The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

by Margaret Dilloway

  A knock sounds, soft, at my locked classroom door. “I’m closed!” I yell back around a mouthful of salad greens (one cup of lettuce with an ounce of tuna).

  Dara’s painted face peers through the glass transom and I unlock the door. “I didn’t see you in the cafeteria.” She sips from a can of Diet Coke through a straw. She wears a full brown skirt and matching blazer with a nipped waist.

  “Nor I you.” I wipe my hands on my slacks.

  She sits in the guest chair by my desk, crossing her ankles as delicate-ly as royalty. “What’s new and exciting? I saw you called.”

  I want to blurt out the whole story of Mr. Morton, but something is holding me back. Dara leans back in her chair, her eyes scanning the desk, the room, her lap. She looks everywhere except right at me. “I sent in my entry for Pasadena.” I point to the screen. “Where do you want to stay?”

  Her last sip of soda is a loud slurp. She crumples the can and tosses it into the blue recycling trash. “About that.”

  I wait. Her throat moves in a swallow. She laces her fingers. At last she continues. “I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

  I blink. I feel strangely calm. “Why’s that?”

  She furrows her brow. “Remember? I said I was a maybe. I’m going to make an extra payment on my credit cards instead. Gal, I’m sorry.” She hasn’t moved her hands off her lap, where they appear to be holding each other for comfort. “Are you mad? You’re mad.”

  I search for my lost voice, willing it to show itself from the bottom of some kind of deep pit where it fell. She had told me she was a maybe, at dinner. But surely she knew she wouldn’t be able to make it. Why didn’t she just say no? Then I wouldn’t have made these plans. My brain freezes. “I’m not angry,” I say at last. “I just wish you had been clearer.”

  Dara’s body already fidgets toward the door like a bad student. “I really did want to go, Gal.” She opens her mouth as though she wants to say something else, her eyes wide circles, but doesn’t. She looks at a crumpled piece of paper on the floor, throws it in the trash.

  “I’m glad you’re being responsible,” I say, sounding exactly like my mother. “Maybe Riley can go with me.”

  She relaxes, her shoulders slumping in the chair. “I bet she’d love that.”

  I nod, once.

  The bell rings. Dara springs up. “Have a good afternoon, Gal.”

  “You as well.” We sound like a bank teller talking to a customer, interchangeable and shallowly polite.

  She leaves the classroom as my AP Bio students trickle in.

  I still haven’t told her about Mr. Morton. “Wait, Dara.” I go to the doorway but she’s gone, down the hall, talking to Mr. Morton. She nods and he glances toward me. I step back into the classroom before she can turn around.

  Perhaps it’s not my place to tell her anyway. I shut the door to my room as the last bell rings.

  21

  AFTER SCHOOL THIS DAY, I HAVE NOTHING TO DO EXCEPT tend my roses. It’s my favorite kind of day. Just warm enough to wear short sleeves, but not so hot that same shirt sticks. Sunblock optional, not required.

  With Riley in the house studying, I put on my grubby clothes and my big straw hat and go outside. I found an aphid the other day, the ladybugs I released are not enough, so this evening I go around checking every single plant for the little green critters. It is a critical time, May. I want the roses to keep going all summer. Aphids secrete a sticky substance called “honeydew” that causes fungus, as well as sucks all the life out of the plants. If you see a plant with curled and yellow leaves, chances are aphids are the cause. They’re a rose breeder’s nightmare.

  The outside roses have a considerable infestation. I’m particularly worried about the English roses closest to the greenhouse. I hold a Victorian Spice in my palm, a peachy pink David Austin rose that has always done well for me. It almost looks like it’s got green polka dots on it.

  I go into the greenhouse. More blooms have appeared on my seedlings. I run my hands over them, checking for aphids. None have gotten inside here yet, thank goodness for that. A few of these seedlings are absolutely one hundred percent no good. One has withered leaves and ugly blooms. I yank it out of the potting mix, tossing it into my recycling bucket before it can contaminate the rest of my flowers.

