Plantains in Heaven

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“Emeka, you forgot your respirator.”

I reached for the holster at my waistband and felt nothing. Not again! 

“No, I didn’t.”

“So what am I holding right now, young man?”

I pictured Mum with the face-hugging contraption raised to eye level, a frown wrinkling her brow. 

“Did you go into my room?” I was sure my sigh rang clearly through the tiny mic of my earpiece. 

“That’s not the point. How are you going to get home without it?”

“The air quality counter’s green.” I rechecked the small, flat disk dangling from my neck to be sure. Definitely green. “You worry too much.”

She didn’t, but I couldn’t turn around. Not if I planned on making it to the other side of Shepherd’s Bush on time. I just had to make sure to return to West Brompton before the night dust set in.

The expected reprimand for my backtalk came, and I listened quietly, my arms pushing metal oars into murky water. The slush of the blades slicing through liquid was already loud enough to draw peeks from windows. Especially at that time of year when the water level receded enough for my oars to occasionally collide with roofs of long abandoned cars. I wouldn’t have minded on most days, but prying eyes weren’t needed for this trip.

I arrived at my destination just as Mum’s voice cut out from my earpiece.

“Was that your mum?”

My head snapped in the direction of the speaker. Adriana perched on the first-floor window ledge of a semidetached brick house, her rubber-booted feet dangling above a moored tandem kayak. My lips turned up. They always did when I saw her. 

“Are you psychic now?” My canoe bumped her hull, my fumbled actions failing to match my unflustered tone.

She chuckled and dropped into my wobbling vessel, tying back her thick, dark hair with a scrunchie that circled her wrist. “Your scowl gave it away.” Grabbing my second set of oars, she helped me steady the canoe. 

“You know how she is. Always trying to baby me.” It was impossible not to make a face.

“That’s because you keep doing things like forgetting your respirator.” She pointed at my telling holster with a headshake. “Here, have mine.”

I frowned as I caught the device that came flying my way. “What about you?”

Reaching into the cargo hatch of her kayak, she pulled out a spare from her duffel bag, shaking it at me before shoving it back in. “You forget I know you well. Anyway, mine or yours?” 

She hauled the rest of her equipment into my canoe when I pointed out the sack I’d managed to pilfer from reserves. There was no way our combined load would fit in hers. We wasted no time covering our stash with a tarp before starting to row north, even though people mostly ignored each other when their boats crossed paths in these narrow West London water streets. 

“I can never get over how stunning the skyline looks lit up like this.” Adriana spoke quietly a few minutes later, her strong hands lifting and lowering my second set of oars as we went along.

I looked up, following her gaze. The setting sun cloaked everything around us in a wash of deep red and orange, creating a striking contrast with the backdrop of green foliage covering the flat-roofed houses we went past. Only a few pitched roofs had metal planting decks built over them, because people realized the resources needed to keep those types of vertical farms up during windstorms wasn’t worth the effort. 

Dad had learned the hard way when the platform he’d installed nine years ago crashed into our last house. I still don’t think he’s been able to get rid of the guilt he felt about the loss of my childhood home, a place we’d managed to stay in long after half of the neighborhood was forced out. Dad’s clever tanking of our upper floors to stop damp and mold seeping through from the lower floor couldn’t compete with the gaping hole in the roof. 

“It’s still not as sexy as Venice was before it disappeared,” I joked, crinkling my nose at the discolored water we pushed through. The sulphur-tinged smell wafting toward us made my point.  

The foul odor hadn’t lifted ever since the Thames Barrier broke 15 years ago, flooding London’s densely populated banks for a few miles either side of the city’s epicenter. As I’d only been in diapers back then, it helped that I couldn’t remember what the air smelled like before The Break happened. But occasional jaunts to the drier shores, where the city’s sewers weren’t completely engulfed by the river, made sure I knew the difference. 

Mum always went on about how the government’s decisions to delay the Barrier’s fortification had been down to mismanaged funding. Money channelled toward defending us from external dangers that never materialized. And when the deferred crisis at our doorstep bubbled over, causing the inevitable to happen, the same government was quick to pack up and move the capital’s political house from a waterlogged Westminster to the less affected grounds of Wembley. 

The few thousand residents able to join in the exodus had been the two-home-owning caliber of well-off people, and the fortunate homeowners who had airtight environmental disaster clauses written into their insurance policies. Some others had found lodgings with sympathetic family members living in towns and cities far away enough from the river to only watch on their tellies as the drama unfolded.  

