Vanessa Diffenbaugh: The Language of Flowers

When I returned to McKinley Square it was late morning, and I crept toward my garden on silent grass. I was afraid the couple would still be sprawled across my flowers, but they were gone. The imprint of the boy’s back in my helenium and the tequila bottle protruding from a dense shrub were all that remained.

I had only one chance. It was clear to me that the florist needed help; her face had been as pale and lined as Elizabeth’s in the weeks before the harvest. If I could convince her I was capable, she would hire me. With the money I earned I would rent a room with a locking door and tend my garden only in daylight, when I could see strangers as they approached.

Sitting under a tree, I studied my options. The fall flowers were in full bloom: verbena, goldenrod, chrysanthemum, and a late-blooming rose. The carefully tended city beds around the park held layers of textured evergreen but little color.

I set to work, considering height, density, texture, and layers of scent, removing touch-damaged petals with careful pinches. When I had finished, spiraling white mums emerged from a cushion of snow-colored verbena, and clusters of pale climbing roses circled and dripped over the edge of a tightly wrapped nosegay. I removed every thorn. The bouquet was white as a wedding and spoke of prayers, truth, and an unacquainted heart. No one would know.

The woman was locking up when I arrived. It was not yet noon.

“If you’re looking for another five dollars, you’re too late,” she said, gesturing to the truck with her head. It was full of heavy arrangements. “I could have used your help.”

I held out my bouquet.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Experience,” I said, handing her the flowers.

She smelled the mums and roses, and then poked the verbena, examining the tip of her finger. It was clean. Starting up the hill to her truck, she motioned for me to follow.

From within the truck she withdrew a nosegay of stiff white roses, packed close and tied with pink satin. She held the two bouquets side by side. There was no comparison. She tossed me the white roses, and I caught them with one hand.

“Take those to Spitari’s, up the hill. Ask for Andrew, and tell him I sent you. He’ll let you trade the flowers for your lunch.”

I nodded, and she climbed inside the truck. “I’m Renata.” She started the engine. “If you want to work next Saturday, be here by five a.m. If you’re even a minute late, I’ll leave you behind.”

I felt like sprinting down the hill, overcome with relief. It didn’t matter that I’d been promised only a single day’s work, or that the money would probably only be enough to rent a room for a handful of nights. It was something. And if I proved myself, she would invite me back. I smiled at the sidewalk, my toes jittering in my shoes.

Renata pulled away from the curb, then slowed to a stop and rolled down her window. “Name?” she asked.

“Victoria,” I said, looking up and suppressing a smile. “Victoria Jones.”

She nodded once and drove away.

The following Saturday, I arrived at Bloom just after midnight. I had fallen asleep in my garden with my back against a redwood, keeping watch, and I bolted awake at the sound of approaching laughter. It was a band of drunken young men this time. The nearest, an overgrown boy with hair past his chin, smiled at me as if we were lovers meeting at a prearranged location. I avoided his eyes and walked quickly to the nearest streetlamp, then down the hill to the flower shop.

While I waited I applied deodorant and gel, then paced the block, forcing myself to stay awake. By the time Renata’s truck turned up the street, I had checked my reflection in parked car mirrors twice and reordered my clothing three times. Even with all of this, I knew I was beginning to look and smell like a street person.

Renata pulled up, unlocked the passenger door, and motioned for me to get inside. I sat as far away from her as possible, and when I slammed the door it rattled against my fleshless hip.

“Good morning,” said Renata. “You’re on time.” She U-turned and drove down the empty street the way she had come.

“Too early to wish me a good morning?” she asked. I nodded, rubbing my eyes, pretending I’d just awakened. We drove in silence around a roundabout. Renata missed her turn and went around twice. “It’s a little early for me, too, I guess.”

She drove up and down the one-way streets south of Market until she pulled in to a crowded parking lot.

“Follow close,” she said, getting out of the truck and handing me a stack of empty buckets. “It’s crowded in there, and I don’t have time to waste looking for you. I have a two o’clock wedding today; the flowers have to be delivered by ten. Luckily, they’re just sunflowers—won’t take long to arrange.”

“Sunflowers?” I asked, surprised. False riches. It wouldn’t be my wedding flower of choice , I thought, and then rolled my eyes at the absurdity of the words my wedding .

“Out of season, I know,” she said. “You can get anything—anytime—at the flower market, and when couples throw money at me, I don’t complain.” She shoved her way through the crowded entry. I followed close behind, cringing as buckets and elbows and shoulders brushed my body.

The inside of the flower market was like a cave, hollow and windowless, with a metal ceiling and cement floor. The unnaturalness of the sea of flowers within, far from soil and light, set me on edge. Booths overflowed with seasonal flowers, everything blooming in my own garden but cut and displayed in bunches. Other vendors sold tropical flowers, orchids and hibiscus and exotic plants I couldn’t name, from hothouses hundreds of miles away. I plucked a passionflower and tucked it in my waistband as we rushed past.

Renata flipped through sunflowers as if they were pages of a book. She argued over prices, walked away, and returned. I wondered if she had always been an American, or if she had been raised in a place in which bargaining was a way of life. She had a trace of an accent I couldn’t place. Other people walked up, handed wads of cash and credit cards, and left with their buckets of flowers. But Renata kept arguing. The vendors appeared to be used to her, and argued only halfheartedly. They seemed to know that in the end she would win, and in the end she did. She stuffed bundles of orange sunflowers with two-foot stems in my buckets and raced to the next booth.

When I caught up with her, she held dozens of dripping calla lilies, tightly rolled petals of pink and orange. The water from the stems soaked though the thin sleeves of her cotton blouse, and she threw the flowers in my direction as I approached. Only half landed in the empty bucket; I folded over slowly to gather the fallen flowers.

“This is her first day,” Renata said to the vendor. “She doesn’t yet understand the urgency. Your lilies will be gone in another fifteen minutes.”

I slid the last flower into the bucket and stood up. The vendor was selling dozens of varieties of lilies: tiger, stargazer, imperial, and pure white Casablancas. I brushed a bead of pollen from where it had fallen on the petal of an open stargazer, listening as Renata negotiated the price of her purchases. She was spewing numbers far below what the surrounding customers had paid, barely pausing for a response, and stopped suddenly when the vendor agreed. I looked up.

Renata pulled out her purse and waved a thin stack of bills in front of the vendor’s face, but he didn’t reach for them. He was looking at me. His eyes traveled from the top of my stiff hair down my face, flitting around my collarbone and heating my covered arms before resting on the sticky brown pollen on my fingertips. His gaze felt like an invasion. I squeezed the lip of the bucket I held, my knuckles white.