Author’s Note: I’ve always loved Kudzu for its relentless growth. My drives from ETSU (Eastern Tennessee State University) to my parents’ home in Kentucky wound through kudzu-draped roads in Virginia, feeling like another world. This story explores themes of displacement, connection, and the silent struggles we face. Inspired by my mother’s teachings on Kudzu’s dual nature—destructive yet resilient—I hope it resonates deeply, rooting itself in your hearts like Kudzu, unyielding and ever-present.
Someone Planted Kudzu in New York City
NO ONE KNOWS WHEN IT WAS PLANTED, or who did it, or why. In fact, no one even noticed at first. It was a gradual realization, like when you slowly understand that growing up wasn’t anything like you thought it would be, or when you allow days to become weeks and then months without speaking to your parents back home, or when you lie down to sleep next to someone every night and without even meaning to, you find yourself falling out of love with them. That’s how the kudzu managed to grow in the middle of the city—by being quiet and steady and invisible.
It slithered inch by inch in the background, taking Balto and then the Bethesda Fountain. When it began to walk with me down The Mall and climb into the stone laps of the authors I prayed to, I noticed. I would stand and stare at it, its broad green leaves fluttering in the wind and the tiny, curled fingers reaching out toward the wide-open spaces, just hoping for something to cling to.
Later that day, when I got home, I called my mother in that automatic way I used to, when talking to her was as natural as breathing. It wasn’t until after I heard the ringing that I started to worry about how long it had been since we’d talked. But when she answered the phone, her voice was sunshine like always and it’s hello Kelly and I miss you Kelly and I love you Kelly and I’m just so happy to hear your voice Kelly. She spoke as if any minute now I was going to no longer be myself, but a telemarketer trying to sell her sham car insurance.
I told her about my internship at Soho Press and my writing group that meets on Wednesdays and about Noah’s promotion and how we could afford to move out of the Bronx and into Brooklyn now, into a top-floor studio. She seemed pleased with our progress and said she was happy with all the wonderful news. She told me about the squirrel that steals her tomatoes out of her garden and that Dad had gotten her a little wiener dog that she didn’t want but now loves and about how she’s gotten herself a season pass to the Barter Theatre.
I hung up without telling her about my job at Macy’s in the fragrance department that sends me home with headaches every day because I’m allergic to the perfume. I did not tell her about the constant stream of impersonal rejections, each letter like a papercut to the heart. I did not tell her that it’d been four weeks since Noah last touched me. I wondered what she didn’t tell me.
The kudzu took root and made itself at home. The tourists began to take notice when the kudzu besieged the Belvedere and commandeered the Carousel. When the tourists got angry, the city noticed and decided to do something about the “problem.” The last thing they wanted was for the tourists to take their money to some other city, like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, or—heaven forbid—Toronto! So they decided to spray it. The city signed a hurried contract with an herbicide company and launched chemical warfare on the kudzu the moment the sun went down, and only bums and gangbangers were left in the park.
The next day, the kudzu was gone.
I tried to go about my routine as usual. I was supposed to stay at home and write; my self-imposed deadline was a week away, but my eyes kept glancing to the window across the cluttered, cupboard-sized living room, and my fingers kept striking the wrong keys, typing longwinded descriptions of greenery instead of forwarding plot or developing characters. Once I’d wasted half the day, I closed the laptop, grabbed my bag, and left for Central Park. I had to know if the kudzu was still there.
I walked down every path and trail. I hunted in the Great Lawn, I scouted out Strawberry Fields—I even interrogated the giraffes and lions at the zoo before going mad searching Alice. I gave up and sat at Shakespeare’s feet. I willed myself to forget the vines and remember the verse. There was a poem on the edges of my consciousness that I couldn’t quite remember, but it felt so right in this moment. Something about soft rains. I was about to ask Bill, but a mother and her two young daughters were standing nearby, and I didn’t want to seem like one of the crazies.
That night I slept on the couch because Noah said the kudzu was a dangerous, invasive species of plant and that he was glad the city took care of it. He didn’t know it upset me, and I didn’t tell him I thought it was beautiful and reminded me of home. But, mostly, I didn’t want him to accidentally touch me in the middle of the night. When he touches me—if he touches me—I wanted it to be deliberate. So, I put blankets on the couch, and on his way to bed he stopped and stared at me, toothbrush hanging askew out of the side of his mouth. I kept my eyes averted, making myself busy with fluffing my pillow just right.
