Chapter 114: Tomatoes

The package arrived from Victorville on a Thursday in July.

The package was a cardboard box — the kind of box that the United States Postal Service used for Priority Mail, the kind that cost $15.95 to ship from the Victorville Federal Correctional Facility’s commissary post office, the kind that required the sender to fill out three forms and obtain approval from the facility’s mail officer and wait four to seven business days for processing because the federal prison system did not prioritize outgoing produce.

The package contained tomatoes.

Seven tomatoes. Roma variety. Grown in the prison garden that Colonel James Aldridge — formerly of the United States Army, formerly of the anti-Hearthstone faction, currently of Cell Block D and the Thursday afternoon gardening rotation — had started eighteen months ago with a Three Sisters plot and seven inmates who had never grown anything.

The tomatoes were — Jake held one in his hand, standing at the kitchen counter at 10:47 AM — the tomatoes were beautiful. Not grocery-store beautiful, not the cosmetic perfection of a hydroponic tomato that had been bred for shelf life and color uniformity. Beautiful the way a first thing was beautiful. The way the first rice was beautiful. The way the first cup of jjigae was beautiful. The beauty of a thing that had been grown by a person who had never grown anything before and who had put — everything — into the growing.

The tomatoes were slightly misshapen. Two of them had splits at the top — the result of irregular watering, the prison’s garden hose being shared among twelve plots and the watering schedule being at the mercy of the facility’s recreation officer. One tomato had a green shoulder — the spot where the sun had not fully reached because the garden plot was next to the east wall and the wall cast a shadow after 2:00 PM. The tomatoes smelled like — the tomatoes smelled like tomatoes. The specific, vine-ripened, this-is-what-a-tomato-is-supposed-to-smell-like smell that had been bred out of commercial tomatoes decades ago and that existed only in garden tomatoes, farmers’ market tomatoes, tomatoes that had been grown by hands.

Aldridge’s letter was in the box.

The letter was handwritten — the colonel’s handwriting, which had changed in eighteen months. The handwriting that had arrived in Jake’s first letter — the handwriting of the man who had ordered the Armenian bakery bombing — had been military: precise, angular, the handwriting of a person accustomed to signing orders. The handwriting in this letter was different. Softer. The letters rounder. The lines less straight. The handwriting of a person who had been gardening, whose hands had been in soil, whose fine motor control had shifted from the precision of command to the imprecision of cultivation.

The letter said:

Jake,

The tomatoes are from the garden. Seven plants, seven tomatoes. The yield is low — the soil is poor and the water is irregular and the sun is limited by the east wall. But the tomatoes are real. The tomatoes grew. The tomatoes exist because seven men who had never grown anything decided to put seeds in the ground and wait.

The waiting was the hardest part. Not the planting. Not the watering. The waiting. The days when nothing happened. The days when the soil looked the same as yesterday. The days when the other inmates walked past the garden plot and said: ‘Nothing’s growing.’ The days when I said to myself: Nothing’s growing.

And then the first leaf. And then the first flower. And then — the green ball that would become a tomato, hanging from the vine like a promise that the vine had made to the seed and that the seed had made to the soil and that the soil had made to the water and that the water had made to the sun.

The promise was: wait. The promise was: keep standing. The promise was: the growing happens underground, in the dark, where you cannot see it. And then one morning the growing breaks through and the tomato is there and the tomato is real and the tomato is — yours. Not because you made it. Because you waited for it.

I am sending seven tomatoes because there were seven plants. I wanted to send all of them to you. But Marcus — one of the seven, in for armed robbery, nineteen years remaining — Marcus said: ‘Colonel, if you send all the tomatoes, what do we eat?’ And I realized: the tomatoes are not for sending. The tomatoes are for eating. The tomatoes are for the people who grew them. The tomatoes are the Question being answered — in soil instead of in a pot.

I kept seven. I sent seven. Marcus kept three. Rodriguez kept two. The others — they took their tomatoes to the cafeteria and ate them there, in front of the other inmates, and the other inmates watched and said: ‘You grew that?’ And they said: ‘Yes.’ And the other inmates said: ‘Can I try the next one?’ And they said: ‘Help us grow it and you can.’

The garden plot had seven men in January. The garden plot has twenty-three men in July. The waiting list is forty-one.

