Grace

Lissa Staples

“It won’t be long now, Lisbeth,” Aunt Jean says quietly to my mother, looking at the pale figure of my grandmother who is lying in bed. Mama nods and wipes her eyes with a tissue.

I don’t know how to judge whether she’s talking about days, hours or minutes. It’s that time in the afternoon when the light becomes golden and my mother usually calls me to wash the vegetables for dinner except that Nana is dying and we had to drive here very quickly, so there will be no kitchen work tonight.

My grandmother has melted away since we last visited three weeks ago and is so thin that her straight nose resembles a beak. Her lips are two bluish lines, slack and slightly open as if she were ready to receive Communion. She has very little hair and even her eyebrows have disappeared. I’ve never before seen the faint frost of whiskers on her chin, a sign that she is very old. Her blue-veined hands lie on top of the blankets, her fingers twisted and swollen. I don’t like the way she looks now so I think about how her eyes are green like a pine tree and how we laughed the summer before last when she took me on a picnic in her red convertible and it rained so hard. And then when we got home, instead of going inside, she pulled me onto the grass and said, “Dance with me, Grace!” And so I jumped around, which was all I knew about dancing, while she swayed with her arms out, our faces turned to the dripping sky, mouths open like funnels which is hard to do when you’re laughing. Even Mama joined us and by the easy way she kicked off her shoes, it seemed to me she had done this before.

Now, Nana’s eyes are closed and only her nostrils move as she breathes. There is not much conversation and only in quiet voices as if she is sleeping and not to be disturbed.

Her stillness reminds me of the dead lamb at the farm this past August and how small its body was, how unnaturally still. My father dug the grave, sweat rolling down his face. The ground was not easy and I heard the ping and crunch of stones as he stabbed it with the shovel. Bluebottles crawled into the lamb’s eyes, ears and nose. Even its mouth and little pink tongue were black and hideous with insects but my father did not cry so I didn’t either. When the hole was deep enough, he lifted the muddied body as though it were no more than a sack of flour and laid it carefully in the ground. I helped him shovel the soil back, pushing it in with my hands and then he stomped all over the top with his heavy boots so the coyotes wouldn’t get into it, or at least he hoped not. Finally, he put the shovel away in the barn, slapping his hands on his pant legs and we went into the house for dinner. I know where the grave is although there’s no marker. I could find it even in the snow.

My family fills Nana’s small bedroom. Papa stands by the tall dresser, calm and relaxed. It is how I recognize him when he walks into a room, not by his height or his large hands, but by the easy way his body flows which is the way he rides a horse, always in balance with the animal and always in control. My cousin, Little John, who’s not as tall as I am but older by a year, sniffles and Papa bends down, takes John’s good hand and whispers something in his ear. John nods and I can see that he means to control himself but when he looks toward our grandmother, he comes undone again and turns into the comfort of my father’s arms.

Little John’s big brother, Thomas, leans against the door picking at his fingernails with a toothpick. He keeps wiping his eyes and I worry that he will poke himself.  He calls me his ‘little sister’ and takes after my father with his honest nature. I know that if John makes a promise, he keeps it, such as the winter three years ago when he told Nana he would shovel the snow from her driveway and he did although there were many storms that year and he got so sick with fever the doctor put him to bed. Even then, I heard he snuck out and shoveled her driveway in his pajamas and heavy coat. And he keeps my secrets, too. Like the one about the library book I’d accidentally damaged and was afraid to return. He asked to see the book and agreed that dropping it in the bath was unfortunate and, yes, it was not fit to be on the library shelf anymore. After dinner he, Little John and Aunt Jean left but when I went to bed that night, the book was gone. Miss Harris at the library never said another word about the damage and treated me with the same kindness she did the other children.

Their mother, my Aunt Jean, who likes to keep people busy, stands at the footrail with her thick arms crossed, her legs planted and a stern look on her wide face. Sometimes she frightens me with her roughness and I avoid going to her if I need a cut washed out although I saw her care for her dog, Molly, after she was hit by a car and lost an eye. For all the weeks of her healing, Molly never left my aunt’s side, often leaning against her leg as if that was her safe place. My aunt would reach down and press her close, talking to her in a soft voice the way one should to a child. Still, she is Thomas and Little John’s mother and that must count for something.

