Stealing back.
Tom was right about the gate latch, very easy to lift. The house is dark. A pretty brick house in a line of pretty brick houses, the nicest on the island. I think of Alla meeting me in her garden. How I knew by her eyes that she hated me. She just doesn’t know any better, Mother said when I told her. Small-minded people, Sunshine. You’ll find them everywhere. Yet when Alla invited Mother for tea once, Mother said why not? They sat in the solarium off the garden, sipping tea from gold-rimmed cups patterned with roses and smoking long, thin cigarettes. They laughed and laughed; I heard them from where Stacey and I sat in the den watching Degrassi. No way could we rate each other with our mothers there, Stacey said. Listening to Mother’s laughter, I felt angry. I thought she said Alla was small-minded, but apparently not to her face. Maybe because Alla was a fellow Christian. Mother, why can’t I be Christian too? I asked her when we left. Because I promised your father, darling, Mother said. He had a different religion, so we made a deal. And I said, But Grand-Maman thinks you’re leaving me open to dark forces. And Mother laughed. Dark forces. Do you believe that woman?
In the garden, my bare feet make no sound. The grass is spongy and soft, and the earth smells green and sweet beneath my feet. Some people have gardens, Mother said when we came home from Stacey’s. We will too someday, Belle. In a much better place than this. She sounded drunk. Maybe Alla’s tea wasn’t just tea. We’ll have a garden with fruit trees. And we’ll have fucking flowers. Not roses, though. You know Mother’s allergic.
I know.
I’m supposed to pluck thirteen petals, Tom said. From the bed of roses in the farthest corner, whose throats are the most open. So very pretty this place is where I’m not supposed to be. Where Mother sat drinking alcoholic tea with the woman who thinks I’m godless. Who looks at me with eyes of ice. I’m creeping toward the roses and my hands are closing and opening at my sides. Don’t even need the light of the low red moon to lead me there. The smell would lead me, like the most alive perfume. What Mother calls heavenly, though never about roses. It opens something inside me, the scent. The same thing Tom opens whenever he looks at me. Don’t wake anyone, Belle, he said. Be quieter than quiet. As quiet as a mouse, my mouse. Remember, it’s a secret. Our secret. And the universe of his eyes was shining in the black. In my head now, I can feel Tom smiling at how quiet I’m being. My footsteps are nothing. I’m barely breathing. My heart’s hammering inside me, but hearts don’t make noise, do they? I remember Stacey has a white cat, Luba, that’s always slinking around out here, hissing. God I wish Tom were with me. But Tom’s gone. He’s smoke. The only way back to him is through these roses. Why roses, Tom?
Oh, you’ll see, Tom said.
I see a bed of them growing by the basement window, glowing under the moon just like he said they would be. Sharp and red and shining in the dark. Long snaking stems. Petals that curl open prettily like bells. And inside, a tight swirl like a secret, the secret of Beauty itself. I hear them breathing quietly in the soil. The same cold, damp soil I’m standing in with my bare feet. They look like the word no. Don’t touch. Don’t pluck. They look like the word forbidden. These are the words I said to Tom in the dark about these flowers. And he smiled his white smile and said, All the more reason. His eyes like the sky the roses were trying to reach, his face glowing like the sun that made them bloom.
I look back up at the dark house of brick. The windows are still black. No light but the moon’s. Stacey’s in there somewhere, dreaming.
Tom, which rose, which rose? I asked him.
You’ll know the one when you see it, mouse.
And I do know the one. Growing in the very center of the bed, shining with thorns. The tallest, the most beautiful. The queen. Its throat of swirling petals seems the most open, an open secret. Its scent the most alive perfume. It puts Mother’s violets and smoke to shame. Fills me with something so happy and sad all at once. Like how Tom’s eyes are the sky and the sea all at once. Beauty is a spell, isn’t that what Tom Cruise said? I’m reaching my hand out to the rose like I’m in a spell, I’m in a dream. My heart’s beating so hard, surely it makes a noise now. I have to really lean forward, dance my hand through the thorns. As I reach, I feel something drop from me. Oh god, what dropped? Before I can look, a light goes on in the dark house. I feel it before I see it, a square of yellow light falling on me, freezing me in the mud. I remember the eyes of ice, imagine a white arm gripping me—What are you doing here?!—and I lose my balance. Fall into the thorny bed. My skin sings with pain, the thorns cutting me all over—oh god—but I don’t cry out. Quickly I gather as many petals as I can. Stuff them into the black silk bag Tom gave me.