Lapagería

I wish you had gotten to see the flowers down 7th Avenue. No one knows how they rooted between the packed cobblestone streets, but one Saturday morning, as roosters crowed the sun awake, thick vines and bushes sprouted for a mile through the city. People couldn’t drive more than a few feet before tires sank into the shrubbery. Shears bent when they tried to cut them; some reported tools yanked from their grips when the blades touched the stems. The flowers stopped before the sidewalk, so we milled around bursts of colors and shouted names like botanists on a game show. Roses? Lilies? Tulips! I sent you a photo before they evacuated the shops, and you labeled them with ease: flor de maga, bougainvillea, dahlia, copihue.

You learned from your mother, who learned from your mother’s mother, how to keep a garden. You called it bad luck to point at flowers, using your elbow to show me where to prune or jutting your chin to a wildflower on the street. For fertilizer, you saved coffee grounds in a tin can and dug through neighbors’ bins for banana peels. As a girl, I remember looking out at night to see you bent in the garden in long gloves and a big hat. A veces es mejor trabajar en la tarde, you’d say. When you grew sick, you taught me how to scatter seeds in your stead, how to stick my thumb in the soil, how to spot a bad leaf. When I opened my shop in the States, you made a list of indoor plants and wrote watering instructions on the back of an envelope.

Police put up steel barricades along the sidewalks, and signs warned passersby of fines if caught touching the flowers. Some guy on the news said his botanical research couldn’t explain how the tropical flora survived with the desert-favoring cacti. He vehemently opposed any strangeness beyond the inter-climate habitation of non-native species, before the show cut to a segment on locals’ claims of whispers and movement in the green street. That same day, officers came to my store with questions. I hid your list under the registers. When I told you about it, you said there was nothing wrong with variety in one’s planting.

The plants didn’t shrink, but they didn’t grow, either. Researchers and tourists milled with clipboards and cameras, businesses reopened, and college kids used 7^th Avenue as Instagram backdrops. Fiery flamboyant trees cast enough shade for restaurants to add more outdoor tables. The roosters pecked at marigold petals that grew again by morning. Sometimes, while locking up, I’d spot the copihue in the center, its vines bunched, the waxy pink bells hanging. You told me another name for it was the Chilean bellflower. You preferred “lapagería.” You said longer names gave flowers life. I swore I saw the bells swing on breezeless nights.

When people lost their phones in the flowers, more signs were posted, and the barricades moved closer to the buildings. Politicians called it the “big green blight.” They warned of diseases the plants might carry and how the flowers could be a threat to our safety. Headlines reported rising panic despite shop owners reporting booming sales. One day, you asked to visit. Las flores se irán eventualmente, you said, despite the growing police presence. I told you the travel made me nervous. We hadn’t heard from your doctor. It cost too much. But you insisted, and I folded because I missed you and didn’t like hearing you cough on the phone.

I made travel plans with cousins before the doctor called. Said you’d fallen asleep. Said you hadn’t woken up. A stroke, maybe, but too early to tell. He suggested returning home to say goodbye. My uncle called at four a.m. when you passed.

I researched tickets for myself instead. Family called with bendiciones, to tell me how lovely you were, how beautiful you left the world. Protesters lined the sidewalks on the day of my flight, spraying weed killer on doors and throwing trash into the street. I left a sign reading por favor, sé amable con las flores. When I returned to my store after your funeral, someone had left the sign on the sidewalk in a crumpled ball near a holy ghost orchid. The flowers remained, still no bigger and still no smaller. The governor talked about sending the National Guard to try and break the vines.

I lingered outside after closing. Flor de maga, bougainvillea, dahlia, copihue. Near the center, the vines of the pink copihue cling together. Lapagería. A nearby officer told me to move along. I thought of you coaxing a shy bud to abre, abre, and the flowers seemed to turn to me, opening in recognition. The petals motioned like a beckoning finger, curling inwards towards itself. The officer tapped my shoulder.

I clambered over the barricades and past the signs into leaves and stems and petals and spikes, and the officer called after me, but I didn’t sink. I was lifted by a sea of cruz de malta y flor de maga y flamboyant, their leaves parting until the cobblestone of 7th Avenue was at my feet, the first to touch the street in weeks. The greenery was almost blue that time of night, yet the flowers were the brightest they’d ever been, sharp yellows and pinks and purples pulsing in all directions. I reached for the petals of the lapagería with an open hand, and they met me halfway. A breath of fresh air wrapped around me, and I smelled damp earth and coffee grounds and banana peels in the breeze. Despite the night, I felt the sun on my cheeks, the scrape of dirt beneath my nails.

As the plants embraced me, I heard whispered instructions on caring for them, tilling their soil, keeping away the bugs. If I squeezed my eyes tight enough, I could have felt arms, not leaves, wrap around to welcome me into the garden.