand and led her through the soft grass, crouching at each flower bed, collecting them all: pansies, daisies, dandelions, orange poppies.

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Kali loved the sharp orange of the golden poppies, lying against the green, opposite sides of the color wheel. She loved them but she wasn't allowed to pick them, the teachers at school said, because they were the state flower. It was illegal to pick the state flower. The orange that lined the coast, sitting next to the yellow that dotted the hills all the way down to Mexico. She loved the way they responded to the daytime and the nighttime just like she did: closing when Kali was being tucked into bed and opening their petals to the sun in the morning, waiting to greet her after she woke up. Kali watched [MOTHER] open the book and place one flower on each page, spreading out each petal and flattening each leaf.

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So that became Kali's job. Every time she sat in the car, she pushed all of her weight into her bottom, falling into the notebook, flattening everything inside, as though the effort would make it all happen faster. She had dozens in the notebook now. From all different places. Each one now crisp, dry.

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[MOTHER] Always said that the flowers show themselves in new ways once you press them. Once you allow them to rest, to compress. They smelled different, and they even smelled different everyday if you paid attention. They left greens and purples and oranges on the paper beneath them. The fallen flowers, once dead, came alive—if you give them the chance.

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Kali liked to keep her pasts in the book with her. Carry them with her to meet new flowers, new pasts. She began taping them to the window in her bedroom at home, watching the light spill through the petals and leave her room colored with a pink light. Kali and [MOTHER] never picked living flowers. They only picked the ones that had fallen on their own. The ones that had already seen death and deserved to be celebrated. They all had a broken petal or a dry leaf to begin with, many had been stepped on or crumpled or crisped in the sun. Pressing them revived them. The dead and the unwanted became her light. So, she sat hard, peeking every few minutes to ensure that none of the petals had departed and slid away only to be crumpled into crumbs lost in the car cushions."

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"They spent the sleepy Saturday in the kitchen. That's where all of the plants lived. [mother] said it was always best to keep plants in the kitchen, where the house got the most light. They filled every corner, heavy potted leafy plants sat together crowding the tiles on the floor, smaller pots of herbs and flowers along the window sills and the counters.

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Mom always told Kali that her only job in the house was her education. That, and the plants.

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So, Kali began to know them.

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She had a stepstool when she was younger, to take the green plastic watering can to the sink and fill it with cool water. She learned the water level had to be below the spout or she would have to begin again. Now, she used a more sophisticated method. Dozens of plants, each had to be fed or watered every other day, so that meant more water. The watering can wasn't sufficient any longer, it ran out by the second or third plant. Sometimes she would cheat and give each a smaller dose, starve them a little more, leave them a little less damp in the soil and the roots. But [Mother] always noticed. The leaves are sagging, she would say. Look at them, the plants are crisped, they need more water, beta.

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Now she gathers all vessels at once. The electric tea kettle, their largest metal shiny pots, the glass pitcher they use to pour water for dinner guests. She claims her own corner of the kitchen by the sink with dozens of big-bellied water carriers and filled them all up at once. Mom always called her that, the water-carrier, an aquarius. She said that's what [FATHER] would have said. That the universe had made her the bearer of water in their home, that she had to get the plants their water, that she was the only one who could.

She liked their greenness. She felt a kinship. Sometimes she would lay in the sun beneath their jagged shadows and absorb the energy, too. The other-worldly energy she needed to survive, that they needed, too. She loved their greenness, she thought of their greenness, too. The green beneath her skin, coloring her. Eventually, she learned their ways. Who wanted streams of water, who wanted ice cubes, who preferred to be spritzed with mist from an old, emptied bottle of blue window cleaner. Who wanted to be watered in the night, in the morning, who needed another drink in the afternoon. Who wanted water every other day, who would drown and rot if watered more than once a week. Kali's fingers learned the soil, sinking in the first segment of her first finger to feel the dampness and the coolness of the soil.

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Kali never saw plants in her friends' homes. Not inside, anyway. Only outside, in neat beds in rows with purples and pinks in the spring and nothingness in the winter. Lined up perfectly in soil against the grass. They had no earth in their homes, nobody to breathe for them, to give them air and oxygen and life. Nobody to reflect green onto their walls, nowhere to put their extra eggshells and pennies. Nobody to grow mint for cooking or green chillies for crunching.

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But in Kali's home, there were some in every corner. Breathing for them. Living for them. You must let the outside in, Mom would say. Sheer curtains. Open windows. Growing life inside.

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Some of the oldest things in the home were plants. Three money plants in the corner, one a lighter green than the rest—all from the same cutting. Another with tendrils wrapping their way down the legs of the pot stand, falling onto the floor."

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"[MOTHER] stood in the shower. The house was so empty now, with Kali away at college all the time. The evenings felt heavier, the sun seemed to set later, the nights lengthening, the quiet setting the silence deeper into the house, like a stain left to seep too long.

It felt permanent and draining, the house hollow without how-was-your-day conversation and arguments about whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher. [MOTHER] began to know the house new, a child that had grown up right beneath her nose, beneath her toes. She began to learn the individual cries of the house, the empty pockets beneath the floor that made the wood whine. Spaces and wood that her golden toe rings had clattered over thousands of time before, running after baby Kali, carrying laundry down the hallway, vacuuming the floors. She began to notice where the sun's lights and shadows lengthened and shortened and disappeared at twilight, hurrying in from after school activities to heat up the rotis for dinner time.

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The shower brought warm heat to her joints and muscles, the stretches of shoulder that trapezed around her neck and across her upper back. The ones that tensed frequently now, when the sky fell and the loneliness began in a big, empty house.

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She watched the steam rise, cracking the shower door, warm steam for the body, fresh air for the lungs. She rubbed a translucent bar of sandalwood soap along her skin. Kali favored body washes and shower gels, but [MOTHER] could never make the switch. She liked the feeling of the bar of soap rubbing the dirt out of her body, massaging the tender skin on her inner elbows and collarbone. The Indian stores carried the exact bars she grew up with, wrapped in textured paper. She smelled the same her whole life. So did Kali now, too, but her smells were watermelon shampoo and blue detergent that didn't smell like anything else in the world except blue laundry detergent.

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She massaged her shoulders and picked up her toothbrush. [MOTHER] had brushed her teeth in the shower since she was young. She didn't like washing her face in the sink, the way the water dribbled down her chin and dripped on her clothes. She squeezed her neem toothpaste on the brush—another plant they didn't seem to have in the States. At least other Indian plants had English names, but neem was just neem, and nobody here seemed to know about it. Except for those who brought it with them, another vestige of their parents and families back across the sea, packed into suitcases between warm cotton fabrics."

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