I stared at the red-veined salad on my plate, watching a tiny beetle amble across the largest leaf. “Hullo,” I said and it stopped in its track, almost as though it understood that I was speaking to it.
“Finish your food,” my grandmother said in a stern voice from across the table.
I rolled the leaf, stuffed it into my mouth and chewed. The beetle’s aroma exploded inside my mouth the moment I chomped down on it. Quickly I stuffed more leaves to help me get rid of the smell.
Mother placed a plate of raw minced meat in front of me. “Eat properly, baby,” she said as she sat down before a smaller portion.
Grandmother scooped a spoonful of the dish and, after tasting it for a long while, nodded her approval. “This is good, Melanie.”
“It’s amazing what you can plant nowadays,” mother said.
Grandmother put down her spoon and looked at mother with unbridled excitement as she asked, “Will you go to the Farm Fair tomorrow?”
“Yes, Mother. Diana told me that the new breed of tomato is amazing.”
“Oh,” grandmother said with a moan of ecstasy. “It is. I had some at your Aunt Mary’s place. The brain matter growing in the seed sacs was absolutely delicious. It was fresh and sweet and creamy.”
“This breed isn’t one of those that overgrow, is it?”
“Don’t you worry about that, sweetheart. Ever since the new law had been passed, bioagriculturist are now required to build in a self-kill gene into all of their genetically engineered plants.”
Mother shivered as the ghost of a memory crossed her mind. “I hope so. The last thing I want is another incident like the one at the supermarket.”
Grandmother scoffed, “Those Bio-Ethicaters should find better things to do with their lives. What do they know about the environment anyway? Those scare tactics they used were absolutely deplorable. Imagine, letting a tongue salad grow beyond its expiration date. That is just irresponsible.”
“But they were people, Nana,” I said, “and they looked sad.”
“Don’t talk to your grandmother like that,” mother warned, “It was those people’s fault that the salads became people. Anyway, it has been proven that plants don’t feel pain. And the reason they look sad is because they don’t have facial muscles to make them smile.”
I stared at my mother blankly. “They weren’t people?”
“No, they weren’t, baby. They were tongues. However, if irresponsible people make them grow beyond their useful life then the other anatomies will begin to appear.”
“Like a baby, right?”
“Like a fetus,” mother corrected, “First there is just that little blob then you get a brain, heart and limbs. The things the bioagriculturists have done are amazing. They didn’t just find a way to combine animal and plant genes together, they also managed to find a way for the plants to grow only the parts they want for a season. Now they have found a way for the plant to die when the animal gene begins to show a tendency to grow other anatomies.”
Grandmother chuckled. “One time they tried to grow fish, but it smelled so bad there was an outcry. The first successful groups were the sheep tongue salads. Everybody loved them, even though they don’t smell quite fresh in the backyard. That is why the plants infused with human genes are the most expensive, because they are the ones releasing the least odor.”
Then they both turned their attention away from me, and barely nodded when I asked for permission to leave the table. All they could talk about was the brain tomato: How much it cost, how easy it was to plant and how soon they could expect to serve the first harvest on the table.
I placed my empty plate into the sink in the kitchen. Then I took some biscuits from the cookie jar and went to the backyard garden. The tongue salad licked my shoe, the ladyfingers poked my arm and the bunches of eyeballs rolled as I walked past their beds. I made my way to a corner of the garden, towards a sleepy apple tree who greeted me with a smile and told me to eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away. I went behind it, sat down between her jutting roots and crossed my legs. A tiny hand appeared out of a hole under the tree, and a baby crawled out. She had fresh dewy leaves for hair and tiny little leafy twigs jutting out of her waist. I could tell that she had been sucking on an apple because of the juicy rim around her mouth. She smiled and gurgled the way babies do when I gave her a piece of biscuit. After staring at the biscuit for a while she leaned back on the tree and began to suck on it. I could see the hint of a new tooth showing on her upper gum. I know I should tell my mother or grandmother about her but she looked so happy, and she was quiet. I decided not to say anything for another day.
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