Five Roses

by Alice Zorn

  Thérèse had understood the first time she’d been told that charity was not an inexhaustible resource. Since she began working, she’d paid for her bed and board.

  She left the office and the building. She’d only slept for a couple of hours, but Mother Dominique’s words had jolted her awake. When the bus she normally took to work drew up to the curb, she stepped on. She didn’t get off downtown but stayed in her seat, watching the sky that appeared now and again between the high-rises. Not many people were left on the bus when she finally saw the scaffolding atop a tall brick building with the gigantic letters, FARINE FIVE ROSES.

  She yanked the bell and got off. The sidewalk was lined with low buildings with grey plywood covering their windows. Once upon a time people must have lived and worked here. She’d never before seen abandoned property in the city. Except for the odd car, the street was empty. She began walking toward the Five Roses sign, down one street, then another, only to be stopped by a waterway built of great blocks of concrete and stone. The water glimmered, depthless and murky. She peered farther along and saw where a bridge crossed it. The bridge belonged to a main street where cars and trucks passed. The Five Roses sign still loomed in the sky, but she couldn’t tell how to approach it. Directions twisted strangely — not like the city roads downtown. More like paths in a forest following a creek or skirting a marsh.

  She turned onto a street of aged brick buildings, all joined in a row, close to the sidewalk. Doors canted slightly. Steps were trodden. Scrap lumber had been used to fashion a handrail. A woman walking toward her wore a second-hand coat. Thérèse recognized the hang of shoulders and hips stretched to fit someone else’s body. The cars parked along the street were dented and rusty like cars in the country. A boy, still in his pajamas and with a plastic bag of sliced bread dangling from his hand, jogged past and loped up the stairs to a house, shouting “Maman!” as the door slammed behind him.

  Thérèse heard the strum of a guitar and plaintive singing coming from a house with a door painted bright orange. A hand-lettered piece of cardboard was propped in a window. CHAMBRE À LOUER / ROOM FOR RENT. She didn’t hesitate. She climbed the three steps from the sidewalk and knocked. When no one came, she rapped on the glass. The singing stopped. From an upstairs window, someone called, “Quoi?” A young man with bedraggled blond hair leaned out on his arms, peering down.

  “I came about the room.”

  “So come,” he said and ducked inside.

  She waited at the door. When she heard him start singing again, she tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. The door faced a large hallway and, beyond that, a broad room opening onto another. Against the walls eddied cushions, blankets, and sleeping bags. There were no tables, no chairs.

  Thérèse followed the soft wailing up a broad stairway with a handsome carved banister. Along the hallway were doors, some closed, some ajar. She saw a mattress heaped with rumpled clothes, candles on the floor burnt low in dishes, a girl sitting cross-legged, braiding another girl’s hair. Both wore long patterned skirts.

  The young man stopped singing long enough to say, “The room’s at the end — on the left. Forget about the balcony. It’s for the pigeons.”

  She walked down the hallway. In her body she felt she belonged here. The Five Roses sign had led her to this house — to this room. The plaster walls were nicked with scars, the floorboards bald with age and use. There was a balcony outside the window with pigeons perched along the railing. They didn’t fly away until she knocked on the glass.

  Thérèse told the young man she was taking the room. “Doesn’t work like that,” he said. “You have to come back when Stilt’s here. Talk to him.”

  She retraced her walk to the main street where the bus passed. At the convent dormitory, she packed her suitcase. There was no one to whom she even wanted to say goodbye. She waited on the sidewalk for the bus and stayed on until she saw the Five Roses sign and the bus crossed the bridge. She carried her suitcase along the streets of weathered brick row houses.

  She didn’t knock on the orange door before she walked in because she lived here now. She rooted through the cupboards in the kitchen for a bucket and rag. The windowsill was so thick with grime that she had to change the water before she could start on the floor. She leaned on her knees, fists balled inside the rag as she scrubbed. She paid no attention when one of the kids, then another, stood in the doorway to watch.