Mama sits on the edge of the bed holding Nana’s hand. She is crying silently, wiping her eyes with a raggy tissue. Unlike my father, my mother cries easily even when she’s happy. The sun will come out after a snowstorm making every surface sparkle so brightly that I have to squinch my eyes to see anything but sure enough, my mother will sigh, “Will you look at that!” as her eyes overflow. When she wraps her arm around my waist, I can feel her body vibrate as she holds in all those tears.

“Everyone’s here, Mama,” she says to Nana. Her voice wavers and her chin trembles. She brushes a tendril of hair from Nana’s cheek, her fingers lingering as if no one else is in the room.

Nana takes a breath and quite unexpectedly, she says my name. I look at my mother, not sure what to do. Her eyes widen in surprise but she gets up from the bed and motions for me to sit in her place. I take my grandmother’s ancient hand as I saw my mother do, careful of the knobby bones and spotted skin. The whole room seems to hold its breath and listen. Nana grips my hand with a strength I didn’t expect and pulls me toward her. As I lean in, she whispers to me but they’re sounds without shape or meaning. She gasps for air, mumbles some more, then her hand relaxes until it’s heavy in mine and I sense a change in her as if she’s made a decision of some kind. Her breathing sounds different, uneven. Even her hand seems cooler although not yet like the poor lamb, but soon, too soon she will be lowered into darkness and covered in dirt and then I’ll never see her again. I wipe away tears and feel eyes on the back of my head.

Little John is frowning at me. It’s the look he gets when it’s not his turn and I’m used to that. But Aunt Jean stares right through me as if she’s been injured in some way. I look down at the floor. I have no idea why my grandmother chose me and not my aunt who I think wants me to tell everyone what Nana said, but I can’t describe the odd sounds she made.

They’re all staring at me now and my face gets hot as if I’ve done something wrong. Without thinking, I run out of the room, down the short hallway into the kitchen and out the front door, down the wooden steps and along the dirt path to the far corner of the yard where the metal swing set is. I can’t go any further without climbing the wall, so I kick the metal pole as hard as I can but it doesn’t change anything. Death is coming for Nana just like these long shadows creeping across the grass, bony fingers searching for something to swallow. The darkness reaches my shoes and I jump backwards with a cry.

The front door opens and closes and I hear the creak of the third step, then the swish of Thomas’ long stride through the grass. He takes my hand and squeezes it in comfort but doesn’t say anything while we stare at the swing set that Little John and I played on just a few months ago. It’s as if I’ve never seen it before: it’s not a shiny red playground, it’s just a rickety set of swings, faded and rusty and I will never play on it again because I’m too old now. I try to tell this to Thomas but I have no voice, so I give him my fiercest eyes.

“It’s okay, little sister. When you’re ready, I’m here.”

The stairs creak again and my father calls my name softly. I run to him, clinging to his neck as he lifts me. He strokes my hair with one hand until my sobs become hiccups and all too soon, he sets me down and wipes my cheeks with his broad thumbs, a small smile on his face and those brown eyes that never look through me but always greet me with kindness. As Thomas kneels to tie my shoe, he looks up at me and smiles sideways like we have a secret. I cannot stay upset: I smile back at him. My face must look swollen and red but neither of them says anything about how I should wash up and blow my nose. Most importantly, they don’t ask me what Nana said even though they must be curious as I’m the only one she had a message for. I have never been treated like this by any adult and I tuck the feeling away to look at later. It is the second strange gift I have received today.

I am sleepy with yawns. My bed at home is soft and warm with the promise of sweet dreams, and all the shadows are friends.

“Do you think people dream as they die, Papa?” I ask my father.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but it sounds nice. What do you think, Thomas?”

“I’m counting on it,” my cousin says. “But not for a long time,” he assures me.

Aunt Jean calls us from the doorway, “Paul. Thomas. You’d better come.” There is urgency in her voice.

