Flowers
On that day, the last day, the primroses were especially pretty.
The following is an excerpt from That Time I Loved You by Carrianne Leung, published in March 2018 by HarperCollins.
On this day, sitting in her garage, on the edge of the lovely morning, she decided that today would be the final day. On this day, she would go home, to her real home, away from this hose, away from this house in the middle of the block. The other day, Georgie showed her his first paycheque from working part-time with his father on the construction site. Mr. D had clapped his hand across Georgie’s back and offered a rare smile. Georgie, her boy, was a man now. And her mother was dead. The flowers had been telling her for a long time to go, but now she understood. They were right. She had been waiting for some release from the heaviness that had been building in her body. This weight had pinned her to this life, where nothing seemed to make sense no matter how hard she tried. Only Georgie made sense, and now, he didn’t need her anymore. She could fly away if she wanted. Her mother was leading the way. The signs were there. She swung open the garage doors and picked up the hose. She turned and sprayed the driveway and the side-walk in front of their house. This last time, she wanted to do an extra-good job making everything clean. The red flowers beside the walkway leading to her front door turned their faces up at her again to say, “The letter.” Mrs. D nodded to show that she had heard. They had a right to be intrusive; they’d lived there almost as long as she had. Mr. D planted them when they first moved into the house. They were expensive, she remembered him saying, but they would come back every season. They came back like noisy relatives each year. She took care of them, but it was Mr. D whom they loved. They preened and giggled like lovestruck girls when he walked by. They loved Georgie too, whistling and shouting, “How handsome!” when he was near. With Mrs. D, they weren’t so kind, and sometimes she had to bend down close to catch their discreet whispers. “Closer, closer. Closer still.” They beckoned until she was on her hands and knees with her ear close to their petals. “You’re ugly!” they would finally tell her, and laugh in shrill unison. At first, Mrs. D was mad at these vain flowers, and she would refuse to acknowledge them for days, although she never withheld water. The flowers would cajole her back, complimenting her in a way that made Mrs. D doubt their sincerity, but she found herself lured back to them nevertheless. They were so lovely, and maybe they were right. She knew she was no beauty, was short and squat with deep lines like a puppet around her mouth, so she forgave them for their honesty. She would unfold a lawn chair and sit beside them, listen to them chattering. She had no friends here to talk to. She didn’t know the language well enough to have made any. There was only Georgie, and he was busy with his own life. Mr. D told her to keep quiet most days because, he said, she annoyed him with her noises. There were days when she didn’t utter a single word. The primroses reminded her of the women back home who after all the chores had been done would sit on their stoops and gossip with each other. The flowers had opinions about the neighbours. The Mrs. in the house with the cherry tree wore her skirts too short. The Mr. in the house with the yellow door laughed too loud. When the flowers were good friends, they were very good friends. But the flowers had sharp tongues, and they couldn’t resist criticizing Mrs. D after a spell. Eventually, Mrs. D let it all go and tolerated their meanness because no one else spoke Portuguese on the block. The flowers, emboldened, began to dole out their wickedness as matter of fact. “Mr. D hates you. Georgie too.”
As she continued to walk, she thought about the letter that she received two days ago. It had come in a thin white envelope, and her name had been handwritten on the front. This was a rare thing, handwriting on an envelope. Mrs. D had taken it to her kitchen and carefully used a butter knife to cut the edges so she could take out the neatly folded page. Her brother’s scrawl was difficult to make out. When she read his words, that Mãe had been ill for weeks but had finally died peacefully in her sleep, she felt the familiar wind rush through her. She smelled clean laundry, the kind that could only be created by the alchemy of salty wind and sun. She circled Clara Street until Georgie called her in. He yelled, “Mãe,” from the driveway, waving his arm. She looked up and saw her Georgie boy. She was often surprised that he was no longer a baby, even taller than his father. He was so beautiful with his brown curls, like an angel. Even as a baby, he was, she knew, an angel lent to her. The flowers looked up at him too. They smiled and swayed their petals. At 15, he had become such a handsome man. She watched Georgie running over to her, and she stumbled as she went to meet him. She wondered, Will he miss his mãe? He held her hand and took her home. As they passed, she could hear the flowers hissing at her, impatient. It was time to go, they insisted.
On that day, the last day, the primroses were especially pretty. Their red petals opened to kiss the summer sun. Mrs. Da Silva’s first thought upon waking that morning was to water them. She had tossed and turned all night in a restless sleep and woke up already tired. There had been no rain for days. In her faded cotton house dress, she pulled the garden hose from its long coil attached to the concrete wall of the house. She liked the ease of the garden hose, its coil, its simple tap, its reach. Everything was easy here, compared to Portugal. You had a house with a tap attached to the side wall. You turned it on and water came from the hose. After 20 years in this country, Mrs. D was still amazed. Spraying the water across the patch of grass and on the petals of the prim-roses was among her favourite things. Each blade of grass and small flower shook and shivered under the mist raining down. When she turned, the flowers whispered two words in Portuguese behind her back that sounded like a sigh: the letter.