The soup you brought me — the jjigae, the doenjang, the Question — the soup taught me that food is a question. The garden taught me that growing is also a question. The garden asks: will you wait? Will you stand? Will you come back tomorrow even when nothing is growing?

The garden is my stove. The soil is my pot. The tomato is my rice.

I washed my hands before planting. Not because anyone told me to. Because the soil needs to read the hands. Clean hands. Hands that are — present.

Yours,
James Aldridge
Victorville FCC
Garden Plot #3

Jake set the letter on the counter. He set the tomatoes on the cutting board. Seven tomatoes. Misshapen, split, green-shouldered. Beautiful.

He cut one open.

The inside: red. The deep, actual, this-is-the-color-of-a-real-tomato red that was not the red of a grocery store tomato. The red of a tomato that had been grown in prison soil by a man who had been convicted of domestic terrorism and who had learned, from a bowl of doenjang-jjigae and a Three Sisters plot, that the Question could be asked in soil.

The seeds visible in the flesh. The juice running on the cutting board. The smell — the smell filling the kitchen, the specific, tomato-on-a-summer-day smell that was universal, that was every garden in every country, that was the smell of growing.

“엄마,” Jake said.

Misuk came to the counter. She looked at the tomato.

“이게 뭐야?” What is this?

“Aldridge’s tomatoes. From the prison garden.”

Misuk picked up a half. She held it — the way she held all ingredients, with the full attention, the assessment that preceded the cooking. She smelled it. She looked at the color. She squeezed gently — the firmness test, the ripeness test, the test that her hands had been performing on vegetables for forty years.

“좋은 토마토야,” she said. It’s a good tomato.

“He grew it in prison.”

“토마토는 어디서 자랐는지 모르지. 토마토는 그냥 자라. 해가 있으면. 물이 있으면. 손이 있으면.”

The tomato doesn’t know where it grew. The tomato just grows. If there’s sun. If there’s water. If there’re hands.

She set the tomato down. She looked at the six remaining.

“된장찌개에 넣자,” she said. Let’s put them in the doenjang-jjigae.

“Tomatoes in doenjang-jjigae?”

“토마토 된장찌개. 여름에 먹는 거. 엄마가 어렸을 때 할머니가 해줬어. 텃밭 토마토로.”

Tomato doenjang-jjigae. Summer dish. My mother made it when I was little. With garden tomatoes.

Jake looked at the tomatoes. Aldridge’s tomatoes — the prison tomatoes, the waiting-list tomatoes, the twenty-three-men-in-July tomatoes.

In his mother’s grandmother’s jjigae.

The layers: Aldridge’s hands in the soil, the soil in the tomato, the tomato in the jjigae, the jjigae in the pot, the pot on the stove, the stove in the kitchen, the kitchen in the house where the Question was asked every morning. And beneath all of it — Misuk’s grandmother, in a kitchen in Korea sixty years ago, putting garden tomatoes in doenjang-jjigae because the tomatoes were ripe and the jjigae needed something and the something was — summer. The something was — the garden.

“해볼게,” Jake said. I’ll try it.

---

The tomato doenjang-jjigae was different.

Not radically different — the base was the same. The doenjang at thirty seconds. The tofu. The zucchini. The green onions. The same jjigae that Jake had been making for four hundred and seventy-one mornings. But the tomatoes changed the jjigae the way a new note changed a chord. The acid of the tomato meeting the fermentation of the doenjang — the meeting producing a brightness that the jjigae had not had before. A summer brightness. A garden brightness. The brightness of a fruit that had been grown in prison soil and that carried, in its acid and its sweetness and its slightly green shoulder, the eighteen months of waiting that Aldridge had put into the garden.

Misuk tasted it.

She was quiet for a long time.

“할머니 맛이야,” she said. It tastes like grandmother.

“Your grandmother?”

“우리 할머니. 여름에 이 맛이었어. 텃밭 토마토 넣은 된장찌개. 이 맛. 정확히 이 맛.”

My grandmother. In summer, it tasted like this. Doenjang-jjigae with garden tomatoes. This taste. Exactly this taste.

She looked at the pot. The jjigae — the jjigae that was Jake’s jjigae and Misuk’s grandmother’s jjigae and Aldridge’s tomatoes and the prison garden and the Glendale kitchen and the sixty years between a kitchen in Korea and a kitchen in California.

“이 토마토가 — 이 토마토가 할머니 텃밭 토마토랑 같아.”

