Just Water Mrs. Bennett's Plants

“Okay, last one,” Rachel said to herself, opening the black notebook that had dictated so much of her life the last month.

She used a ballpoint pen to draw a line through the penultimate item on a list within the notebook, before reading the final item out loud.

“Water Mrs. Bennett’s plants,” she said, “Easy enough. I can’t believe it. I’m going to get TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!”

She covered her mouth, realizing her outburst had drawn the attention of every person at the bus stop. Her eyes darted back and forth between the large middle-aged man in the blue coat, the kid in the black hoodie holding a skateboard, and the twenty-something woman with her right leg crossed over her left, rubbing her foot.

Rachel buried her gaze in the notebook. She whispered, “Sorry,” but did not bother to look up to see whether anyone heard it. She was just starting to get her life back on track when the pandemic happened. Five years earlier, her husband, a pastor, fell into a cycle of credit card debt. He hid it from her. His brother knew but had been sworn to secrecy. He had revealed that in the note he left her. Hindsight is 20/20, but she would have forgiven him. That’s what she wrote in the Moleskine journal she clutched so tightly at that bus stop:

DEAR GOD, PLEASE TELL ANTHONY I FORGIVE HIM. I DON’T WANT HIM TO FEEL GUILTY FOR LEAVING US HERE ON EARTH OR ANYTHING. I JUST DON’T WANT HIM UP THERE THINKING WE DON’T STILL LOVE HIM DOWN HERE. PLEASE TELL HIM. AMEN.

Rachel worked so hard to finally pay it all off. She would work two and three shifts in a row at the hospital until her sight would become blurry. When the HR department found out, they almost fired her supervisor before they discovered how she manipulated him with freshly baked bread, cupcakes, doughnuts, and other sweets. They decided to fire both of them. Her final paycheck was enough to pay off the last credit card. In a stroke of irony, while she had no job or income, she had outstanding credit. Her mother-in-law, Noami, suggested she open a bakery the very same week a lady at church retired from her coffee shop. She only needed a small loan to cover the cost of renovating and adding the bakery kitchen. Rachel was confident she would pay it off in five years. It felt like God’s timing.

“My faith is restored,” she told her new pastor.

Bakeries were not considered “essential” in her state during the pandemic. She obtained grants and loans, but they only delayed the inevitable. The owner of the property sold the building to a collective with ties to a major retail chain. They gave her a chance to sign a new, more expensive lease. Without knowing when or if life would return to normal, how could she take the risk? She had just enough in the bank to repay the loan but not enough for the rent to their apartment.

Rent protections kept her and her daughter from being evicted, but they did not stop the bills from piling up. Before she knew it, she was in debt again. Desperate, Rachel called her mother-in-law. They had not been especially close when Anthony was alive, but they got along fine. Naomi was old-fashioned such that she would not let Rachel’s daughter, Iliana, watch the Harry Potter Movies.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” Naomi would say.

The squeal of the bus’s brakes reminded her she was almost there. She just had to water the plants, call the number the voice had given her when she received the list, and deposit the check. Rachel smiled at the bus driver as the doors hissed shut. A twinge of doubt tightened like twine tied around her heart, but she shook her head and glanced out the window as the city rushed past. Sometimes she wanted to imagine what God had planned for the lives of the people in the houses she passed.

“I don’t know how you keep up with what everyone needs,” she mouthed silently.

“Thank you, Miss Rachel,” the driver said as she stepped down to the curb and walked toward the apartment building. The red bricks reminded her of her childhood home on the other side of the city. She shook her head as if it would erase the memory and walked through the green door. She bounded up the stairs to the fifth floor, slightly out of breath as she clicked the knocker for room 515. No one answered. She knocked again. Still no answer. She knocked again more forcefully until she heard the sound of feet shuffling toward the door.

“Who is it?” asked a raspy voice through the door.

“Mrs. Bennett? Hello, my name is Rach—”

“Do I know you?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t believe so. I am here—”

“No, thank you.”

Rachel sighed, saying, “I guess this will be a little harder than I thought.”

She knocked again, this time with just her knuckles. There was no answer. She called to the woman, but there was no response. She continued to alternate between knocking and calling for what she thought must have been an hour until her knuckles were red and swollen.

“Mrs. Bennett, please open the door,” she pleaded, “I’m here to help you.” There was no response. Rachel made her hand a fist and pounded on the door. She dropped to her knees and beat the door with both fists as tears filled her eyes.