  She had washed halfway across the floor when a man squatted next to her. “Hey, whoa! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Thérèse kept rocking forward on her haunches, shoving the rag with her fists.

  He laid a hand on her forearm, which made her sit back as if he’d pressed a button.

  “Who are you?”

  “Thérèse.”

  He wore strands of beaded necklaces, a leather vest without a shirt, silver rings with great stones on his fingers. She’d seen people like him in the city, but never close-up. His hair, pulled back in a ponytail, frizzed grey at the temples.

  She sloshed her rag in the bucket, wrung it, and dropped the twist on the floor. She had to finish in time to get to work.

  “Hey, are you deaf ? I don’t want to play the heavy here, but I’m the one who decides if you can have this room.”

  She understood now. Like Mother Dominique. She sat back with her head lowered.

  “Are you a runaway?”

  Run away from the cabin? How did he know?

  “Nah,” he drawled. “You’re too old. You must be like twenty, eh?” He fingered the end of her braid then looped it around his hand.

  She clenched her jaw and stiffened, wishing he wouldn’t touch her hair.

  “Your braid’s cool. But you’re pretty straight, aren’t you?”

  She had no idea what he meant.

  “Do you have any bread on you?”

  She glanced at him. Why would she have bread?

  “Money,” he said.

  She remembered about charity. “I have a job.”

  “A job’s good.” He paused. “But I don’t think you’ll like it here.”

  “I will.”

  “Oh yeah? I bet you’ll be gone in a week. But I guess I won’t kick you out after you already washed the floor. Don’t want bad karma.”

  The next morning, when Thérèse returned from work, she saw that someone had dragged a mattress and a blanket into her room. She was so exhausted she slept despite the gamy stink of the wool and the sunlight from the window. When she woke, she didn’t recognize where she was. Then she heard the pigeons. Their roosting murmur had worked so far into her dreams that the sound was already familiar.

  Thérèse never set out to explore the house, though day by day she began to clean it. She scooped towels off the floor and hung them to dry. Bagged the empty pizza boxes and takeout containers. Scrubbed the sinks. Swept the hallway and wiped the carved wood moulding.

  The house was quiet during the day. The kids only woke or began to arrive toward evening. When Thérèse got ready to leave for work, putting on her uniform and pinning up her braid, she could hear the rhythmic slap of hand drums starting up and smell the strangely scented reek — like smouldering weeds — that wafted through the house. People had always acted in ways she didn’t understand. She ignored them.

  As the weather got warmer, she tacked a piece of flowered cloth across her window so she could open it without the pigeons trying to fly into the room. Sometimes she woke to a grey tabby curled in the nook behind her legs. The cat liked to pad careful steps across the guano terrain of the balcony and slink in her window. She showed it the route by the hallway but it still chose the balcony, making the pigeons grunt and flutter off.

  When Thérèse rode the bus to work and home again in the morning, she watched for the Five Roses sign. She knew it watched her, too, from its height and in spirit. She remembered waking in the cabin and how the words o
n the sheet whispered to her.

  Not far from the house, in a junk shop, she found a large bowl like the one Maman had used for making bread. She bought flour, sugar, lard, and yeast. Like the Italian cleaning women who cooked for their families, she wanted to bake bread for the kids. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know their names, or even how many lived there. Early in the morning she sprinkled yeast over warm water and waited for it to soften. With a wooden spoon she stirred and beat the dough until it was rubbery. She kneaded in the final cups of flour and covered the dough with a damp cloth. The thick ceramic walls of the bowl kept the dough warm. When it had risen, she formed two balls she set side by side in a single pan. Maman had called bread shaped like this pain fesse — buttock bread. She didn’t normally mention that part of the body, but that was the name. Two smoothly rounded loaves joined by a seam.

  In the house, the kids woke in the late afternoon to the yeasty odour of bread baking. They lumbered down the stairs, yawning and hungry. Thérèse gave them thick slices. She was happy with her new life, her job, the savings she tucked in an envelope taped to the wall of her closet, the old house she kept tidy, the easy company of the kids who said her bread was the greatest. She thought about buying a chair for her room. She stroked the cat, who lay on her blanket and purred. She scratched around its ears and under its chin.