But the rest didn’t have that luxury. They stayed where their lives had once made sense, watching anxiously every day as water levels rose around them with every downpour of torrential rain. 

Helpless as the city they knew and loved became one with the river. 

The truth is, when you have nowhere to run, you don’t die out. You simply adapt.

Adriana scoffed at my Venice comparison, drawing me back to the present. “You’re just going off photos. This view is plenty sexy to me.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me and winked, and for a second, I wondered if she was actually referring to me. No, not wondered. Hoped. 

Catching myself before I full-on stared at her, I huffed. “First of all, I don’t think the gondolas they had were trying to navigate submerged cars and drifting furniture. There’s absolutely nothing sexy about that.”

The contradiction of our situation was that, with no more active cars clogging London’s streets, the air quality within the expanded river line was much cleaner than in places on the outskirts. The main atmospheric pollutant we battled was sporadic carbon hazes the night winds blew in from those areas. Dust thick and stifling enough for the air counter disks around our necks to be necessary.

Adriana shrugged. “Well, my abuela went to Venice for her honeymoon, and she swears London was just as romantic, if you had the right person to share the city with.”

“How is she holding up?” I asked now that Adriana had brought up her grandmother.

Her slumped shoulders said a lot more than words.

“I should have started earlier. I don’t know if she’ll hold out.”

“You’ve done the best you can. I’m still amazed you found a way to pay for those rhizomes.”

“It was worth it. For her.”

I nodded, my eyes dropping to the covered supplies between us. At first, I hadn’t understood the magnitude of what Adriana intended to do when she’d pulled alongside my boat one Sunday morning as I waited for Mum and Dad to say their exceptionally long goodbyes to the crush of worshippers inside the upper room of Saint Ambrose Church. The way they carried on, you would think we weren’t going to see everyone again in just a week. 

“Can you keep a secret?” 

She had smiled as I’d looked to my left and right, then behind me for good measure. Adriana Diaz was talking to me, Emeka Emezue. Nearly four years after her family started attending Mass there, she was acknowledging I existed past the nods we shared during the service’s peace offering. 

A small part of me wished I’d been the one to pluck up the courage to say something to her, but it was finally happening. That was all that mattered. 

She was clearly her family’s designated rower for the day, sent out before Mass ended to bring their boat close to the church’s converted window exits before everyone else came out. Her mother, brother, and grandmother were probably still being sociable inside. I wondered if, like me, she didn’t mind not being stuck in there with all those people. 

“Depends on what it is.” I crossed my arms casually, as if I wouldn’t carry a murder to my grave if that was what she wanted to confess.

I watched as she struggled to resist an eye roll and failed. “I’m only asking because I know you work at Kew.”

My eyes narrowed. I wondered what her angle was. My job at Kew Gardens had never been something anyone showed interest in. At least not anyone below the age of 30. Those who remembered the days before our new normal and were eager to tell me how glorious the place had been. 

Hugging the river, it was no surprise the sprawling grounds of the botanic gardens hadn’t been spared during The Break. On my first day as a volunteer there, we were told that, at first, the horticulturists and grounds workers had done their best to secure the area. But with far too many specimens to rehome at short notice, they eventually took what they could and left the rest to be salvaged by a handful of volunteers who lived locally. 

In more recent years, Kew’s outreach program had spread slightly farther, allowing people like me to sign up. Teens who cared about what our agricultural science teachers showed in our online classes and wanted some practical knowledge to help land jobs in the vertical farms dotted across the city. Kids with few friends and with parents eager to get them out of the house.

“Can you get your hands on something for me?” Adriana asked when I didn’t respond to her statement. 

My squint solidified into a frown. Of course, that was the only reason she was talking to me. It was no secret that some exotic seeds and shoots found their way out of the undamaged storerooms left at Kew for the right price. I just never thought anyone would imagine I would be able to help broker such a deal. 

“Why are you so keen on growing this?” I’d asked when she showed me a photo of what looked like long, fat bananas on her phone. “You know it’s going to be near impossible for plantains to mature here without constant warm weather and care.”

I knew quite a lot about plantains because of Mum. She reminisced about them all the time, swearing no self-respecting Nigerian family could do without them once upon a time, even in the confines of London. Ripe, unripe. Fried, boiled, roasted, mashed. The variety of ways they could be consumed were endless. Before The Break, Mum swore she could find them easily in African shops. She even claimed supermarket chains began stocking them when they realized there was a large enough market to see them fly off shelves, if you threw in people from the Caribbean, South Asia, and South America. 

