She led the principal to the classroom. It was recess, so the room was empty except for the plants and, tucked in a corner, a small cardboard box. Inside the box was a seed they had planted weeks ago—a bean wrapped in wet cotton. The children had been watching it, waiting.
“Look,” Elena said, lifting the cotton gently.
“Señorita,” the young woman said. “I’m Camila. The one who only whispered.”
And outside the window, the jasmine was blooming again.
Elena touched the page gently. “Then you are my garden,” she said.
Every morning, before the first child arrived, she would open the windows of the small classroom. The air from the patio carried the smell of wet earth and jasmine. She kept a row of pots on the sill—not decorative plants, but working plants: basil, mint, a struggling little tomato that the children had named Ramón.
The principal was quiet for a long moment. Then she looked at the basil, the mint, the little tomato named Ramón.