AN EYE FOR A FLOWER
JOAN HALADAY
"Look Momma, flowers."
"Rosa, don't stare."
Maybe it started when she was conceived in flowers. Something began then that afterward Rosa could never resist- planted and cut flowers, painted petals, and paper florets.
One moonlit night on a park hillside, both of them, who became her parents, were triggered by sugar and heat. They stepped a little high on spring and soft from a good dinner and punch stronger than it tasted. Atypically, they walked in to see the illuminated river. What else could have convinced a church lady to lift her dress in a public place and lie down on a daisies-and-dandelions carpeted slope? She could smell the floral scents.
Maria was beyond the age of foolishness and knew enough to consider poison ivy, shit, and rats, but she didn't think at all. It was the only thing that saved her from a life of good works, choir practice, and loneliness locked up, down so deep, she didn't even know it was there inside her or her own.
The choirmaster was gone soon afterwards and never saw her belly begin to grow. He was a good man, a man of God that choirmaster. He sent two dozen roses and added to her collection of scents. The man called her Sister and blessed her in a card. Then, he took advantage of a transfer offer to another church. She never stopped loving the gift of a daughter he’d given her. So she guessed she’d loved him a little too without knowing it until he was already a memory.
Maria never told their secret, not even to him. The rest of the congregation assumed Rosa was some hot-roof baby with a drunken neighbor who already had a wife and kids or a visiting distant cousin who got out of hand. They gossiped a while and Maria knew it, but they hushed when she came into the room. After Rosa’s birth, they all just said, "Lord be praised” and “hallelujah" and other such things, especially "Don't be shy about askin' for help Sister."
His were the only flowers Maria ever received as a gift though Rosa had her hands on blossoms before she could walk. Vendors took one look at her and asked, “What's her name?” Upon hearing, they handed over a rose as if it were already hers or made by her like a mirror image or shadow. Schoolboys with one earring, the baddest razor cut design, and cool tattoos plucked violets out of community gardens to fete her.
Rosa was a radiant child. It was miraculous that one homely woman and a plain man could produce such a child of light with speaking eyes and hands before she could pronounce a word. Perhaps every mother thinks her child is a flower, a force of beauty in the world. If so, then Rosa was a community flower with a congregation full of mothers- many of whom were men- and a neighborhood blossom too, who brought light, joy, and pleasure to streets still too raw and dirty. How could such a child not stop to look at flowers planted in cement? Still, it was Maria’s maternal duty to try to save Rosa from the streets, so she tried again.
"Rosa, amor, they're a wreath, like in a cemetery."
Entreaties, taken off and flying, nonetheless had no visible effect on Rosa who continued to stare. Maria knew Rosa had never seen a burial or a graveyard. She’d take her to Trinity or start even smaller by peering at the Marble Cemetery through a fence one day. It’d be a first time for both of them. For now though, Maria had to get Rosa away from the street shrine: Votive candles in their miniature coffin-like box. The photograph of a brown bearded youth. To take her away even from the tempting flowers. She had to keep Rosa safe from thorns, from excrement, from mischievous moonlight, deceptively sweet recipes, seductive music, from all of life’s turns. She had to keep Rosa safe.
Joan Haladay studied literature and Portuguese. Her short works have appeared in The Inquisitive Eater, Under the Sun, Travelers’ Tales The World Is a Kitchen, The Brasilians, Small Press, and other publications. Her novella, The Book of Men, was a finalist for the Eludia Award at Hidden River Arts.