Nana’s room is soft with yellow lamplight. We encircle the bed. Nobody talks. I don’t dare move. Something is different about my grandmother. She is made of bone. There are sounds in her throat as if she’s drowning and I’m about to beg my mother to call for help when a great sigh of air whooshes from her mouth and then a profound silence. No one moves for a long moment.

“Mama,” I whisper.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Nana’s not breathing.”

“I know.” She presses her wet cheek to mine. “I know,” she says again.

I hear gulps and sobs. It’s Aunt Jean. She reaches for my mother like Little John reaches for me. Mama goes to her and they embrace, rocking each other. Thomas has turned away but his shoulders shake. Little John limps over to me and I bend to hug him, careful of his poor crooked back. And then I hear a sound of pain I don’t recognize but I know right away it’s my father. I stare at him for I have never seen him cry and never like this - arms hanging at his sides, eyes shut tightly and this hollow sound pouring out of his twisted mouth. My father – who gentles animals, is like a father to Thomas and Little John, and always knows what to do - is helpless. Mama gets to him first.

“Oh Paul, this may be hardest for you,” she says.

He nods his head and falls into her arms. This is another mystery for me to figure out. I feel the shapes of Thomas, Little John and then Aunt Jean whose large, heavy hand settles on my waist, pulls me to her side gently but firmly just as I saw her do with her dog and who, to my enormous surprise, kisses the top of my head. And then it comes to me. 

Nana said, “Grace” and everyone thought she was asking for me because that is my name. But maybe she was giving us her blessing. I think as hard as I can about what she was trying to say barely an hour ago, firming up the dull consonants and the vague vowels until they fall miraculously into place. I almost jump up and down wanting to tell everyone what Nana said, but I have learned that I get to choose when and how I tell a secret, and now is not a good time.

I untangle myself from the group and go to my grandmother, or at least what looks like her, for she is dreaming now and has no use for her body. I place my fingers on her hand, uncomfortable about touching death, but she is still soft and warm. She is not like the lamb at all. I don’t want anyone to hear me so I whisper that when the sun brightens our faces tomorrow, I will tell them what was meant for each of us –

“Grace… Lisbeth, Jean… Thomas…‘iddle John… Paul.”

And then something more…I close my eyes and mimic the sounds she made, the small movements of her lips, until I think I must have it right. It’s the only thing that makes sense, what she always said when it was time to go home while also telling us we would see her again.

Thomas kneels next to me. I hold his hand or he holds mine. I can hear Nana’s voice in my head, see her waving to me from her car, her front door, at the gate of my school; I can see her smile and feel the pressure of her kiss on my cheek.

“She said bye-” I say, then can get no further. But Thomas and I don’t need a lot of words between us. His eyes widen in understanding and he nods, then looks at Nana and whispers for me,

“Bye for now.”

 

Lissa Staples is a classical singer who found writing a little later in life. Writing is a lot like singing and both bring her great joy. Her story, 'The Month of Drowning' recently won Synkroniciti's short story contest and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been a student at The Writers Studio since 2014. Her work can be read at Corvus Review, The Stickman Review, Quibble, The Write Launch, Unbroken and East by Northeast.

 

Holding Images

T. Ben Bryant

The paper sits patiently. I wonder if it can sense it has been altered in some fundamental way. I dump chemicals over it. A smooth motion. Even. Continuous. Total. An image rushes onto the paper. Clear and present. 1/500 of a second of light trapped forever. Saya stares up at me from the tray. Her eyes distracted. Lips parted as if about to speak. I have to stop my hand from touching her. She isn’t real. A memory. A ghost. Something lost in the broken torrent of time. I keep a book of them. These images of the lost. The left behind or the leavers. Chronological. Carefully preserved and maintained. Rarely observed. 

I take Saya from the tray and hang her from a thin line in my living room. For six years she hung her clothes on the same line. Now her clothes hang less than an hour away. I glance at the balcony window. Imagine I can see her building.  

The spring sun will dry the paper. It will curl and I will press it flat between two heavy books. I sit on the sofa and watch my birds. After a while I get angry. I never should have bought the sofa. The vile green thing annoys me. Disposing of it is a hassle. Tokyo has such specific requirements for the disposal of anything. I don’t feel like paying more to get rid of it than I paid for it. It remains. Saya disappeared.

