The Language of Flowers

turned on the water in the sink and in the shower, hoping the noise would drown out the series of retches that followed.

Grant knocked on the door, but I didn’t open it. He went away and came back a half-hour later, but I still didn’t answer his soft tapping. There wasn’t enough room to lie flat on the bathroom floor, so I lay folded over on my side, my legs pressed against the door and my back curved against the ceramic tub. My fingers traced the white hexagonal tile and drew patterns of six-petaled flowers. It was after eleven when I emerged, the shapes of the tile etched deeply into the flesh of my cheek and exposed shoulder.

I hoped Grant would be asleep, but he was sitting upright on the love seat, all the lights turned out.

“Was it the food?” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t know what it was, but it definitely wasn’t the food. “The roast was incredible.”

I sat down beside him, our thighs touching through matching dark denim. “Then what?” he asked.

“I’m sick,” I said, but I avoided his eyes. I didn’t believe that to be the truth, and I knew he didn’t, either. As a child I had vomited from closeness: from touch or the threat of touch. Foster parents towering over me, shoving my uncooperative arms into a jacket, teachers ripping hats from my head, their fingers lingering too long on my tangled hair, had forced my stomach into uncontrollable convulsions. Once, shortly after moving in with Elizabeth, we had eaten a picnic dinner in the garden. I had overeaten, as I did at every meal that fall, and, unable to move, I had allowed Elizabeth to pick me up and carry me back to the house. She had barely set me down on the porch before I threw up over the side of the railing.

I looked at Grant. He had been touching me, intimately, for months. Without being aware of it, I had been waiting for this to happen.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said. “I don’t want you to catch it.”

“I won’t,” Grant said, taking my hand and pulling me up. “Come upstairs.”

I did as he asked.

18.

The morning of my adoption hearing, I awoke at sunrise.

Sitting up, I turned and leaned against the cool wall, the comforter pulled up to my chin. Light traveled lazily through the window, the soft beam illuminating my dresser and open closet door. In many ways, the room looked the same as it had when I’d entered a year before; it contained the same furniture, the same white comforter, and the same stacks of clothes, many of which I had yet to grow into. But all around me were signs of the girl I had become: library books stacked on the desk with titles such as Botany on Your Plate and The Ultimate Book of Mix-It-Yourself Concoctions for Your Garden, a photograph of Elizabeth and me that Carlos had taken, our bright pink winter cheeks pressed close together, and a wastepaper basket full of flower drawings for Elizabeth, none of which I’d deemed good enough to give her. It was my last morning in the room as a foster child, and I gazed around, as I always did—surveying objects as if they belonged to someone else. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I will feel different. I will wake up, look around, and see a room—a life—that is mine and will never be taken away from me.

Moving quietly down the hall, I listened for Elizabeth. Though it was early, I was surprised to hear the house quiet, to see her bedroom door shut. I had imagined her to be as sleepless as I was. The day before had been my birthday, and though Elizabeth had made cupcakes and we’d frosted them with thick purple roses, the anticipation of my adoption had mostly eclipsed the celebration of the day. After dinner, we’d distractedly licked off the frosting, our gazes shifting out the window, waiting for the sky to darken so the new day would begin. Lying awake in bed, my body wrapped in the long floral nightgown Elizabeth had given me as a present, I’d been more excited than on every Christmas Eve of my life put together. Perhaps Elizabeth had been unable to sleep, too, I thought, and was sleeping in because she’d been up half the night.

In the bathroom was the dress we’d purchased together, hanging in plastic on a hook behind the door. I washed my face and brushed my hair before pulling it off the hanger.

It was hard to put on without Elizabeth, but I was determined. I wanted to see the look on her face when she awoke to find me dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, waiting. I wanted her to understand that I was ready. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I pulled the dress on backward, zipped it up, and then twisted it around until the zipper ran the length of my spine. The ribbons were thick and hard to tie. After multiple failed attempts, I settled for a loose square knot at the back of my neck. Around my waist I did the same.

When I went downstairs, the clock on the stove read eight o’clock. Opening the refrigerator, I scanned the full shelves and chose a small container of vanilla yogurt. I peeled back the seal, poking at a layer of thick cream with a spoon, but I wasn’t hungry. I was nervous. Elizabeth had never slept in, not once in the year I’d been with her. For a full hour I sat at the kitchen table, my eyes on the clock.

At nine o’clock, I climbed the stairs and knocked on her bedroom door. The knot around my neck had loosened, and the front of the dress hung too low, exposing my protruding chest bone. I didn’t look as glamorous, I knew, as I had in the store. When Elizabeth did not answer or call out, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. Pushing the door quietly, I stepped inside.

Elizabeth’s eyes were open. She stared at the ceiling, and she did not shift her gaze when I crossed the room to stand by the side of the bed.

“It’s nine o’clock,” I said.

Elizabeth did not respond.

“We have to see the judge at eleven. Shouldn’t we go, to get checked in and everything?”

Still, she did not acknowledge my presence. I stepped closer and leaned in, thinking she might be asleep, even though her eyes were wide open. I’d had a roommate who slept that way once, and every night I waited for her to fall asleep first, so that I could shut her eyelids. I didn’t like the feeling of being watched.

I started to shake Elizabeth, gently. She did not blink. “Elizabeth?” I said, my voice a whisper. “It’s Victoria.” I pressed my fingers into the space between her collarbones. Her pulse beat calmly, seeming to tick away the seconds until my adoption. Stand up, I pleaded silently. The thought of missing our court date, of having it postponed for a month, a week, even just another day, was incomprehensible. I began to shake her, my hands clutching her shoulders. Her head wobbled loosely on her neck.

“Stop,” she said finally, the word barely audible.

“Aren’t you getting up?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Aren’t we going to court?”

Tears leaked out of Elizabeth’s eyes, and she did not lift her hand to wipe them. I followed their path with my eyes and saw the pillow was already wet where they landed. “I can’t,” she said.

“What do you mean? I can help you.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t.” She was quiet a long time. I leaned so close that when she finally spoke again, her lips grazed my ear. “This isn’t a family,” she said softly. “Just me and you alone in this house. It isn’t a family. I can’t do this to you.”

I sat down on the foot of the bed. Elizabeth didn’t move, didn’t speak again, but I sat where I was for the rest of the morning, waiting.

19.

The nausea didn’t go away, but I learned to hide it. I vomited in the shower every morning until the drain started to clog. After that, I didn’t shower, racing to my car before Grant got up, blaming Renata and an impossible summer wedding schedule. The feeling followed me throughout the day. The scent of the flowers at work made it worse, but the coolness of the walk-in brought relief. I took afternoon naps among the