“What are you doing?” he asked, a white dribble of toothpaste foam gathering at the edges.
“I thought I’d sleep on the couch tonight.”
There was silence for a beat, then the sound of him brushing for a moment, and then he asked, “Why?”
I didn’t respond except to throw the covers back and sit down. A few seconds later he walked out of the room, and I could hear him spit into the sink and gargle mouthwash. He came back, wiping his mouth on the back of his forearm. He stood there watching me.
“Are you mad?” he asked.
I shook my head no.
“Did I forget something important?” He was beginning to sound anxious.
I shook my head no.
“Did I not notice something? Did you get a haircut or lose weight?”
I shook my head no, again and sighed, now beginning to feel annoyed at how clueless he was.
After another minute, he admitted, “I have no idea what is going on right now.”
I looked up at him, taking in the sight of his shirtless body, tousled hair, confused expression. “I guess it’s just not what I imagined.” I stretched myself out on the couch and started to cover up.
“What?”
“The way everything has changed.” I flipped over and faced the back of the couch, turning away from him. I waited, wondering if he would come to me, comfort me, tell me that the way he feels for me has never and will never change. Instead, I heard his footsteps retreating to the bedroom, and soon I fell asleep under the artificial glow of a muted Amanda Evans and a cacophony of rain on the roof.
The next morning, I woke to the smell of fresh air mingling with bacon. Noah had opened the window and was making breakfast, which was unusual for him. I sat up and breathed, trying to inhale and internalize the aromas that made the small apartment smell like a real home. I wrapped the covers tighter around me, and Noah told me to unmute the television because there was something I’d want to see.
I grabbed the remote and listened as Amanda Evans relayed the breaking news. The camera cut to an overhead shot of Central Park showing all eight hundred acres smothered in kudzu. The camera zoomed out farther to show the park juxtaposed with the buildings around it. The vines were spread out like a sea of green in the middle of the sparkling silver city.
Noah stepped over with two plates of breakfast and handed me one as he sat down on the couch next to me.
“Pretty amazing, huh?” He nodded toward the television.
“I thought you didn’t like the kudzu?”
He looked at me. “Are you kidding? It’s beautiful. I mean, I know it’s got to be controlled, but this is the coolest fucking thing that’s happened since we moved here, Kel.”
“You really think so?”
Noah nodded. “I was thinking about taking the day off work so we could go down and check it out. You want to?”
“Sure.”
At the park, caution tape separated the city from the battlefield as dozens of contracted landscapers fought the good fight against the invader. They weren’t even concerned about waiting until after dark anymore to spray the glyphosate onto the plant, but it didn’t look like they needed to waste their time or energy. The herbicide seemed to have no effect whatsoever on the kudzu. Some of the soldiers began hacking and chopping at the vines with sickles; when that didn’t work, they fired up weed eaters and charged into the creepers.
Noah and I stood watching the massacre for hours until the men worked their way out of sight, leaving in their wake bits of vine and leaves littered across the ground. The segments of vine looked like severed green fingers. I felt Noah’s hand on the small of my back, and I let him guide me away. He guided me all the way to Il Cortile, our favorite restaurant in Little Italy. We used to go so often that the maître d’ knew our names and always gave us the most intimate table on the patio underneath the twinkling lights and grapevines. But we could afford it then. That was when I was teaching at JHS 80, before that kid took a gun to school and Noah convinced me to quit. I had protested; the kid only took it to show off to his friends, never attempted to fire it. My reasons fell on deaf ears, and for weeks afterward he’d hold my face in his hands every morning before work and stare at me for minutes that felt like years, and then he’d kiss me like he was never going to see me again before walking out the door without a word. Then when I’d come home after, he’d beg me on his knees to never go back. He was terrified, and I loved him. And so now I work in Macy’s fragrance department, and I wonder if the reason he doesn’t kiss me anymore is because I smell like sandalwood with a hint of geranium.