Her finger released the lever of the nozzle on her hose. She stood silently in the glistening grass, her toes getting wet through her slippers. She waited to hear more, but the flowers went silent. Mrs. D wondered how the flowers knew about the letter, but then she remembered that they knew everything about her, as if there were an invisible thread that ran between them. The letter had arrived two days earlier, and she had read it, memorized its contents, but the news didn’t seem real, more like a ghostly whisper from far away. Only when the flowers uttered the words in their familiar accent, as if they too had come from her fishing village in São Miguel, did the letter feel true. There were facts in the letter. The flowers confirmed it. Her mãe, her beautiful mother, was dead. Mrs. D dropped the hose, the water still running, and walked into her garage. The cool darkness comforted her body. She felt sweat gathering in her armpits. Away from the sun, where everything sparkled and blinded, the darkness was a relief. She eased her body down on a lawn chair, filling it. Her body, so angular and lean when she was young, was now soft and padded. She spent a lot of time here in the garage, sometimes with the doors wide open, sitting at its threshold, so she could look at her garden and talk to the flowers. It was perfect, this spot, neither outside nor in. She liked to have a roof over her head. Also, she liked to be close to the laundry. Mrs. D had a washer and a big tumbling machine that dried clothes. Whirlpool. They were very good and efficient. Still, after she removed the damp clothes from the washer, she preferred to hang them. It’s how her mother did it, and how she was taught to do it back home. They did it together, high up in the hills with the wind whipping their skirts, the tall grass swaying, and beyond, the sea. Where the sweet scent of ginger lilies that grew along the coast was floated up to them. These were her happiest memories with her mother. Her hands rhythmically pinned the damp clothes, releasing them to the gales. She did her part, so the sun and breeze could do theirs. Afterwards, she would stand beside the fluttering linen and spread her arms out, legs wide, and face the sun, the clouds, the sea, the wind and grass. She would close her eyes and become part of the world. Even here in this new country, in this quiet neighbourhood away from the big city, where the houses were protected from the elements and things were easy, even during the wintertime, Mrs. D wanted to hang the clothes. She asked for a clothesline to be mounted in the garage. Her husband said she was crazy. He wouldn’t do such a fucking thing when he had bought her a washer and dryer, he’d said, and slapped her for her foolishness. Later, she asked her child, Georgie, to do it. Georgie loved her, and so he did. He was too short to reach up to the crossbeams, but he pulled out his father’s ladder and hammered the nails and fastened the line. Georgie did this even though he knew his father would hit him when he found out. And sure enough, Georgie’s father did hit him, but for whatever reason, the line was left up. Sometimes in the coldest months, when Mrs. D would come out to the garage, the clothes would be frozen. Like cardboard dolls, stiff on the line. This made her laugh. She had a bark of laughter like a small dog sounding short and urgent warnings to others. There were years when nothing had made her laugh, and she had walked like a shadow through her days. When she first arrived in this country, she had been afraid of everything. At first, she told Mr. D about her fear. “Sometimes, the doorbell rings when you are away. I am afraid of answering the door.” He told her to shut up. “I am afraid of going to the store by myself. They say things to me I don’t understand.” He told her to get off her ass and buy some food. “I am afraid to go out in winter. It’s so cold. I am afraid I may freeze like they do in the Tom and Jerry cartoon and die.” He slapped her with an open palm.Like a miracle, one spring day, the flowers started to talk.But one day, all her clothespins went missing. She didn’t know where they went or who could have taken them, but she became even more afraid. She held the fear inside her body like a shiver. Mrs. D paid special attention to what Mr. D expected—she bought the food, answered the door, went out in the cold, opened her legs—but always with the shiver inside her. Sometimes she shivered so hard, she thought her body might crack open and shatter, but she never spoke of it. Then, like a miracle, one spring day, the flowers started to talk. At first, she was confused by the murmuring, but then she listened hard. They were talking to her! They were funny, sometimes naughty or mean, but they talked. Flowers talking—it was so absurd—and the idea of it caused her to laugh so hard her stomach ached. They asked her in unison, “Who are you? Who am I?”
