That was the actual crop.

Mai and I never had a long conversation the whole first year — her English and my complete lack of any other language saw to that — and yet I would count her among the people who remade me, which taught me something about how little language actually has to do with being known.

We communicated in cuttings and seedlings and foil packages and the particular smile of a woman watching you taste something for the first time.

She gave me starts of her long beans and showed me, with her hands, how to build the frame they climbed.