I go for a walk. The park is empty during the middle of the day. The weekend crowds have vanished. The cherry blossoms have almost fallen and the ground is littered with petals turning brown and black in the shadows. Decay holds no beauty for the onlookers. They only desire the soft pinks and whites of life floating by.

I sit under a tree and watch the sun reflect on the water. The koi rise and make small noises when the surface is stirred. They break the amber scales of the water with their orange and black and white before descending once more into the murk. Waterbirds stalk along the edges. Feeding. Insects disappear down violent red gullets. The sun falls behind the buildings surrounding the park and incandescent bulbs crack to life and throw dirty orange light over everything.

I forgot to leave a lamp lit. My birds are screaming in the gloom. When I turn on the light they calm down. Saya is curled on the line. Only the edge of her sweater is visible. I remove the tiny yellow clips and unfurl the paper. No spots. Clear. Precise. Preserved in platinum salts and sunlight. I put the print between two large books. A collection of landscapes and a book of Degas ballerinas. Saya will become herself again in time. All distortions erased and forgotten. I take a copy of Ficcones from the cabinet and sit on the vile green sofa. Borges escapes me and I cannot concentrate on the plots. I think about how I always teeter on the edge of control and totally fucking my life up. I assume I crossed that line long ago but the blessing of the truly fucked is never truly knowing.

I wake up. The sun is throwing shadows on the floor. My eyes are stinging. Raw. Persistent itch. I must have touched them with the salts on my fingers. It happens more than it should. I sit up and drink the last of a cup of tea that lay forgotten on the table. It is weak. Only a little bitter. I carefully lift the Degas book. Hoping there are no tears in the print. Saya lays perfectly flat. More still than I had ever seen her. The only way I could ever see her from now. I sit and study her for what feels like hours. It can only be a few moments. The steady pulse of time temporarily distorted and suspended and broken. Angry at a moment stolen and kept safe from the endless decay. I place Saya on a hard rubber mat and trim the edges of the paper to form a perfect eleven by eleven square. The discarded pieces fall to the floor in slow and unreal turbulence. I run my fingers along the edge. No burrs. Sharp. I run them over the surface of her face. The feel of skin is not there. It never is. A small high whisper of finger on platinum shadow. There is only the tight weave of the paper and the disappointment. It is all the ever remains.

T. Ben Bryant lives and works in Japan.

 

THE LIPSTICK PLANT

Hope Yancey

The plant’s dark, glossy leaves were healthy and vibrant. Red flowers that resembled miniature lipstick tubes blossomed all over. Their buds reminded Roxana of the tiny lipsticks from a set she had when she was a little girl. She recalled the faint artificial taste of the lipsticks. Nothing like the ones she used today. She kept the plant on the table next to the kitchen window where ample amounts of late afternoon sun streamed. Sometimes, she moved it to the dining room to take advantage of the morning sun. This plant needed plenty of indirect light. Other than that, it wasn’t too demanding. It even cleaned the indoor air. She liked houseplants, especially those that were air purifiers.

Although there were many varieties of lipstick plant, Roxana favored this one, scientific name Aeschynanthus radicans Krakau. To her, it was the most reminiscent of lipstick, and lipstick was important in her life. She owned a fledgling natural cosmetics and toiletries company that eschewed animal ingredients, animal testing, and anything harmful. She’d become fed up after each news report about benzene inadvertently winding up in some brand of spray sunscreen or dry shampoo. She wanted to launch her own cosmetics company. She found inspiration in history in the form of Hazel Bishop’s talent for cosmetic chemistry. The woman doesn’t get enough credit, she thought. She made lipsticks with staying power, but how many people know her name?

Roxana’s goal when she started the company was for it to be financially lucrative enough that her own name would be a household word. Instead, she found herself struggling to stay in business. The pandemic caused sales to wither. Women wore masks, but not a lot of lipstick those years. Why spend money to buy lipstick no one could see you wearing? Besides, no one was going anywhere to need lipstick. Sometimes, she wore lipstick underneath her face covering as a small act of defiance against all the pandemic had stolen. She ignored the stains her lipstick left on the inside of the material.

