He picks a spot and brings a shovel home from work. Wendell decides that while he can’t change the world, he can change that lot.

In the evening he checks on the beans and sees they’re doing well. He shows her he’s only watering the plants and backs away slowly. He waters the plants and realizes the girl is watching him. He sees an old refrigerator reflecting sunlight on the beans and realizes this is the only reason they haven’t frozen. Ana has twisted her ankle and she instructs Wendell to water the plants. After examining the plants with binoculars, Wendell, who grew up on a farm, explains that they are beans and the girl planted them too early. Ana tells him that the young girl hasn’t showed up in four days and her plants are dying. Wendell rushes to Ana’s apartment, worried that something bad has happened to her. The following day she calls Wendell, a school janitor and the only other white guy in the building, and tells him to come to her apartment immediately. Two of them have sprouted roots and she worries that she’s damaged them. She decides to find out by digging up what Kim has buried. When Ana sees Kim she is sure she must be burying drugs or a gun. Today it is a very diverse but run-down place plagued by unemployment and violence. Then they left, as did many later waves of immigrants when the mills and factories closed down. Ana remembers when the neighborhood was mainly inhabited by Romanians. Meanwhile, Ana, a Romanian woman who has lived in the working-class neighborhood for many years, watches Kim from her window with suspicion. She vows that she will prove that she’s her father’s daughter and that the beans will thrive. There she uses a spoon to dig holes for the beans and she waters them. On a cold and lonely Sunday in early April, Kim sneaks out to the vacant lot by her house. In an effort to connect with him, she decides to plant lima beans, just like she did with her school class. Kim cries because she has no memories of her father and fears that he may not even know who she is.īack in Vietnam, Kim’s father was a farmer.

Her father died when she was just eight months old.

Kim stands before an altar that her family has made to mark the anniversary of her father’s death. Kim is a nine-year old girl who was born in Vietnam and lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman