“Weird things happened when she died,” I said. “I mean, right when she died. Colors and sounds and then some dreams.”
“Auras,” said Daiyu. “The energy of people. You can bridge the worlds. You’re an intuitive, I think. Sometimes these gifts are passed down.”
“What?” I tried to sit up but she wouldn’t let me. She was really strong. “You think my grandma could . . . could see stuff?”
“Not her. Your father.”
“My father? He was a sperm donor. I never even knew him.”
Daiyu shrugged. “You relax,” she said. “You’ll learn slowly.”
“But what does it mean? What do I do with it?”
“You relax now.” Daiyu looked hard at me, and I closed my eyes and felt myself drifting softly away from the room, the city, into a place where soft fog drifted over shallow water and plants grew up out of it. I saw slender birds sail across the sky and I heard whispering voices, women singing. I could smell wood smoke and wet leaves, and a warm tingling sensation pulsed through my body. I felt more peaceful than I had since we’d lost Grandma and left the house.
A figure was moving toward me, a figure made out of a lavender light and a great kindness, but the next thing I knew, I heard Daiyu’s voice calling me back and the figure retreated. I wanted to reach out for her, call for her to return, but she was gone.
I sat up unsteadily. Clark was watching me, his forehead corrugated with worry. “Is there anything more you can tell me?” I asked the proprietor of Black Jade. Which, I realized, was the color of her eyes.
She helped me off the table, placing her hands on my back and steering me out. “That’s all I can say. You need to discover for yourself.” She handed me a small yellow glass bottle with a dropper. “Take this. Four drops in the morning and at night. It will help. But it must come from you.”
“What else do you know?” I said. “Please.” I was so far away from the foggy river world to where I had traveled during my treatment, and from the glowing figure I had wanted to touch.
Daiyu shook her head again. “That’s all. Now it’s your friend’s turn.”
Half an hour later Clark’s treatment was complete and Daiyu handed him his own orange glass bottle. I was a little surprised he had gone so willingly, in spite of his skepticism.
“I gave you a lung treatment,” Daiyu told me. “A kidney one for him. Lungs govern grief in Chinese medicine, and kidney is fear. You’ll both be more prepared now for your work.”
But what was that work? we both were wondering.
Daiyu, evidently convinced that we were worthy of the herb if not more information, sold us the mugwort and told us two places where we might possibly find the roses, but would say no more.
AFTER LEAVING DAIYU, WE went to a restaurant and ordered soup and rice and plump, delicate-skinned steamed dumplings, which we ate carefully with chopsticks, trying not to let the cabbage and tofu fall out onto the crane-and-cherry-blossom-painted plates. I shivered in the air-conditioned restaurant and wished I’d brought a sweater. One that belonged to my grandmother. Maybe black cashmere and bugle-beaded with a note in the pocket quoting a famous poem.
Clark shook the small plastic bag I’d set on the table. “What’s this toxic warthog stuff anyway?”
“Mugwort,” I said.
“I don’t get it. I can’t see how any of this is going to work.” I couldn’t help but think that he really meant, I don’t want this to work. Not yet. “And how do we know this lady is legit?”
“She seemed to know stuff,” I told him. About the ghost, the auras, the treatments we needed.
“Yeah, and what’s this with auras?”
I shrugged and looked down, suddenly embarrassed. Maybe I did just have a brain disorder.
“Sorry,” Clark said. “This shit is just a lot to take.”
“But you’re a Buffy fan. You shouldn’t be upset by a little aura,” I tried to joke.
“Remember I told you, fiction versus nonfiction.” He frowned. “Do you really see them?”
“I saw this lavender color when my grandma died. It was so strong. And just now, Daiyu, she was sort of silver?”
“What color am I?” Clark asked, his eyes big behind his glasses.
“Green. Bright, clear, light green.”
“Cool.” Clark smiled and I was relieved. “That makes me think about trees,” he said. “And you know where they have a lot of trees, right?”
I could tell he was on board now. It had just taken a reference to his favorite TV show and the mention of the right color. He was surprisingly easy to cheer up for someone who could be so brooding.
WE DROVE OUT TO Arcadia, to the Arboretum, one of the places where Daiyu said we might be able to track down the rare roses. Pathways led us among tall trees, past a lagoon, where ducks swam under wide palms. There was a small bent-willow-branch hut that we had to stoop to enter.
“I want to live here,” I said, wistful as a willow.
Across the lawn was a boarded-up Victorian Queen Anne–style house, painted red and white with lacy trim, spires, and a wraparound porch. Peacocks paraded across the lawn like cloisonné statues come to life.
“Okay. I’ll live there,” Clark said, pointing to the house. “You can come over when you want to shower.”
“Hey, no fair.” I softly slapped his shoulder. The mood had changed suddenly among the trees, to something even lighter than when we had left the restaurant, and I could tell we both needed that.
He pulled my hair, gently, tugging the braid down my back. It was the most he’d ever really touched me, as Clark. I laughed and grabbed his straw hat from his head. He chased me out of the willow hut, through the gardens, among the vine-covered arbors. Peacocks ignored us, fanning their tails narcissistically, oblivious. We were forgetting why we had come.
Until a shadow passed over the sun and we stood on the path under a large, flowering tree, looking at each other. For a second, I thought I saw Grant flashing behind Clark’s eyes and then he was gone.
The rose garden was severely pruned, leaving only thorny stems, and we couldn’t even find the autumn skeletons of the three bushes we were looking for. I wondered for a moment if Daiyu was messing with us.
Still, it had been a good day. I felt better for having gotten out. I thought of Colin and Mary, the sickly, peevish children in The Secret Garden, a book my grandma had liked to read to me when I was little. How it was the natural world outside the house, behind the gates, among the crocuses and roses that healed them. For me, the house we lived in when I was growing up was a secret garden, inside and out.
Clark and I drove home in silence.
Finally he said, “I’m not sure I want this.”
He leaned back from the steering wheel and un-hunched his shoulders. “Even though this whole thing is fucking weird. I don’t know; part of me is still glad he is using my body, that he’s with me somehow.”
I nodded, trying not to give away too much of my own ambivalence.
“But it still freaks me out, too.” He paused. “She called him emptiness and . . . what was it?”
“Devastation.”
His shoulders shivered; I couldn’t tell if it was spontaneous or if he was consciously shaking something off.
“We at least need to go to the other address she gave us for the roses,” I said.
CLARK TOLD ME GOOD-BYE in front of my apartment.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked him.
He glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected someone to be there, watching us. “No, it’s okay,” he mumbled, and I realized he was afraid that Grant might come.
I pretended to feel relieved that Clark hadn’t come in, that Grant couldn’t visit, but to be honest I wanted company. The day had been the best one I’d had in a long time and it was hard to transition back to the empty apartment. My mom was out and there was nothing to eat. Luckily I was still full from the giant lunch I’d had with Clark. I took a bubble bath, put Daiyu’s tincture under m
y tongue, got in bed with To the Lighthouse, and fell asleep around eleven.
The refrigerator woke me with a bang just after midnight, like a warning. The landlord had checked it out but couldn’t find anything wrong and this made me even more uneasy.
I got up to get a glass of water from the filter bottle inside and a noxious smell hit me so hard it was almost three-dimensional. Covering my mouth with one hand, I looked around for the source but couldn’t see anything, so I went to bed with the windows open. In the morning, the kitchen was freezing cold but the smell was gone.
THAT WEEK AT SCHOOL was uneventful. My mother job-hunted during the day and went out for dinner with Luke most nights, coming home late with her leftovers for my next dinner. I tried to focus on work and school. Ms. Merritt’s class was the easiest because I could escape into poetry. I planned to do my report that was due after Christmas vacation on Emily Dickinson, if I could gather the courage to pick up my grandmother’s Dickinson book—it reminded me too much of the day she had died.
