Our Missing Hearts

by Celeste Ng

She found mothers everywhere, even in the garden, tending her plants. When the frost is coming, she learned, the way to ripen tomatoes on the vine is to twist their roots. Pull until the earth cracks, until the spider-hairs below snap like cut strings. This tells the plant: Your end is near—save what you can. Give up on growing taller; give up on leafing wide. Think only of the fruit, dangling in hard green fists. Exhaust yourself. Let your leaves shrivel and yellow. Nothing else matters. Push until there is nothing left of you but a dry stalk holding a round red globe aloft. Wither, pushing that one sweet fruit into ripeness, hoping that in summer something of you will sprout again.

Spirare, Bird hears his father say. To breathe. Con: together. So conspiracy literally means breathing together. They make it sound so sinister, Sadie says, and only then does Bird realize he’s spoken aloud. But breathing together, breathing the same air—it’s actually kind of beautiful.