The Language of Flowers

Mother Ruby was not the only one to visit that first week. The day after the birth, Renata shopped for a featherbed for the blue room and a Moses basket for the baby, carrying them upstairs in two trips. She came back every afternoon with lunch for both of us. I lay on my new featherbed with the half-door open, the baby asleep with her cheek pressed against my bare breast, as I ate noodles or sandwiches with my hands. Renata perched on a bar stool. We rarely talked; neither she nor I could communicate in the presence of my nakedness, but our silence grew more comfortable as the days passed. The baby ate and slept and ate again. As long as she stretched across my body, skin to skin, she was content.

On Tuesday, while Renata and I ate in our accustomed silence, Marlena came to the door. I’d stopped answering the phone, and we had an anniversary dinner the following day. Renata let her in, and she delighted over the baby. She held and rocked and shushed her with a naturalness that caused Renata to raise her eyebrows and shake her head. I asked Renata to retrieve cash from my backpack and give it to Marlena; she would have to do the flowers for the dinner herself.

“No,” Renata said. “You keep her here. I’ll do the flowers.” She got out the cash and also my event calendar, where I had written the purchasing list and the address of the restaurant. Renata scanned the book. I had nothing else for thirty days.

“I’ll be back with lunch tomorrow,” she said. “And I’ll show you the centerpieces. You can approve them.”

She turned to Marlena and shook her hand awkwardly under the sleeping ball of baby. “I’m Renata,” she said. “Stay here as long as you can today, and come back tomorrow as well. I’ll pay you whatever hourly rate you usually make.”

“Just to hold the baby?” Marlena asked.

Renata nodded.

“I will,” Marlena promised. “Thank you.” She spun in slow motion, and the baby sighed, sound asleep.

“Thank you,” I said to Renata. “I could use a nap.” I hadn’t slept deeply in days, always aware, even in sleep, of the baby’s location and needs. It seemed I had inherited a maternal gene after all, I thought, remembering Renata’s words on the drive to our first dinner together.

Renata walked over to where I lay on the featherbed, my hand reaching out the half-door and stretching into the living room. She stood over me as if trying to figure out how to hug me but gave up and nudged my hand gently with her big toe. I squeezed her foot, and she smiled. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

“Okay.”

Renata’s boots padded down the stairs. The metal frame of the door rattled as she walked out.

“What’s her name?” Marlena asked, kissing the baby’s sleeping forehead. She settled onto one of the bar stools, but the baby stirred. Standing up again, she walked the length of the room and back with a slow sway.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m thinking about it.”

I hadn’t actually thought about it, but I knew I needed to start. Even though I wasn’t doing anything but feeding and diapering and swaddling, there didn’t seem to be space, mental or otherwise, for anything else. Marlena moved into the kitchen, the baby nuzzling the length of her chest and pressing her pink cheek against Marlena’s shoulder. She began to cook with one hand. Easily. I couldn’t cook, and I definitely couldn’t cook one-handed with a baby on my shoulder.

“Where’d you learn?” I asked.

“To cook?”

I nodded. “And babies.”

“My last foster home had a daycare. The woman kept me because I home-schooled and helped with the infants. I didn’t mind. It was better than high school.”

“You home-schooled?” I asked. My mind flashed back to the task list on Elizabeth’s refrigerator door; I checked my watch reflexively.

“Yeah,” she said, “the last few years. I was so far behind, the county thought it might help me get caught up, but I just got further behind. When I turned eighteen, I gave up on school and moved in to The Gathering House.”

“I was home-schooled, too,” I said. One o’clock. Elizabeth would have been just drying and putting away the last dish, drilling me on my eights, maybe my nines.

Something simmered on the stove, and Marlena added salt. I was surprised she had found anything to cook in the empty cabinets. The baby startled awake, and Marlena transferred her to the other shoulder. She angled the baby so she could see what she was cooking and mumbled something soft, a prayer or a poem, that I couldn’t make out. The baby closed her eyes.

“You’re better with kids than flowers,” I said.

“I’m learning,” Marlena said, not appearing offended.

“Yeah,” I said, watching her work. “Me, too.”

As Marlena chopped, the baby’s head jiggled gently. “You should sleep,” she said. “While the baby is happy. You know she’ll be hungry again soon.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Wake me up if she needs anything.”

“I will.” Marlena turned back to the stove.