  One morning she came home through rain pelting down. Her shoes squished as she ran. She leaped onto the front steps and opened the door to the staccato howl of crying. A girl in a long, wet skirt sat against the wall in the front room. A baby had slid from the slack crook of her arm to her lap. Its face was crimson with rage and bawling, its legs and torso bundled in a filthy blanket.

  A boy scuffed into the room, holding a mug of tea. “God, I’m glad you’re here,” he told Thérèse. “I found her in the park. She’s got nowhere to go.”

  The girl clutched the mug with both hands, letting the baby slide farther between her legs to the floor. Its cry grew thinner, more choked.

  Thérèse couldn’t bear to see the baby so neglected. She hurried across the room to lift it from the girl who made no move to stop her. Through the blanket Thérèse felt the sodden diaper and tiny limbs. The smell of concentrated urine made her blink. She strode to the stairs and behind her heard the boy urging the girl to come, too. Why? The girl was useless.

  In her room Thérèse lay the baby on her mattress. She peeled away the dirty blanket, her fingers careful with the safety pins wedged in the saturated diaper. The baby heaved for breath to cry. A girl, Thérèse saw. She tugged free a corner of her bedsheet to cover the child’s scrawny nakedness. How could she bathe her? There were no stoppers for the sinks in the bathrooms.

  The girl who was the mother stood by the wall with the boy. Two other kids leaned in the doorway. “Here,” Thérèse said. “Someone watch the baby.” When no one moved, she said more sharply, “Here!”

  The boy took a step closer. Thérèse said, “Don’t touch her, just make sure she stays there.” She bounded down the stairs to the kitchen and grabbed her large bread bowl and soap. She gushed the water hard, testing it for warmth.

  As she walked down the hallway with the bowl filled with water, she could hear the baby still crying, but more weakly, exhausted. The girl sat sprawled against the wall.

  “Get her out,” Thérèse told the boy. “Give her a bath. And dry clothes.”

  The girl raised her head with its tangled, bushy hair. “She’s hungry.”

  “Then why didn’t you feed her?” Thérèse snatched a towel from her closet, gently wrapped the baby, and carried her to the girl, who fumbled with her T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts, plumped against her stomach, leaked milk. She let Thérèse place the baby in her arms. She didn’t move to help and Thérèse — disgusted by the girl’s lack of shame — had to nudge the baby’s chin toward the nipple. The baby batted her fists in protest until a dribble of milk touched her tongue. She latched on now and began sucking greedily.

  Thérèse had no choice but to wait. The kids stood watching the girl with the baby. Then the boy began telling them how he’d found the girl. Thérèse saw the cat at the window, its tail lifted like a disapproving finger at the crowd in the room.

  Excitement bubbled among the kids at this discovery of a girl like themselves with a baby. The girl watched them with vacant eyes, head leaned against the wall, breasts exposed, tears dried and sticky on her pale cheeks. Thérèse bent to take the baby, who’d fallen asleep. An instinct or a memory made her hold the baby upright and pat her back.

  “Go,” she said. “Into the bath.” She’d several times dipped her fingers in the water in the bread bowl to make sure it was still warm. She supported the baby’s back — so small she was! — on the flat of her hand and slowly eased her into the water. The baby moved her arms but didn’t wake. Thérèse squeezed water from a washcloth over her body and smoothed soap over her slippery limbs. She ran her wet hand several times across the baby’s scalp.

  She wrapped her in the towel and, holding her close, walked down the hallway. The kids had clustered around the bathroom doorway, holding up skirts and jeans they’d scrounged. The girl lay in the tub with her knees and breasts poking from the suds. The bottle of dish detergent Thérèse had brought was on the floor. “I can’t wear jeans,” the girl was complaining. “My hips are too big.”

  “Because you just had a baby!”

