We used to joke I had a black thumb.

I don’t know that I ever actually killed anything, but over time the aversion from not wanting to kill anything became so ingrained that I just… started to believe it.

When my parents left on vacation in the summers, we were supposed to go out at dusk every day to water the roses and hydrangeas; the grass and shrubs and wild strawberries; the vibrant clusters of lily of the valley. I’d remember to do this every few days instead, but half the time it was too late, or too hot, or it wasn’t my turn, or, or, or. It took forever to make sure everything was watered, and sometimes mom would return to a house ringed in dry brown. Oops.

But when I could dredge up the will, I’d step into the soupy summer heat and slap at the hovering mosquitoes (because the bug sprays never work as well as they should), and angrily wave the arcing shower from the hose before me to wash away any spider webs. (You only make the mistake of walking into them once.) (Okay, twice.)

In the end, it was my mom. Isn’t it always? She inherited these plants that my grandpa grew; they’re known as epiphyllum oxypetalum, or queen of the night flowers. You know - the ones from Crazy Rich Asians. Their blooms appear rarely and open only at night, then close and die before the dawn. When you don’t prune them back they get to be these huge, hulking things. My mom had hers for a while on tall stands outside near the front door, and they loomed like bodyguards over the cushioned porch swing, one on each side.

I’m not sure where she found it, but my mom gave me a photo of one of Koong Koong’s queens when he passed, now likely long gone, blazed open and blooming at their old house in Kota Kinabalu. It’s somewhat ghostly to look at because of the flash, leaves and petals in stark relief from the shadows beyond. But something about the composition, the mood it evoked, made me really like it.

(She came over the other day and told me it was apparently not a picture of his plants, and she had no idea who the owner was, or even the house it was taken at, which. Well. All I could think was ghostghostghost that’s a ghost ahhhhhhhhhhh and then just continuous internal shrieking for… a while.)

I saw banyan trees for the first time on a trip back to the motherland, towering statues of an old world still sewn deeply into the core of the cities we visited. My parents told us spooky stories of spirits who lingered under their branches and long, hanging roots. Years later, when one of the queens was placed in my old room, I looked in during a visit and felt the same creeping sensation as I had staring into the empty spaces under those trees, a persistent pricking at the skin behind my ears.

For a while my mom would propagate a bunch of new babies from Koong Koong’s plants, and they’d sit in the basement’s kitchen sill for months among their siblings, settled in wide-mouthed beer glasses and thrift store vases. There’s plenty of bright, indirect light, and no disturbance save for the couple next door who throw ragers on their patio, and the thrumming hum of the fridge. Dad occasionally went down to commandeer the TV, away from everyone else, but the plants made for quiet companions.

The cut leaves eventually sprout tiny roots, which grow longer and longer until they twist and clump in a little mass. They’d get sold off on Facebook marketplace, and my mom would put them in bags at the door when she left for work and come home to ten dollars in the mailbox each time. They were also gifts, like for Sandy, who placed hers in prime real estate behind the couch in the front room window. This is how she convinced me, because I looked at Sandy’s plant, and I remembered standing outside every year in the late night chill to smell the blooms and watch the flash of her phone camera. I recalled Koong Koong’s hands checking each new leaf, stern eyebrows drawn down in a deep vee while the afternoon news droned on in the background.

And so I said yes.

I named her Agatha, after Sister Agatha Van Helsing from the 2020 BBC One series Dracula, because of course I did.

After Agatha it was like the goddamn floodgates opened, because all of the anxiety about keeping plants alive suddenly mattered very little, in the face of something new and exciting that people were excited about for me. I went from having no plants to six(ish?) in the space of a week, and I fended off other offers of plant gifts - more than I was ever expecting! (It was the beginning of the pandemic. I guess that kind of explains a lot.)

I’m very proud to say that Agatha is still around and kicking, three years later, even after several bug encounters. I honestly don’t think she’ll ever give me a bloom, which is fine; she’ll do what she feels is right for her. My mom’s seen her a couple times since then, and it’s an interesting experience, because my brain superimposes the image of her checking out Agatha’s leaves over memories of Koong Koong. They stand there, hands clasped behind their back, bent slightly to bring their faces closer to inspect things. She tuts at the scars from buggy guests, tells me to give her more water because she’s so close to the fireplace and the window.

But Agatha’s doing just fine, and as her plant dad - that’s pretty cool. I don’t have to wade into a treacherous garden, and all my children let me know when they need something; kind of hard to miss when they’re wilting and feeling sulky.

Guess my thumb was greener than we thought.