Roxana tried to diversify her product line by including eye makeup and skincare products. But lipstick was her main interest. It traced to playing dress-up when she was young. No outfit she tried on then was complete without a swipe of vivid lipstick. Second-guessing herself to emphasize other products hadn’t worked out.

A photograph Roxana treasured was taken in fall 1981. She recalled how the leaves on the maple trees in front of the house where she grew up shed their crimson and gold leaves like confetti that time of year. She wore one of her childhood getups for Halloween, complete with the ubiquitous lipstick. The eclectic ensemble paired a light blue turtleneck shirt for warmth (her mother’s sensible contribution) underneath the silky blue flowered dress one of her grandmothers brought her back from a vacation in Hawaii. She remembered how smooth the cloth felt under her fingers. In her right hand dangled one of those orange plastic jack-o-lantern pails. Her neck and wrist were heavy with the hand-me-down costume jewelry her grandmother gave her to play with. Every time she studied the picture, she noticed some detail she hadn’t before. Her gaze landed on the design of the fabric from the dress. She wondered about the flowers: what kind they were; if they were native to Hawaii; what made the designer choose these particular flowers – big orange, yellow, and white blossoms.

With the pandemic relenting, Roxana’s company was still viable, but more behind in sales than she forecast. At times like these, she sought reassurance in her lipstick plant. She always enjoyed caring for it, but when she was troubled or struggling was when it was most rewarding. Taking care of it was relaxing. It soothed the stress she felt. She may be trying to make her fortune in red lipstick, but her thumb was decidedly green. The plant was everything she was beginning to believe her cosmetics business was not: It was unpretentious and real.

As much as she liked lipstick – even the satisfying sound the container made when she snapped the top into place over a fresh tube – Roxana was starting to think she might like her lipstick plant better than actual lipstick. To her, contemplating this seemingly benign realization was sacrilege. She banished the thought. She was caught up in the fantasy of becoming a bold success in the cosmetics industry. “Forget, it,” she said aloud to herself. “Just forget it.” Uncle Knox was getting to her. That had to be all there was it.

Roxana’s uncle – her father’s brother – was forever planning to retire to Florida. He had done enough research and taken enough trips to destinations where he might retire down there that everybody wondered if he was really going to do it, or finding ways to procrastinate in the decision.

“I love my customers,” came his usual refrain when Roxana asked. For years, Uncle Knox owned a small nursery and gift shop. He was well-known in town, not only to his loyal circle of customers, but also by the local garden club, whose members came to him for advice on what to plant. It was Uncle Knox who ordered her the lipstick plant for her house.

Roxana loved the earthy smell of Uncle Knox’s greenhouse. He had a knack for selecting the right plant for the right person. “A plant is a very personal thing,” he reminded her. It was a saying of his. She guessed she understood; after all, a plant was a commitment. The responsibility of caring for it could, in some cases, last as long or longer than having a pet. She thought of the Silver Queen plant that had been in her family 20 years.

Roxana had joined him on one of the excursions to Florida. They drove late at night from North Carolina to the Amtrak station in Camden, South Carolina, to board a train going to Winter Park, Florida. Why did passenger trains have to leave at an ungodly hour? Uncle Knox wasn’t too worried about car thieves wanting the old truck he used to haul plants for the nursery. They left the truck at the station. She was skeptical about leaving a vehicle unattended at an unmanned train station in the middle of the night, but Knox was as certain the truck would be there when they returned as he was which plants would be popular sellers each season. (And right about both.)

Roxana felt like she was in Europe in Winter Park, with its arts and cultural offerings and the canal tour they’d taken. It was a reprieve from her troubles. On the way home from that trip – first on the train and, later, on the highway for the final leg of the journey – she and her uncle talked about his retirement plans. “You know, Roxie, I can’t trust my business to just anyone,” she recalled him saying with a sigh. She looked away until her gaze fell on the crumpled seed catalog in the truck’s floorboard.

