That ginger had stolen my soul. There was

That ginger had stolen my soul. There was no other explanation for it. I felt only misery & pain. Even though nobody knew how to retrieve a soul from a ginger, I was determined.

I gingerly raised the spirit of a past rhizomal possessions: The potato shaped like my head. Perhaps if I planted the ginger like the potato, my soul would eventually

Grow into one of those CabbagePatch kids! I was still bitter that my mom couldn't beat down the other moms at ToysRUs to grab me one. I was giddy with delight over the notion I

That couldn't be right! Hadn't I ordered the seeds from the vegetable nursery not the local dump? What would I say to my mother when she saw I was raising disrespectful babies?

Turnip babies. That's what I'd raised because anywhere there was trouble, that's where my children would turnup. I could just hear my own mother scolding me, "Why couldn't you have

a salad instead?" Tongs for the advice Mom, but I wanted to put down roots & have a turnip family. She starts to leave when I tell her to back off the subject. She's so sensitive

about mixed marriages. She believes lettuces are too posh for root vegetables. But my seedlings' father is a no-nonsense turnip & not some limp-leaved bunch of spinach. Harve doesn

't know that his Turnip father is buried under ground. They pulled the plug when he became a vegetable. Harve was a torn up turnip when his father disappeared.

Harve took a dirt nap and dreamed of lovely Ruta Baga. But when he awoke he looked left, he looked right, he looked up. He looked down, looked down, he was standing in his grave.