I squirmed and tried to extricate myself from his grip.
“She don’t look very happy to be your girlfriend,” said one of the short losers.
“Sure she is, why don’t you give me a kiss Naomi?”
The look on my face must’ve revealed my horror because at once the entire group, with the exception of Dwayne, burst out laughing. He pulled me closer and instinctively I shoved against him. Not hard or anything, hurting him would be impossible. I just wanted to get away. A sound like a bomb exploded in my ears and a taste like blood coated my tongue.
Dwayne let go with a yelp. “Bitch, what did you do that for?”
I had no idea what I’d done. He let go, but I didn’t do anything. Or did I? In my confusion, I pushed through bodies and headed for the library. Curse words floated behind me as I stepped on toes and rammed into shoulders. Dwayne kept pace.
Behind us one of his cronies yelled, “She’s too pretty for you, Dwayne. You’ll need to find an uglier one to bribe to be yer girlfriend.”
He finally caught up with me and grabbed my arm, whispering low and fast in my ear, “You’ll pay for that. You wait.”
I pulled away but he had a hard grip and he was looking at my hand curiously.
“Where is your ring?”
“What ring?”
“The one I gave you last night.”
“Um, I left it at home. I didn’t want to lose it.” Truthfully, I had no idea what happened to it.
“You’ll wear it, you little bitch. It’s proof that I own you.”
When the bell rang, he pushed me away and stalked off. I stared for a minute at the place where he had been standing. The impossibility of it all swirled around in my head like a storm cloud about to break.
After school, Ruth jogged up behind me, looping her arm through mine. I cringed as her fingertips rested on the back of my hand, but the familiar burning sensation did not come. Her fingertips were cool and soft. I still unhooked my arm. She was too close. Her white flip-flops slapped the ground.
“Hey, what happened this morning?” her voice was breathless near my ear.
“I got lost in the crowd. Sorry.”
“No problem. Do you want to come over tonight? My parents would love it if I brought a friend home.” She tugged on my arm and looked at me like a baby deer. I could just see it, Ruth and I at her house baking chocolate chip cookies, her foster mom laughing as we stole cookie dough out of the bowl. And then that night, we’d lay awake and whisper about the things we were afraid of and I would tell her all about Dwayne and my father. I shook my head. If I told anyone about Father and Dwayne, they’d kill me before I could spill anymore.
“I can’t.” I looked over my shoulder just as we got on the bus. Dwayne stood there glaring at me. His lips curled into a cruel smile as he slid his fingers across his throat. It seemed so unreal and brash. No one made threats like that, right? So I did something very uncharacteristic of me. I slipped my hand behind my back and flipped him off.
My boldness shocked me. Never had a curse world slipped from my lips. Let alone a vulgar action. Cursing was punishable by placing a hot coal on the tongue in front of the whole congregation. Most of the time, women were not allowed to witness anything in the main sanctuary but sometimes, if someone was being punished, they would force us to watch. About a year ago, we witnessed the punishment of a foul tongue. The boy was small, nine or ten. His mother stood in front of me. I heard her whisper that he’d said “shit” when he dropped a heavy rock on his foot and broke his toe. Unfortunately for the boy, his father heard it.
The noise that came from his mouth when they placed the burning ember on his tongue was not human. I never saw the boy or his mother again. I hope she took him and ran.
I would have to burn my finger.
My mind spun with the implications of the last twenty-four hours. My life changed in a way that even I couldn’t comprehend and that was just on the things that were happening to me. Inside, I was changing too. My mind had somehow cleared of the fog I’d been in for the last eight years. The home I lived in was not just unusual, it was wrong. I wanted out.
When I arrived home, I dropped my bag in my room, paused for a second to admire the bowl of Kaisers, and snuck out to the greenhouse before Mother could catch me. I was afraid that if she saw me, she’d see the guilt on my face. The guilt of making a friend. The guilt of defying my father. Not that they’d ever come out and said I couldn’t have friends, but it was more or less a given and so far I hadn’t deliberately disobeyed them. Which was good. For every act of disobedience one of my fingernails would be ripped out with a pair of pliers. I hated witnessing that one at church.