As much as she enjoyed this nostalgic stroll in her mind along Winter Park’s cobblestone streets, reminiscing about accompanying Uncle Knox to try out retirement options, she needed to get back to her business. Which was cosmetics. In spite of her uncle’s kindness, she felt the familiar sense of pressure to have a major accomplishment. Pressure she couldn’t resist. If she could get her cosmetics company back on firm footing again, it would bring her closer to that achievement.

Roxana could ill afford distractions in her new advertising campaign. She wanted to use a depiction of a lipstick plant as the logo for her business, but the consultant she hired wasn’t enthusiastic about it. They compromised on a splashy stylized illustration inspired by a lipstick plant rather than a botanical drawing of a lipstick plant, as Roxana would have preferred.

The brilliant blooms and shiny foliage of her lipstick plant lifted Roxana’s mood when she arrived home from her meeting with the consultant about the ad campaign in late afternoon and paused in the kitchen. Such was her vespertine routine now. The plant’s soil was still moist from a recent watering, but not saturated with water. That was good. At the same time, she was crestfallen. “This isn’t going to work,” she said. The plant, which she often talked to, seemed to agree. The seemingly small conflict over how to spend scarce advertising dollars was emblematic of all that was wrong on the path she was on.

At times, Roxana convinced herself this plant was capable of some kind of magic. Lipstick plants typically bloomed best as summer began to turn to fall. But really, they could bloom most any time of year. When she thought about it, she realized her lipstick plant seemed to bloom at precisely the right times. The times she needed it most, as if it took no heed of whatever month she had the pages of her day planner turned to. She still kept a paper calendar, unlike most people she knew. The plant had been there guiding her, reassuring her, the whole way. The answer was right in front of her, had always been in front of her. That night, when she went to bed, she dreamed about the plant. When she got up in the morning, she knew what she needed to do. She felt like André Michaux, the French botanist and explorer, must have felt setting out on a discovery in America. She thought about him at that moment because she was fascinated with his travels in North Carolina in the 18th century.

Her thoughts drifted to Uncle Knox. She remembered when her love of plants began. She was a little girl when he took her for an afternoon walk to see the bloodroot blooming in the woods behind his house. It must have been March or April. In the sunlight, the flower’s white petals were open. “Why is it called bloodroot?” asked a then 9-year-old Roxana. “The roots and stem carry a reddish-orange sap,” Knox said. “Some Native Americans used it as a natural dye.” From then on, the plant with blood in the name – and plants in general – captivated her. There weren’t all these plant databases where you could look up information online then. She admired the way Uncle Knox just knew things.

If she was honest, bloodroot scared her a little. “If you came back at night, this flower would be closed, Roxie.” Uncle Knox tried to explain the plant’s evanescent ways. Without her uncle’s knowledge, Roxana had gathered her courage and returned alone to the woods that night years ago with her flashlight to look at the bloodroot. In the distance, an owl called softly but insistently, “Who, who, who, who, who.” She ran all the way home in the darkness, but felt exhilarated when she got there.

Uncle Knox was right. Everything has a right time. And for her, the time was now. Her heart – her blood – wasn’t in cosmetics. She wanted another way of doing business, one that was more personal. Much like that night so many years ago, she felt exhilarated now.

Uncle Knox would understand. When she finally told him, his face relaxed. A burden had been lifted, and a smile broke out across his face. He suddenly looked much younger than his years to his niece. “Roxie, honey, I knew it all the time. I certainly knew it before you did. You never did play with that chemistry set you begged everybody to buy you one Christmas. When was it? 1984? I think you were about 10. You always were one for plants.” Then he added with a laugh, “Where do you suppose you get that from?”

The two walked arm-in-arm. Uncle Knox continued to tease her about the old chemistry set with its age-appropriate experiments that wound up in the back of her childhood closet before New Year’s Eve had even come and gone that year. “Whatever happened to the glassware in that set, anyway? I could use it back at the house. Probably could use the magnifying glass, too. Could examine some plant seedlings with it.”

