The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

  “Get up,” she said, “and sit at the table. The stack of papers you have to sign will take most of the afternoon.”

  I stood up and walked out of the walk-in, past the papers stacked high on the worktable, and out onto the sidewalk. Dry-heaving into the gutter, I started to run. Renata called my name, repeatedly and with increasing volume, but I didn’t look back.

  When I reached the grocery store on the corner of 17th and Potrero, I was exhausted and out of breath. I collapsed onto a curb and heaved. An old woman with a bagful of groceries stopped and put her hand on my shoulder, asking me if I was okay. I slapped her hand away, and she dropped her groceries. In the commotion of the gathering crowd, I slipped into the store. I bought a three-pack of pregnancy tests and walked back to the blue room, the light paper box a stone in my backpack.

  Natalya was still asleep, her bedroom door open. She had stopped closing it months ago, when I’d all but stopped living there, and slammed it shut whenever I surprised her with an appearance. Closing her door silently, I shut myself in the bathroom.

  I peed on all three sticks and lined them up on the edge of the sink. It was supposed to take three minutes, but it didn’t.

  Sliding open the bathroom window, I threw them out one at a time. They bounced and settled on the flat gravel roof just a foot below the window, the results still readable. I sat down on the lid of the toilet and put my head in my hands. The last thing I wanted was for Natalya to know; Renata was bad enough. If Mother Ruby found out, she’d be living in the blue room with me, feeding me fried eggs day and night, and placing her hands on my stomach every five minutes.

  I walked into the kitchen and climbed onto the counter. Natalya and her band often climbed onto the roof this way, but I’d never tried it. The window over the kitchen sink was small but not impossible to get through, even with my body in its widening state.

  The roof was littered with cigarette butts and an empty vodka bottle. Crawling over them, I gathered the pregnancy tests and put all three in my pocket. I stood up slowly, dizzy from the exertion and the height, and looked around.

  The view was astounding, as much because I had never noticed it as for the actual sight. The roof was long—the distance of an entire city block—and surrounded by a low concrete wall. Beyond the wall was the city, from downtown to the Bay Bridge to Berkeley, a perfect illustration of itself, the motion of taillights on freeways the blur of red pigment. I walked to the edge of the roof and sat down, breathing in the beauty, forgetting, momentarily, that everything in my life was about to change, again.

  The pads of my fingers traveled from my neck to my navel. My body was mine no longer. It had been inhabited, taken over. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I didn’t have any options; the baby would grow within me. I couldn’t have an abortion. I couldn’t go to a clinic, and undress, and stand naked in front of a stranger. The thought of anesthesia, of losing consciousness while a doctor did whatever he would with my body, was an offense beyond consideration. I would have the baby, and then I would decide what to do with it.

  A baby. I repeated the words to myself again and again, waiting for warmth or emotion, but I felt nothing. Within my paralysis, I held only a single conviction: Grant could never, ever know. The excitement in his eyes, the instant vision he would hold of the family we would be together, was more than I could bear. I could picture exactly the way it would unfold: me, sitting at the picnic table, waiting for Grant to sit down so that I could choke out the life-changing words. I would begin to cry before I finished speaking, but still, he would know. And he would want it. The light in his eyes would be proof of his devotion to our unborn child, and my tears would be proof of my unfitness to be a mother. The knowledge that I would let him down (and the unknown of how it would happen, and when) would keep me far from his excitement, sealed from his professions of love.

  I had to leave, quickly, silently, before he discovered the reason for my departure. It would hurt him, but not as much as it would hurt him to watch, helpless, as I packed my bags and took his child away from him forever. The life he desired with me was not possible.

  It was better for him never to know how close we had come.

  20.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and Elizabeth was still in bed. I sat at the kitchen table, eating peanut butter out of a jar with my thumb. I’d thought about making her dinner, chicken soup or chili, something with a magnetic scent. But so far I’d only learned how to make desserts: blackberry cobbler, peach pie, and chocolate mousse. It didn’t feel right to eat dessert without dinner, especially today, when we had nothing at all to celebrate.

