The Language of Flowers

When I went downstairs, the clock on the stove read eight o’clock. Opening the refrigerator, I scanned the full shelves and chose a small container of vanilla yogurt. I peeled back the seal, poking at a layer of thick cream with a spoon, but I wasn’t hungry. I was nervous. Elizabeth had never slept in, not once in the year I’d been with her. For a full hour I sat at the kitchen table, my eyes on the clock.

At nine o’clock, I climbed the stairs and knocked on her bedroom door. The knot around my neck had loosened, and the front of the dress hung too low, exposing my protruding chest bone. I didn’t look as glamorous, I knew, as I had in the store. When Elizabeth did not answer or call out, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. Pushing the door quietly, I stepped inside.

Elizabeth’s eyes were open. She stared at the ceiling, and she did not shift her gaze when I crossed the room to stand by the side of the bed.

“It’s nine o’clock,” I said.

Elizabeth did not respond.

“We have to see the judge at eleven. Shouldn’t we go, to get checked in and everything?”

Still, she did not acknowledge my presence. I stepped closer and leaned in, thinking she might be asleep, even though her eyes were wide open. I’d had a roommate who slept that way once, and every night I waited for her to fall asleep first, so that I could shut her eyelids. I didn’t like the feeling of being watched.

I started to shake Elizabeth, gently. She did not blink. “Elizabeth?” I said, my voice a whisper. “It’s Victoria.” I pressed my fingers into the space between her collarbones. Her pulse beat calmly, seeming to tick away the seconds until my adoption. Stand up, I pleaded silently. The thought of missing our court date, of having it postponed for a month, a week, even just another day, was incomprehensible. I began to shake her, my hands clutching her shoulders. Her head wobbled loosely on her neck.

“Stop,” she said finally, the word barely audible.

“Aren’t you getting up?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Aren’t we going to court?”

Tears leaked out of Elizabeth’s eyes, and she did not lift her hand to wipe them. I followed their path with my eyes and saw the pillow was already wet where they landed. “I can’t,” she said.

“What do you mean? I can help you.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t.” She was quiet a long time. I leaned so close that when she finally spoke again, her lips grazed my ear. “This isn’t a family,” she said softly. “Just me and you alone in this house. It isn’t a family. I can’t do this to you.”

I sat down on the foot of the bed. Elizabeth didn’t move, didn’t speak again, but I sat where I was for the rest of the morning, waiting.

19.

The nausea didn’t go away, but I learned to hide it. I vomited in the shower every morning until the drain started to clog. After that, I didn’t shower, racing to my car before Grant got up, blaming Renata and an impossible summer wedding schedule. The feeling followed me throughout the day. The scent of the flowers at work made it worse, but the coolness of the walk-in brought relief. I took afternoon naps among the chilled buckets.

I don’t know how long things would have continued this way if Renata hadn’t confronted me in the walk-in. The heavy metal door closed behind her with a loud click, and she toed me awake in the darkness.

“You think I don’t know you’re pregnant?” she asked.

My heart beat against its nut-hard shell. Pregnant. The word floated in the room between us, unwanted. I wished it would slip under the door, onto the street, and into the body of someone who wanted it. There were plenty of women dreaming of motherhood, but neither Renata nor I was one of them.

“I’m not,” I said, but without as much force as I’d intended.

“You can stay in denial as long as you want, but I’m getting you health insurance before that baby is full term and you’re standing there birthing it in front of my store.”

I didn’t move. Renata went to kick me again, but it turned into a gentle nudge on what I now noticed was my fattening middle.

“Get up,” she said, “and sit at the table. The stack of papers you have to sign will take most of the afternoon.”

I stood up and walked out of the walk-in, past the papers stacked high on the worktable, and out onto the sidewalk. Dry-heaving into the gutter, I started to run. Renata called my name, repeatedly and with increasing volume, but I didn’t look back.

When I reached the grocery store on the corner of 17th and Potrero, I was exhausted and out of breath. I collapsed onto a curb and heaved. An old woman with a bagful of groceries stopped and put her hand on my shoulder, asking me if I was okay. I slapped her hand away, and she dropped her groceries. In the commotion of the gathering crowd, I slipped into the store. I bought a three-pack of pregnancy tests and walked back to the blue room, the light paper box a stone in my backpack.