These tomatoes — these tomatoes are like my grandmother’s garden tomatoes.

“How can that be? These were grown in a prison in California.”

“토마토는 어디서 자랐는지 모른다니까. 토마토는 손을 알아. 이 토마토는 — 이 토마토는 기다린 사람의 손을 알아. 할머니도 기다리는 사람이었어. 전쟁 끝나고. 남편 돌아올 때까지 기다리고. 아이 클 때까지 기다리고. 토마토 익을 때까지 기다리고. 같은 기다림이야. 같은 손이야.”

I told you — the tomato doesn’t know where it grew. The tomato knows the hands. These tomatoes know the hands of a person who waited. My grandmother was also a person who waited. After the war. Waiting for her husband to come back. Waiting for her children to grow. Waiting for the tomatoes to ripen. Same waiting. Same hands.

The same waiting. The same hands.

Aldridge waiting for the tomatoes. Misuk’s grandmother waiting for the war to end. The waiting — the waiting was the frequency. The waiting was the Question in its agricultural form. The Question asked of the soil: will you grow? The Question asked of the tomato: will you ripen? The Question asked of the sun: will you come back tomorrow?

And the answer — always the answer — was: yes. If you wait. If you stand. If you keep coming back.

---

Jake called Aldridge that afternoon. The prison phone system — fifteen minutes, recorded, the mechanical voice that said “this call is from a federal correctional facility” before the connection was made.

“I got the tomatoes,” Jake said.

“Were they okay? Marcus was worried about the shipping. He said tomatoes don’t travel well.”

“They were perfect.”

“They weren’t perfect. The one with the green shoulder — that was Martinez’s plant. He overwatered in June.”

“I put them in doenjang-jjigae.”

Silence. The prison silence — not the kitchen silence, not the silence of a person tasting food, but the silence of a person being told that the thing they grew had been cooked into the thing that had changed them.

“Jjigae,” Aldridge said. “The — the soup?”

“My mom’s jjigae. She said it tastes like her grandmother’s. Her grandmother used to put garden tomatoes in jjigae in the summer. Sixty years ago. In Korea.”

“A Korean grandmother’s recipe. With prison tomatoes.”

“Same waiting. Same hands.”

Aldridge was quiet.

“Colonel.”

“I’m here.”

“The garden. How’s the garden?”

“We added a second plot. The warden approved it after the first harvest. We’re growing — we’re growing peppers now. And Korean radishes. Rodriguez found the seeds online. He said — he said if the cook can make Korean soup with prison tomatoes, the garden can grow Korean radishes in prison soil.”

“Korean radishes.”

“For kimchi. Marcus wants to make kimchi. He watched a video. He says — he says kimchi is just the garden asking a different question.”

“What question?”

“The garden asks: will you grow? Kimchi asks: will you ferment? Same question. Different timeline.”

Jake stood in the Glendale kitchen with the prison phone against his ear and the tomato jjigae cooling on the stove and the knowledge that a man in a federal prison was growing Korean radishes for kimchi because a bowl of doenjang-jjigae had taught him that waiting was a form of asking and growing was a form of cooking and the garden was a form of the kitchen and the Question was the same Question everywhere.

“Send me the radishes when they’re ready,” Jake said.

“That’ll be — October. Maybe November.”

“I’ll wait.”

“The waiting is the point.”

“The waiting is the point.”

The fifteen minutes ended. The mechanical voice. The call disconnecting.

Jake looked at the pot. The tomato doenjang-jjigae — the summer jjigae, the grandmother’s jjigae, the prison-garden jjigae. The jjigae that tasted like waiting and like hands and like the sixty years between a kitchen in Korea and a garden in California.

He ladled a bowl. He set it at the empty seat — the seventeenth seat, the hunger’s seat, the seat that held the feeling that made the other seats full.

The tomato in the jjigae. The garden in the pot. The prison in the kitchen. The waiting in the cooking.

All of it. All of it the same Question.

밥 먹었어?

The tomato answered: I grew. I ripened. I traveled. I was cut and cooked and served. I am here. In the bowl. In the pot. In the kitchen where the Question is asked every morning.

Yes. I have been eaten. And the eating was — the eating was the point of the growing. The growing was the asking. The eating was the answering.

One tomato at a time.

One garden at a time.

One question at a time.

Always.