The Language of Flowers

“Off,” the driver said. A large knot was already forming on his head, and he pressed the palm of one hand against it while he reached for a radio with the other. I put on my backpack and climbed off the bus. Dust from the road swirled around me as I looked up through the open doors.

“Your mother’s name,” the driver demanded, pointing down at me.

“I don’t have one,” I said.

“Your guardian, then.”

“The State of California.”

“Then who do you fucking live with?” The radio crackled with harsh words, and the driver turned it off. The silence on the bus was complete. Even Perla had stopped crying and sat motionless.

“Elizabeth Anderson,” I said. “I don’t know her phone number or her address.” My entire childhood I had refused to memorize phone numbers, so that I wouldn’t be able to answer questions like these.

The bus driver threw the radio on the floor in anger. He glared at me, and I held his gaze in defiance. I hoped he would drive off and leave me alone on the side of the road. I would prefer to be left than continue on to school, and I relished the thought that my abandonment would likely cost the bus driver his job. He tapped his thumbs on the horn, and my anticipation stretched down the empty road.

Just then Perla stood up and stepped out in front of the driver. “You can call my father,” she said. “He’ll come for her.”

I squinted my eyes at Perla. She looked away.

Carlos did come for me. He put me in the truck, listened to the bus driver’s version of events, and then drove me back to the vineyard in silence. I looked out the window as we drove, paying attention to every detail as if taking in the landscape for the last time. Elizabeth would not keep me, not after this. My stomach lurched.

But when Carlos told Elizabeth what I’d done, his rough hand clamped around the back of my neck, forcing me to face her, she laughed. The sound was so unexpected and fleeting that the second she stopped laughing, I thought I’d imagined it.

“Thank you, Carlos,” Elizabeth said, her face turning serious. She reached out to shake his hand and quickly released it, and the gesture was grateful and dismissive at once. Carlos turned quickly to leave. “Do the crews need anything?” Elizabeth asked as he walked away. Carlos shook his head. “I’ll be back in an hour, then, maybe more. Watch over the harvest, please, while I’m gone.”

“I will,” he said, disappearing behind the sheds.

Elizabeth walked directly to her truck. When she turned and saw that I wasn’t following, she walked back to where I stood. “You’re coming with me,” she said. “Now.” She took a step toward me, and I remembered the way she’d carried me into the house, just two months before. I had grown since then, and gained back the weight I’d lost, but I didn’t doubt she could still throw me inside the truck if it was her will to do so. Following her into the cab, I imagined what was to come: the drive to social services, the white-walled waiting room, Elizabeth leaving even before the social worker on call could check me in to the system. It had all happened before. Clenching tight fists, I stared out the window.

But as we started down the driveway, Elizabeth’s words surprised me. “We’re going to see my sister,” she said. “This feud has gone on long enough, don’t you think?”

My body turned rigid. Elizabeth looked to me as if for a response, and I nodded stiffly, the reality of what she had said sinking in.

She was going to keep me.

My eyes filled with tears. The anger I’d felt toward Elizabeth that morning dissolved, replaced immediately by shock. I had not, for even one moment, believed Elizabeth when she said there was nothing I could do to make her give me back. But here I was, only moments after having been sent home from school—a suspension would follow, if not an expulsion—listening to Elizabeth talk about her sister. Confusion and something unexpected—relief, maybe, or even joy—swirled within me. I sucked in my lips, trying not to smile.

“Catherine won’t believe you hit the bus driver over the head while he was driving,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, she won’t believe it because I did it, too—the exact same thing! Maybe I was in second grade, though? I can’t remember. At any rate, one minute he was driving, and the next minute he was glaring at me in the rearview mirror, and before I could stop myself, I was out of my seat, yelling, ‘Keep your eyes on the road, you fat bastard!’ And he was fat, let me tell you.”

I started to laugh, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. Folded over, my forehead pressed against the dashboard, my laughter escaped in a series of choking gulps that sounded like sobs. I covered my face with my hands. “My bus driver isn’t fat,” I said when I had calmed enough to speak, “but he’s ugly.”

I started to laugh again, but Elizabeth’s silence quieted me.