  “No, my hips —”

  Thérèse interrupted. “Someone has to buy diapers. I’ve got money.”

  A girl with small gold-framed glasses said she would go. She followed Thérèse to her room, cooing at the baby. “Ooooh, qu’elle est chouette. The perfect little sweetheart.”

  Thérèse spread her fingers wider across the baby’s back. The baby needed more than pretty words and noises. She wasn’t a toy.

  At noon Thérèse called in sick to work. How could she leave the baby with the kids? The girl only remembered her when her breasts ached. All afternoon she lounged with the others in the next room. They giggled, shared a large pizza, traded stories about which bands they’d seen.

  At sundown they trooped downstairs as more kids arrived. Soon, Thérèse smelled the rank sweetness in the air. The thump and wail of music grew louder. She paced in her room with the baby, who began to cry and wouldn’t stop. Thérèse had no choice but to find the girl.

  The kids sprawled on the sleeping bags and cushions in the front room, passing around a pipe. Candles lit the gloom. The laziest movement cast long, distorted shadows. Music clashed and groaned. The scene was evil — an image of hell, which had never before seemed real to Thérèse, but which she recognized now that she saw it. She wanted to flee, but the baby had to be fed. Huddled over to protect her as well as she could, Thérèse crept into the room and kneeled before the girl, who could hardly rouse herself to lift her shirt. Jaw hard, Thérèse forced herself to watch. There had to be another way. A better way. There had to.

  That night Thérèse tucked the baby into bed next to her. She stroked her delicate cheek and whispered, “I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

  Later, when the baby woke and began to fidget, Thérèse carried her downstairs again. The house was quiet. The girl, still clothed, lay against a boy who was naked, both snoring softly. The girl didn’t wake. Thérèse rolled her aside with her foot, freed a breast, tucked the child against it, and gave her the nipple.

  For two days and two nights Thérèse cared for the baby. She hardly slept, but she had never felt more determined and awake. The baby was docile now that she was held, regularly fed, clean and dry. While she slept, Thérèse ran from the house to the store to buy more diapers and clothing. There she saw bottles and formula. Slowly, her finger on the package, she read the instructions.

  The baby sputtered when Thérèse rubbed the wet nipple across her lips, but Thérèse cajoled and rocked her, waiting for her to taste the few gr
ains of sugar she’d added. “What’s your name?” she wondered. She’d never heard the girl say it. “I’m going to call you Rose.”

  That day, when Thérèse called in sick again, the supervisor told her she would need a doctor’s certificate if she called in sick the following night. Thérèse didn’t answer. A baby’s claims were surely greater than a length of grey carpet.

  Rose had taken the bottle several times, but tonight she kicked and gagged on the nipple. Thérèse finally bundled her close to carry downstairs. The front room throbbed with music, flickering shadows, drumbeats, and smoke. The kids slumped in a circle around a tableau of mother and child, not unlike the other times the girl had nursed the baby.

  But Thérèse held Rose. A man lay in the girl’s arms, his mouth on her nipple. In the wavering candlelight, Thérèse saw Stilt’s unshaven cheeks pulling draughts of milk. The girl’s dreamy smile. Farther down his body, a head bobbed at his crotch. The other kids lay in poses miming Stilt’s. Some only watched or rubbed at themselves.

  Thérèse charged up the stairs and slammed the door behind her. She stood with her back against it, her heart pounding hard in her throat. When Rose began to wriggle and cry again, Thérèse grabbed the bottle she’d left on the floor by her mattress. This time Rose took it.

  Thérèse paced the room and thought hard about what to do. She flung open her suitcase, crammed in diapers, baby clothes, formula, nipples. Her things didn’t matter. She tiptoed down the stairs with Rose hidden against her, suitcase in hand, and slipped out the door.

  A groundhog sat upright, its snout twitching at the air. The boys playing in the fields near the woods saw the banner of smoke twisting above the trees. They sneaked as close to the cabin as they dared and spied movement at the window. What if robbers were staying in the cabin and they had guns? The boys scrambled home to tell their father.