Girl Under Glass Chapter One

www.emilysplants.com

 Girl Under Glass Intro

                             Chapter 1

Kelsey McCully waits while the girl at the Rite Aid pharmacy counter searches the shelves for her mother’s prescriptions. “M-A-C?” she asks—same as last month.

“M-C,” Kelsey says.

The pharmacist glances up. “How’s your mom?” 

“Fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

There are times Kelsey thinks she was born inside out—every nerve exposed—feeling everything one day, and nothing the next. She either hates this monthly charade, or has to fight back tears because some one bothered to ask about her mother. Ronald, the pharmacist, always asks. Kelsey always lies. Her mother worked here five years ago, but was fired. No one cares how she’s doing, and today Kelsey hates them for pretending they do. 

Her friend, Carly, waits outside, guarding her bicycle. Kelsey comes out, and tosses the bag of prescriptions into her basket.

Carly nods toward the store employee, whose butt-crack is exposed every time he bends to reset plants blown over by the last night’s gusty winds.

Kelsey watches him pick up the lone gardenia, and put it back on the stand. She looks at Carly and grins. “My mother loves gardenias,” she whispers, wheels her bike to the plant stand, presses her nose into the single, sweet blossom, and breathes deeply.  

 Carly pushes her bike into position between the clerk and Kelsey and holds one hand behind her back, ready to signal when he isn’t looking.

Kelsey feels light-headed and her heart thuds. She sniffs the white blossom again, sneaking a peek at the blue-vested employee. He’s watching a woman in high-heels walk to her car.  

When Carly flaps her hand, Kelsey snatches the gardenia, jams it into her bike basket, and rides away. She shoots across the parking lot toward Coast Tire, then out onto the sidewalk. She flees past the Tradewinds Motel, turns up Hazel Street, slows, circles back, and peers around the corner. When she sees Carly ride out of the parking lot, she starts back toward her, grinning, but Carly looks over her shoulder, then shouts something.

“What?”

“Go. Go!” Carly screams.

Kelsey turns into the Tradewinds’ parking lot, pedaling as hard as she can toward the Franklin Street exit. She bounces over a speed bump and nearly falls as she makes a sharp left onto the sidewalk behind the motel. Jerry Curtis, the same Fort Bragg cop who caught her when she sneaked off to a party in her mother’s car a month ago, stands in the center of the sidewalk with his hands on his hips. She tries to steer around him, but he catches her around the waist and lifts her off the bike, which crashes into the only section of the motel’s back wall that isn’t hidden by thick clumps of pampas grass. The potted gardenia flips out and lands right side up on the concrete. The bag of prescriptions sails out and lands in a puddle the drip system has left.
            Kelsey tries to act innocent and confused. “Geez, Jerry, you scared me.”

            Carly comes out of the motel’s rear driveway, sees them, and turns the other way. She glances back once before crossing Franklin, and riding, hell-bent, up Chestnut.

            “Nice gardenia.” Jerry picks it up and smells the bloom.

            “I bought it for my mother.”

            Jerry’s a neighbor. He lives one block over from Kelsey’s house—too close as far as she’s concerned.

“I bet she’ll like that.” He smiles.  

            “Yeah. They’re her favorite.”

            “They don’t do well here. Too cold, I guess.”

            Kelsey can’t tell if he believes her. “Well, I gotta go.” She rights her bicycle.

            Jerry grabs the handlebars. “Sure, Kelsey, I just need to see the receipt.”

Kelsey pretends to look for it: in her backpack, on the sidewalk, then she shrugs. “It must have blown out of my basket.”

            “Did the bag blow out too?”

            “They didn’t give . . .” Kelsey turns and follows Jerry’s gaze.

            The Rite Aid clerk is jogging up the sidewalk toward them, his belly bouncing like a beach ball. “There were two of them,” he pants.

            Fat-so.

            “I know them both,” Jerry says. “Take the plant, but leave me your name. You’ll probably be called to testify.”

            “Not a problem. I’m sick of these kids ripping us off when they’ve got more money to pay for stuff than I have.”

