The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

  I exhaled. I wanted more than anything to be that girl, to be a child again and carry crocus or hawthorn or larkspur instead of buckets of thistle. I wanted to search the North Bay until I found Elizabeth, and apologize, and beg forgiveness. I wanted to start my life over, on a course that would not lead to this moment, this waking up alone in a city park, my own daughter alone in an empty apartment building. Every decision I’d ever made had led me here, and I wanted to take it all back, the hatred and the blame and the violence. I wanted to have lunch with my angry ten-year-old self, to warn her of this morning and give her the flowers to point her in a different direction.

  But I couldn’t go back. There was only now: this forest within a city and my own daughter, waiting. The thought filled me with dread. I did not know what I would find when I returned to the apartment. I did not know if she still screamed, or if time, solitude, and hunger had collapsed my daughter’s lungs as completely as a rising tide.

  I had failed my daughter. Less than three weeks after giving birth and making promises to us both, I had failed, and failed again. The cycle would continue. Promises and failures, mothers and daughters, indefinitely.

  14.

  My arms began to shake violently, water from the soup pot sloshing onto Elizabeth. The cold spray snapped her into action. She ran to the phone in the kitchen as I sprinted out the front door, tripping over the jam jars as I flew down the steps.

  The water in the pot was not enough to save even one vine. Looking at the fire, I knew this. Yet I had to try. Acres burned, the heat dizzying. Everything Elizabeth had spent her life cultivating would be gone if I did not act. She would be left on scorched earth, homeless and alone. I had to put it out. If I didn’t, I would never be able to look at her again.

  Halfway to the road, I launched the water on a row of burning vines. If there was a sizzle, if even one flame surrendered, I didn’t hear or see it. Up close, the roar of the fire was deafening, the smell of the smoke sugary. The scent reminded me of Elizabeth caramelizing apples, and I realized the sweet smell came from the grapes, the perfectly ripe grapes, charring.

  From the porch, Elizabeth called me. I turned. In her glassy, helpless eyes the fire reflected. She clutched one hand over her mouth and the other over her heart. I turned away, the enormity of my error as thick as the smoke in my lungs. That I hadn’t meant to cause so much damage didn’t matter. That I had done it only to stay with her, because I loved her, would never matter. I had to put out the fire. If I didn’t, I would lose everything.

  Without making a conscious decision to do so, I ripped off my nightgown and began swatting at the flames, trying to suffocate them. The thin cotton, splattered with lighter fluid, exploded in my hands. Elizabeth ran toward me, frantic. She yelled at me to back away from the fire, but I continued flapping my flaming nightgown around my head wildly. Sparks flew from the scorched material, so that Elizabeth had to duck under them as she ran to me.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Elizabeth screamed. “Get back to the house!”

  I stepped closer to the fire, the heat intense and threatening. A stray spark singed my hair, traveling up a cluster of strands and melting into my scalp. Elizabeth slapped at my smoldering hairline, and the sting of the slap felt good, deserved.

  “I’m putting it out!” I screamed. “Leave me alone!”

  “With what?” Elizabeth demanded. “Your bare hands? The fire trucks are coming. You’ll get killed standing here like an idiot, waving your hands in the air.”

  Still, I didn’t back away. The flames leapt closer to where I stood.

  “Victoria,” Elizabeth said. She had stopped screaming, and her wide eyes filled. I strained to hear the words she uttered over the roar of the fire. “I’m not losing my vineyard and my daughter on the same night. I won’t.” When I didn’t move, she lunged at me, grabbing me by the shoulders, shaking me. “Do you hear me?” she shouted. “I won’t!” I wriggled free from her hands, and she caught me by one arm, pulling me toward the house. As I fought, she pulled harder, and I felt my shoulder pop out of the socket. She yelped and let go. Collapsing onto the ground, I pulled my knees in to my bare chest. The fire circled me like a blanket, and through the heat I heard the faraway sound of the trailer door slamming. Elizabeth screamed for me to get up, pulled at my feet, and kicked me in the ribs. When she tried to carry me, I screamed and bit at her like a wild animal.

