Vanessa Diffenbaugh - The Language of Flowers

“Good morning,” Elizabeth said. “This is my daughter, Victoria. Victoria, this is Perla.” The sound of the word daughter made my stomach hurt again. I kicked dust at Elizabeth until she stepped on both my feet with her right shoe, her fingers clamping down on the back of my neck. My skin burned under her touch.

“Hi, Victoria,” said Perla shyly. She picked up a heavy black braid from where it rested on her shoulder and chewed on the already-wet ends.

“Good,” said Elizabeth, as if Perla’s quiet words and my stubborn silence had established something. “I’m going inside to rest. Victoria, stay out here and play with Perla until I call you.”

Without waiting for a response, she walked into the house. Perla and I, alone, stared at the ground. After a time, she reached out hesitantly and touched the tip of my wrapped hands with a thick finger. “What happened?”

I pulled at the gauze with my teeth, all at once desperate to use my hands again. “Thorns,” I said. “Unwrap them.”

Perla pulled at the edges of the tape, and I shook loose of the material. The skin, uncovered, was pale and wrinkled, the scabs small, dry circles. I picked at the edge of a scab with a fingernail, and it flaked off easily, fluttering to the ground.

“We’ll be in the same class at school tomorrow,” Perla said. “There’s only one fourth grade.”

I didn’t respond. Elizabeth thought I would start school. But she also thought I would be her daughter, and thought she could force me to have a friend. About all of this, she was wrong. I walked toward the garden shed. Perla’s heavy footsteps followed. I didn’t know what I would do, but suddenly I wanted Elizabeth to understand exactly how wrong she’d been about me. Snatching a knife and a pair of clippers from a shelf by the shed, I crept around the side of the garden.

On the other side of the almond tree, I followed a pattern of gray-and-green succulents until they faded into gravel. There, at the place the dusty dirt road collided with the lush garden, was an enormous, tangled cactus. It was bigger than Meredith’s county car, and the trunk was brown and scabby-looking, as if it had been cut over and over again by its own spines. Each branch was built like a collection of flat hands growing one out of the other, right, then left, then right again, so that each branch was balanced enough to stand straight and tall.

I knew what I would do.

“Nopales,” Perla said, when I pointed to the cactus. “Prickly pear.”

“What?”

“It’s a prickly pear; see the fruit on top? In Mexico, they sell them at the market. They’re good, as long as you peel them well.”

“Cut it down,” I ordered.

Perla stood still. “What? The whole thing?”

I shook my head no. “Just that branch, the one with all the fruit. I want it, to give to Elizabeth. But you have to do it, or I’ll hurt my hands.” Perla still didn’t move but looked up at the cactus, twice as tall as she was. Flaming red fruit grew like swollen fingers on top of each flat palm. I shoved the knife in her direction, its dull blade pointed low toward her abdomen.

Perla reached out, tested the point of the blade with her soft finger, then stepped closer to me and took the knife by its handle.

“Where?” she asked quietly. I pointed to a place just above the brown trunk where a long green arm began. Perla rested the blade against the cactus and closed her eyes before leaning forward with the weight of her whole body. The skin was tough, but once she broke through the outer layer, the knife slipped through easily and the branch fell to the ground. I pointed to the fruit, and Perla cut off each one. They lay on the ground, bleeding red juice.

“Wait here,” I commanded, running through the garden to where I had discarded the dirty gauze.

When I returned, Perla was right where I’d left her. I held the fruit with the gauze, picking up the knife and carefully removing the spines from each prickly pear as if I was skinning a dead animal. I held the ripe, edible fruit out for Perla.

“Here,” I said. She looked at me with confusion.

“I thought you wanted these?” she asked. “For Elizabeth?”

“So take them to her, if you want,” I said. “This is the part I need.” I wrapped the strips of spiny skin in the gauze.

“Now go home,” I said.

Perla cupped the fruit in her hands and walked away slowly, sighing, as if she expected something more from me for her act of loyalty.

I had nothing to give her.

12 .

Natalya was Renata’s youngest sister. There were six siblings, all girls . Renata was second in the birth order, Natalya last. It took me all week to gather this information, and for this I was grateful. Most days Natalya slept until late afternoon, and when she was awake she was quiet. She told me once she didn’t like to waste her voice, and the fact that she considered conversation with me a waste did not offend me at all.

Natalya was the vocalist for a punk band that, as she put it, had “made it” only within a twenty-block radius of the apartment. The band had a spirited following in the Mission and a few scattered fans around Dolores Park, and were unknown in every other neighborhood and every other city. They practiced downstairs. The rest of the block comprised offices, some leased and some empty, but all closed after five. Natalya provided me with a box of earplugs and a pile of pillows. Between the two I could reduce the music to only the vibration of the sound on the fur carpet, making it feel even more alive. Most nights her band didn’t start practicing until after midnight, so I had only a few hours of attempted oblivion before I rose.

I didn’t work until the following Saturday, but every morning that week I found myself wandering the streets around the flower market, watching wholesalers back overflowing trucks into the crowded parking lot. I wasn’t looking for the mysterious flower vendor; at least, I told myself I wasn’t. When I did see him, I slipped down an alley and ran until I was out of breath.

By Saturday I had settled on a response. Snapdragon. Presumption . I got to the flower market at four a.m., an hour before Renata, with a five-dollar bill and a new mustard-colored knit hat pulled low over my brow.

The flower vendor was bent over, unloading bushels of lilies, roses, and ranunculus into white plastic tubs. He didn’t see me approach. I took advantage of the time to return the unabashed stare he had released on my body the first day we met, scanning from the back of his neck down to his muddy work boots. He wore the same black hooded sweatshirt he had the first day we met, dirtier this time, with white-speckled work pants. They were the kind with the loop to hold a hammer, but the loop was empty. When he stood up I was standing directly in front of him, my arms overflowing with snapdragons. I had spent five dollars on the flowers, and at wholesale prices that bought me six bunches, mixed bouquets of purple and pink and yellow. I held the flowers high so that the tip of my hat ended where the snapdragons began, hiding my face completely.

I felt his hands close around the bottoms of the stems; his fingers, where they touched my own, were the temperature of the early-morning November sky. Fleetingly, I had the desire to warm them: not with my own hands, which weren’t any warmer, but with my hat or socks, something I could leave behind. He withdrew the flowers, and I stood exposed in front of him, heat rising in pink patches to my face. Turning quickly, I walked away.

Renata was waiting for me at the door, flustered and frantic. She had another big wedding, and the bride was straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster, demanding and irrational. She’d provided Renata with a pages-long list of flowers she liked and disliked, specifying color with paint swatches and size in centimeters. Renata tore the list in two and handed half to me with an envelope of cash.