Marcus doesn't say anything to me on the bus ride home. I use the time to plan. My eight weeks of community service for initiation start tomorrow. Some initiates, usually the ones who are Abnegation born, take on extra volunteer work a few evenings a week, but I won't. Not unless I can make my schedule match Caleb's exactly. For the rest of the summer, I'll work in my garden after dinner. We usually leave the windows open, so I'll be able to hear any fights. I'll find something to do inside in the winter, even if it's just reading or preparing meals or cleaning. I'll always be somewhere near Caleb.
At home, I bargain with Marcus to be put on permanent dinner preparation duty. My reason for doing so is logical but also a perfect excuse: it makes sense for me to cook dinner because I'll get home before him, and Caleb can use the time he would spend making dinner to add to his volunteer hours or do his homework. That way, I also figure, Marcus and Caleb will not be alone together in the evenings. I'll wash the dishes, too. I don't care. I don't ask Marcus to be a part of any of it. I just about fall over when he agrees to the arrangement. Caleb only nods and says, "Yes, sir," when Marcus informs him that our chore schedule will change. He never much liked cooking anyway.
Two years, I remind myself as I settle into bed. Just two years of vigilance, and then both Caleb and I will be free. They won't be an easy two years, but I will do anything it takes to get Caleb to his Choosing Ceremony safely, with as little worry as possible. After Caleb chooses, it doesn't matter what happens to me. I'll be content to patch sidewalks or feed the factionless or do whatever else Abnegation asks of me for the rest of my life. I'll watch him marry and have kids of his own, something I've decided is not an option for me. I can't take the risk that I'll end up like Marcus. No matter how much I'm aware of my own capacity for violence, I can't trust that I'll be able to control it. Better to live alone, be alone.
July fades into August, then September, and Marcus does not change. I thought for a stupid moment that my choice to stay in Abnegation might do just that. I thought he might see that I am doing everything in my power to lead a selfless life. Nothing I do seems to matter, though. He never has any patience for me. He speaks to me only to order or criticize. When he has a bad night, which is more often now that Erudite has declared their intention to seek control of the city government, he will hit me with his belt or a wooden spoon and throw me into the upstairs closet. More than once I fantasize about leaving, about jumping onto a train the way the Dauntless do, riding it out to Amity, and spending my life picking crops in peace and safety. I get as far as envisioning myself in a sunny field of corn when I think of Caleb. If I ran away, I wouldn't put it past Marcus killing Caleb to spite me. I suppose I could take him with me, but he deserves to finish school.
Despite everything Marcus does to me, I keep my secret promises about Caleb. Every morning, I get up before I have to and make sure Caleb eats breakfast and has his homework done. I don't volunteer for extra community service projects. Through the fall and winter the other Abnegation in my initiation class host dinner parties at their homes, and they're happy to invite Caleb when I mention him. He plays board games with his friends and volunteers to wash dishes, not knowing it's all part of my plan to minimize his time with Marcus and enable him to choose Abnegation because he knows it's who he is, not because he feels he must.
At the beginning of March, I start preparing my garden. My mother planted it not long after I was born, and she used to spend hours out here every spring, summer, and fall. When she saw that my interest in her plants went beyond just wanting to make a mess in the dirt, she started giving me small tasks to do. By the time I was six it was our project, our special time together. After she died, the garden did too, but two years ago I started planting herbs again. I grow anything that I can make survive in our broiling, humid summers: spearmint, coriander, basil, sage, lemon thyme, dill. I trade with the neighbors for flour or eggs, and they give me boxes of tea leaves they make from my herbs. Now, as I look at the collection of terra-cotta pots and hand tools and bags of potting soil, I see new possibilities. I can plant more than herbs. I can grow extra food for Caleb. It won't be anything on the scale of Amity. Our back yard is too small for fruit trees, and I don't have any of their technology to work with. But I could probably produce a decent amount of vegetables. Potatoes and carrots. My largest pot could easily sustain a tomato plant. I think peas and lettuce are easy to grow too.
The idea of keeping Caleb strong through my gardening efforts sends me on trips to the Abnegation library. I take notes on planting seasons and request seeds and a few planters from Amity, which they send; I'm not the only person in Abnegation with a backyard garden. Marcus has no interest in the garden, never has, so he doesn't ask me why I come home with the supplies. As far as he knows, it's just replacements for whatever didn't survive the winter. With every seed I plant and stake I tie, I think of Caleb. He is more than worth the ache in my lower back and the blisters on my hands.
More than once, Caleb offers to help me garden. Sometimes I accept. Most of the time, I want the garden to myself. I don't want Caleb to see what I'm doing for him. I don't want him to even entertain the idea that I grow food for him because I think he's needy. I'm not sure he'd get the distinction if I explained I'm growing the food to keep him strong, not because he's weak. The garden also the spot where I do my thinking, my planning to get both of us out of Marcus's house. But when I've had a long day or just want to spend more time with him, I let him water the plants and pull weeds. I pretend I don't see him lingering over the fennel, inhaling the sharp anise scent. I know how much value there is in those stolen moments of solitude, of getting to do something purely for your own pleasure, however small.
Later in the summer I pick and prepare what I can as soon as it's ready. Caleb seems to eat nonstop lately, so I make sure to always have fresh vegetables and hard-boiled eggs and cheese for him in the fridge. I get a recipe for zucchini bread from a woman in my volunteer group and notice that Caleb can eat an entire loaf by himself. As summer passes into fall, I plant squash and brussels sprouts and collard greens for him. So much of Caleb's life is out of my control: friendships, Marcus, the Erudite kids who bully him at school. Keeping him healthy, however, feels like the thing I was put in this world to do. I know I've done something right when in January I ask him to retrieve a glass from a high shelf and he reaches it with minimal effort, something he couldn't do last summer. He's going to be taller than I am by the time of his Choosing Ceremony.