  Finally, she let me be.

  15.

  The baby was awake in the Moses basket when I returned. Her wide eyes blinked up at the ceiling, and she did not cry out when she saw me. I retrieved her bottle from the kitchen, emptied the day-old formula into the sink, and refilled it with a fresh can. Standing over the baby, I rested it on her lips. She opened her mouth but did not suck. I squeezed the nipple and watched the liquid run in a thin stream down her waiting tongue. She swallowed twice before falling asleep in the basket.

  I showered and ate a bowl of cereal on the rooftop. Every time I walked by the baby’s basket, I would pause and study her face, and if she opened her eyes, I would put the bottle to her lips. She learned to suck, slowly, placidly, without the urgent ferocity with which she had once devoured my breast. It took her all day to finish a single can of formula. She did not cry. She did not even whimper.

  Before going to bed, I changed her sodden diaper but did not take her out of the basket. She seemed comfortable there, and I was afraid to break the fragile peace we had reached, afraid my panic would return at the sound of her first scream. Instead, I moved her basket to the couch, where we settled into a square of moonlight. I offered her a fresh bottle, and her lips formed a perfect circle around the amber-colored plastic. Tiny bubbles ran the length of the bottle as she persuaded water, iron, calcium, and protein through microscopic holes. Her eyes were wider than I had ever seen them, concentric circles and small triangles of white scanning my face. When she was done eating, the rubber nipple slipped from her mouth, and she reached her tiny fingers toward my face. I lowered my head until my nose was only inches from her hands, my eyes looking into hers. She opened and closed her fingers in the empty space between us, squeezing tight.

  Before I realized I was crying, a tear dropped from the tip of my chin onto the baby’s cheek. It ran in a thin line to the edge of her mouth, and her red lips puckered in surprise. I laughed, and the tears ran faster. The open forgiveness in her eyes, the uncensored love, terrified me. Like Grant, my daughter deserved so much more than I could give her. I wanted her to carry hawthorn, laugh easily, and love without fear. But I could not give her this, could not teach her what I didn’t know. It would be only a matter of time before my toxicity would taint her perfection. It would leak out of my body, and she would swallow it with the willingness of a ravenous infant. I had hurt every person I had ever known; I wanted, desperately, to save her from the dangers of being my daughter.

  I would bring her to Grant in the morning.

  He would preserve her goodness and teach her everything she needed to know. Renata was right; Grant deserved to know his daughter. He deserved her sweetness, her beauty, and her unwavering loyalty.

  When I pulled my face away, the baby’s eyes were closed. I left the basket on the couch and shut myself in the blue room.

  That night I smelled moss, dried leaves, and damp soil in my apartment of plaster and concrete, blocks and blocks from anything green or growing.

  In the morning I hurried out of the apartment. Feeding the baby what was left of the formula in the bottle from the night before, I carried her in her basket to my car. She was awake as we drove across the city. She had slept through the night, or, if she hadn’t, she had not cried out. I had slept deeply and without dreams but awoke with the agitated alertness of the overtired. My body ached, my full breasts on fire, and I was hot in the cool morning. I rolled down the windows, and the baby grimaced in the strong wind.

  Driving north on the freeway, I crossed the bridge and took the first wooded exit. I didn’t have time to drive to one
of the lush state parks, but it wouldn’t matter. It had been a wet spring. I would find what I needed in any dense, shaded forest. I pulled in to a parking lot at a vista point overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, which was rust-colored and glowing in the early-morning sun. Already the parking lot was half full with hikers pulling on boots and filling brightly colored plastic bottles with water.

  Grabbing the basket by its woven handles, I started down a trailhead. The trail split and split again. I chose the path with the least sun and shuddered as I walked into the cool undergrowth. Hikers passed and cooed over the baby until I turned off the main trail and onto one marked Reforestation. Do Not Trespass. I lifted the basket over the thin chain and dropped out of sight into a circle of redwoods.