Now, most fresh foods we were able to buy were locally grown to save on resources and reduce the importation carbon footprint. Potatoes, peas, leeks, squashes. The types of crops accustomed to the city’s natural climate. We still had some items brought in from outside London, but after a strong governmental push for communities to be locally resourceful, the cost of getting these luxuries put most people off. 

“We’re pretty much matching the summer temperatures for Florida back in the early 2000s,” Adriana insisted with confidence, shutting off the image on her phone, “and I’ve read they were able to grow plantains there.”

She had a good point, although I still couldn’t see how she expected them to survive. Seasonal temperatures started to level out about a decade ago, but the heat in London had risen so quickly before that merciful moment, we were already several degrees above what anyone would have imagined when the Paris Agreement was struck at the turn of the century. The converse was that the temperatures also dipped drastically during the winter months, bringing a chill that only began to ease in early June. 

Definitely not a plantain-growth-friendly climate. 

“It’s for my abuela,” Adriana finally admitted after I explained this to her. Her body tensed as she looked toward the church. “There’s not a lot she talks about so clearly and constantly these days. She goes on about how much she loved fried plátanos from her childhood in Puerto Rico. I didn’t even realize she liked them so much before she began to lose her …”

She looked away. I let the moment pass. 

“Anyway, it’s a craving she can’t seem to shake. It broke my heart when she joked that at least she’ll get to taste plantains in heaven. If I can do this for her, she won’t have to wait that long.”

I was going to protest some more, try to make her see how difficult it would be, but loud chatter and movement near the church’s window signaled people had started to emerge. 

“What’s in it for me?” I didn’t want to look too eager to say yes. 

She frowned as if she hadn’t considered I wouldn’t just do this out of goodwill. “A quarter of my stash?” 

The fact that this came out as a question confirmed my suspicions. 

“Eh, that payment is only dependent on whether you yield any crop. If it isn’t already clear, I’m not confident your plan’s going to work.”

“Look, it’s going to take all the money I’ve saved up to pay for what I need. I doubt I’ll have anything left over for you.” Her reply came with a desperate glance at the window. 

I only had a moment to consider her offer. The thing was, if this worked, I would also be able to surprise Mum with something she had craved for years. It wasn’t quite as noble an act as Adriana going through all this trouble to give her ailing grandmother something to cherish, but it would make my mother happy. 

I realized what I had to do.

“OK, I’m in.”

“Really?”

“On one condition.”

Her face clouded over again as she waited for my demand.

“If I’m going to benefit from this transaction, I have to make sure the plants actually reach maturity. You can’t possibly manage this all by yourself. Watering, manuring, weeding, frost protection. There’ll be plenty to do.”

And it certainly wouldn’t hurt that it would give me an excuse to spend time with her. 

“So you want to help me?”

At my nod, her hand shot out quickly, taking mine and shaking it.

“Done.”

Her family came out at that moment, so I was never sure if she agreed to my condition just to close the deal, or if she actually wanted my help. Either way, we were locked in.  

The purchase was much easier than I imagined. I made a subtle inquiry the next time I was at Kew. A guy called Paul spoke to his mate, Mo, who asked his supervisor, Lee, if there were any plantain rhizomes going. I was probably holding my breath as much as Adriana for the five days we waited for a response. Not wanting to scare her off, I never asked how she was able to afford the extortionate amount of credits I’d been told to transfer. 

When Paul finally handed me something wrapped in damp cloth in the loos after work one day, it was a miracle I didn’t fist-bump him. I snuck a peek at the weird-looking cuttings and crossed my fingers we weren’t being swindled.  

About a month later, Adriana showed me the small leaves shooting out of an earth-filled box she’d hidden in her canoe. Now this was no longer just an idea she’d been holding on to, we’d started to leave Mass even earlier than usual to strategize. Her face glowed with so much excitement, I wondered how she was able to keep our plans a secret from her family. 

“Aren’t they stunning? I can’t believe they didn’t die right away. I was sure I’d overwatered them or hadn’t let them sit in enough sunlight.”

“Don’t get too excited, this is only the beginning.” I’d tried managing her expectations, but it was pointless. Seeing how happy those tiny sprouts made her, I was proper hooked. There was no way I was going to let this fail. 

