Roots in Water

On the windowsill sits a glass jar, and inside it, an avocado pit soaks in water.

Three toothpicks hold it at the water’s surface. The water is changed once a month, and year by year the white roots below grow longer, like a small, quiet white beard. This pit came from Haiti, brought by Estelle.

In the spring of 2022, it had just begun to sprout. That same week, a letter from the government landed in her mailbox.

The letter said: she had been granted “Temporary Protected Status.”

Temporary. Protected. Status. She knew all three words, but strung together, she read them over and over. Later, a compatriot who understood such things explained it to her: You can stay legally, work, pay taxes, live in this room—but only for now. Back home it isn’t safe, so you can’t go back; here, the door has opened a crack, and you haven’t stepped through. You’re standing in the crack of the door.

That summer, she wrote her first letter. Addressed to: Haiti, care of Auntie, for Mama.

Dear Mama: Bonswa. I hope you and Auntie are well. I got a piece of paper—they call it “Temporary Protected Status.” Don’t ask me what it is; I don’t fully understand it myself. It means: for now, I am safe. I found work in a laundry, the night shift, ironing hotel sheets. The iron pushes forward and the white sheets swell up and fall, like a small stretch of sea. Two hundred sheets a night, and I press every one of them flat—except my own, which stays wrinkled. Has our mango tree given fruit this year? Stand under it for a while for me, and consider me there. Your daughter, Estelle

That letter traveled over the ocean for more than two months. Later, Auntie wrote that Mama read it three times: once aloud to herself, once to the cracks in the walls, and once to the mango tree in the yard.

Estelle didn’t live far from the sea. The bus to work always passed a stretch of shoreline. Haiti is an island; she grew up with the sound of waves. But this sea was not that sea. The same Atlantic—the water connects, the road does not.

At night after work, she changed the water in the glass jar. The white roots swayed gently, growing well—but with no soil.

“You’re waiting too,” she told the pit.

The news on her phone grew heavier by the day. The United Nations said millions in her country were going hungry, and millions had lost their homes. Every night she scrolled her family group chat all the way to the last message before she dared to sleep.

In winter, Mama’s letter arrived. It was thin—written in Auntie’s hand, because Mama’s eyes could no longer make out the pen.

The letter said: The house is still standing. There are new cracks in the walls, but it stands. The mango tree bore fruit this year; the old woman at the corner picked them for us and handed them out to the children on the street. No one grabbed—it was sharing. Don’t worry. The people here are still good people. Don’t send money the old way anymore—there are people stopping travelers at the crossroads. When our nephew comes to the city, I’ll tell you a new way. Mama asked me to pass along one thing: Stop dwelling on “can’t go back.” Wherever a person lives, that is the road.

Also that winter, a group of volunteers came to the neighborhood where immigrants had settled. They set up long tables and handed out rice, beans, blankets, and bucket after bucket of steaming porridge. Estelle went to collect a portion. The woman handing things out asked her name, then asked if she spoke Creole.

“I do,” she said. “It’s my mother’s tongue.”

“Wonderful,” the woman said. “We need a translator. Many of the newcomers don’t speak a word of English.”

From then on, Estelle’s Saturdays had a purpose. She helped people fresh off boats and buses fill out forms, accompanied them to clinics, and taught their children to count in Creole: en, one; de, two; twa, three. The children learned fast, and their laughter was loud. Only then did she realize how much she actually knew—how to handle status paperwork, which clinic was cheap, which phone line could actually reach Haiti. Things that had taken her two years to figure out now flowed from her mouth and into someone else’s hands within a month.

One newly arrived old woman in the hospital clung to her hand and wouldn’t let go. She translated every single sentence. As they walked out of the clinic, the old woman said: “Your words are just like my mother’s.” Estelle said: “They are the same words.”

When spring came, she wrote her second letter.

Dear Mama: I sent the money the new way—let me know when it arrives. And one more thing: there’s a community garden, and the volunteers gave everyone a small plot. I planted the avocado pit. It soaked in water on my windowsill for two years, and its roots grew half a foot long. I never dared to put it in the ground—afraid that if the day came to leave, I couldn’t take a pot of soil with me. But Mama, I’ve planted it. When it grows into a tree, I don’t know under which tree I’ll be eating its fruit. It doesn’t matter. You said in your letter: wherever a person lives, that is the road. All the things I’ve learned these years, I teach one by one to the newcomers; our family’s language, I teach to the children here. Your daughter, Estelle

Planting day was a Saturday. The soil in the garden had been turned—dark, damp, loose. The children gathered around to help her set the seedling upright and heap soil over its roots. The woman who handed things out came too, whittled a small wooden marker, wrote “Estelle” on it with a marker pen, and stuck it in the earth.

The roots had waited two years in the glass jar—once in the soil, they gripped tighter than anyone.

The wind blew from somewhere far to the east. Estelle knew that on the other end of that wind was the sea of Haiti. She straightened up and brushed the dirt from her hands.

That soil would stay in her fingerprints, like a reply letter slowly being written.

This story is adapted from real events. All names are pseudonyms.

COVER_QUERY: woman planting avocado seedling garden