            Jerry nods. “Tell me about it.” 

            Kelsey swallows, determined not to cry. “Jerry, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise. Mom’s been sick, and I wanted to bring her something.”

            “Sorry, Kiddo. You were warned. No more free rides. Maybe a few weeks in Juvenile Hall will change your tune before it’s too late.”

*

Kelsey spends the morning watering down her mother’s drinks, trying to keep Lydia sober enough to walk and talk, but drunk enough not to know what’s going on. Before the time comes to leave for court, Kelsey gets her mother to eat a little lunch, and baits her into getting dressed by asking Lydia if she wants to stop at the liquor store after they go to the courthouse to pay a parking ticket.

“When did I get a parking ticket?” Her mother stands in front of the bathroom mirror letting Kelsey comb her hair.

“Two weeks ago. Don’t you remember?”

“I guess I do. In front of the post office, right?”

“Uh huh. There.” Kelsey puts the comb down. “You look nice.” She smiles at Lydia’s reflection in the mirror. They look eerily alike and unrelated at the same time. Kelsey’s hair is a mousy, dull brown; her mother’s a graying shade of dishwasher blond. Kelsey’s eyes are brown, her mother’s are pale blue, red-rimmed and bloodshot. All they have in common is the same pug nose and the same gap between their front teeth. Sometimes, like now, with her mother’s hair combed, they resemble each other, but so superficially that Kelsey feels pretty sure that her mother’s drinking has nothing to do with having Kelsey as a reminder of her lost youth.  

*

The bailiff calls, “All rise” when Cindy Mayfield, the Mendocino County Juvenile Judge, enters the courtroom. Kelsey drags her mother to her feet and keeps her steady with a hand on her shoulder. After Judge Mayfield takes her seat, Kelsey sits and pulls Lydia into the seat beside her.

“Well, which is it?” Her mother’s voice is slurred.

“Young Lady,” Judge Mayfield says.

            “Yes, ma’am.” Kelsey stands again, but keeps a firm hand on her mother’s shoulder.

            “It’s yes, your Honor.” 

            “Yes, your Honor.”

            “I’ve read Officer Curtis’s report and heard the testimony of Mr. Jennings from Rite Aid, and I have reviewed your record. This is your second arrest for shoplifting, which means, incidentally, that you aren’t very good at it; you’ve been picked up three times for truancy, and you have a speeding ticket. That’s quite a record for someone too young for a learner’s permit.” She puts down the file, folds her hands, and glares at Kelsey. “Here’s the deal. You’re fifteen. In spite of the recommendation of Ms. Rontero of the Juvenile Probation Department, I am loathe to send you to Juvenile Hall at your age, but I see no other way to get through to you.”

            Kelsey concentrates on picking at the chewed skin around the nub of her thumbnail.

            “Look at me.”

            She sucks on the inside of her cheek and looks up at the judge.

            “I want to hear your excuse.”   

            “For which thing?”

            “The one you’re here for now,” Judge Mayfield snaps.

            “My mother’s . . .” Kelsey whispers.

            “Speak up.”

            “. . . been sick. She likes flowers.”

            “So you stole one for her. Would a stolen gardenia have made you feel better, Ms. McCully?”

Kelsey glances at her mother.

Lydia McCully’s head comes up lazily, and she blinks at the judge.

“Say, no, your Honor,” Kelsey hisses under her breath.

“No, your Honor.” Her mother smiles dimly. 

Kelsey’s shoulders sag. She tried to keep her mother out of this by erasing the message the police left and intercepting the notice to appear in court, but three days ago that woman from the Mendocino County Juvenile Probation Department came by to make sure her mother knew Kelsey was in trouble again. She’d come late in the afternoon, but Lydia managed to appear lucid. After the woman left, Lydia fixed herself another vodka and water, had a good cry, turned on the television, and seemed to forget all about it. 

Judge Mayfield studies Lydia. “How are you feeling now, Ms. McCully?”

Kelsey turns to whisper the answer, but her mother says, “Not well, your Honor.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Gout,” her mother answers.