To my surprise, the maître d’ remembered our names. At our normal table, under sparkling lights and lifting his glass of wine, Noah reached his hand across the table and interlocked his fingers with mine. I smiled and clinked my glass to his. I drank to the kudzu; I wondered what Noah drank to. He talked about work, and as we ate, the conversation shifted to musings about how things were back in Abingdon and then to our upcoming move and how we needed to start organizing silverware into boxes and how proper labeling was key to a successful move. We sat there talking until they closed, and it felt nice to be talking to him. But as we walked back to the subway, silence descended. I swallowed over and over on the subway ride home, trying to get the stale taste like cardboard out of my mouth.
The next day the kudzu was gone. They’d shredded it, chopped it, cut it up into itty-bitty pieces, and cleared it out of sight so that the park belonged to the people again and nature was tamed. Amanda Evans’s picture on the television was replaced with video they’d shot the day before of landscapers’ work. I cut off the television, interrupting her mid-sentence. I didn’t bother to try and write at home; I had to go back to Macy’s the next day, and I didn’t want to waste any time, so I packed up my laptop and headed for the park to write.
I knew the kudzu wouldn’t be there, but I sat on the edge of the Burnett Fountain alone in my own secret garden and trailed my palm across the glassy surface of the water. I sat staring at the deep green pool before pulling my hand away and wiping it off on my pants. I opened my laptop and began typing. I stayed all day without stirring, until the streetlamps flickered to life, and I knew I had to go home.
Noah had dinner ready for me, and we ate on the couch watching Amanda Evans to see if she said anything about the kudzu, but the only thing the brunette reporter mentioned was that landscapers had been successful in eradicating the nuisance. After dinner, Noah asked about my day and about my writing and if I was sad about the kudzu. I told him it was a wonderful day, and I wrote a lot and that it would grow back. He kissed me on the cheek and then the mouth, and then he grabbed my blankets from the couch and took them around the bookshelf that separated the living room from our makeshift bedroom.
I let him lead me by the hand and didn’t turn from him as he pulled my body to his, and I didn’t push him away as his hand slid up under my shirt and he fell asleep cupping my breast. I scowled at the ceiling, frustrated with myself for being so stupid and angry at Noah for not loving me like he used to. With a sigh, I turned my back to him and yanked the covers around me so that they pulled off of him. He just made a sleepy noise and turned with me, looping his arm around my abdomen and throwing his leg over mine. I tensed, but was too tired to push him off, so I exhaled and tried doing that mental exercise of consciously relaxing each body part, starting with the toes and working upward, but I was barely past my knees when I started thinking about Noah again. Then thinking about Noah became thinking about teaching, which became thinking about writing, and I wanted to write a song about the kudzu that a famous musician would sing so the whole world would know about it, but I have no rhythm.
We slept and it rained and the next morning the kudzu had reclaimed what was taken from it and had invaded the city. Amanda Evans said the expanse of the vine’s conquest reached out as far as 2nd Ave. and down to 23rd Street on the East Side. The shops on 5th and in the Garment District closed for the day as the herbage coated their display windows with broad leaves and locked its curling arms across their entrances. The streets were not drivable because the vines had climbed their way to the tops of the poles and wrapped themselves around the streetlights. People couldn’t leave their homes because entire apartment buildings were wrapped up in its unyielding embrace.
With Macy’s closed, I could go see it in person. I needed to witness the verdure violate the cityscape. I hurried down the sidewalk to the Metro station and hopped on Line 6. The route formed itself in my mind and without any effort. As I settled into an empty seat on an almost empty train car, I realized that learning the Metro happened the same as the kudzu—gradually and unnoticed. I remembered the struggle when we had first moved to the Bronx, first dropped our bags on the apartment floor of the Pelham Grand. There was constant confusion every day in figuring out where we were going and how to get there. Now, those things that had confused us were effortless, and what used to seem so simple was what we struggled with the most.
As the subway approached Manhattan, the car filled up with people; it filled with bodies that had lives and jobs and purposes and families and thoughts that I would never be able to know or experience. They had eyes I would never be able to see from, shoes I’d never be able to walk in. I tried to remember when riding the Metro stopped being an event and just became a routine, when I stopped being a curious outsider and became a whatever I am. I tried to remember that exact moment during the entire fifty-steven minute train ride to 68th Street. But remembering that was as tenuous as trying to remember the day you learned to read or when you went outside to play with your friends for the last time of your childhood.