To my surprise, the greenhouse looked the same. No petals littered the ground, just the usual thorny vines climbing over the door and the multi-colored flowers in every corner. I brushed my finger along the table. Spotless. That table hadn’t been spotless in years. Was I going crazy? Was all of this some weird tale my brain spun to protect me from reality?
My Kaisers were starting to regrow and evidence of my fit was gone. The floor had been swept clean. I’m not a neat freak, I prefer my space to be organized chaos. My room couldn’t be that way because my mother insisted on cleanliness, but she never entered the greenhouse.
The floor was always covered in dirt and leaves and I had plants stashed everywhere. I could find all of them, but no one else could. Now the table and floor were clean and I had a bowl full of Kaiser Wilhelm’s in my room.
The kiss. Real?
I shook my head. A hallucination. My greenhouse did that to me sometimes. I’d hear, see or smell things that were unnatural. That’s all this was. A fantasy gone too far. Yet, I could still taste the honey and cinnamon. And his face, I could picture clearly, even though I hadn’t even seen him. I made him the boy who bought me a new tray of breakfast. I sighed and wished that the life I lived in my head was real. Fantasies like this couldn’t hurt anything. In fact, they helped when I thought about Dwayne. Maybe life with him wouldn’t be so bad if I could close my eyes and pretend he was someone else, someone kind and handsome.
Several of the roses were in full bloom. I stopped to sniff a few and I deadheaded a couple of bushes, but then remembered I had a mission. Next to the table sat a small plastic set of drawers. I opened a drawer and pulled out my laminating paper. In my backpack I had a small picture of Ruth. I printed it off during photography. My second favorite class. My first was my agriculture class. I got to spend eighty minutes every other day in the greenhouse at school. Course, they didn’t teach us anything about roses. We grew Spider Plants, Swedish Ivy, and Poinsettias instead. The kind of plants we could sell at Christmas or Mother’s Day, but I still learned a ton.
Photography was less exciting but better than gym or drama. Anytime we got a new student, we got to take their picture for the school newspaper. I didn’t go with them to photograph Ruth, but I still took a copy. She deserved to be out here with my roses, but her rose was not in the greenhouse at all. She belonged outside.
I took a lot of pictures of people. Some people I knew, others I didn’t, but every person belonged with a rose. Well, Father didn’t and neither did Dwayne, but everyone else did.
On the pot of my Collette Roses was my mother. And my late grandmother was attached to my White Angel rose bush outside. She taught me to love my roses and she was my angel. She taught me how to breed and prune roses. Because of her I could continue getting new ones. Whenever I created something new, I thought of my love for my Grandma. When Grandma died, I locked myself in her greenhouse for three days surrounded by our roses. That day her greenhouse became mine. I couldn’t bear the thought of life without her.
For the last couple of years, I’d been searching for someone to go with my Ruth Alexander roses. And now I had someone. Ruth was perfect in every way. Not only did her name match, but her hair matched the bloom color. Well almost. Ruth’s hair was more orange than apricot, but it was close enough. I finished laminating the pic
ture, punched a hole through the top and drew a long string through the hole.
The well-worn path to my outside garden meandered through the woods for several hundred feet. Birds chattered and squirrels ran up and down the trees. At the end of the path stood a trellis covered in bright sunset colored roses. When I reached the trellis, I tied Ruth’s picture to a sturdy stem near the ground.
Next year, I wouldn’t be around to see Ruth bloom. I sank to the ground. The damp earth seeped into my skirt, chilling me. When I married Dwayne, I would be forced to stay in my house all day and not be allowed to go to school. My day would consist of scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, and trimming Dwayne’s toenails. He would sit on the couch and make me bring him his dinner and if my father had his way, we would be like rabbits, producing child after child. My stomach churned thinking of sex with Dwayne. He would be my whole world. If he wouldn’t allow me to do something then I couldn’t do it. He’d never allow me to do anything that would make me happy. Like roses.
Stop thinking about it, I commanded myself—dwelling on the inevitable was pointless. Focus on the here and now. Enjoy the roses. I shook my head, dug out my clippers and set to trimming bushes.
When I finally walked back to the greenhouse, I had to fight to keep the tears at bay. Next year this garden would die. Why did I have to leave?
