Affinity by Bianca Caraza
Affinity
I’ve always had an affinity for broken things. I collected chipped teacups from consignment stores in high school and fallible partners well into adulthood. I got into fixing bicycles as a hobby before I started at the shop and my childhood stuffed rabbit had only one button eye, the second tucked safely away in a jewelry box. I’d never gotten up the nerve to sew it back on.
Plants are a particular weakness. Customers at work or friends of my mother will hear about my green thumb or else sense it about me within minutes of meeting. I have often wondered how they did this and decided that it was the slight curve of my spine— a hazard of height— reminiscent of a fern curling in on itself.
“I have this air plant,” they would say, eyes bright and guilty. Or fig tree or rubber plant. “My mother-in-law gave it to me.” My boss. My long distance partner. “And I just can’t let it die. See how brown it is? Am I overwatering? Can I bring it to you?”
This was where I would go wrong—because I couldn’t help but say yes. If I demurred, offered a few suggestions about misting or the ice cube trick, then a little death would be on my hands. Certainly even a small life is worth saving.
A drop off would be scheduled sometimes, but often a plant would just appear on my doorstep and I would have to drag a ten-gallon terra cotta pot full of wilted tree with pale wormy roots into my overcrowded apartment.
This time it was a sad little rose bush with a single browned flower dried as potpourri hanging from its green stem. It was held up completely by a stake about three feet high and set in a cheap black tub dotted with drainage holes. I dragged it past the row of thriving succulents dotting the hall wall and the bookshelves of air plants in their crystal terrariums. I had to get it into the metal sink to get a good look at it. I cut away the dead rose first then hacked away some of the drearier leaves until it looked bald and shivery. The browned petals fluttered down around me as I worked, forming a layer of detritus along the bottom of the sink and it seemed in the dusty light of my kitchen that they may have once been white.
I thought of the Queen of Hearts and her white roses painted red and I should have known then, but I had been charged with the little rosebush and now there was nothing I could do except will it back to life. Along the far kitchen wall was a corkboard where I pinned recipes and grocery lists. From here I plucked a silver pin and pushed it deep into the meat of my left palm in the fleshy mound just under my thumb. The pain was lancing, but brief and I opened my eyes to a single drop of blood welled there. I allowed it to splash onto the rich soil which smelled already of iron and rain and though it bored the clear signs of overwatering it took that drop of blood like dry sand drinks in seawater.
I placed the stark rose bush back on the floor beside a glorious elephant ear in a jade pot. The tub had left a rust-colored ring along the bottom of the sink.
That evening I dreamt I was cocooned in a nest like a baby bird, protected and swaddled. The nest was lined with downy feathers which brushed my cheeks, petal soft. I crawled through the nest, which twisted around me like a constricting maze, and soon the branches grew long and ragged, sinching tighter around me. I could only see a single square patch of blue, but I couldn’t tell if the sky was above me or before me, and as I tried to crawl toward it thorns bloomed on the nest branches. I cried out, moving toward the cloudless sky, but the thorns found more of me to pierce, lodging deep in my knees, my neck, the high arches of my feet until I could only hold myself in the fetal position and cry as they slid between my ribs.
I woke up thirsty, my throat raw. I crept into the kitchen, hands still shaking, for a glass of water. When I turned on the light— a small bare bulb hanging beside a spider plant— I saw that my lush elephant ear had lost a leaf which lay shriveled on the tile. The rose bush stood straight against its post, but seeing the jutting brown thorns made my mouth go dry all over again. I drank my water and pushed the rosebush to the corner with my foot, away from my other plants.
At work I sold a pair of identical beach cruisers to a very tan couple who looked as though they might be siblings. I watched them kiss outside the window, their bodies tangled together like vines before they climbed onto their bicycles and rode off.
By the time I got home the rosebush had sprouted a tendril. It was perhaps two inches long and looked more vine than branch. I pulled on my gardening gloves to examine it and thought about calling my mother to tell her friend the deal was off, but thought the better of it. Instead, I removed the gloves and then my dress and slipped into a hot bath. I shaved my legs still buried under the layer of fine bubbles and then toyed with the razor head, unlatching the aluminum staples which held the row of neat little blades in place, then smoothing them out again. Sometimes if I didn’t think about it, I would have one of the blades out and pinched gingerly between my fingertips without knowing how it got there. I flicked the razor away, reaching for my bath oil in an antique porcelain bottle (its fan-shaped stopper was cracked down the middle) and dropped in a rush of lavender-scented oil. I lay back into the curled towel at my neck and drifted, the water warm as it lapped against my throat, steamy and perfumed.
When I woke the water was tepid and tinged red. I started, afraid of slipping, and then saw that the cut in my palm had opened wider, now less a cut than a hole reminiscent of a bleeding saint. My bath smelled of earth and blood and the whole bathroom was so thick with the scent I gagged and sat up. I had to drain the bath only to step in again and shower, the smell still lingering in the air. There was something else in it too, I thought as I tried to scrub the scent out of my hair, my skin— something cloying and rotten. I realized as I wrapped the towel around me that it was roses— not fresh roses, but the idea of roses, the mismatched hothouse rose conjured up in an old lady’s perfume. Overpowering.
The rosebush had formed a tiny bud. I took a picture of it and texted it to my mom’s friend— Laurel— and she responded with a string of emojis. Wilted rose, flourishing rose, smiley cowboy, green heart, thumbs up.
