The Language of Flowers

outstretched finger as she latched on, the fact of my nipple in her mouth not enough to prove my return. As she nursed, I ate the turkey sandwich. A thin sliver of turkey escaped from my mouth and landed on her temple, rising and falling with her frantic suck. I leaned over, eating the turkey right off her face and kissing her at the same time. She opened her eyes and looked into mine. Where I expected anger or fear, I saw only relief.

I would not leave her again.

10.

It was dark when I returned to Elizabeth’s.

From the dull glow of the upstairs windows, I imagined her sitting at my desk, heavy textbooks open before her, waiting. I had never missed dinner; she would be worried. Hiding the heavy canvas bag under the back porch steps, I walked inside. The screen door squeaked when I opened it.

“Victoria?” Elizabeth called down the stairs.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m home.”

11.

Mother Ruby returned on Saturday, as she had promised she would. She sat down on the floor outside the blue room. I turned my face away. The weight of what I had done tormented me, and I was sure Mother Ruby would know. A woman who traveled to a neighborhood for a birth before being called would know when a baby was in danger. I waited for the accusation.

“Give me that baby, Victoria,” she said, confirming my fears. “Come on, hand her over.”

I slipped my pinkie finger between my nipple and the baby’s gums as Mother Ruby had taught me to do. The suction released. I rubbed the baby’s mouth with my thumb in an attempt to remove the dried blood from her upper lip but was unsuccessful. I passed the bundle over my shoulder without turning around.

Mother Ruby breathed her in. “Oh, big girl,” she said. “I’ve been missing you.”

I waited for Mother Ruby to stand up and walk out the door, taking my daughter with her, but I heard only the sound of the springy scale. “Twelve ounces!” came Mother Ruby’s elated voice. “Have you been eating your mama alive?”

“Pretty much,” I murmured. My words soaked into the walls, unheard.

“You come out of there, Victoria,” Mother Ruby said. “Let me rub your feet or cook you a grilled cheese sandwich. You must be exhausted caring for this baby like you have.” I didn’t move. I didn’t deserve her praise.

Mother Ruby reached in and began to stroke my forehead. “Don’t make me come in there,” she said, “because you know I will.”

Yes, I knew she would. The formula I had purchased was at my feet, still in the bag, evidence of my crime. I kicked it farther into the corner, rolled over, and crawled out feetfirst. Sitting on the couch, I waited for Mother Ruby to see the truth. But she didn’t look at my face. She lifted my shirt and rubbed something from a lavender tube onto my cracked nipples. It was cooling and numbed the stinging pain.

“Keep this,” Mother Ruby said, closing my palm around the tube. She turned my chin and looked into my eyes, my guilty, drowning eyes. “Are you sleeping?” she asked.

I considered the previous night. After finishing the sandwich, the baby and I had gone straight to the blue room, where she reattached herself to my body and closed her eyes. She sucked and swallowed and slept in an excruciating rhythm, and I let her, accepting the pain as punishment. I did not sleep.

“Yeah,” I lied, “pretty well.”

“Good,” she said. “Your daughter is thriving. I’m so proud of you.”

I looked out the window and did not respond.

“Are you hungry?” Mother Ruby asked. “Are you getting enough help? Do you want me to make you something before I leave?” I was starving, but I couldn’t take another compliment. I shook my head.

Mother Ruby handed the baby back to me and put away her scale. “Okay, then,” she said. Her eyes were on my face, studying me as if for clues, and I strained my neck away. I didn’t want her to see me.

She stood to go, and I jumped up to follow. Suddenly, I was not afraid she would look into my face and see my trespass; it was more terrifying to think of her leaving in oblivion, without knowing what I had done, without doing something to stop me from doing it again. But Mother Ruby only smiled and leaned in to kiss my cheek before walking away.

I wanted to tell her, to come clean and beg forgiveness, but I didn’t know what to say. “It’s hard,” was all I could manage, my whisper directed at her back as she descended the stairs. It wasn’t enough.

“I know, love,” Mother Ruby said. “But you’re doing it. It’s in you to be a mother, a good one.” She walked down the stairs.

No, it isn’t in me, I thought bitterly. I wanted to tell her that I had never loved anyone, and ask her to explain how a woman incapable of giving love could ever be expected to be a mother, a good one. But even as I thought the words, I knew they were not the truth. I had loved, more than once. I just hadn’t recognized the emotion for what it was until I had done everything within my power to destroy it.

Mother Ruby stopped when she reached the bottom of the stairs and turned around. She looked small and ignorant, and my reliance on her felt misplaced. She was an intrusive old woman, I thought, nothing else. A switch flipped inside me, and I felt the return of the angry child I had once been. I wanted only for Mother Ruby to leave.

“Name?” she called up to where I stood. “Does that big girl have a name yet?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“It’ll come to you,” she said.

“No,” I said harshly, “it won’t.”

But Mother Ruby had already walked out the door.

After Mother Ruby left, I set the baby in her Moses basket, and through a small miracle she slept peacefully for most of the afternoon. I took a long, hot shower. My body was filled with a palpable despair—a numb, tingling sensation—and I scrubbed my limbs as if the irritation was external and could be washed down the drain. When I got out of the shower, my skin was pink and scraped red in patches. The despair had moved to a deeper, quieter place. I pretended I was clean and renewed, ignoring its low, persistent buzz. Dressing in loose pants and a sweatshirt, I rubbed the cream from the lavender tube on the patches of raw skin on my arms and legs.

I poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat on the floor, looking into the baby’s basket. When she awoke, I would nurse her, and when she was done eating, we would go for a walk. I would carry the basket down the stairs and out the door, and the fresh air would be good for us both. Maybe I would carry her up to McKinley Square and give her a lesson in the language of flowers. She wouldn’t respond, but she would understand. She had the kind of eyes, when they were open, that made me believe she understood everything I said and much of what went unspoken. They were deep, mysterious eyes, as if she was still connected to the place from which she had come.

The longer the baby slept, the more the despair subsided until I could almost make myself believe I had overcome its gravity. Perhaps my brief escape to the grocery store had not caused permanent damage, and I was, as Mother Ruby insisted, capable of the task before me. It was unrealistic to think I could make a clean break from the way I had lived for nineteen years. There would be setbacks. I had spent my life being hateful and solitary, and I could not, overnight, become loving and attached.

Lying down on the floor next to the baby, I breathed in the damp-straw smell of the basket. I would sleep. But before I had closed my eyes, her rhythmic breathing was replaced by the familiar sound of her open, searching mouth.