One weed, two weeds, a Twix wrapper, three weeds, a blood-red disposable vape. People threw trash over Marisol’s fence all the time.

Humming. Marisol always hummed, in times of stress. Switching name tags between eight-hour shifts. Tetrising grocery price tags till they fit the shape of her budget. Weeding more than what hit their harvest bucket. Backyard trash-collecting. A lone red line. Blood. Dual red lines. Credit card bills. Past-dues. Never-minds. Humming.

These scraggly spinach leaves, piercing up like drowning fingers, and those yield-little tomato plants drooping like thirsty prisoners in their cages—they were still better than nothing. Growth was hope. Hope was growth.

That morning, Queenie texted, Not feeling great.

Her stomach-clenching words unspooled into miles of overthought worry in Marisol’s mind. She and Queenie had played out uncountable dreams, dramas, and ambitions with their Barbies as kids. They would become official sisters by marrying a pair of brothers. They would live side-by-side with a connecting pool. No, they would share a mansion and race roller skates in the ballroom. They would solve local murders and break into an aquarium to free all the penguins. None of these had come true—not even the somewhat realistic one—but there was one joke-not-joke still buoying them through hardship: Queenie would have a Little Girl, and Marisol would have a Little Boy.

Some errant lash stung Marisol’s eye. She rapid-blinked against it, ripping off a gardening glove. Acrid, lung-shriveling rubber fumes clung to her bare hand. She felt the lash’s tip poking out from her tear duct, plucked it—and winced when it came and came and came free with a drawn-out, stinging tickle. Not a lash. A full-length hair. Neon green. Synthetic. Like it came from the cheap rainbow hair extensions that crowned her old childhood dress-ups.

The plastic hair went into the litter-heaped weed bucket.

A small handful of lettuce leaves went into the harvest bucket.

Marisol hummed until her garden was empty.

Marisol and Carson made a Michelin Star game of dinner. They played at being gourmet chefs, artfully arranging their stunted greens into a minimalist masterpiece of fine dining. Tiny portions belonged to the poor and the rich alike; they laughed like they were the latter.

Carson presented the pepper grinder over his arm and said, Some of our vintage peppercorns from Milan, m’lady?

In turn, Marisol asked, Can I tempt monsieur with a decadent tomate atop your salad?

They clinked their mismatching glasses of tap water, toasting the success of their garden. On Carson’s second bite, however, he crinkled his brow, tonguing at some strange texture in his cheek. He plucked out a Snickers wrapper, now slick with saliva.

Horrified, Marisol apologized for her lapse in litter-picking. Carson shook his head, reminding her that he had washed the greens, and that they had both plated together. How could it have been missed? Who knew. But it certainly wasn’t their fault. If people ever used a trash can, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Look at this, he said, examining the wrapper up close. Its expiration date is like twenty years ago. Scary how this shit just sticks around.

At least we’re eating organic, Marisol said. Unprocessed. Healthy.

I doubt it even matters anymore, Carson murmured. Everything grows on microplastics and rainwater that’s not safe to drink.

Sex that night, recklessly hopeful.

It hurt. It hadn’t hurt for a long, long while, since Marisol sabotaged her own first time by working up anxious nerves. This time, however, it hurt Carson, too. He couldn’t even finish. He excused himself to the bathroom.

Marisol waited. Waited. Hummed while she waited.

He spent a long time shut in there. Once or twice, Marisol heard him masturbating desperately, but bookending those intervals were painful whimpers or even more painful breath-holds. She knocked on the door to ask if everything was okay. Carson yelped that he needed to be alone for a minute.

That minute stretched across an unbearable hour.

Then the toilet flushed, and Carson returned to the bedroom, nursing a shaken silence. He laid down facing away from Marisol. He said nothing. Marisol cuddled him, also saying nothing, just as he had often held her through the unholdable.