An hour later, Mother called me in for dinner. I cut a few roses from my Rosa Mundi, a wide striped red and white rose. They were unique and pretty. On the pot was a picture of one of the cheerleaders at school who always said hi to me. I slid them into a vase and walked slowly back to the house.
I put the vase down on the dresser and noticed a small gold band. The ring. I slipped it on my finger and sighed. If that small piece of metal was enough to keep Dwayne off my back then it was worth it. I didn’t remember taking it off.
After putting my flowers in my room, I sat down next to Father and waited for Mother to serve me. I kept my eyes down, seeking to avoid attention. Silence was a normal part of our dinner routine, I didn’t need to worry about speaking. Mother put a few pieces of broccoli on my plate, a spoonful of noodles, and a bit of spaghetti sauce. She placed a chunk of garlic bread on her plate and Father’s, but did not give any to me. For some reason that annoyed me. Why couldn’t I have garlic bread?
Dinner was silent and tense. Even though I knew they couldn’t possibly know about my indiscretions there was an air of something-is-about-to-happen. After dinner I picked up my plate and my mother’s.
My father grunted. “Your mother will clean up. You will come help me chop wood.”
Chop wood? It was nearly summer time. We didn’t need any more wood. Besides, chopping wood was men’s work, not women’s. Women cooked, cleaned, had babies, took care of the babies, and made sure the husbands were happy. Men did whatever they wanted. Plus all the outdoor chores. How could I possibly chop wood?
The air outside was balmy. The woodpile sat behind our burn barrel, piled high with short logs. Usually, in the middle of the summer, Father would rent a wood splitter and split all of the wood to heat our home for the winter.
He pointed to the woodpile. “Pick a piece, then set it here.” He patted the large tree stump in front of him. In his right hand he held a large axe. I found a piece that wasn’t too heavy and heaved it to the stump. I set it on its end. It wobbled a little and then fell over.
My father scowled at me. “You’ll have to hold it up.”
My hands shook as I placed them about halfway down the eighteen-inch piece. For a second nothing happened. I kept my face turned away and my eyes squeezed shut.
“Dwayne tells me you have a new friend.”
I turned my head and looked toward him in surprise. How was it possible that Dwayne was smart enough to realize that Ruth was a new friend? The axe whooshed inches from my face and hit the wood with a terrifying thunk. I let go. The wood fell into two pieces. My father placed one piece on the ground, held the other out to me and nodded toward the stump. I placed my hands around the wood and my whole body shook now that I knew what to expect.
“What’s her name?” he asked and raised the axe again.
“Ruth.” Whoosh. Thunk. The axe bit deeper into the wood this time and came to rest only a couple of inches above my fingers.
“Is she a slut?”
I shrugged and my cheeks burned. I picked up the other half of the piece of wood.
“Dwayne tells me she’s a slut. I don’t like you being friends with her.”
Whoosh. Thunk. I let go before the axe finished its path. Good thing too or my right index finger would have been sliced off at the first knuckle.
“Naomi, look at me.” I stood up straight. Defiant.
His pale watery blue eyes met mine. Long ago, those eyes were kind and held the promise of fishing and mischief. Now they only carried the promise of pain. “You won’t be friends with her. You hear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He left the wood sitting by the stump, leaned the axe against the burn barrel and strolled back into the house. Not once did he look back at me.
I burned with fury. What right did he have to tell me who my friends could be? I never made friends. Never. And now he’d gone and forbidden that. He shouldn’t have even found out about it, yet he did. Because of Dwayne, who would soon have even more control over me. Ruth had escaped her horrors. Now I needed to.
That night sleep came quickly and I dreamed. Dwayne’s horrid face swam above mine, his skunk-like breath filling my nostrils. He hissed words I could not understand and his body turned to a snake. He struck me in the arm, his fangs releasing slow venom. The poison burned and traveled down my limbs.