Daiyu’s tincture, which I took three times a day, eased some of the sadness I felt, at least for a little while. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed I could breathe a bit more freely every time I used it.
Clark didn’t come over, but we saw each other in class and had lunch together. As we ate his kicharee, we planned for the next Sunday when we would go to see Tatiana González, the second source Daiyu had suggested for the roses we needed. Though we still weren’t exactly sure how we were going to use them.
3. CASA FLORIBUNDA
“I hate that they call this the ‘Suicide Bridge,’” Clark said, clinging to the steering wheel as he drove us over the bridge to Pasadena.
“Have you been taking your drops?” I asked him.
“Yeah, all week. I don’t know if they’re working.”
“Well, at least you’re not at home with your head under the covers,” I said, and he smiled.
“At least you’re not turning goth, only wearing black, and listening to The Cure all day,” he countered.
Maybe Clark was becoming less afraid and I was a little less depressed. Or maybe we were imagining it, but I still felt glad to be crossing the bridge, out in the day, away from our regular indoor lives. I could breathe better, even on a bridge called Suicide.
We had called Tatiana González and mentioned Daiyu, and Tatiana had told us to come. She hadn’t asked any questions, but there had been a knowing tone to her voice that made me think she might be able to help us.
Tatiana lived in a huge, pale-pink Spanish adobe overgrown with entwined purple morning glories and red bougainvillea. It reminded me a little of our old house, except much bigger, sprawling for a good portion of the tree-and-mansion-lined block behind an adobe wall and wrought-iron gate with the words Casa Floribunda written in script. Also, this house had silver milagros—charms of hands, feet, legs, lips, eyes, and hearts—embedded in almost every inch of the outer front walls.
I was glad I had worn a turquoise cotton 1950s skirt, covered with silver sparkles, with my black-and-turquoise cowboy boots and T-shirt—it seemed to go with the setting. A scent of flowers, so strong it felt as if I were holding a bouquet to my nose, met us as we walked inside the courtyard. I could hear the play of water from small fountains and wind chimes that seemed to be singing specifically to us.
A petite woman, black curls adorned with fresh gardenias and cascading to her minuscule waist, met us at the door in a burst of indigo light. Either my perceptions of color, or auras as Daiyu had called them, were becoming stronger, or hers and Daiyu’s were just particularly noticeable, which made sense.
“Welcome!” The woman hugged us both and kissed our cheeks. I saw Clark blush, and a tiny wince of jealousy passed through me. I realized I cared about what Clark felt for other women more than I had thought.
We followed her into the house. The floors were tiled, and the walls glowed in soft colors, different for every room. Pale apricot, smoke blue, lavender. Gleaming oil paintings in antique frames hung everywhere, and there were many elaborately carved wooden figures with beads and dried rose wreaths around their necks. Tatiana took us into a sitting room overlooking a small orchard of fruit trees. There was tea set out for us, along with tamarind ices and guava cream-cheese pastries.
“Tell me about yourselves,” Tatiana said. She wore a purple silk blouse, jeans, and high-heeled sandals, one of which she rocked on the end of her foot as she observed us.
“We’re seniors at Beverly Hills High. We heard about you from Daiyu.”
“Not that. I mean, what is really happening. There’s some kind of obstacle, no?”
I always felt weird mentioning Grant, as if he could hear me, so I just said, “We’re trying to reach my grandmother. She died last August.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But there’s something more, too?”
“Clark’s brother, Grant,” I said.
“And this Grant, he’s no longer with us either.”
I shook my head no.
“I’m so sorry,” Tatiana said, to Clark this time.
“Thank you.” Clark’s voice cracked.
Our hostess regarded us with her dark, almond-shaped eyes, then poured the tea. It had a woodsy fragrance, and I let the steam permeate my skin.
“It’s so hard, death,” Tatiana said. “We aren’t taught or prepared. It’s hard to let someone go, especially when they aren’t ready either.” She looked directly at Clark and twirled a large ring on her finger. “Sometimes we want more of them after they leave, but sometimes, no matter how much we love them, we want less.”