She got up to pee a few hours later. The bathroom’s atmosphere remained permeated with the familiar weight of recent personal crisis. Though it kept its secrets, Marisol noticed an odd clue caught between wads of toilet paper in the trash can:

Gloopy with drying globs of semen and blood, a single inexplicable LEGO brick.

One weed, a Deer Park water bottle label, two weeds, a used gift card for Amazon, the plastic tab from a plastic bread bag.

Marisol’s phone gave the ding that denoted Queenie above scam texts and coworker shift trades. She pulled the phone from her back pocket and read, Feeling worse. Also some spotting.

The words condensed like a cruel jewel in Marisol’s throat.

Prob nothing, she replied, but go to the Dr to make sure.

Not enough $$

Maybe we can help?

But both women knew there wasn’t enough “help” to go around anymore. Their world was run by people who only gave when tax-deductible, and they, the mere worker ants, played pass-around with empty hands.

Marisol could feel the barometric pressure of her period brewing to its release point. Failure again. Perhaps Queenie was simply shouldering a portion of her best friend’s woe and worry. Every woman’s struggle is inextricably linked, yet they each echo through their own unique well of loneliness.

Three weeds, a Starbucks lid, four weeds, a mechanical pencil, a deformed iPhone case.

Don’t stress, Marisol texted. I’m here for you.

Cramps kept Marisol hunched through most of the next day. She took an aspirin, then another, then another, but the discomfort persisted, sapping her appetite and ruining the shift at her first job. She even toyed with calling out from her second. But rent was going up again, and Queenie needed help.

Marisol soldiered on.

Smiles. Receipts. Brave faces. Questions. Complaints. Eight hours on her feet, not allowed to sit.

A woman demanded Marisol’s manager; her expired coupon wouldn’t scan. Scorned when she heard the manager wasn’t on duty, she called Marisol a lazy food stamp baby mama who couldn’t possibly appreciate the real working-class struggle to shop discounts.

Such words wouldn’t ordinarily faze Marisol. Anyone who can’t take physical strain or verbal abuse has no place working with the public. She was also told once, by a beer-gutted man, that selfish feminism was at fault for the nation’s declining birthrate; women like Marisol prized money and selfhood over children, and so she would die a miserable and unloved old lady with regrets one day. If she could smile and count his change, she should have been able to smile and offer this customer another hollow apology.

But with her friend unwell, her hormones frazzled, her guts twisting, her bills due—the accumulation of life’s misery cracked her shell. She held on long enough to take a bathroom break, then released an hour’s worth of sobbing silently across four allocated minutes.

On the fifth and final minute of her bathroom break, Marisol off-switched her pain—another necessary skill for retail—and recollected herself.

Cold water over the face. Minimize puffiness. Dab the eyes. Take a steadying breath.

She blew her nose. The pressure pushed back, popping her ears. She wiggled her nostrils in the tissue and blew again. The pressure shot loose. Marisol checked the tissue. B and F: the old alphabet beads of bygone friendship bracelets, summer afternoons braiding plastic strings, waterproof to survive chlorinated pools.

Marisol crumpled the tissue and threw it away, humming.

Instead of eating or doing laundry, Marisol bled away her brief time between shifts on the toilet, sitting with her torso folded over her knees.

Why were her cramps so bad this time? Why did her clots seem heavier? She prayed nothing was wrong. They couldn’t afford cancer, and she couldn’t handle a definitive never so early into such a struggling life. Her hope held her through hard days.

Marisol hummed as if to musically heal her body. Cats did that with purring, she saw somewhere. She rubbed her own shoulders. She hugged herself. She needed to be better in ten minutes, or she might be late for her second job.

Ding!

She slapped for her phone on the edge of the counter. Queenie.

It’s bad. I’m scared it’s the big M.

Don’t say that sweetie.

:”(

Hang in there.

That was all any of them could do.

No more sitting through pain and stress and worry; Marisol had to leave. She stood, started cleaning herself up—stopped. Health concerns require hands on, gag reflex off. This uterine clot didn’t seem right.