When I emerged from the subway station, I entered into a new world. It was no longer New York City—it was the New York Forest. I looked around at green-sheathed buildings and vine-covered sidewalks. I stepped over plant life and stood near a lamppost encircled by foliage. This was not the New York of my dreams or the New York of the new life I made here. This was the New York of three thousand years from now. This was the New York abandoned by humanity and reclaimed by the earth. It occurred to me that this was the New York of the future.
When I came home there was a letter from Epiphany in my inbox and it was not a rejection. I tried to order pizza and then Chinese, but Bedford Cafe was the only place that agreed to deliver during the kudzu crisis even though we weren’t anywhere near the “outbreak zone” as police were calling it. On television, Amanda Evans was interviewing a man named Dr. Frye, an extension educator associated with the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University. He has spent most of his career studying kudzu. He says the only way to eradicate the plant was to dig up its root system.
The doorbell rang, and I accepted the cheeseburgers and handed the skinny teenager a twenty-dollar bill. I left the television on the news and watched as the footage showed them trying to follow Dr. Frye’s advice. They grabbed the plants by the vine with both hands and were trying to follow them back to the base. I thought about how sad that was, how abrupt and ungentle. To just yank something out of its home, roots and all, seemed somehow inhumane. It seemed downright cruel. The kudzu was just trying to live, like all of us. Just trying to find its place, make its home. Taking away its roots would be to take away its life. I thought about how I hadn’t been home in five years. I turned the television off and went to bed without waiting for Noah to get home.
The next day, the kudzu was gone.
Noah told me that they’d worked all night, digging up every trace of the root system that they could find. Then, they removed every last scrap of leaf, root, and vine to a remote area for incineration. On the news, Amanda Evans interviewed city officials, who assured citizens this was the last they would have to worry about the kudzu. I pulled on my all-black funeral clothes and headed to Macy’s.
The odors of the fragrance department wafted into the air, cypress and vetiver mixing with oakmoss and magnolia. The scents stuck in the air and became trapped in my sinuses. I couldn’t breathe, and a thumping pain began in my temples and spread behind my eyes. There was a distinct lack of customers, perhaps due to the insanity of the last few days, and so instead of spraying more perfume into the air or organizing and reorganizing crystalline bottles, I pulled out a notebook and began to write.
I lost myself in the story, became mesmerized with the transfer of words from brain to hand to page, became hypnotized by the light scratching sound of pen against paper, became entranced at the sight of ink pouring out into swirling twirling winding letters linking to form words to form sentences to form paragraphs to form pages, and everything connects and is interconnected and—I quit.
It seemed I ignored a customer who needed some Bleu de Chanel. I gathered my belongings without a word of apology or excuse, and I just walked out as the manager shouted after me. Outside, I took a deep breath, felt the fresh air of the day inflate my lungs like balloons. On the ride home, I pulled out my notebook and kept writing. When I got home, Noah was still at work. I called my mother again, and she asked me if I was happy.
After we hung up, I opened the window and climbed out onto the fire escape because I wanted the wind to blow my hair into my face. It was as if I’d awakened from a long sleep and the sunshine was blinding, but I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer. I looked around as if I thought I could see the kudzu growing from here, but my apartment didn’t have a view. I could only see the brick wall of the building next to mine rising up toward the sky and the alley below, littered with take-out wrappers, glass bottles, and cigarette butts.
♦
Sam Campbell is a writer, teacher, and editor with an M.A. in English (ETSU) and an MFA in Creative Writing (University of Arkansas). She co-founded Black Moon and serves as its fiction editor. Her work has been featured in October Hill and Another Chicago Magazine. She won the 2021 Jesse Stuart Prize for Young Adult Fiction and is currently a student at Columbia’s Publishing Institute. Learn more at samiamwrites.com
The Delmarva Review, published from St. Michaels, Maryland, was founded to offer all writers a desirable home in print (with a digital edition) presenting their most compelling new prose and poetry to discerning audiences everywhere. This is a time when many commercial print publications (and literary magazines) have closed their doors or are reducing literary content. For each annual edition, the editors have read thousands of submissions to select the best of new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The review is available from online booksellers and regional specialty bookstores. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org
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