It was four months later. Moving day came, much to everyone’s surprise, and Uncle Knox actually did relocate to Florida, although he chose somewhere that lacked Roxana’s beloved museums and cobblestone streets. The newspaper sent somebody to the greenhouse to cover his retirement and write a community news feature about the relationships that took root with people while he was nurturing their plants. She walked close enough to overhear one of the reporter’s questions for Uncle Knox. “Will the business carry on now that you’re retiring?”

She heard the beginning of her uncle’s answer: “It wasn’t an easy decision for Roxie, er, Roxana to close her business and take over mine.” Roxana suppressed a smile when she heard him struggle to be formal in referencing her name.

After the celebration with coffee and homemade chocolate chess pies she and her uncle baked for a small collection of longtime customers and friends, Roxana lingered in the greenhouse, absorbing it all like a plant taking up nutrients. Since buying the nursery, she filled the space with an array of different types of lipstick plants to go with the other kinds of plants the store already sold. Some lipstick plants had red flowers, like hers. Some had pink, orange, or purple flowers. Others were more greenery and less flower. Her own lipstick plant was there in a comfortable location. The plant that generated it all. The plant that changed her. Had it saved her? By now, she had decided the plant was, in fact, magic – at least the figurative kind, if not in the literal sense. Caring for it had carried her through the pandemic, as well as other hard times.

A plant like this deserved a name. It wasn’t the first time the thought occurred to Roxana, but she always struggled with what to call it. Nothing seemed quite right. Suddenly, a name came to her with ease. Hortense. She knew it meant “of the garden” or “gardener.”

Roxana had lots of ideas for growing the nursery and gift shop. A business needed to adapt with the times. She was excited to refresh the business with some of the same creativity she once wanted to use in her cosmetics company. She thought the women customers might appreciate reviving the sweet sentiment of Easter corsages. Picking out a corsage to wear was an annual tradition she looked forward to when she was growing up. Uncle Knox still sold them back when she was a child. It was exciting to pry open the clear plastic corsage box. Next spring, she would have a selection in several colors paired with coordinating ribbons. She knew an orchid hybridizer who might be able to supply the flowers for some striking orchid corsages. The right corsage complemented a dress much the same way a flattering shade of lipstick completed an outfit. They would be wrist corsages. She didn’t like fumbling with corsage pins.

“I think the gift shop could use a few lipsticks next to the rack of herbal soaps,” Roxana said to Hortense. “Don’t you?” There was sufficient inventory left from the cosmetics company to stock the shelves. Though Hortense never replied, she felt firmly that the plant was listening.

Roxana maintained an affection for her uncle’s old Rolodex system of storing customers’ names and special occasions. She would consider keeping his record system intact. But she wanted to give back to the community, too. Not just focus on the business and its profits. Maybe once she had some traction with the business, she’d contact some publications about writing an occasional gardening advice column. She’d learned from the best.

As she stood making plans, the sound of footsteps crunching the pea gravel behind her interrupted Roxana’s thoughts. A customer she recognized as one of her uncle’s regulars browsed the aisles of the greenhouse. “May I help you?” she asked, the smile on her red-painted lips genuine these days. “I’m in the market for a new houseplant, something with pretty flowers,” the woman said. “I want something I really like.”

Roxana noticed the woman eyeing her lush lipstick plant she’d given pride of place in the greenhouse. It was a position of prominence befitting its role in her life. The woman overlooked the “sample” tag denoting Hortense wasn’t for sale. Roxana carefully set down the stack of terra cotta pots she was organizing. In a minute, she’d use gentle diplomacy to steer her uncle’s customer – now her customer – to the many other lipstick plants that were available for purchase. But first, she granted herself a delicate tendril of time to admire her plant. It was larger and appeared more robust than before. The gloss of its dark leaves and its generous red blooms were a testament to her care, but simultaneously an affirmation of something more.

“I understand perfectly,” Roxana said. “A plant is a very personal thing.”

 

Hope Yancey is a freelance writer and independent journalist in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hope is a graduate of Queens College, now Queens University of Charlotte, Winthrop University, and the University of Kentucky. She loves plants but can’t seem to keep an orchid alive. Her herb plants fare a little better than the orchids.