She kept pointing at him right in the face and James had his arms crossed while shaking his head. I could see them fighting again through the glass doors that separated the patio from the television room. James had bought a used RCA from those rich people above 12th because they bought the new color model from the Sears catalogue on credit and had their old one advertised in the gazette. I didn’t care if it was black and white. I got to watch The Twilight Zone if nobody was around. James didn’t seem to care, but Mom would turn the channel to some dumb show if she caught me sneaking. I was looking down at the snapshot of my father I had hidden behind a framed picture of The Lone Ranger when I heard steps coming down the hall from the living room. The fight must be over and my mother was sitting in her chair doing a crossword. I slid the picture back and fell under my covers before the door handle moved. James turned off my table light and stopped in front of the window I was looking through. He set down his drink and stood next to my bed breathing slowly and watching me under the covers. He finished off the smelly liquid and shut my door behind him.
Mom told me that grandma Swift was coming to stay with us for a week and
I was to behave when she got here. Mom started smiling all the time with the big
wooden smile that I saw for a few weeks after Dad died. Grandma Swift stayed in
the room next to mine and snored every night. At breakfast Mom said she was
going to see her sister in
James stayed out late almost every night after Mom left for
I watered the rose bushes every day like grandma Swift said when I came home from school, not too much, not too little. Every morning when I left I expected to see a rose when I returned but nothing ever changed. The dirt remained flat as the day I had buried the seeds for weeks, but then finally short green and brown skeleton hands began to grow out of the dirt. They kept moving skyward until they were about two feet high and then they just stopped and did nothing.
Mom called long distance and she didn’t sound very good, her tired cough interrupted everything she said. She only talked to me for a few minutes and then James and Nana both had a turn. I always asked my mother when she would come home and she never told me. Today was no different so I walked out to the rose bushes and started saying everything I wanted to say to James, Nana, mother and the rest of the world. It’s not fair, I shouted. I’ve done everything I’m told and you don’t do anything. I don’t even care anymore. Just die or…grow something. I reached for one of the bushes thinking I would just yank it right out of the ground and stomp it once or twice. I forgot they were covered in thorns and one cut my finger deep enough that a drop of blood fell on the ground right at the pokey base. That made me even angrier and I kicked it once really good cracking it toward the bottom. I ran inside to do my homework before anyone could see what I’d done. That night I pretended to be asleep like I always did when James came in late, breathing thick and bumping my coat rack.
I didn’t even water the stupid things before I left for school the next morning. I thought about mom all day and just wished she would come back and James would leave. When I got home from school Nana asked if I would take out the trash. I walked out the back door toward the garage and when I looked toward the rose bush what I saw made me drop the bag right in the middle of the path splashing my shoes with chicken grease. The bush I had kicked stood taller than me and was covered in the most beautiful light blue roses I’d ever seen. I rushed the garbage out to the alley and came back with a watering can. I knew they’d bloom. I watered the rest of the bushes that were still sitting flowerless and went to smell the beautiful blue blossoms. I quickly turned my head away because they stunk so badly. The smell of garbage made me hold the bag away from my face when I walked it out, but this was much worse. It had that smell of eggshells and discarded meat that you would discover in the trash after a day at the beach in summer if you left it inside with the windows closed. I could barely get close enough to water them now that I knew what they smelled like. They sure looked good from the back porch though.
The next day the rest of the flowers had little green sprouts sticking out of their brittle tops. The blue roses didn’t have as much color as they did when I first saw them, but they sure still stunk.
Each day after that the smaller bushes had more and more green and the big one seemed to be fading away. I couldn’t let my favorite one die so I went and bought some fertilizer with the money mom left me. I thought the new fertilizer would bring it back, but it didn’t help. The smaller ones seemed to be growing slowly, but the big one kept dying.
Danny! James called from inside the house. I’m sure I’d forgot to do something important so I slid in between the two bushes. The larger one had long thorns and one grazed my cheek. Instantly there was that hot feeling when blood rushes to a cut. It didn’t hurt so I wiped the blood off my face with my hand and put it back down on the ground. As soon as I touched the earth the color came back to one of the buds. I lifted up my hand now caked with dirt and blood. I rubbed the black mixture in my fingers and let it fall back to the ground. I darted into the alley and avoided the house until I was sure James had forgotten what he had in mind for me to do.
When I came home later I was afraid James would be in a foul mood because he was unable to find me. I’m home, I called in the back door and James appeared from the back hallway. He looked at my cut face and gave a little smirk before messing my hair and wandering over to the television. You better not be fighting and if you are you better be winning, he said. To my surprise he seemed in good spirits and Nana was busy about the house tiding up. We got a call from your mother today, she told me. This past week she bounced back to almost her usual self. She has an appointment with the doctor tomorrow and hopefully there will be good news. James stuck his hand out from behind his chair. With three fingers wrapped around a can and one pointing in our direction he said, don’t count on it though!
