The Language of Flowers

I did as she asked, and when I returned she was standing on the bottom step, testing her weight on her hurt foot. She looked from the road to her garden and back again as if trying to decide where to go.

“Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.” She took her first step toward the road and grimaced. “You’ll have to help me or we’ll never make it,” she said, reaching for my shoulder.

“Don’t you have a cane or something?” I asked, shrinking away from her touch.

Elizabeth laughed. “No, do you? I’m not an old lady, despite what you may think.” She reached toward me, and this time I didn’t retract. She was so tall she had to bend at the waist to lean on my shoulder. We took slow steps toward the road. She stopped once to readjust her shoe, and we kept walking. My shoulder burned beneath her hand.

“Here,” Elizabeth said, when we reached the road. She sat down on the gravel and leaned against the wooden post of the mailbox. “See? Everywhere.” She gestured to the ditch separating the highway from the rows of vines. It was about as deep as I was tall, full of stiff, dry plants, without a flower anywhere.

“I don’t see anything.” I was disappointed.

“Climb down in there,” she said. I turned around and slid down the steep dirt wall. She handed me the jam jar and scissors. “Look for dime-sized flowers that were once purple, although this time of year they’ve likely faded to brown like everything else in Northern California. They’re sharp, though, so pick them carefully when you find them.”

I took the jar and scissors, and crouched down into the weeds. The brush was thick, golden, and smelled like the end of summer. I cut a dry plant at the root. It stood tall in its place, supported by weeds on all sides. Detangling it, I threw it onto Elizabeth’s lap.

“Is that it?”

“Yes, but this one doesn’t have flowers. Keep looking.”

I scrambled up the side of the ditch a few inches to get a better view but still didn’t see anything purple. I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could in frustration. It hit the opposite wall and flew back in my direction so that I had to jump out of the way. Elizabeth laughed.

Leaping back into the weeds, I parted the brush with my hands and examined every dry stalk. “Here!” I said finally, snatching a clover-sized bud and throwing it into the jar. The flower looked like a small golden puffer fish with a faded tuft of purple hair. I climbed back to Elizabeth to show her the flower, which was bouncing around inside the jar like a living thing. I clapped my hand over the top to keep it from escaping.

“Thistle!” I said, handing her the jar. “For you,” I added. I reached out awkwardly and patted her once on the shoulder. It was perhaps the first time in my entire life I had initiated contact with another human being—at least the first time in my memory. Meredith had told me I was a clingy baby, reaching out and clutching hair, ears, or fingers if I could find them—the straps of my infant car seat if I could not—with pulsing purple fists. But I didn’t remember any of this, and so my action—the quick connection of the palm of my hand to Elizabeth’s shoulder blade—surprised me. I stepped back, glaring at her as if she had made me do it.

But Elizabeth just smiled. “If I didn’t know the meaning, I would be thrilled,” she said. “I think this is the kindest you’ve been to me, and all to express your hatred and mistrust of humankind.” For the second time that afternoon her eyes filled, and, like before, she did not look sad.

She reached out to hug me, but before she could draw me in, I slipped out of her arms and back into the ditch.

14.

The solid form of the chair on which I sat began to liquefy. Without knowing how I got there, I lay on my stomach on the library floor, books spread in a semicircle around me. The more I read, the more I felt my understanding of the universe slip away from me. Columbine symbolized both desertion and folly; poppy, imagination and extravagance. The almond blossom, listed as indiscretion in Elizabeth’s dictionary, appeared in others as hope and occasionally thoughtlessness. The definitions were not only different, they were often contradictory. Even common thistle—the staple of my communication—appeared as misanthropy only when it wasn’t defined as austerity.