  I check my mother plants, the ones I have just crossed. These will wither and ripen into rose hips, which look like red seed pods. Most casual rose growers never see these, because either they deadhead the roses before it happens or their roses are sterile. If I didn’t need the hips for breeding, I’d eat them. They’re full of vitamin C.

  Rose G42 is looking splendid. I turn it around to better see it. Plants, all plants, stretch toward the sun as they grow. This was something I learned through observation of my mother’s fern houseplants as a child. “They’re lopsided unless you turn them,” she said.

  This is true in the greenhouse, where the sun beams on it indirectly. I have to change the position of G42 daily. There are several more blooms on now. The one blossom it had at the rose show has made more petals, making it even fuller. The colors are so bright they nearly hurt my eyes.

  I bend over and sniff it, hoping it somehow magically has gotten fragrant. Nothing. My nostrils itch. Nothing much at all except the regular pollen-y smell of a plant.

  I don’t much like to use insecticides, not when they might get the good bugs, too. But I can’t risk the aphids getting into the greenhouse. Usually the water spray works great. There are too many of the critters this year, though. With regret, I get out the insecticide and mix it in the special bucket with its attached sprayer I keep just for this purpose.

  “What are you doing?” Riley is standing behind me. I jump about two feet into the air.

  “Lord, Riley, you scared me.”

  “Sorry.” She leans on the table, her bottom touching the G42.

  I push it back from the edge. “Please be careful.”

  She picks up the small plastic pump bucket of aphid poison. “What’s this?”

  “Poison. Put it down.”

  “For those green bugs?”

  “You saw them?”

  She nods. “This morning.”

  “Didn’t you wash them off the roses?”

  “Was I supposed to? I thought I was washing fungus, not bugs.” She absentmindedly pulls on the trigger. A squirt of poison shoots out onto the floor.

  “Be careful.” I take the poison away from her pointedly. Is she really fifteen? “Yes, you were supposed to wash those off. And now they’ve gone crazy.” I calculate. A few days without getting washed away properly accounts for a number of aphids on those English roses. I go outside and spray.

  She follows me out. “You’re destroying their organic-ness.”

  “Technically, all carbon-based life forms are organic.” I keep spraying. “‘Organic’ really isn’t a very descriptive term.” I am being difficult, I know.

  She frowns. “Whatever. You won’t be able to eat those.”

  “Nobody’s going to eat them.”

  “You’re poisoning our water supply.”

  I stop spraying and cast an evil eye on her. “Riley. What is it you want?”

  “Have you graded my bio test yet?”

  I turn back to the spraying. “I’ll do it tonight. After dark. When I’m done with this.”

  She doesn’t give up. “I really really want to know how I did.”

  “You’ll get it back tomorrow.” It’s one of my hallmarks of teaching that I do all my grading the same night they take the test, for almost immediate feedback.

  “What’s for dinner?”

  I ignore her. I step back from the rosebush, satisfied all the bugs have been saturated, then begin on the next one.

  “Aunt Gal?”

&n
bsp; I spray the bush a bit more vigorously than necessary. “Riley, it is four o’clock. If you’re so worried about dinner, go get started on it.”

  “What?”

  I spray the rose bush. “In my house, when your mother and I were growing up, she who complained about dinner had to cook it. Believe me, eating Becky’s dinner when she was eleven was interesting, to say the least.”

  Riley follows me to the next rose. She’s wearing sweat shorts, her legs pale and cold-looking under them. Of course she’s wearing the ever-present hoodie. “What did she make?”

  I think back. Becky had complained about Mom’s roasted broccoli, tossed with olive oil, cooked in a 400-degree oven for thirty minutes until it was almost black, the roasting rendering it crunchy-sweet. I still love Mom’s broccoli, as I called it, only I can’t eat it now. I told Riley this. “Can you imagine, someone not being allowed broccoli?” I chuckled.