  The baby didn’t make a sound as I lay her down on the forest floor, the bald patch on the back of her head pressing against the soft duff. She looked up through the redwoods, her blurred, blue-eyed vision scanning the tall trees, patches of light, gray sky, and perhaps even what lay beyond it. I didn’t doubt her.

  I pulled out the large, flat putty knife I had stuck in the back pocket of my jeans and began to strip the spongy green moss from the trunks of the redwood trees. The moss fell to the ground in long, hairy patches, and I arranged them carefully around the bottom and sides of the basket, making sure the softest and most fragrant pieces would surround her tiny head.

  When the basket was completely covered, I put the knife back in my pocket, picked up the baby, who had fallen asleep, and lay her down gently on the blanket of moss.

  Maternal love.

  It was all I could give her. Someday, I hoped, she would understand.

  * * *

  The spare key to Grant’s door was where it had always been, inside the rusted tin watering can on the front stoop. I unlocked the door and carried the moss-lined basket into the kitchen, setting it down beside the spiral staircase in the corner of the room. From where the baby lay, she could look up three stories, and it seemed to amuse her well enough. She continued her quiet squinting while I moved about the kitchen, lighting the stove with a match and filling a kettle with water for tea. It had been nearly a year since I’d made tea in this kitchen, but everything was exactly as it had been before.

  I sat down at the table while I waited for the water to boil. The baby was so quiet it was easy to forget her, easy to imagine I had returned only to surprise Grant with a cup of tea at the splintering table. I missed him. Sitting in his water tower, looking out over his flower farm, the feeling was impossible to ignore. And soon I would miss the baby. I pushed the thought from my mind and kept my focus on the flowers stretching across the fields below.

  The baby made a sound between a sigh and a squawk just as the water started to boil. Steam clouded the kitchen window. I wondered if she could drink peppermint tea. It seemed like it might be good for her stomach, soothing, and I had brought the near-empty bottle but forgotten a can of formula. Dumping the congealing liquid down the drain, I rinsed the bottle and filled half with boiling water, half with tap water. I dropped in a tea bag and screwed on the top. The baby’s nose wrinkled in surprise as she tasted the tea, but her lips worked the nipple hungrily and without complaint. Steam from the still-boiling water settled down on us. The moss glowed greener from the moisture in the air.

  I balanced the bottle against the side of the basket so the baby could suck while I filled a soup pot with water and lit another burner. I wanted the moss to live for as long as possible. As the baby sucked, the water tower filled with hot, billowing steam. I carried the basket up the two flights of stairs to Grant’s bed. The baby was asleep by the time I got to the top—a deep, motionless sleep that made me nervous about my choice of nourishment. Setting the basket down in the middle of the foam mattress, I lay down next to her, lowering my face until I could feel her quick exhales on my upper lip.

  I stayed there—our noses nearly touching, our exhales joined—until the sun was dangerously high in the sky and Grant’s arrival was imminent. Closing my eyes, I withdrew my face. The baby made the air-sucking whimper I remembered from the release of my nipple from her mouth, and my breasts ached with the memory. I pulled a small square of moss off the edge of the basket and rubbed it against her cheek, her chin, and tucked it into the crease where her neck would be, someday, when she was strong enough to lift her head. The moss pulsed with the beating of her heart.

  Pulling myself away, I walked down the stairs. The pot on the stove was almost empty. I filled it to the brim, returned it to the stove, and slipped silently out the door.

  My hatchback skidded down the long dirt driveway, and I continued toward the highway without looking back. What had started as a dull, dislocated ache had become centralized in my left breast. When I touched the nipple, a pain shot through my flesh and down my spine. I started to sweat. The windows were down, and I turned on the air-conditioning as well, but still I was hot. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw the empty seat where the baby had been. There was nothing but a thin spray of dirt and a single hair-fine coil of bright green moss.