What… is…? What is…?

Her bloody fingers rubbed at a years-removed familiarity. Rubbery weird texture. An oddly specific shape. Hollow. Marisol waddled to the sink, undies still around her ankles, stray period drips ignored. She rinsed the object under hot water, till the drain ran clear and she could see what she was holding.

A Polly Pocket skirt. Purple. Ruffled. She remembered it—remembered the smooth squeak of it along her gumline, bunching it under her lip like her grandfather’s spitty wads of tobacco.

Blood plopped onto the bathroom mat.

An abandoned Labubu, two plastic straws, three broken acrylic nails, a weed.

Marisol knelt in the garden with their last rubber-banded bundle of seed packets. Each one was down to its final scatter. So few of them took, in that barren, poisoned soul, that replanting hardly seemed worthwhile. Still, she persisted. Carson had kissed her at the kitchen table that morning, murmuring that he would follow her lead down any decision, keep-trying or just-quit or maybe-not-now or anything. She clung to his comfort but had no idea how to answer. Their margin for loss had grown taut enough to snap.

A plastic Coke bottle, two disposable vapes, an arcade prize ring, four candy wrappers.

Marisol’s head ached with the pressure of purple barrettes and gel pens wedged between her brain folds. They rewrote her memories in sparkling greens and pearlescent pinks. Childhood clotted into glitter bombs. Just that morning, she’d thrown up a rush of stomach acid and balloon-shaped birthday confetti.

A butterfly hairclip, an empty sunblock bottle, a lemonade cap, a Littlest Pet Shop bunny.

Marisol weeded all the junk from her garden, determined to make it her own again. She would make a safe crib in the lifeless earth, and if her carrots or potatoes emerged from the soil clutching forgotten Happy Meal prizes, then at least she would share polluted solidarity with Nature’s womb. This world wasn’t livable, but they had no other option. They could only persist through the concrete cracks.

Someone curve-balled a Styrofoam takeout container over the fence. It hit Marisol’s forehead, exploding plastic utensils and half-eaten noodles into her hair.

Humming, Marisol shook the garbage loose and wiped her face with a sleeve. Humming, she collected the takeaway mess—every pallid worm of it—from the dirt. Humming, she sowed her last handful of seeds.

At the end of work the next day, too exhausted to hum anymore, Marisol finally took her phone out of its breakroom locker. Missed calls. Messages. A moment alone to cry in her car.

I’m on my way, Marisol texted Queenie.

Another bathroom heavied by intimate horror. A best friend’s hand to hold. A partner grieving in the other room. It had come to this before—sometimes for Queenie, sometimes for Marisol—but neither of them had ever gotten far enough to show, until now. The toll would be higher. How much higher could they bear?

Marisol midwifed her friend through her latest loss. Agony ripped Queenie apart, body and soul. She screamed, more than once, unable to contain it. Her downstairs neighbors banged on their ceiling and threatened to call the police.

Little Girl came at dawn.

Queenie cradled her broken dream in her arms: a baby doll, complete with blood-drenched curls of synthetic blonde hair, a dripping gingham dress, and beady blue eyes that opened halfway when she was lifted.

The women looked at one another, shattered by the senselessness of manmade life. At least—if they could wrench any solace from the ensuing silence—at least Queenie couldn’t blame herself, hadn’t actually wombed death, never had even a zygotic glimmer of a real daughter to mourn. Only this. Only litter in the garden.

Oh, Queenie, Marisol said, between tears. Sweetheart.

Queenie stroked an amniotic-slick plastic hand, so tiny and rigidly posed in the palm of her own. She pulled the string between its shoulders, reverently. A tender voice called for its mama.

Hayli McClain is an ace writer and freelance editor from Pennsylvania. In addition to being a finalist for the 2022 Brilliant & Forever literary festival on the Isle of Lewis, she's had work published in places like New Writing Scotland, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, White Wall Review, and Reflex Press.