The Language of Flowers

you’re happy—and then a no-show for your adoption proceeding? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” I shouted. For the first time in my life, it was true, but there was no reason for Meredith to believe me. “Elizabeth’s tired, you heard her. Just leave us alone.” I crawled into bed, pulled up the covers, and turned to face the wall.

Exhaling a loud, impatient sigh, Meredith stood up. “Something’s going on,” she said. “Either you did something horrific, or Elizabeth isn’t mentally fit to be a mother. Either way, I’m not sure this is a good placement for you anymore.”

“It isn’t your place to decide what is or is not good for Victoria,” Elizabeth said quietly. I sat up and turned to look at her. She leaned heavily against the door frame, as if she would fall over without its support. A pale pink bathrobe crisscrossed her body. Her hair fell in tangled bunches over her shoulders.

“It’s exactly my place to decide,” Meredith said, stepping toward Elizabeth. She was neither taller nor stronger, but she towered over Elizabeth’s wilted figure. I wondered if Elizabeth was afraid. “It wouldn’t have been my place anymore if you’d appeared in court at eleven a.m. this morning, and believe me, I was ready to give up control of this child. But it seems that isn’t to be. What did she do?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Elizabeth said.

I couldn’t see Meredith’s face, couldn’t see if she believed her. “If Victoria didn’t do anything, I’ll have to write you up. Give you a written warning for missing a court date, for suspicion of neglect. Has she eaten anything today?” I lifted my shirt away from my skin, where streaks of peanut butter remained from my snack, but neither Meredith nor Elizabeth looked at me.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.

Meredith nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She moved toward the bedroom door, stepping past Elizabeth. “We’ll finish in the living room. Victoria doesn’t need to be a part of the conversation we’re about to have.”

I didn’t follow them down the stairs, didn’t want to hear. I wanted everything to be as it was the day before, when I believed Elizabeth would adopt me. Rolling to the edge of the bed, I reached underneath until I found my wrinkled ball of a dress. I pulled it into bed with me, squeezing it into my chest and pressing my face into the velvet. The dress still smelled like the store, new wood and glass cleaner, and I remembered the feeling of Elizabeth’s arms underneath my armpits and tight across my chest, the look on her face as our eyes met in the mirror.

From downstairs I heard snippets of an argument: Meredith mostly, her voice raised. She has you or she has nothing, she said at one point. It’s bullshit for you to say you want more for her. An excuse. Didn’t Elizabeth know that she was all I wanted? That she was all I would ever want? Huddled under the comforter, I found the summer heat thick and suffocating. I struggled for breath.

I’d been given a chance, a final chance, and somehow, without meaning to, I’d ruined it. I waited for Meredith to march up the stairs and deliver the words I never thought I’d hear: Elizabeth’s given notice. Pack up.

21.

On Sunday morning, I ate soda crackers and waited for the nausea to subside. It didn’t. I got into my car anyway and drove across the city, vomiting into storm drains on three different occasions. The worldwide population expansion was not a phenomenon I could comprehend as I rolled to a stop at one grate after another.

Grant wasn’t home, as I knew he wouldn’t be. He would be standing behind his truck, handing cut flowers to lines of locals. I had been away only three nights, not an unusually long time for me or for our relationship, and I imagined him hurrying through his work, thinking about the extravagant dinner he planned to create. It would never cross his mind that I would miss a Sunday-night meal. At least I’d warned him, I thought, as I let myself in with the rusty spare key. It wasn’t my fault if he’d forgotten.

Listening for the sound of his truck, I packed quickly. I took everything that belonged to me and many things that didn’t, including Grant’s duffel bag, a large, army-green canvas tube that would camouflage well beneath the heath. I stuffed in clothes, books, a flashlight, three blankets, and all the food he had in the cupboard. Before zipping the bag, I shoved in a knife, a can opener, and the cash he kept in the freezer.

I crammed my belongings into the backseat of my car and went back for my blue photo box, Elizabeth’s dictionary, and the field guide. In the car, I secured them into the front seat with the seat belt and then went back up the spiral staircase to the second floor. I pulled Grant’s orange box off the bookshelf. Opening it, I thumbed through the photos, considering whether or not I should take it. I had made it; everything inside belonged to me. But the idea of having an extra in a safe location comforted me, especially as the next few months of my life would likely be anything but safe. If something happened to my blue box, I could always come back for the orange one.

I left the box in the middle of the floor and withdrew a small square of paper from my backpack. It was folded in half so that it stood up on top of the box like a place marker at a formal dinner. In the center, I had glued a quarter-sized photo of a white rose from a pile of scraps in the blue room, having trimmed it with precision so that only the flower remained. Below the image, in the place where a name would go, I had written a single sentence in permanent ink.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

Grant would understand, if not accept, that this was the end. 

Part Three Moss

1.

I would go back to the blue room; I would have the baby within its watery walls. I knew this in the same way I knew that Grant was looking for me, without evidence and without doubt. Grant didn’t know the location of the blue room, but he knew enough to find it, I was sure. Until he had given up, I had to stay away. It could take months or most of the year. I was prepared to wait.

No longer squeamish in the presence of intoxicated teenagers, I moved back in to my garden in McKinley Square. I had a knife and a sexual past. They couldn’t attempt anything that hadn’t already been done, and, looking at my reflection in a gas station mirror, I doubted anyone would try. Feeling numb toward both my changing body and my homelessness, I didn’t change my clothes, didn’t seek out showers or wealthy neighborhoods. The weeks began to show on my skin.

I missed Renata, and missed my job, but I couldn’t go back to Bloom. It was the first place Grant would look for me. Instead, I hid under the heath bushes, which had grown and multiplied in my absence. The seeds of heath could exist in the soil for months or years—decades, even—before bursting forth new life, and the familiar plant comforted me as I curled up with Grant’s duffel bag beneath its branches. The rest of my things I left in my car, which I moved to a different street every day. If Grant saw the hatchback, he would recognize it—even with the license plate removed and the blue box well hidden under my belongings—so I kept it far from Potrero Hill, in Bernal Heights or Glen Park, sometimes as far as Hunters Point. I had been sleeping in the park for weeks before it dawned on me that I could sleep in my car at night. But I didn’t want to. The smell of the soil, saturated from overwatering, entered my dreams and calmed my nightmares.