The next challenge we had was identifying a space tall enough to hold the stems when they were fully grown. A suitable internal space at least four meters high with windows to let in enough light, but not so much that the plants could easily be spotted by passersby. And one with sufficient floor strength to carry the weight of the soil needed. The problem was, most spaces that ticked all those boxes were located on ground floors. 

We found the perfect ballroom a few weeks into our search, on the upper level of a hotel that didn’t have a massive red cross on its front wall. Although we chose to live within the river line at our own risk, the government felt ethically obliged to send structural engineers and surveyors around every now and then to check for weakening foundations. Council taxes were still paid by homeowners, and what better way was there to rationalize this than building safety inspections? Nothing in London had been built to survive years of submersion in water. Not even with the respite of extremely dry summer months. 

The hotel was close enough to the water’s edge to have been abandoned by its owners. Most multistory buildings with lifts couldn’t function properly with flooded plant rooms at basement level. Once we were sure all floors were unguarded, I’d helped Adriana dig up earth from parks nearby. I also occasionally nicked a bag or two of manure when my supervisor sent me on deliveries to vertical farms. It wasn’t uncommon for items to fall into the water every so often.  

As it turned out, Adriana had everything else worked out. It was warm enough that we didn’t need much extra heat in summer, but when she showed up with a stash of solar panels, some UV lamps and a toolbox to make sure her investment was secure during the cooler months, my admiration for her went up more than a notch. 

“We’ll install the panels on the roof so we can keep the lamps on all year round if we want. They should produce enough electricity to also power some portable heaters.”

“Have you done this before?” I eyed the panels as we hauled them up the stairs. Not that I didn’t trust her confidence, but it was hard to fully buy into it when we were only 16.

She shrugged. “Perks of Mum being an electrician. She installed the panels we have at home. I helped her last year when she had to change a few, and I’ve read up a lot on the rest.” 

“That’s impressive. Sometimes, it almost feels like you don’t need me,” I joked with a short laugh. 

“Nah, mate, I’m glad I have your help.” She stopped walking and smiled at me. “It would have been really lonely doing all this by myself.”

The sincerity in that smile had kept me going for days. It became clear not long after we started working together that Adriana had no friends. At least no one she mentioned to me. I could see how she had very little time for any when she spent most days helping with her grandmother’s care after school and on the weekends.

Maybe working at Kew wasn’t the only reason she’d approached me. Maybe she’d recognized a fellow loner in me back then. Maybe she’d seen I needed her company as much as she needed mine. 

Now, four months after she initially came up to me outside the church, I couldn’t remember what my days had been filled with before that point.  

“Something’s wrong,” Adriana said as we pulled up near the hotel. 

I tilted my head to see past her, spotting a boat by the building’s entrance. An engine hummed on this one, and it was wide enough to fit five people.

“Could it be an inspection?” I asked, despite knowing she wouldn’t have an answer.

“Whatever it is, we can’t go in until they leave.” She stated the obvious.

“But we can’t lurk here, they’ll wonder why we’re watching them.”

We weren’t doing anything illegal by being there, but if an official decided to get nosy, poked around and asked about the manure I’d taken, or if they discovered we were occupying a building we didn’t own, or realized how we’d got our hands on the rhizomes in the first place, it would be a different story.

As if on cue, one of the women on the boat turned our way. 

Adriana panicked at the exact second I did. Our oars clashed as we drove them into the water at the same time, and the canoe wobbled.

“Whoa! Brace against that wall,” I called out, pointing to the building we were beside.

We’d managed to attract the attention of everyone on the boat. There was no time to waste once we were steady. 

“This way,” I directed Adriana, keeping my head down and rowing swiftly into a side street. “We just have to wait them out.” 

Adriana frowned. “I have to get back within the hour. They need my help at home.”

“It shouldn’t be long. It’s quite late in the day for inspectors to be out anyway.”

I was right. We heard the boat’s motor drawing closer as they left the hotel. And then even closer when they began to turn into the street we were hiding in.

“Crap!” I shrieked, looking around for an escape route. There was a double-casement window behind Adriana wide enough for us to row into. The building already had a cross on its wall, so the crew wouldn’t be checking it. “In here. Hurry!”

I let out a sneeze the moment we pushed our way into the waterlogged living room. Something hung heavy in the air, and it wasn’t the unmissable stench of damp and decay. It took another second for me to realize what it was, but not before I watched in horror as Adriana’s oar banged against a floating tabletop.