  I turned on the radio and spun the dial until I found something loud and vibrating, too many cymbals and a voice without words. It reminded me of Natalya’s band. I drove faster, flying over the bridge and through intersections, neither red nor yellow lights slowing me down. I needed the blue room. I needed to lie down and close my eyes and sleep. I wouldn’t emerge for a week, if I emerged at all.

  Screeching to a stop in front of the apartment, I came bumper to bumper with Natalya’s car. The trunk was open. Boxes and suitcases were stacked on the sidewalk. It was hard to tell if she was coming or going. I got out of the car quietly, hoping I could slip inside the blue room and lock all the locks without her noticing.

  I tiptoed across the empty office space and nearly collided with Natalya at the bottom of the stairs. She did not step aside. I looked up and could tell by her expression that my face looked as hot as it felt.

  “You all right?” Natalya asked. I nodded and tried to get by, but still she did not move. “Your face is pinker than my hair.”

  She reached out, touching my forehead, and recoiled as if she’d been burned. I pushed past her but tripped and fell on the bottom step. I didn’t even try to stand but crawled on my hands and knees up the stairs. Natalya followed. Collapsing into the blue room, I pulled the door closed behind me.

  Natalya tapped on the half-door. “I have to leave,” she said, her voice a whisper, full of fear. “Our tour has been extended—I’ll be gone for six months at least. I just came to get some things and tell you to use my bedroom if you want.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I really have to go,” she said again.

  “So go already,” I managed to say.

  Something loud hit the door, likely Natalya’s foot. “I don’t want to return in six months to the smell of your rotting corpse,” she said, kicking the door again. The next thing I heard was the sound of her shoes stomping down the stairs and a car door slamming. The engine of her car sputtered and started. Then she was gone.

  Would she call her mother? I wondered. Would she realize the baby was gone, and report me to the authorities? If she was going to call someone, I hoped she decided on the police; I’d rather do time than face Mother Ruby and her disappointment.

  I lay on my left side on the featherbed, the hard rubber ball of my breast supported by the mattress. My body, which did not feel like my own, shook uncontrollably. I was freezing. I put on every sweatshirt I owned and pulled up the brown blanket. When that didn’t warm me, I crawled underneath the featherbed. I stayed there, barely able to breathe, my body and mind an ice storm under a heavy cloud. My chill became something black and swirling, and I had the fleeting, comforting thought that the sleep I was entering was eternal, a state from which I might never return.

  From far away, sirens whirled, growing louder, nearer, until they sounded as if they were coming from Natalya’s bedroom. Flashing lights soaked under m
y door. And then, just as suddenly, they stopped.

  For just a moment the room was black and silent as death; then the door was pushed in and I heard the trampling of feet on the stairs.

  16.

  I lay in an ambulance, strapped to a white cloth board. I couldn’t remember how I got there. I was still in only my underwear, and someone had draped a hospital gown across my chest.

  Beside me, Elizabeth sobbed.

  “Are you her mother?” a voice asked. I opened one eye. A young man in a navy uniform sat near my head. Whirling lights shone through the window and flashed across his sweaty face.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said, still crying. “I mean no. Not yet.”

  “She’s a ward of the court?” he asked.

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “You’ll need to report it, then, immediately. Or I will.” The man looked apologetic, and Elizabeth wept harder. He handed her a heavy black phone, connected to the side of the ambulance by a cord that spiraled like the one in Elizabeth’s kitchen. I closed my eyes again. We drove through the night for what felt like hours, and Elizabeth didn’t stop crying.

  When the ambulance stopped, hands tucked the hospital gown under my arms. The doors opened. Cool air rushed in, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Meredith, waiting. She was still in her pajamas, a trench coat thrown on over them.

  As we passed, she leaned forward, her hand reaching out to pull Elizabeth away from me. “I can take over from here,” she said.

  “Don’t touch me,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

  “Wait in the lobby.”

  “I’m not leaving her,” Elizabeth said.

  “You’ll wait in the lobby or I’ll have you escorted out by security,” Meredith said.

  I watched over my receding toes as Meredith left Elizabeth standing in the hall, shocked. She followed me into a room.