Kelsey coughs to cover her astonishment. Where the hell did that come from?

            “Uh huh.” The judge stares at Lydia for a full minute, then turns her scary gaze on Kelsey. “Here’s the deal,” she says. “I see in your file that your sixteenth birthday is in six months, so I’m giving you one more chance—six months probation and 300 hours of community service. That means every day.” She shakes a finger. “Every single day after school, and all day on weekends you will work for Dr. Jonathan Hobbes. The bailiff will give you the address. Is that clear?”

            “A doctor?”

            “He has a PhD in botany. You’ve got yourself six months to grow a gardenia for your mother.” She writes something in the file, and hands it to the clerk. “Kelsey . . .”

 “Yes, your Honor?”

“If I hear you’ve missed a day or caused Dr. Hobbes one minute of trouble, you are going to Juvenile Hall. Is that clear?”

Kelsey nods.

“I never want to see you here again.”
            “You won’t ma’am. I promise.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“I mean it this time.”

“You had better, young lady. You are headed down a dead-end road.”

*

RECENT SCIENCE

“A Colorado State University scientist has re-engineered plants so that they can detect explosives, air pollution and toxic chemicals. Plants fixed with custom-made proteins in biologist June Medford’s lab signal the presence of potentially deadly vapors by turning white from green. Military and federal Homeland Security research directors Wednesday said they envision wide applications for the genetically modified plants positioned in buildings, war zones and cities where terrorists could set up covert bomb-making factories.

…from The Miami Herald, February 2011

*

 "They tell us that plants are perishable, soulless creatures, that only man is immortal but this, I think is something that we know very nearly nothing about."  …John Muir

*

“It’s never too late to become who you might have been.”

                                                                                                         Unknown

Girl Under Glass Introduction

Meat Eating Plants 

kids.nationalgeographic.com

 In 1966, FBI polygraph instructor, Cleve Backster, solely on a whim, hooked his undernourished, and often ignored, office plant to a lie detector. He was curious about whether he could record its physiological reaction to receiving water. He expected increased electrical conductivity as the water reached its leaves. Instead, the polygraph needle trended in the opposite direction, equivalent to a sigh of relief. Backster was so surprised by this reaction that the possible explanation began to consume him and, until his death, he pursued what he believed happened that day, that he had established contact with the plant kingdom.

            I think it was 1974, when I first read about this experiment and many others in a book entitled The Secret Life of Plants, which is still available and selling well on Amazon—perhaps even your local bookstore. I found it fascinating, as did others. It launched an era of people talking to their plants and playing them classical music. Funny now. Kind of. The thing is, poor Cleve Backster was ridiculed by the scientific community for the rest of his life, but he never conceded defeat. He studied plant communication right down to a cellular level until the end of his life. I spoke with him some years before his death, and he sent me the book he’d written on the subject, which he called Primary Perception.

            The most remarkable experiment Backster performed went (as well as I can remember) as follows: He put two plants in his lab, one of which was hooked to a polygraph. He then had his students draw straws. The one with the short straw—and no one knew who that was—went into the lab and destroyed the plant not attached to the lie detector. He torn it out of its pot, ripped its leaves off, and stomped on it. Afterward, Backster filed his entire class through the lab and when the “murderer” passed by, the witness-plant had a violent reaction—recorded on the polygraph.

            I love gee-whiz biology.
           In 1974, I was not a writer. The idea of becoming a writer had never crossed my mind. I was a college drop-out who failed English numerous times. In 1974, I was a flight attendant, and recently married. At that time, Colombo was a wildly popular detective series, featuring a rumpled-trench-coat wearing Peter Falk as Colombo. The twist was, viewers got to see how the perpetrator planned and carefully carried out the murder, then watched Colombo try to figure out how it was done, and how he was going to prove it.

            I was so enamored of The Secret Life of Plants, I thought it would make a great Colombo episode. Imagine the perfect murder with a house plant as the only witness. I did something I’d never done before, or since, I wrote the producers, and received a short reply: “We have writers.”

