Untangling the Inseparable By Rebecca Schumejda

Adrian Scottow CC





Untangling the Inseparable
 
“Return to the root and you will find the meaning.” -Sengcan 


I stare at the seedlings that I planted inside before my greenhouse was delivered. They look like prisoners marked by their time inside: fragile, droopy, yellowing around the edges from too little light and space. I try to figure out where to start; I pick up the closest pot housing two small intertwined tomato plants, as if they are holding each other up—or pulling each other down—when my cell phone rings. 

“You have a collect call from an inmate at the New York Department of Corrections, if you would like to accept this call press 1…” the prerecorded voice rambles on. When my younger brother emerges through the layers of restrictions and protocols, his voice arrives unsteady and distant, trying to grow through concrete and violence—where any sort of peace must learn to survive in controlled light and limited air flow. Each word spoken, cautiously tended, as if it must be repotted before spoken. 

“How’s it going?” he asks, surprised by his own voice escaping its confinement. 

For a moment, I pause, I press my phone between my shoulder blade and ear so I can peel off my gardening gloves and let them fall onto gravel ground. 

“I got a greenhouse,” I confess, looking up at the sky through the transparent roof. “It’s absolutely amazing,” I say, feeling instant regret for experiencing pleasure. “I am standing in it right now,” I add, with less enthusiasm. I know that joy and sorrow aren’t a zero-sum system. My happiness doesn’t deprive him, and my guilt doesn’t help him— yet I can’t stop myself from  constantly editing my responses. 

To tend plants is to practice a kind of faith. You place a seed in soil, add water, and wait. You adjust the light and temperature, but you can’t force the sprout to hurry up, and grow. You have to wait. Transformation becomes an act of patience, and patience a form of healing. 

Over the decade my younger brother has been locked up in maximum security prisons, the roots I clung to have been yanked from this earth: our mother and my first husband, both lost to cancer. I watched them both wither away slowly. I brought them water and opened the blinds to let in sunlight, but there was little else that I could do. I still struggle to accept that care is often simply being there when nothing else can be done. 

“How big is it?” he asks. 

It’s less about believing something will grow and more about meeting conditions as they are, without clinging to what may happen. There is a groundedness in this idea that I want to fully embrace: action without attachment, care without expectation. With one hand I hold the phone against my ear; with the other, I lift the two tomatoes tangled in one pot. 

“Ten by twelve,” I answer. 

Before he was inmate number 8349724, he co-owned a farm stand. Before he lost his freedom, he was a small seedling rooted in an open field, reaching toward sunlight. Before his incarceration, I stood in that same field—a slightly taller seedling, unaware of how quickly conditions can change, how fast a storm can roll in.  

“That’s bigger than my cell,” he laughs. 

I lower myself slowly and sit on the gravel. I have about seven minutes left before the prerecorded woman’s voice reminds us we have one minute remaining. Like plants in a greenhouse, inmates are dependent and restricted. Temperature, light, and water are regulated by others. Neither can wander into an open field or feel the wind move across their faces. Both are contained—by glass, by metal. Every moment is scheduled, every interaction structured. The hope is that, maybe, plants that struggled outside can flourish when given time, protection, and careful attention.

In the background, I hear men yelling, making guttural sounds. The noise crashes against concrete and steel, like something the building cannot contain, yet cannot release. Here, in another place entirely, I sit in my greenhouse, light pooling through glass, birds chirping just beyond the open door. I pick up one of the larger pots I’ll use to replant the seedlings, giving them more room to grow.

“Have you heard from anyone lately?” he asks. 

I try to dig the soil from beneath one nail using the edge of another. I never tell him how his actions created an eerie silence in our family. Instead, I say, “I’ve been busy,” because sometimes the truth can also serve as an excuse.
 
To tend to an incarcerated and mentally ill brother is to practice a kind of faith. You offer one word, then another, and wait. You adjust your tone, your language, but you can’t force someone to become who you want them to be. You can hope they’ll change, grow—but all you can do is wait. Transformation becomes an act of patience; over time, patience becomes its own kind of healing.

“I curled 130,” he says, “benched 320, it feels good, you know getting back outside, getting back out into the yard. It’s been a long winter.” 

Through the glass, I see my husband carrying bags of composts for me. He drops them down outside the greenhouse door.

“Are you ok in there?” he asks. 

“Yeah—I am talking to Steve,” I reply. 
When my brother and I were young, we knelt beside our father in the garden. I remember how his large hands handled each plant with care.

“You know what’s strange? Hearing someone say my name,” my brother says. “Tell him I said hello.”


Again, I reach for those two tangled tomato plants and gently try to untwist them. My husband drops two more bags of compost outside the greenhouse door. As soon as I let the tomato plants go, they fall back into their twisted position. The automated voice startles me. 

“You have one minute remaining.”  

We sit in silence—my brother in a maximum-security prison, me in my greenhouse.

Finally he breaks the silence. “Can you put money in my commissary?” 

Before I can answer, the voice cuts in: “Thank you for using Securus. Goodbye.”

I stand, still holding the pot with the twisted tomatoes. I slide them out and gently shake the soil loose. I know better than to tear them apart. Instead, I dip their roots into a bucket of water, trying to loosen what I can, to free them from one another, to soften the shock of transplanting.

You can’t untangle everything completely. 



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Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Sentenced (NYQ Books) and Something Like Forgiveness (Stubborn Mule Press). She holds a BA from SUNY New Paltz and an MA from San Francisco State University. She teaches and co-edits the online magazine Trailer Park Quarterly. She lives in upstate New York with her family and two ridiculously energetic German Shepherds, where she has recently bought her first greenhouse. You can find her online at www.rebecca-schumejda.com