The Language of Flowers

Grant knocked on the door, but I didn’t open it. He went away and came back a half-hour later, but I still didn’t answer his soft tapping. There wasn’t enough room to lie flat on the bathroom floor, so I lay folded over on my side, my legs pressed against the door and my back curved against the ceramic tub. My fingers traced the white hexagonal tile and drew patterns of six-petaled flowers. It was after eleven when I emerged, the shapes of the tile etched deeply into the flesh of my cheek and exposed shoulder.

I hoped Grant would be asleep, but he was sitting upright on the love seat, all the lights turned out.

“Was it the food?” he asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t know what it was, but it definitely wasn’t the food. “The roast was incredible.”

I sat down beside him, our thighs touching through matching dark denim. “Then what?” he asked.

“I’m sick,” I said, but I avoided his eyes. I didn’t believe that to be the truth, and I knew he didn’t, either. As a child I had vomited from closeness: from touch or the threat of touch. Foster parents towering over me, shoving my uncooperative arms into a jacket, teachers ripping hats from my head, their fingers lingering too long on my tangled hair, had forced my stomach into uncontrollable convulsions. Once, shortly after moving in with Elizabeth, we had eaten a picnic dinner in the garden. I had overeaten, as I did at every meal that fall, and, unable to move, I had allowed Elizabeth to pick me up and carry me back to the house. She had barely set me down on the porch before I threw up over the side of the railing.

I looked at Grant. He had been touching me, intimately, for months. Without being aware of it, I had been waiting for this to happen.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said. “I don’t want you to catch it.”

“I won’t,” Grant said, taking my hand and pulling me up. “Come upstairs.”

I did as he asked.

18.

The morning of my adoption hearing, I awoke at sunrise.

Sitting up, I turned and leaned against the cool wall, the comforter pulled up to my chin. Light traveled lazily through the window, the soft beam illuminating my dresser and open closet door. In many ways, the room looked the same as it had when I’d entered a year before; it contained the same furniture, the same white comforter, and the same stacks of clothes, many of which I had yet to grow into. But all around me were signs of the girl I had become: library books stacked on the desk with titles such as Botany on Your Plate and The Ultimate Book of Mix-It-Yourself Concoctions for Your Garden, a photograph of Elizabeth and me that Carlos had taken, our bright pink winter cheeks pressed close together, and a wastepaper basket full of flower drawings for Elizabeth, none of which I’d deemed good enough to give her. It was my last morning in the room as a foster child, and I gazed around, as I always did—surveying objects as if they belonged to someone else. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I will feel different. I will wake up, look around, and see a room—a life—that is mine and will never be taken away from me.

Moving quietly down the hall, I listened for Elizabeth. Though it was early, I was surprised to hear the house quiet, to see her bedroom door shut. I had imagined her to be as sleepless as I was. The day before had been my birthday, and though Elizabeth had made cupcakes and we’d frosted them with thick purple roses, the anticipation of my adoption had mostly eclipsed the celebration of the day. After dinner, we’d distractedly licked off the frosting, our gazes shifting out the window, waiting for the sky to darken so the new day would begin. Lying awake in bed, my body wrapped in the long floral nightgown Elizabeth had given me as a present, I’d been more excited than on every Christmas Eve of my life put together. Perhaps Elizabeth had been unable to sleep, too, I thought, and was sleeping in because she’d been up half the night.

In the bathroom was the dress we’d purchased together, hanging in plastic on a hook behind the door. I washed my face and brushed my hair before pulling it off the hanger.

It was hard to put on without Elizabeth, but I was determined. I wanted to see the look on her face when she awoke to find me dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, waiting. I wanted her to understand that I was ready. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I pulled the dress on backward, zipped it up, and then twisted it around until the zipper ran the length of my spine. The ribbons were thick and hard to tie. After multiple failed attempts, I settled for a loose square knot at the back of my neck. Around my waist I did the same.