Clark dropped his head and looked at his hands. Tatiana went on.
“My mother died and I was haunted by her spirit for three years. She would overtake me and I’d come to in the strangest places. I was exhausted all the time and lost weight. I weighed eighty pounds. I couldn’t send her away. The idea of having her so close again was—was like an elixir, embriagador, intoxicating, even though I was never present to experience it. She came to be with Florian.”
A puckish man in his twenties was standing in the arched doorway behind her and she greeted him without turning around. “Hello, Florian. I was just talking about you.”
He walked toward us as if he were on a fashion runway, lifting foot over foot, kicking up his heels, wearing a tight, well-fitted suit with slightly short pants that skimmed the tops of his shiny shoes. There was an ascot around his neck, and his blond-streaked hair was swept to the side over enormous brown eyes fanned by long lashes.
“This is my son, Florian.”
She looked much too young to be his mom. Tatiana smiled as Florian shook our hands. “Isn’t she great?” He beamed. “Pleased to meet you. Grandmother said you’d be coming.”
We looked at Tatiana González, who explained, “Before she finally left us for good, she told him lots of things.”
Florian nodded. “We don’t share this information with everyone. Some people are a bit bothered by it. But we think you understand.”
“She has some talents, yes?” Tatiana was staring at me, but not meeting my eyes; her gaze was at the very center of my forehead. “You see the colors, Julie?”
I hesitated; for a moment I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or not, even though she’d said my name. “You mean, around people, right? Sometimes.”
She twirled the ring on her finger the other way. “May I ask if you see mine?”
The indigo light was pulsing stronger now. “Blue,” I said shyly. Clark looked at me with what I could only describe as tender wonder. “But I don’t always see them,” I said. “I only saw my mom’s once, when she was really depressed, and I saw Clark’s when we met.”
“Being able to see auras can be developed. You need to practice. It can help you in your life. It can help you know whom to trust and not to trust.” She took the ring off her finger, reached for my hand, and slipped it on mine. I wondered how it could fit; her fingers seemed much smaller. “This will help,” sh
e said, “for you to see the colors.”
It resembled a cheap mood ring, the kind that had gone in and out of style more than once, but when I looked into the milky surface of the ring and then held it toward Tatiana, the stone shone with indigo undertones.
Clark and I exchanged a glance. I wasn’t sure he was entirely comfortable with all this.
Tatiana held up a finger, gesturing for us to wait, went into another room, and came back with a book. It was titled How to Read and Understand Auras and had illustrations with little figures surrounded by different shades, as well as charts with colored circles and dark dots.
“You need to develop your peripheral vision with these exercises,” Tatiana said. “It will help. The front of the retina is more damaged from overuse. You will see better from the side. But this, this understanding of the colors, isn’t why you came, is it?”
“We’re looking for some roses,” I told her. Although part of me wondered if that much information was necessary; she and her son seemed to know everything about our visit already.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place!” Florian exclaimed. He and Tatiana took us out some glass doors into a garden filled with flowers. The scent in the air, as Florian described it, was “positively ambrosial.” I was happy to have come if for nothing more than to smell that fragrance.
“They bloom like that this time of year?” I asked. It was early December; roses were pruned now, weren’t they?
“Here they do.” Without asking the names of the flowers we needed, he led us straight to three rosebushes planted side by side near a white lattice trellis covered with bell-shaped lilies.
The Magic Matawhero, pale-gold floribunda, so fragrant it made me feel drunk, the pink, charmingly blowsy Iris Gee rose, and the precise petaled apricot Arethusa rose.
Clark and I stood staring at the flowers after I had sniffed each one.
“How much are these?”
“They’re a gift, right, Mother? More grow the more we pick.” Tatiana nodded, and Florian went on, “You can purchase some essences if you’d like. But we love to share the flowers with people who understand. So many people don’t understand.”
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