A plume of small black particles rose all around us. Thick layers of toxic carbon dust that had lain undisturbed for goodness knows how long in the abandoned house. I felt the disk around my neck vibrate before the room filled with teeny beeps as our air counters did what they were designed to do to protect us. I looked at Adriana, and the flashing red light at her chest matched mine. 

Even as my eyes began to water, I knew I couldn’t do what a lifetime of training and logic begged me to do. All I could think of was shutting off the sound before the inspection crew decided to come to our rescue. Between a fit of coughs, I tugged at the chain at my neck, reaching forward to yank Adriana’s off too. I was full-on gasping by the time I dunked the disks into the water. The irony was, the beeping had cut out, but the sound of my wheezing was now louder than those had been. 

Something cold and metallic covered my nose and mouth, giving my lungs a chance to suck in sweet, clean air. I looked down at the hand holding the respirator to my face, and turned to find Adriana had already sensibly put her spare on first. We rasped into our devices, waiting to see if we’d been fast enough to stop the sounds reaching the crew, each passing second feeling like a lifetime.   

By the time the hum of the boat’s engine began to fade, I was no longer gulping for air. And when the only sound that reached our ears was that of our breath, I didn’t stop to think before I pulled Adriana against my chest. We sat there for a moment longer, our racing heartbeats failing to match the room’s serenity. 

I had always imagined how it would feel to hug her for the first time. Relief was not one of the emotions I thought would be coursing through my veins. Especially with the added realization that Adriana’s arms had found their way around my shoulders. On any other day, a heartfelt declaration would have been the only way to seal this moment. 

“That was … the respirator … I don’t know if I …” The words tumbled out of me, making more sense in my head than out. “Thank you for doing that.”

Adriana leaned back, the fear in her eyes still clear. “No, thank you for shutting the disks off. We’d be in bigger trouble if you hadn’t done that.”

“I think the fact that you saved my lungs deserves more credit than what I did.” I somehow found it in me to chuckle.

“Technically, you wouldn’t be here at all if I hadn’t asked for your help.”

“Still, thank you.” I reached for her again and didn’t let go for a little longer. Adriana didn’t pull away, only sighing heavily when I finally sat back. 

We said no more, keeping the respirators on as we carefully made our way out of the house. The street was empty, as expected, so we turned the corner and headed to our original destination. 

When we arrived outside the hotel, a fresh red marking on the wall greeted us. 

“No! It can’t be!” The despair in Adriana’s voice was almost as stifling as the dust cloud.

“Hang on. Let’s see what it says.” I pulled out my phone and scanned a black dot by the cross. 

“Limited structural damage detected in basement-level walls,” I read the summary on my screen. 

“Foundations unaffected; however, structural integrity of the building fabric is likely to deteriorate further within 12 months.” 

My sigh of relief echoed Adriana’s. At least it didn’t say a month, or even two. There was still time for the plantains to reach maturity.

Adriana’s head snapped my way, her eyes widening. “Do you think they …” She couldn’t get the rest out.

We moored the canoe and sprinted up to the ballroom. 

“Thank god!” Adriana cried out when we stumbled in to find our investment intact.

“But we’re screwed anyway,” I said, walking up to touch one of the broad green leaves. “This building’s now on their radar.”

“I think it may be a good thing.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “What part of this could possibly be good?”

“Think about all the houses they inspect on your street. Once they mark them as structurally unsound, they don’t bother with them again for a while, do they?”

“We’re still risking collapse on ourselves if we stick to this.”

“And when last did you hear of a marked building collapsing?”

I frowned. She wasn’t wrong. 

“If my projection is right based on the temperatures we’ve been maintaining, we have about six more months to go before we can hope for fruits to show up.” Adriana didn’t look deterred. In fact, there was a new light in her eyes. “All we need is one bunch to make all this worth it. We can still make it happen.”

“You deserve a medal for all this, you know.” I couldn’t help smiling this time. “I would have given up ages ago. Maybe all the way back in that week when we were waiting to hear if the rhizomes were available. And definitely that time the plants started to wilt because you thought we’d overwatered them. But somehow, you just keep going.” 

I thought my compliment would turn her lips up, but she only shrugged.

“Is it silly that I keep praying this has to work, because what if there are no plantains in heaven?” 

Adriana choked back a sob.

My hand reached for hers. Adriana looked down at it. 

“Your abuela will hold on for the ones right here.”

Her answer came after a long pause. “Promise?” When her eyes met mine again, they glistened.

We both knew my answer held no meaning, yet I nodded, squeezing her hand gently.

“I promise.”

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