  Putting the peanut butter away, I began to rummage through the pantry when I was surprised by a knock. I didn’t need to look out the window to see who it was. I had heard the knock enough times in my life to know. Meredith. She pounded harder. In another moment she would try the door, and it would be unlocked. I ducked into the pantry. The sound of the front door slamming traveled into the darkness. The beans and rice lining the shelves rattled in their canisters.

  “Elizabeth?” Meredith called. “Victoria?” She walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Her footsteps traveled around the table and paused in front of the window over the sink. I held my breath, imagining her eyes traveling over the leafy vines, looking for signs of movement. She wouldn’t find any. Carlos had taken Perla camping again, for their annual trip. Finally, I heard her turn and walk up the stairs. “Elizabeth?” she called again. And then, quietly: “Elizabeth? Are you all right?”

  Creeping up the stairs, I stopped on the top step and leaned into the wall, out of sight.

  “I’m resting,” Elizabeth said quietly. “I just needed a little rest.”

  “ ‘Resting’?” Meredith asked. Something in Elizabeth’s voice had angered Meredith, and her tone had turned from concerned to accusing. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon! And you missed your court date. You left the judge and me sitting there staring at each other, wondering where you and Victoria—” She stopped midsentence. “Where’s Victoria?”

  “She was just here a minute ago,” Elizabeth said, her voice weak. Hours, I wanted to yell. I was there hours ago; I’d left her bedside at noon, when I knew for certain we were not going to court. “Did you check the kitchen?”

  When Meredith spoke next, she sounded closer to me. “I checked,” she said. “But I’ll check again.” I stood up and began to tiptoe down the stairs, too late. “Victoria,” Meredith said. “Come back here.”

  Turning, I followed Meredith into my bedroom. I had changed out of the dress and into shorts and a T-shirt earlier in the day, and the dress lay across the top of my desk. Meredith sat down and began to run her fingers over the top of the velvet flowers. I snatched the dress from her, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it under the bed.

  “What’s going on?” Meredith demanded, her voice as accusing as it had been with Elizabeth. I shrugged.

  “Don’t think you’re going to stand there and say nothing. Everything’s going great, Elizabeth loves you, you’re happy—and then a no-show for your adoption proceeding? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” I shouted. For the first time in my life, it was true, but there was no reason for Meredith to believe me. “Elizabeth’s tired, you heard her. Just leave us alone.” I crawled into bed, pulled up the covers, and turned to face the wall.

  Exhaling a loud, impatient sigh, Meredith stood up. “Something’s going on,” she said. “Either you did something horrific, or Elizabeth isn’t mentally fit to be a mother. Either way, I’m not sure this is a good placement for you anymore.”

  “It isn’t your place to decide what is or is not good for Victoria,” Elizabeth said quietly. I sat up and turned to look at her. She leaned heavily against the door frame, as if she would fall over without its support. A pale pink bathrobe crisscrossed her body. Her hair fell in tangled bunches over her shoulders.

  “It’s exactly my place to decide,” Meredith s
aid, stepping toward Elizabeth. She was neither taller nor stronger, but she towered over Elizabeth’s wilted figure. I wondered if Elizabeth was afraid. “It wouldn’t have been my place anymore if you’d appeared in court at eleven a.m. this morning, and believe me, I was ready to give up control of this child. But it seems that isn’t to be. What did she do?”

  “She didn’t do anything,” Elizabeth said.

  I couldn’t see Meredith’s face, couldn’t see if she believed her. “If Victoria didn’t do anything, I’ll have to write you up. Give you a written warning for missing a court date, for suspicion of neglect. Has she eaten anything today?” I lifted my shirt away from my skin, where streaks of peanut butter remained from my snack, but neither Meredith nor Elizabeth looked at me.

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.

  Meredith nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She moved toward the bedroom door, stepping past Elizabeth. “We’ll finish in the living room. Victoria doesn’t need to be a part of the conversation we’re about to have.”