            In 1977, I went back to college. In 1982, I wrote an editorial for a local newspaper about an abandoned dog. It was published and one of the editors called me and said, if I could write like that, they’d publish anything I wrote. The phone called that changed my life! At the time, I was a biology major and had Organic Chemistry, Physics, and Calculus yet to take. I signed up for a creative writing class instead. Really. That’s how this thirty-year plus odyssey began.

            The first story I wrote in my first creative writing class was the one about my husband sinking his airboat and walking out of the Everglades. The second was entitled, The Greenhouse, about a young girl whose biology professor is murdered and she figures out the plants in his lab are witnesses. It was, frankly, crap. I still have it around here somewhere, in case I ever get to thinking I was blessed with a story-telling gene.

            And the point is? I have five published novels, and five unpublished novels. One of them is entitled Girl Under Glass. It’s The Greenhouse with 30 years of writing experience under my belt. I love this book, but no publisher (and I’ve had four different ones) has ever shown any interest in it. I like to think it’s because Marketing doesn’t believe kids (my main audience) will be interested in reading about plants. I think anyone who enjoys a good mystery, or sci-fi (even if it's not,) will like this book.

By now, you get where I’m going.

I’ve had nearly 80,000 hits on this blog. I realize that may well be 100 of my best friends who have dutifully clicked on each and every post over the last four years. Still it's a place to start.

When Backster did his experiments, he was unaware of the recent research into plant communication. In The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, explores the way plants have for centuries maneuvered us into protecting and propagating them, how they lure us with beautiful blooms to provide food, water and space to grow. They enlist us as allies to ensure their survival. But what if it goes beyond the exchange of nutrition, transportation and space? What if they form attachments—perhaps care enough to use their defenses to attempt to warn us of danger?  

In Daniel Chamovitz’s recent book, What Plants Know, he delves into the mystery of how they can warn each other of predation; how carnivorous plants know when to spring the trap. It's another fascinating read.

This is the Girl Under Glass “elevator speech,” sent to disinterested editors.

When Kelsey McCully, shoplifts a gardenia for her mother, she steps across a line and discovers how deep a relationship with the botanical inhabitants of this planet can go, but the question remains will Kelsey McCully, a troubled teenager, find—in a cranky old man, a roly-poly cat, and a greenhouse full of plants—the support she needs to straighten out her life?

Maybe this will work out, and Girl Under Glass will find an audience. Maybe it won’t. Either way, it will be out there for a few to enjoy, and that will make me, and my philodendron happy.  

I’ll start with this Introduction, and post a chapter a week. Tuesday's with Kelsey. At the beginning of each chapter will be a link to the Intro and any preceding chapter.   

             

GIRL UNDER GLASS / Synopsis

Girl Under Glass builds on the intriguing scientific research into plant communication as detailed in the still popular, best-selling The Secret Life of Plants, and more recently The Botany of Desire, and What Plants Know. 

Kelsey McCully, 13, is fatherless and living with an alcoholic mother. When she gets arrested for shoplifting, the judge sentences her to community service with a local botanist who is trying to duplicate experiments done with plants. When the botanist is severely beaten and robbed, Kelsey discovers the secret of these communications but must convince the police that the greenhouse plants are witnesses to the crime.  

Girl Under Glass weaves the themes of family alcoholism, family secrets, and the everyday struggles facing most teens with the mystery and intrigue of our relationship to the natural world. It moves Kelsey from coping with her loneliness and self-doubt expressed through bad behavior and association with other outcast kids, to learning to trust enough to ask for help for herself and her mother.     

*

Despite not having brains or nervous systems in the traditional sense, plants are surprisingly sophisticated. They can communicate with each other and signal impending danger to their neighbors by releasing chemicals into the air. Plants constantly react to their environment — not only light and temperature changes, but also physical stimuli.       

                                                                                  Washington Post.com 7/10/14

 

I'd love to buy you a beer...

If you'll spring for the airfare.  

Bag of Nails pub in Bristol.   

 Daniel Garrett, BBC News

Cat Pub

 

Non-Human Persons. Cheers for India!

 Animal Minds 
A thought-provoking TED talk.