It was not possible, of course. Not over so little time, but then there was the strange, thorned tendril hanging down from its central branch. I hadn’t included that in the picture. Perhaps, I thought, it was not really part of the rosebush at all. Perhaps it was a growth or parasite I’d never heard of. Or perhaps it wasn’t even a rosebush at all but a plant that looked like a rosebush. I googled weird plants during slow times at work the next day, scrolling through images of blighted trees and Venus flytraps. I put my phone down to tune up a purple mountain bike with a cracked plastic seat.
A girl with loose black curls and a yellow sundress came to pick up the mountain bike after lunch. Her dress tied in the front so that a little bow rested under her chest and revealed a small peephole of brown skin. Her perfume filled the shop with summer— cedar and rose— and for a moment I was dizzy.
“It’s ready.” I told her, taking the bike down from the work table and flipping it onto the ground gently. “I can replace the seat for you.”
“That’s alright. It’s lucky. I’m doing the triathlon this weekend.” Something about this charmed me badly and I wanted nothing more than to say something clever to her, but the rose of her perfume was like a drug, a toxin. My throat was suddenly swollen.
“Good luck.” I managed to get out and this, at least, made her smile. As I handed her the receipt she caught sight of my gouged palm and winced. The wound still had not scabbed over and it glisted in my palm like a garnet— raw and wet.
“Ouch. What did that?” She glanced over to my work table and I could see her decide it was a slip.
“Yeah, I should know better than to not wear gloves.” I put my hand in my pocket, suddenly wishing I was wearing gloves, that this girl hadn’t seen my ruined hand. That she wouldn’t think I was clumsy or stupid. And part of me feared that she could see the truth— could guess.
But she simply waved and walked her bike out, her perfume haunting the shop the rest of the afternoon.
It turned out that the girl from the shop had a name: Marguerite. She still wore her mesmerizing dress, that bare triangle of skin displayed like a medal. She laid me back against my sheets, taking my hand gently in hers and kissed my palm, the corner of her mouth just grazing the deep wound there. She kissed my hand, my wrist, staining them faint pink with her shimmering lip gloss. I couldn’t move, paralyzed by her, unable to move or think as she imprinted me with those feather-light kisses trailing up my wrist— up and up until her lips found the soft crook of my arm. She bit me lightly there and my back arched involuntarily, my body unfolding beneath her. And I cried out, a strangled little noise that turned from longing to pained as a bright flash snaked up my arm. I couldn’t pull away, couldn’t move, as she bit me deeply. Gored me. I screamed as she lifted her head, granting me a terrible smile as her mouth came away bloody.
I woke up tugging my arm furiously away as though I had been bitten. Something had me, was wrapped around me, and for one baffling second I wondered if it was just my arm tangled in the sheets, but when I pulled again something snapped. My arm stung with pins and needles and I cast about furiously for my phone, sliding open the flashlight app: wrapped around my wrist was a long, thin vine about six inches long and half an inch thick. It was dotted with brutal thorns still lodged in my skin. I pulled it away, swallowing down my horror as I had to ease each thorn from my skin. They seemed eager to stick in there as if they were the barbs of some spiny fish. The thorns came away wet, one in the crook of my arm where the girl had kissed me, one in the blue vein of my wrist, and one had burrowed itself back in that first wound on my palm.
I cradled my arm against my chest as I walked blearily to the kitchen, flicking on each light in the house along the way. The rosebush had grown fuller, leafier, and its tendril was now so long it reached the floor. I did not bother with gloves as I examined the end— jagged and pale as if it had been torn in two. Snapped.
The plant had not been moved from its designated corner. The tendril, though long, could not have reached the other room. Yet it was there. I took the kitchen scissors from the knife block and snipped the tendril off with some effort. Its base was thicker than the rest of it and protected by four foul looking thorns. Perhaps it was just a blight— a diseased offshoot, a parasite feeding off the innocent plant. An aggravation. I threw both pieces into the compost bucket and sealed the lid tightly.
I crawled back into bed, hand still bleeding sluggishly, but I did not turn the lights off. I lay there for a long time, absent to myself, the humming of the refrigerator and rustling of leaves lulling me some.
I woke to the smell of a garden— a greenhouse of potent roses. The air was thick as blood and it slid down my throat and in and out of my nose hot and fetid and verdant. I had to open a window to let in summer air, but it did little to relieve the inside of the house. The jade plant on my sill seemed to shiver in the breeze.
Overnight, the bud had opened into a flower. A flower as wide as my outspread hand. The petals were a devastating white, almost pearlescent and pillowy in their luscious abandon. The plant itself had outgrown its stake which had fallen uselessly to the floor and it was thick and leafy as if it had flourished a summer in the sun rather than a dim kitchen.
But the most surprising development was not the leaves or the height or the flower, but the petals’ tips which were edged in a striking and thirsty blood red. The sight of it combined with that compelling, carnal scent made me jerk back. I realized with some horror that I had reached out to it, unknowing, and my fingertip came away red, pricked on a ruby thorn.
Still in pajamas, I pulled my car up to my door and lugged the rosebush into the back, still in its plastic tub. I had to roll down the windows and breathe by cautious counts— in four, hold four, out eight— for the ten minute journey to my Laurel’s house. I recognized the red door and crooked welcome mat and I dropped the plant beside it, careful not to brush against it as I did. I did not leave a note: the plant itself was obvious enough, alive and heartbreakingly beautiful. I caught a glimpse of it in my mirror and I could resist imagining the velvet petals under my fingertips even as the mound of my thumb throbbed.
