“Yes,” I say. “I’ll be fine.” My face is full of lying, but she sees nothing. Not even when she leans in close to kiss the air by my cheek and I smell her dead perfume. Thank god, I tell myself. Which god, I don’t know. Between Mother’s and Father’s gods, I picture a wide black space full of stars. That’s the space I whisper up to. Maybe there’s a god there, too. My own.
* * *
Find a pestle and mortar, Tom said to me last night. His eyes were shining in the dark. Blue-green then red then blue-green again. Your mother has one in the kitchen. She likes to think she’s a cook.
What’s a pestle and mortar? I asked.
And Tom smiled his white smile. It’s a tool, my dear mouse. You’ll use it to crush the roses.
It takes me forever to find it in the kitchen. I have to open all the cupboards and drawers. Turns out Mother hid it under the sink, behind a carrot juicer that she bought a long time ago. For a week after she bought the juicer, we drank nothing but carrots because Mother said it was good for us and also it might make us beautiful. Then it turned our skin orange and Mother was frightened. So much for that. The mortar and pestle is a black heavy bowl of stone that comes with a rock for crushing. I can’t remember Mother ever using it. The sky is still bright though it’s evening now. I bring it to my bedroom and put it under the bed with the roses, which are really starting to smell. I have just enough time to hide it before Grand-Maman arrives.
When she comes in the door, she looks at me and I know she sees everything. Her eyes take in every cut, every scratch. She sees the dark bruise on my forehead, and that’s where her eyes stay.
“Que s’est-il passé?” she whispers.
“Nothing.”
But Grand-Maman knows it’s not nothing. “Is it that man? The new one? The producer?”
I hesitate. Look at Grand-Maman’s face. “Yes.”
And then Grand-Maman’s eyes go like I’ve never seen them go before. Soft and hard at the same time. Like she’s going to cry, but then her eyes say never. “Je le savais. I knew something.”
And her hands holding mine are shaking.
“I’m going to go to my room and play records now,” I tell her. You’ll need to play them loud, Tom said, to cover the sound of the crushing.
Grand-Maman looks down at our held hands. My tan hands and hers white with tan spots. All the jewels on her wrists and fingers. All the shimmering gold and pretty colored stones. I picture her young, beautiful, holding out her white, spotless hand for each shiny thing the men give her.
“Go play records,” she says.
* * *
Loud, Belle, remember, Tom said. I play Madonna, who Mother hates. Why don’t you play that record by the Bangles instead? Mother always says. With “Walk Like an Egyptian”？ Mother bought it for you, remember? And she hums the song, does the dance from the video, arms and hands bent at strange angles. At a parent-teacher meeting, Mother told Ms. Said she bought the record for me. And do you like that song, Belle? Ms. Said asked me. Yes, I lied, to protect Mother. I hate that song. Whenever Stacey sings that song to me, which she loves to do, breathing it hot and close into my ear, I go red in the face and want to not exist. But Mother loved me for saying I loved it to Ms. Said. She even bought me the Madonna record True Blue on the way home as a surprise. Rolling her eyes a little but smiling when she handed it over. Trashy with that blond hair now, Mother said on the bus home. She was watching me stare at Madonna on the cover, I could feel her eyes. Always trying to transform herself. Into what this time? Marilyn Monroe?
Now I play True Blue the loudest it can go. My very favorite song, “Live to Tell,” which is like a secret at the end of side one. When I first heard it, I thought I dreamed it there. It sounds like smoke. I take the black bag of roses out from under the bed, and the mortar and pestle. But it’s funny, when I open the bag, I see the petals have changed. Not soft and red anymore, they’re dark and crisp like they’ve been burned. I’ll start the process, I remember Tom said. The bag will start the process. You’ll finish it, mouse.
Petal by crisp petal, I put them in the bowl and crush. Very important to go petal by petal, Tom said. It needs to be a fine powder in the end. A very fine dark red powder is what you’ll have, Tom said. If you really crush. I crush all night in my white dress, never once looking in Mother’s mirror in the corner. Can’t seem to bring myself to, though I can feel Tom there somewhere. I can almost smell the ocean of him through the roses. Nice to feel him there. It takes a very long time to crush, longer than I would ever think for thirteen petals. Grand-Maman doesn’t knock on the door. She won’t now that I’ve told her that lie about Bryce. She’ll leave me alone. Maybe she’ll pray to her and Mother’s god for me. But she’s not praying now. Even over the sound of “Live to Tell,” I can hear Grand-Maman watching Wheel of Fortune in English out there. I can hear the rickety turning of the wheel and the applause. Then Jeopardy! and Grand-Maman never knowing the answers. Never shouting them out like Mother, even when I know she knows them. Not the answers, darling, the questions, Mother always corrects. In Jeopardy!, the questions are everything.