India Declares Dolphins "Non-Human Persons", Dolphin shows BANNED.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/30/1226634/-India-Declares-Dolphins-Non-Human-Persons-Dolphin-shows-BANNED?detail=emailclassic

By Jason Hackman  

India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests has decided to forbid the keeping of captive dolphins for public entertainment anywhere in the country.

 In a policy statement released Friday, the ministry advised state governments to reject any proposal to establish a dolphinarium “by any person / persons, organizations, government agencies, private or public enterprises that involves import, capture of cetacean species to establish for commercial entertainment, private or public exhibition and interaction purposes whatsoever.”

More: 

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/30/1226634/-India-Declares-Dolphins-Non-Human-Persons-Dolphin-shows-BANNED?detail=emailclassic

To the Baby in Front of Me by Jessica Kotnour

FYI. Two years ago Jessica won one of the 5 Under 25 scholarships to the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. Here is a good example of why.

To the Baby in Front of Me

You don’t know me. I don’t know you. Our paths seem to have crossed. You’re in the seat in front of me, on a flight from Columbus to Orlando. I’m sure you’re going to Disney. Or maybe to visit your grandparents. You are in your mother’s arms. You are laughing, even if you were crying, it would be okay. You are in a flying tube. You are allowed to cry.

You’re standing up now on your mother’s legs. Stand there as long as you can. Let her be your rock. Your foundation. Grip your tiny toes into her quads. Dig deep. Leave marks.

You keep looking around. Observing. I wish the top of the plane were glass so that you could see all of the clouds. They’re so much prettier when you are in them than they are from the ground. Well, they are still pretty from the ground as well. 

Your sister keeps peaking her head back and smiling at me. She’s reading a book. I hope that she never stops reading.  If she ever needs a book, you call me and I’ll make sure you get one. 

Your sister just handed your dad a sticker. What a special gift. I pray that he saves it. Sticks in on the car window. Sticks it on his phone. Sticks it on his heart.

You are so very young, too young to be forming memories. By the time you’re my age, you’ll have formed so many memories, but you’ll have even more to form. Some of them will be good. Some will make you cry.  Most of them will involve your favorite people, maybe your parents, or your friend, or your first dog. I want to tell you to form memories of every moment. But you can’t. I am sorry about that. Try to remember the small things. The way your mom’s legs feel underneath your feet right now.  The way your sister gives the most meaningful gifts, like stickers. If you have a dog, remember the way it feels when he falls asleep on your feet. Hug him often. Hug everyone often.

When you get older, scary things might start to happen. Tumors will be found in your best friend’s leg. You won’t be able to shower because the floor has MRSA. You will be so scared, but you will never be alone. 

I’m on this flight now, heading back from college. Heading back home. Back to my mother’s legs. I’ll lay on the couch with her tonight and my unshaven legs and hers will be next to each other, with the dog laying on both of our feet. 

You are crying now.  I am crying now. 

Your sister keeps smiling at me. And I keep smiling back.  She’s missing some teeth. She is not fully formed, but neither am I. Neither is anyone. 

The flight attendant is coming through now. We are about to land. I hope that you enjoyed your flight, but if it was scary and stressful, that is okay. No one expects you to be able to handle everything. 

For now, all we are asked to do is to stand on our mother’s legs and take it all in.

Can you guess what this is?

nationalgeographic.com

Living life raft 
News cast from South Carolina

The first time I saw a raft like this was after drenching rains in Texas. I was so astonished when I realized what it was that I nipped the image to create a scene in Lost in the River of Grass. Readers, do you remember where it is?

oilpalmbiodiversity.com

Chimps Face Abandonment

 I quietly posted this last week because there was no way to help. Now there is.
 How we can Help
 

AP Photo

Stranded in Liberia

By Jonathan Paye-Layleh BBC Africa, Monrovia

A group of 66 tame chimpanzees used for US medical testing faces being abandoned on six Liberian islands amid a potential funding crisis. The animals are those left from 108 chimps used for biomedical research carried out by a New York-based charity, Blood Center.