  “What did Mom say?” Riley can’t resist touching the rose leaves. I smack her hand away gently.

  “She said they were too oily. So Grandma had her make dinner the next night.” I grin and Riley mirrors me, eyes shining. “Some kind of weird mix of tuna and way undercooked pasta and a can of peas, with some Ranch dressing.”

  Riley laughs delightedly. “It’s pretty much the way she still cooks.”

  “Is it? What’s your favorite thing for your mom to make?”

  “Frozen food.” We both giggle. Riley thinks. “Once, when I was five or so, she made me a cake for my birthday. From a mix, but still, it was sooo good. Devil’s food. I thought I was going to hell for eating devil’s food.”

  I laugh. “I like devil’s food better than angel food.” I reach the final rosebush. This one isn’t so heavily infested, but I make sure I spray it in case some aphids decide to move over.

  “Oh no.” Riley bends and picks up something. A dead ladybug.

  “Friendly fire casualties, I’m afraid.”

  She drops the bug, like a miniature slice of watermelon, onto the earth and kicks dry leaves over it. “I’m sorry, Aunt Gal. I’ll do a better job.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “I was supposed to wash them off. I’ll do better.”

  “Riley. Please. Do the jobs I put out for you, like I said, and I’ll do this.”

  She reaches to rub her eye and neither agrees nor disagrees.

  “There’s no poison on your hand, is there?” I catch the offending appendage and examine her eyeball. “You were just touching the leaves.” Her eye is reddish, but then, so is the other eye. Light purple crescents shine underneath.

  “I’m all right. I’ll be fine.” She pulls away.

  “How late do you stay up when I’m at dialysis?”

  She shrugs. “I read. I lose track of time.”

  “Riley, you have to get to bed by ten, lights out by ten-thirty.” I gather up my poison pot. “Interesting fact. Teenagers, though they always tend to get less sleep, actually need more sleep. That’s why you all sleep in forever on the weekend. We should start school at nine-thirty, not seven-thirty.”

  She heaves a sigh, then squeezes her eyes shut and speaks rapidly, as though she’s afraid she’ll forget her spiel. “Aunt Gal, I really really need help with the trebuchet event.”

  “The tape measure?” I put down the pot again. “I thought you got it. You just have to memorize the increments. I know the metric system is different, but it’s actually a lot easier than inches.”

  “That’s not it.” She shifts her weight from foot to foot. “The part where we use our graphs to predict where to set our targets.”

  I nod. In the competition practice, students use projectiles of varying sizes and weights, along with counterweights, to try to knock over some blocks representing a castle. In the actual competition, the students are given these weights and counterweights and then have to figure out their best use. Part of the score is this calculation, using all the data they collected during their practice runs.

  “Brad tried to show me, but I didn’t get it.” Her voice is low, ashamed.

  “Mr. Morton has you on the team. He’s supposed to teach you.”

  “I might have told him I understood.” Riley’s voice gets even lower, forcing me to lean into her to hear it.

  “Oh.” I give her a gentle smile. This is not uncommon among the kids. How many times have I stood up in front of a classroom and asked, “Are there any questions?” and gotten two dozen shaking heads, only to have a quarter of those kids turn in incorrect work? “Let’s go inside and work.”

  I stick my poison pot into the greenhouse on a random table, and lead Riley into the house.

  • • •

  RILEY’S BIOLOGY TEST grade is, once again, not so good—a D plus. The same grade most of the class earns. I hand back their graded exams facedown on their desks. When you get a test facedown, you know the grade is less than a B. The students slump in their desks and groan. The A students get a high five from me.

  “If you find your grade has gone down,” I say, walking to the front of the classroom, “then you will need to do extra well on the final to pull it back up.”

  A strapping sophomore named Javier raises his hand. “Can we do extra credit?”

  I cluck gently. “All the extra credit in the world can’t make up for the meaty chunk of a final grade.”