“Please, Mrs. Bennett. I’m not a bad person. I just want to help you. I need to help you!” A tear escaped her eyelids and tumbled down her cheek. She watched as it splashed on the dusty concrete. She wiped her eyes on the shoulder of her yellow sundress and jumped to her feet. She pounded on the door with both fists and kicked with the side of her foot until the light began to fade from the window at the end of the hall.

“Mrs. Bennett, just let me water your plants! It will take me two minutes, and I’ll be gone!” Hearing nothing, she continued, “I don’t know what your problem is, but if I water your plants, I get enough money to make a new life for me and my daughter. All you have to do is let me in. That’s it! Please, please, PLEASE!”

The last “please” came out as more of a scream than she meant it to. It scared her, reminding her of how she used to beg “her parents to give her a ride to church when her friends could not take her. She knew that they realized she just wanted to get away from them. They did not really take her anywhere she wanted to go.

“MRS. BENNETT!” she screamed and sobbed, feeling herself lose control like she had not done since she was a teenager, before she moved in with her grandmother, “God! You stubborn woman! Just do this one thing for me!”

Rachel sucked in a deep breath, preparing for another verbal assault on the door when she thought she heard shuffling again. Her heart leaped as she wiped her eyes and nose again on her dress. She knew she had to control her tears and her voice if she wanted to convince the woman to let her inside.

“Rachel?” the old woman said through the closed door.

“Um, yes?” Rachel responded, trying to remember if she had already said her name.

“What do you want?” the woman’s voice was curt.

“I want to,” Rachel started, but was interrupted by what seemed like a lump filled with all her emotions in the center of her throat, “I want to…I want to water—”

“You do not want to water my plants,” said the woman, “What do you want?”

“Ma’am, I assure you I—”

“Young lady, if you want this door to open, you have one more chance. What do you want?”

Rachel opened her mouth to answer, but she was afraid the woman would not let her in if she mentioned the plants again. What could Mrs. Bennett possibly want her to say? That she wants her and her daughter to have a fighting chance to fight their debt? That she wants to go back in time and catch her husband before he unlocks the pill cabinet? That she wants to go back and stop her parents from abusing her by any means necessary?

Rachel collapsed to her knees and screamed into the keyhole at the top of her lungs, “Why are you doing this to me!?”

“What do you want?” the woman asked again. Rachel’s face fell into her hands such that she did not see the woman had unlatched the lock and cracked the door ever-so-slightly.

“What do you mean!?” she cried out through sobs, “What do you want from me?”

“I asked you want you want,” the woman reiterated.

“What do you want from me!? I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked. EVERYTHING!”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know why I’m here begging a crazy old woman to water her plants!? I want to know why all the other women at church husbands and houses have when all they do is gossip about their husbands and gripe about their houses. I want to know why God gave me a husband, just to take him away. I want to know why he gave me parents that hated me. I want to know why I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, and me and my daughter have to share a room at my dead husband’s mother’s house! That’s what I want, Mrs. Bennett! Can you give me those answers?”

“No, Rachel, I cannot,” Mrs. Bennett put her hand on Rachel’s shoulder, “But something tells me you’ve never asked the one with those answers.”

Having forgotten about the plants altogether, she turned to the older woman, “He won’t answer.”

“He may not,” she said, “At least not the way you’d hope. But if he can wield thunder and lightning, hang the stars or throw them at the earth, then he’s strong enough to take your question.”

Rachel felt every drop of water inside her spilling out through her eyes, “What if he doesn’t answer the way I want?”

“Then, I think you know, he’ll answer the way that’s best.”

“How could this be best?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.”

Mrs. Bennett led Rachel inside her house to a bright red couch, where she wept bitterly for what seemed like many hours. Eventually, Rachel looked up, realizing she was still in Mrs. Bennett’s home.

“Here, deary,” said the older woman, handing her a brown envelope, “This is what you came for.”

“But your plants?” Rachel asked.

“Today was more about sowing seeds, my dear. You have done what you came here to do. This is your reward. Look inside.”

Rachel looked inside the envelope to find a check written for $20,000, signed by Elizabeth Bennett.

“You were the voice on the phone?”

“No, no. The voice you heard was my husband. Cancer took him swiftly, but before he left, he recorded the message you were presented. As he lay dying, me yelling for him to keep fighting, he told me someone would come to water my plants. He told me they would be seeking a reward, needing healing, and I must give them both.”

“How did you know I was the one?” Rachel asked earnestly.

“I heard about your husband. Then, I saw you at your bakery. I knew someone with such sad eyes hidden by such a bright smile was hiding deep grief.”

“What should I do with this?” Rachel held up the envelope, realizing she hardly wanted the money any longer.

“I don’t know. But now, I think you are prepared to receive it.”