On this day, sitting in her garage, on the edge of the lovely morning, she decided that today would be the final day. On this day, she would go home, to her real home, away from this hose, away from this house in the middle of the block. The other day, Georgie showed her his first paycheque from working part-time with his father on the construction site. Mr. D had clapped his hand across Georgie’s back and offered a rare smile. Georgie, her boy, was a man now. And her mother was dead. The flowers had been telling her for a long time to go, but now she understood. They were right. She had been waiting for some release from the heaviness that had been building in her body. This weight had pinned her to this life, where nothing seemed to make sense no matter how hard she tried. Only Georgie made sense, and now, he didn’t need her anymore. She could fly away if she wanted. Her mother was leading the way. The signs were there. She swung open the garage doors and picked up the hose. She turned and sprayed the driveway and the side-walk in front of their house. This last time, she wanted to do an extra-good job making everything clean. The red flowers beside the walkway leading to her front door turned their faces up at her again to say, “The letter.” Mrs. D nodded to show that she had heard. They had a right to be intrusive; they’d lived there almost as long as she had. Mr. D planted them when they first moved into the house. They were expensive, she remembered him saying, but they would come back every season. They came back like noisy relatives each year. She took care of them, but it was Mr. D whom they loved. They preened and giggled like lovestruck girls when he walked by. They loved Georgie too, whistling and shouting, “How handsome!” when he was near. With Mrs. D, they weren’t so kind, and sometimes she had to bend down close to catch their discreet whispers. “Closer, closer. Closer still.” They beckoned until she was on her hands and knees with her ear close to their petals. “You’re ugly!” they would finally tell her, and laugh in shrill unison. At first, Mrs. D was mad at these vain flowers, and she would refuse to acknowledge them for days, although she never withheld water. The flowers would cajole her back, complimenting her in a way that made Mrs. D doubt their sincerity, but she found herself lured back to them nevertheless. They were so lovely, and maybe they were right. She knew she was no beauty, was short and squat with deep lines like a puppet around her mouth, so she forgave them for their honesty. She would unfold a lawn chair and sit beside them, listen to them chattering. She had no friends here to talk to. She didn’t know the language well enough to have made any. There was only Georgie, and he was busy with his own life. Mr. D told her to keep quiet most days because, he said, she annoyed him with her noises. There were days when she didn’t utter a single word. The primroses reminded her of the women back home who after all the chores had been done would sit on their stoops and gossip with each other. The flowers had opinions about the neighbours. The Mrs. in the house with the cherry tree wore her skirts too short. The Mr. in the house with the yellow door laughed too loud. When the flowers were good friends, they were very good friends. But the flowers had sharp tongues, and they couldn’t resist criticizing Mrs. D after a spell. Eventually, Mrs. D let it all go and tolerated their meanness because no one else spoke Portuguese on the block. The flowers, emboldened, began to dole out their wickedness as matter of fact. “Mr. D hates you. Georgie too.”
When the flowers were good friends, they were very good friends. But the flowers had sharp tongues, and they couldn’t resist criticizing Mrs. D after a spell.Mrs. D took all of this in, sitting near them in her garage with its door slid open, watching the neighbours as they walked by. Inevitably, the weather would shift, and the flowers’ voices would grow silent as the season cooled, and their petals would wilt and fall to the ground. Did Mrs. D feel some sense of poetic justice when she saw their bare stems? She did not. Instead, she sighed, folded up her lawn chair for the season and thought she would miss them through the fall and winter. When the flowers arrived in June this time, they went after Mrs. D with a vengeance, without even pretending to be friends. Every morning, they wailed for their water and care, and she gave it to them. This day was the same. After she recoiled the hose and was filled with satisfaction that she had completed her duty, she went for a walk around the neighbourhood. Some people waved as she passed. She had grown accustomed to their ways, as they probably had in turn become familiar with her shuffling by in her drab dress and head scarf. She had seen them come and go from their doors, their cars, had seen their kids pouring out into the street to play. They were good people, she had decided. She didn’t know names or particulars, but she knew. She walked in circles, up one street, crossed, and down the other side. She may have walked for a couple of hours and said hello once to everybody, nodding on her second and third round. No need to repeat herself. She walked and looked at the ground. She walked and looked at the sky. The sun was blazing today although it was only June. Mrs. D felt the sweat gather at her brow, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. She walked and looked at the young crabapple trees that lined the road. Their pink blossoms were now gone, replaced by hard green leaves that looked like plastic. She knew the small sour fruit would start to grow soon. When she had first moved to this neighbourhood, she picked these apples and ate them until Mr. D told her that here people didn’t do that. It made no sense to her for food to grow only to fall to the ground and rot. When she was young, Mr. D had lived down the narrow lane from her family home. Her brothers used to fish with him at the marina. They said he always got the best catch. Too good to bother with poles and lines, Georgie’s father, at nine years old, made a spear from bamboo, sharpening an edge with his pocket knife. The first time, the other boys swarmed around the beach and watched him as he concentrated like a soldier and dove into the waves, an orange buoy tied to his ankle. The water would have been freezing, but it didn’t seem to bother him. After an hour, when capped men smoking cigarettes joined the boys, he returned bearing a huge silver fish that he held by the gills, its side bloodied from a hole that the spear had made. A cheer erupted from the small gang of boys and men, and it had felt like a hero’s welcome. The women heard the cheering, and they rushed out with the girls to see what was happening. She was too shy to look at him, so she kept her head down and concentrated on his big toe, which was smeared with drops of blood from the fish. The nail was split in the middle, she remembered. Then some time later, he went away, made a home in this soft country and came back to take her with him. She went, and everybody was happy. Except her mãe. Mãe had stood at the door and said nothing and did not smile. Mrs. D thought about this for a long time, and in a moment of clarity, she wondered if perhaps her mother knew that this man who took her was not just brave, but that somehow, he was also cruel.