  I didn’t follow them down the stairs, didn’t want to hear. I wanted everything to be as it was the day before, when I believed Elizabeth would adopt me. Rolling to the edge of the bed, I reached underneath until I found my wrinkled ball of a dress. I pulled it into bed with me, squeezing it into my chest and pressing my face into the velvet. The dress still smelled like the store, new wood and glass cleaner, and I remembered the feeling of Elizabeth’s arms underneath my armpits and tight across my chest, the look on her face as our eyes met in the mirror.

  From downstairs I heard snippets of an argument: Meredith mostly, her voice raised. She has you or she has nothing, she said at one point. It’s bullshit for you to say you want more for her. An excuse. Didn’t Elizabeth know that she was all I wanted? That she was all I would ever want? Huddled under the comforter, I found the summer heat thick and suffocating. I struggled for breath.

  I’d been given a chance, a final chance, and somehow, without meaning to, I’d ruined it. I waited for Meredith to march up the stairs and deliver the words I never thought I’d hear: Elizabeth’s given notice. Pack up.

  21.

  On Sunday morning, I ate soda crackers and waited for the nausea to subside. It didn’t. I got into my car anyway and drove across the city, vomiting into storm drains on three different occasions. The worldwide population expansion was not a phenomenon I could comprehend as I rolled to a stop at one grate after another.

  Grant wasn’t home, as I knew he wouldn’t be. He would be standing behind his truck, handing cut flowers to lines of locals. I had been away only three nights, not an unusually long time for me or for our relationship, and I imagined him hurrying through his work, thinking about the extravagant dinner he planned to create. It would never cross his mind that I would miss a Sunday-night meal. At least I’d warned him, I thought, as I let myself in with the rusty spare key. It wasn’t my fault if he’d forgotten.

  Listening for the sound of his truck, I packed quickly. I took everything that belonged to me and many things that didn’t, including Grant’s duffel bag, a large, army-green canvas tube that would camouflage well beneath the heath. I stuffed in clothes, books, a flashlight, three blankets, and all the food he had in the cupboard. Before zipping the bag, I shoved in a knife, a can opener, and the cash he kept in the freezer.

  I crammed my belongings into the backseat of my car and went back for my blue photo box, Elizabeth’s dictionary, and the field guide. In the car, I secured them into the front seat with the seat belt and then went back up the spiral staircase to the second floor. I pulled Grant’s orange box off the bookshelf. Opening it, I thumbed through the photos, considering whether or not I should take it. I had made it; everything inside belonged to me. But the idea of having an extra in a safe location comforted me, especially as the next few months of my life would likely be anything but safe. If something happened to my blue box, I could always come back for the orange one.

  I left the box in the middle of the floor and withdrew a small square of paper from my backpack. It was folded in half so that it stood up on top of the box like a place marker at a formal dinner. In the center, I had glued a quarter-sized photo of a white rose from a pile of scraps in the blue room, having trimmed it with precision so that only the flower remained. Below the image, in the place where a name would go, I had written a single sentence in permanent ink.

  A rose is a rose is a rose.

  Grant would understand, if not accept, that this was the end.

  1.

  I would go back to the blue room; I would have the baby within its watery walls. I knew this in the same way I knew that Grant was looking for me, without evidence and without doubt. Grant didn’t know the location of the blue room, but he knew enough to find it, I was sure. Until he had given up, I had to stay away. It could take months or most of the year. I was prepared to wait.

  No longer squeamish in the presence of intoxicated teenagers, I moved back in to my garden in McKinley Square. I had a knife and a sexual past. They couldn’t attempt anything that hadn’t already been done, and, looking at my reflection in a gas station mirror, I doubted anyone would try. Feeling numb toward both my changing body and my homelessness, I didn’t change my clothes, didn’t seek out showers or wealthy neighborhoods. The weeks began to show on my skin.