That night I looked at the old picture of dad and the new one I had hidden of all three of us. I wished and prayed and thought about what I’d learned in Sunday school before James and mom stopped going. Please make mom better, that’s all I want, oh and James to leave, but he can stay if that’s the only way to get mom back…and I hope Nana’s flowers all grow, I think she’d like that a lot…thank you.
I slept pretty well that night and didn’t even hear if James looked in. I dreamt of the flowers and how deep the roots went. Then I saw mom, she was looking down at me and the sky was cloudy. I wanted to reach up and touch her but I couldn’t. It was as if my legs were stuck in the ground and my arms were stretched out high above my head. In each hand I held a beating heart. I wasn’t scared because even though I didn’t know where I was or exactly what was happening to me I could see her, like she was, years ago before James and before she got sick.
I woke up the next day and didn’t even bother going to school. I circled the block and snuck through the alley and into the back gate. The roses were growing well, the big one’s color had come back and it didn’t smell as much. I sat in between the bushes and didn’t mind that I was pricked once in the side. I looked at the tiny spot of blood that stained my shirt and it almost made me laugh. I pricked my finger and looked at the red and let it drop to the ground. The roses leaned in and the whole bush grew just a fraction of an inch. I heard the phone ring and after Nana answered it I heard her exclaim in delight, well I’ll be!
I knew it was mother calling. From the first time I pricked myself mother had been getting better. It sounded ridiculous even in my head, but whether or not they were connected I didn’t want anything to change so I pricked my self the rest of the day and let the drops fall at the base of the flowers one after another until the mud attracted flies and I had to shoo them away.
When I came in for dinner I avoided answering questions about school. Nana could misplace her reading glasses during a trip to the toilet and sometimes called me Sophie, that was my mother’s name, but she always knew when something was wrong. After she told me the good news about my mother she asked if I was feeling unwell and put the back of her hand to my forehead. She scrunched up her eyes and shook her head before heading into the kitchen. She banged a few pots and pans together and after what sounded like a band and felt like three minutes she emerged with a bowl of steaming soup and a glass of something that smelled very much like the rose bushes had a week earlier.
You look pale, she said and started murmuring something about in her day and sweets, and then she forced me to eat everything on the table and sent me to bed. That night I only dreamed of my mother and when I awoke I felt a little better, but realizing what I had to do if I was to see her well again made my stomach twist a little and the throbbing of my fingers pulse from under the covers.
I changed hands from that day forward letting the thorns, which appeared to grow longer and sharper each afternoon, break the skin and draw from in me that thing which made me weaker by the day, but seemed inexplicably linked to the healing of my mother.
A doctor came a week later when I’d shown up at home, white as a ghost, every day. My teachers began stopping by to make sure I hadn’t been sick and said they missed me that week. This revelation displeased Nana and she called mother immediately. Mother was almost fully well enough to come home and the news of my absence from school ensured her early departure for home. I was so excited. All my work had finally paid off and even though I could barely stand the color rose to my cheeks as I resolved to give the bushes everything I had so mother would never leave again.
I crept out of bed when Nana’s snoring guaranteed my safe escape through the bedroom window. The stars were bright as they had been on the night the roses were first planted those days after mother became ill. I laid down in the dark under the rose bush and looked at the stars and the faded blue blossoms against the sky. With a swift motion I brought my arm down against the points and closed my eyes.
Mother leaned down over me against the cloudy sky and I wanted to reach up and touch her but I couldn’t. My feet were so deep in the earth that I couldn’t escape the cold. Every day she leaned over me, the first few days and weeks she cried, then gradually she began to smile.
She told me about how her recovery was considered a miracle by everyone she knew and when James left for work one day and drove the Ford off an embankment it didn’t really surprise her. I was glad he was finally gone. She pruned me and confided that she didn’t understand how she got better and wondered everyday where I’d gone. I was replanted in a large pot in the front room and she would sit by me everyday reading, or telling me things she was thinking about. Someday soon I was coming back was her thought and she smiled and held a leaf that had fallen moments earlier. Try as I might I could never tell her I was fine and right there with her, I think she knew because Nana told her about how we planted the roses the night the stars were out and how I took care of them.
Grandma Swift never left and watered me everyday and when the sky was clear at night would set me under the stars saying, here, I know you like this view.
Fewer and fewer flowers blossomed as the years grew long and mother became thin. Her frailty matched mine every moment and one evening as the moon faded, on its’ new course, she fell asleep and never woke up. The petals had all fallen off and the brittle thorns were all that remained.
She was cremated along with her favorite flower according to her wishes. Part of the ashes were buried next to dad and the other half were scattered over a dense green meadow just outside of town.