  I don’t meet Riley’s gaze, which burns on my skin. Riley should have gotten a better grade. I told her what to study. I told her how to study. The only thing I didn’t do was take the test for her.

  I shouldn’t have to point out to Mr. Morton how silly it is for a C minus student, her class average, to represent what’s supposed to be an academically gifted school in the Science Olympiad. Even if she is my niece. Especially if she’s my niece. People are going to accuse me of favoritism, when it’s really all on Mr. Morton.

  The bell rings. Javier, perhaps only now comprehending that he will be dropped off the wrestling team, groans and shoves his test into his pocket for his parent to sign. “This sucks ass,” he mutters.

  “Mr. Gutierrez, please refrain from using that kind of language in my classroom. Surely you can come up with some synonyms.”

  He sneers. “For ‘ass’?”

  I count them off on my fingers. “Booty, bottom, derriere, rump, fanny.” He gathers his backpack and begins exiting. The other students, despite their black moods, laugh as I follow him into the hallway, calling out to his back, “Backside, posterior, rear.”

  He turns with a grin. “It doesn’t mean the same thing.”

  “Then just say, ‘How awful.’ No ‘sucking’ and no ‘ass.’” I wave him off and he recedes into the sea of students.

  I glance around for Riley, but she has already left.

  Dr. O’Malley is standing before me. I jump. “Do you lie in wait behind the lockers, Dr. O’Malley?”

  “A word, Ms. Garner.” He goes into my classroom. It’s my prep. I square my shoulders and follow him.

  “I take it you saw the test grades.” I entered them into the school computer last night. It’s a system we have so that everyone has immediate access to grades, and no parents can say they were blindsided by Junior’s failing grade.

  He sits behind my own desk as if it’s his. The sun hits him square in the face and I think he would have been better off if he’d sat at a student’s desk. He gets up and closes the blinds.

  “I know what you’re going to say. And you know what I’m going to say. So why do we have to have this conversation all over again?” I stare at him, waiting for an answer.

  “Parents want you removed.” Dr. O’Malley’s voice is soft and level.

  I sit down behind the first desk.

  “Ms. Garner . . .”

  “Miss. I’ve never been married.” Fired? The parents want m
e fired? “Did they start calling you today?”

  He nods. “Oh, it’s been a long time coming, Gal. You know that.”

  “You can’t fire me. I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not my fault if the students don’t put in the effort.” But then I think of Riley. Riley did seem to put in the effort, didn’t she, with her flash cards and her worry?

  What if I really was the problem? Was there something I could do better?

  Dr. O’Malley stretches his palms flat across my desk. “Listen. The way you teach is the way a lot of science and math teachers teach. You teach like you expect them to have a certain degree of knowledge already, like you don’t understand why they don’t understand. It’s easy for you. It’s not easy for them.”

  He lets this sink in.

  I think back to my teaching methods. To Dara and Dr. O’Malley talking about me in the hall. They are conspiring and this is the result. “Dr. O’Malley, you’ve seen me teach. Why would you never point that out before?”

  He grins a little. “I have, albeit more indirectly. You are less than open to criticism, Miss Garner.”

  I lean back in my chair. “So. If we’re being blunt here, what now? I’ve been doing things this way for eight years. How can you suddenly do this?”

  “We’d like to move you to a part-time position.” His hands relax and he places them back in his lap. “I think it will be better for you overall.”

  He’s thinking about my kidney. He’s thinking about the time I missed because my leg graft got clogged, because of the IVP dye, because of all the various small things I have go wrong all the time.

  I bristle. “It’s discrimination. I am a capable person. You can’t do this. I’ll fight it.”

  “Then at the very least, consider making your tests more accessible.”

  So it’s an ultimatum. “Accessible? These students don’t have anything holding them back except their own desire and willingness to learn.” I go over to the desk and grab my big black gradebook. “I know one thing. The kids who came in for extra tutoring all got at least a B. What does that tell you? If they ask for help, they shall receive.”