As she continued to walk, she thought about the letter that she received two days ago. It had come in a thin white envelope, and her name had been handwritten on the front. This was a rare thing, handwriting on an envelope. Mrs. D had taken it to her kitchen and carefully used a butter knife to cut the edges so she could take out the neatly folded page. Her brother’s scrawl was difficult to make out. When she read his words, that Mãe had been ill for weeks but had finally died peacefully in her sleep, she felt the familiar wind rush through her. She smelled clean laundry, the kind that could only be created by the alchemy of salty wind and sun. She circled Clara Street until Georgie called her in. He yelled, “Mãe,” from the driveway, waving his arm. She looked up and saw her Georgie boy. She was often surprised that he was no longer a baby, even taller than his father. He was so beautiful with his brown curls, like an angel. Even as a baby, he was, she knew, an angel lent to her. The flowers looked up at him too. They smiled and swayed their petals. At 15, he had become such a handsome man. She watched Georgie running over to her, and she stumbled as she went to meet him. She wondered, Will he miss his mãe? He held her hand and took her home. As they passed, she could hear the flowers hissing at her, impatient. It was time to go, they insisted.
As they passed, she could hear the flowers hissing at her, impatient. It was time to go, they insisted.She was tired and wanted to lie down, but her son wanted to make sure something was on the table before his father came home. Georgie was kind. Georgie loved her. He got out the pans while she unwrapped some ground beef from the refrigerator. It came from the store already packaged and weighed exactly one pound. Everything here had a place—a perfect place where things fit into one-pound packages. Mrs. D heated up some rice and mixed it with the ground beef and some peppers. She left it in a pan and covered it up. She went upstairs to her room to lie down. In her bed of starched linen, she dreamt. Her mãe. Small brown hand over hand to clip the sheets across a clothesline. Large looming clouds and the wind blowing the tall grass. The whites of hydrangea. She woke up to the sound of TV downstairs. She went to Georgie’s room, but he wasn’t there. Down in the living room, she walked past Mr. D in his chair. He was drinking beer and didn’t look up. She didn’t know if he saw her or if she was already a ghost. She knew this could be true as much as flowers could talk. She looked forward to being invisible. She would be a speck of lint on Mr. D’s big split toe while he watched TV. She would be a brown speck on his brown toe against his brown recliner in that brown room. She stood for a moment in the corner, looking at the back of his head, noticing the large bald patch in the middle. She remembered when it was full of glossy brown curls like Georgie’s. It was the curls that had made her think that maybe it would be okay to follow him across an ocean despite her mãe’s doubts. It filled her with sadness now, for the hair that was no more. When he used to roll on top of her in the night, she would risk running her fingers through that hair, the only time such behaviour was allowed. It was as soft as she had imagined, like dipping her hand in a basket of down. She felt tears spring to her eyes for the lost hair. Before the tears could fall, she let herself out the front door and walked to the garage. She went in and started to close the door behind her. But wait. She wanted one more look at the sky. She opened the door wide enough to glimpse the sky. She looked up higher and saw the moon. Bright, bright orange moon. One flower woke up and scowled at her. “Go back to sleep, sonolenta,” Mrs. D whispered, and winked at it. This was not the way she would have wanted to die. She would have preferred to lie down in a shallow river, her bare back pressed against flat pebbles still warm from the sun, her hair like branches of a tree fanning out from her head. She wanted to face the sky and her eyes to be covered with sunlight that glinted on the water. She ducked back inside and kept the garage open a crack for the moonlight to crawl through. She retrieved the bottle of bleach from the cabinet at the back of the garage, sat down on her lawn chair, unscrewed the cap and lifted the bleach to her lips. She took a long sip, swallowed, and closed her eyes against the moon.