Then, in a sudden shift, my mind went blank and the pain disappeared. I could not open my eyes. Thoughts of Dwayne disappeared and fear fled. A breath tickled my upper lip, smelling sweet. I waited, hoping he’d kiss me again but was met with disappointment instead. He moved and kissed my eyelids, then my cheeks, and the tip of my nose. Visions of warm beaches filled my head. A soft melody played in my ears. He feathered his lips along my jaw and then hesitated. I wanted, desperately, for him to kiss my lips, but found I was again unable to move. Peace filled the hollow cave of my heart. And then he was gone.
My eyelids fluttered open and I flicked on the lamp next to my bed. I licked my lips. Honey. The Rosa Mundi was gone and was replaced with a Madame Kai-Shek. The huge yellow bloom perfumed the air. I stuck my nose inside it and hoped it would be possible to hold onto the peace his kiss brought. That I wouldn’t be filled with fear the next time I saw Dwayne. But even as I thought it, the peace began to fade.
It was strange, even though I couldn’t see his face, I again pictured the boy from this morning. The one who spilled my food all over. He would have to play the part of my mystery kisser in my head. I wished, not for the last time, that I could see his face.
Over the next few nights he came every night. He had not been a dream. Every night I left a rose for him and every morning a different one stood in the vase. The game we played was dangerous and exotic, but where else would I find solace? Perhaps, he wasn’t real and I was going loopy. Either way it didn’t matter. He made me happy and if it was all in my head, then oh well. When I married Dwayne, I’d be dead soon enough. Might as well enjoy my delusions, but in my heart, I knew this boy whoever he was, was no delusion.
He was real.
Seven roses contain the name of the day of rest. My favorite is Sunday Lemonade. Its pale pink blooms give off a scent of lazy summer nights visiting with friends. Just the opposite of the many Sabbaths I spend with my father. His Sundays smell like famine and pestilence.
BIRDS SANG TO ANNOUNCE THE new day. Perhaps I could stay in bed a little longer. My eyelids fluttered and I rolled to my side, the crisp sheets scratching my skin. The cheap alarm clock glowed red in the darkness. 8:30. I had an hour until the apocalypse began. For a minute I debated staying in bed, replaying various kisses from my mystery savior, but I still needed to shower and
plant myself on the couch before Father was ready to go. My stomach growled and I sighed. No food today. Sundays were days of fasting. My ankle-length nightgown twisted around my knees and I struggled to free my legs. My breath came in rapid bursts, the claustrophobia setting in. Consciously, I slowed my breath and untwisted my nightgown. If I ever escaped, I promised myself the first thing I would do is sleep naked.
I sat up and flicked on the cracked floral lamp that sat on my nightstand. My gaze settled on my dresser. Last night I left deep red Oklahoma Roses. Next to them sat a monster blueberry muffin and a banana. I was grateful, but flabbergasted that today of all days he knew to leave food with the flowers. Today, I wouldn’t be allowed to eat.
I scrambled to the dresser and inhaled the muffin and banana. Only when I was half way through did the thought occur to me that Father might notice the smell on my breath. I would have to take extra care brushing my teeth. Full and feeling that today might not be so awful after all, I set to the task of getting ready for church.
After my shower, I scrubbed my teeth and braided my hair. Guilt swam across my insides. This week, I disobeyed my parents, flipped off Dwayne, ate breakfast on the Sabbath and I was kissing a boy every night. If I confessed before the Master I would have a fingernail ripped out, my middle finger would be burned, I would have to drink a glass of scalding water, and I didn’t know what my punishment would be for kissing the boy. No one had ever committed that sin before or at least confessed to it.
Perhaps it was cowardly, but I didn’t want to bear the punishment. Perhaps given enough time, I’d just forget about it. As long as the Master never asked me, I wouldn’t have to confess. I tried once, to not confess, but one look into those evil red eyes and the words tumbled off my lips. I couldn’t help it.
I buttoned up my best dress. On Sundays we didn’t wear skirts. We wore long ugly dresses. Mine was puke green with tiny pink flowers on it. It buttoned from my neck to my ankles. The sleeves rested at my wrists and the dress was fitted at the waist. Most of the women’s dresses were the same, made out of cheap material they found at the fabric store. At least mine didn’t have awful ruffles and deer. That girl always had the same look on her face. The one that said, “shoot me now, please.”
The Thorn Chronicles-Books 1-4: Kissed, Destroyed, Secrets, and Lies Page 3