He reached out to grab the money but did not pause in his bold exploration of my body. Continuing down my layers of skirt, he studied the stripe of leg visible between my socks and stretch pants.
“This is Victoria,” Renata said, flicking her fingertips in my direction. She paused, as if waiting for the flower farmer to introduce himself, but he didn’t.
His eyes snapped back to my face. Our eyes met. There was something unsettling in them—a flicker of recognition—that captured my attention. Looking him over, my first impression was of a man that had struggled as much as, if differently than, I had. He was older than me, I decided—five years, at least. His face had the dusty, lined look of a manual laborer. I imagined he had planted, tended, and harvested his flowers himself. His body was lean and muscular as a result, and he neither flinched nor smiled as I examined him. His olive skin would be salty. The thought caused my heart to race from something besides anger, an emotion I didn’t recognize but which made the core of my body warm. I bit the inside of my lip and pulled my eyes back to his face.
He withdrew a single orange tiger lily from a bucket.
“Take one,” he said, handing it to me.
“No,” I said. “I don’t like lilies.”
“You should,” he said. “They suit you.”
“How do you know what suits me?” Without thinking, I snapped the head of the lily he held. Six pointed petals fell, the flower’s face examining the hard floor. Renata sucked in her breath.
“I don’t,” he said.
“I didn’t think so.” I rocked the full bucket of flowers I carried, dispersing the heat radiating from my body. The motion drew attention to my shaking arms.
I turned to Renata. “Outside,” she said, motioning toward the front of the building. I waited for her to say more, sinking with dread at the thought of being fired on the spot less than an hour after starting my first job. But Renata’s eyes were fixed on the growing line at the next booth. When she glanced back and saw me unmoving, her eyebrows pinched together in confusion.
“What?” she asked. “Go wait by the truck.”
Pushing through a thick crowd, I made my way toward the exit. My arms strained under the weight of the full bucket, but I carried it through the parking lot without stopping to rest. At Renata’s truck I set the bucket down, sinking, exhausted, onto the hard concrete.
From behind the dark windows, Elizabeth watched. I was sure of it, even though I couldn’t see the outline of her body behind the glass. The back door remained locked. Shivering, I watched the sun drop out of sight. I would have ten minutes, no more, before I was left to root for the spoon in darkness.
I’d been locked out before. The first time I was five years old, my protruding stomach empty in a house with too many children and too many bottles of beer. Sitting on the kitchen floor, I had watched a tiny white Chihuahua eat her dinner from a ceramic bowl. I inched closer, overcome by jealousy. It was not my intention to eat the dog’s food, but when my foster father saw me, my face only centimeters from the bowl, he picked me up by the back of my turtleneck and threw me out.
Sitting on Elizabeth’s steps, I ate the pasta and tomatoes from my pockets and thought about whether I would look for the spoon. If I found it and gave it to Elizabeth, she might still make me sleep outside. Doing as I was told had never been a guarantee that I would get what I was promised. But I had glimpsed my room on the way downstairs, and it looked more comfortable than the splintering wood steps. I decided to try.
Slowly, I meandered through the garden until I came to the place I’d tossed the spoon. Kneeling under the almond tree, I felt around with my hands, thorns cutting my fingers as I reached through the thick brush. I parted tall stalks and pulled petals off thick shrubs. I tore leaves, broke branches. Still, I didn’t see it.
“Elizabeth!” I screamed, growing frustrated. The house was quiet.
The darkness was becoming thick, heavy. The vineyard seemed to stretch in all directions, an inescapable sea, and all at once I was terrified. With both hands I reached for the trunk of a dense bush, thorns piercing my soft palms as I pulled as hard as I could. The plant uprooted. I continued, pulling up everything I could grab, until the earth was bare. In the overturned soil the spoon lay alone, reflecting moonlight.
Wiping my bloody hands on my pants, I grabbed the spoon and ran toward the house, tripping and falling and picking myself up without ever letting go of my prize. I bounded up the steps, pounding the heavy metal spoon against the wooden door relentlessly. The lock turned, and Elizabeth stood before me.
For just a moment we looked at each other in silence—two pairs of wide, unblinking eyes—then I launched the spoon into the house with as much strength as I could gather in my thin arm. I aimed for the window over the kitchen sink. The spoon flew just inches past Elizabeth’s ear, arched high toward the ceiling, and bounced off the window before clattering into the porcelain sink. One of the small blue bottles teetered on the edge of the windowsill before it fell and shattered.
“There’s your spoon,” I said.
Elizabeth took a barely controlled breath before lunging at me. Her fingers dug into my lower rib cage, and she transported me to the kitchen sink, all but throwing me inside. My hip bones pressed against the tile countertop, and my face hovered so close to the shattered glass that for a moment the whole world was blue.
“That,” Elizabeth said, lowering my face even closer to the glass, “belonged to my mother.” She held me completely still, but I could feel the anger filling her fingertips, threatening my descent into the glass.
With a jerk she pulled me out of the sink and set me down, letting go before my feet touched the ground. I fell backward. She stood above me, and I waited for her hand to fall on my face. All it would take was one slap. Meredith would return before the mark could fade, and this final experiment would be over. I would be declared unadoptable, and Meredith would stop trying to find me a family; I was ready—past ready.
But Elizabeth dropped her hand and stood up straight. She took a step away from me.
“My mother,” she said, “would not have liked you.” She nudged me with her toe until I stood up. “Now get yourself upstairs and into bed.”
But the moment had passed. Elizabeth looked over my head, her breathing even.
With heavy steps I turned away. Pulling a slice of ham off the table, I climbed the stairs. The door to my room was open. I leaned for a moment in the empty frame, taking in all that would be temporarily mine: the dark wood furniture, the circular pink rag rug, and the desk lamp with a pearly stained-glass shade. Everything looked new: the puffy white eyelet comforter and matching curtains, the clothes hung in neat rows in the closet and folded into stacks in each dresser drawer. Crawling into bed, I nibbled the ham, salty and metallic-tasting from where my bleeding hands gripped. Between bites I paused to listen.
I had lived in thirty-two homes that I could remember, and the one thing they all had in common was noise: buses, brakes, the rumbling of a freight train passing. Inside: the warring of multiple televisions, the beeping of microwaves and bottle warmers, the doorbell ringing, a curse uttered, the snap of deadbolts turning. Then there were the sounds of the other children: babies crying, siblings screaming upon separation, the yelp of a too-cold shower, and the whimper of a roommate’s nightmare. But Elizabeth’s house was different. Like the vineyard settling in the dusk, inside the house was silent. Only a faint, high-pitched buzz traveled through the open window. It reminded me of the squeal of electricity on wires, but in the country I imagined it to come from something natural,