  I missed Renata, and missed my job, but I couldn’t go back to Bloom. It was the first place Grant would look for me. Instead, I hid under the heath bushes, which had grown and multiplied in my absence. The seeds of heath could exist in the soil for months or years—decades, even—before bursting forth new life, and the familiar plant comforted me as I curled up with Grant’s duffel bag beneath its branches. The rest of my things I left in my car, which I moved to a different street every day. If Grant saw the hatchback, he would recognize it—even with the license plate removed and the blue box well hidden under my belongings—so I kept it far from Potrero Hill, in Bernal Heights or Glen Park, sometimes as far as Hunters Point. I had been sleeping in the park for weeks before it dawned on me that I could sleep in my car at night. But I didn’t want to. The smell of the soil, saturated from overwatering, entered my dreams and calmed my nightmares.

  In mid-August, perched at the top of the play structure in McKinley Square, I spotted Grant. He was coming straight up Vermont Street, climbing the hill with his eyes scanning the modern lofts and old Victorians. He stopped and exchanged words with a painter on slanted scaffolding. Turquoise paint dripped from a brush and landed on a drop cloth near Grant’s shoe. He reached down and touched the wet paint, then called something up to the painter, and the man shrugged. Grant was three blocks down the hill, and I couldn’t hear his words, but I could see he wasn’t out of breath even after the steep climb.

  I scrambled through the bushes, zipped my bag, and pulled it across the street and into the corner store. When I’d first moved back to McKinley Square, I’d told the store’s owner I was running from an abusive family. I asked him to hide me if my brother ever came looking. The owner had refused, but as time passed and I purchased every meal from his always-empty neighborhood store, I knew I would not be turned away.

  The owner looked up when I ran in with my heavy bag and quickly opened the door behind him. I raced around the counter, through the door, and up a flight of stairs. Dropping to my knees, I crawled to the front window of the small, sparsely furnished apartment. The hardwood floor smelled like lemon oil and felt slick against my shins. The walls were painted bright yellow. Grant would not look up twice.

  Crouching low under the bay window, my eyes peered over the sill. Grant had already climbed the stairs to the park and passed the swings, the empty seats swaying in the breeze. He spun in a circle, and I ducked down. When I lifted my head again, he stood at the edge of the grass, where thick green sod met the wild forest undergrowth. He pressed a boot into the trunk of a redwood tree before walking across the soft layer of duff and kneeling in front of the white verbena. I held my breath as Grant
looked around the sloping hillside, afraid he would notice the carved-out heath bush and the outline of my body, belly round, beneath it.

  But he didn’t pause at the heath. He turned back to the verbena and bowed his head. I was too far away to see the delicate clustered petals in which he dipped his nose, too far away to hear his hushed words, but I knew he was praying.

  My forehead pressed against the glass, and I felt my body being pulled toward him by the strength of my own desire. I missed his sweet, earthy smell, his cooking, and his touch. The way he placed his square palms over each side of my face as he looked into my eyes, and the way his hands smelled of soil, even after they had just been washed. But I could not go to him. He would make promises, and I would repeat his words because I wanted to believe in his vision of our life together. But over time we would both find my words meaningless. I would fail; it was the only possible outcome.

  Closing my eyes, I forced my body away from the window. My shoulders fell forward, belly pressed against parted thighs. The sun warmed my back. If I had known how, I would have joined Grant in prayer. I would have prayed for him, for his goodness, his loyalty, and his improbable love. I would have prayed for him to give up, to let go, and to start over. I might have even prayed for forgiveness.

  But I didn’t know how to pray.

  Instead, I stayed as I was, folded over on the floor of a stranger’s living room, waiting for Grant to give up, forget about me, and go home.

  2.

  “Six months,” Elizabeth said.

  I watched Meredith drive away. After visiting weekly for two months, she had finally decided to set a new court date. Six months away.

  Elizabeth slipped an extra strip of bacon into a sandwich and set it in front of me. I picked it up, took a bite, and nodded. She hadn’t given notice, as I’d expected, but she was different than she’d been before the failed adoption, nervous and apologetic.