Agnes
The girls are quick studies, with more natural aptitude and discipline than either Sadie or I had at their ages. Sadie was
always boy crazy; she liked to party. I was, as my mother never failed to point out, essentially lazy as a young person, more
prone to daydreaming and getting lost in romance novels than I was to learning about horticulture, herbology, floriography,
chemistry, biology.
“Agnes,” my mother would chide. “Join us in the real world.”
But Vera is a straight-A student, and Ana is fiercely competitive with her sister, never to be outdone. So, they sit still,
attentive, scribbling. In the garden, they follow directions with care, are gentle with the plants. Ana has the gift; I can
see it. Vera does as well, but she also has the discipline, the aptitude. Talent is not enough for what I need from the girls.
There must also be strength, self-control, wisdom.
We’re in the greenhouse. The day outside is cold, snow in patches on the ground, but it’s warm and humid in here.
This is my favorite place; somehow it always seems magical, apart from the rest of the world.
Green and moist, it is like an eternal spring, safe from the white and gray of winter desiccation.
Most of the plants in here are harmless, bred only for their beauty.
With the flowers from here and in my garden, I create bespoke boutonnieres, corsages, and bridal bouquets to supplement my income and to provide a legitimate business cover for my other activities.
The irony of this cover profession, town florist, bringer of beauty and joy, is not lost on me.
Then again, life and nature are nothing but dichotomy.
The most beautiful flower, or lushest ripe fruit, can kill.
The rot of compost is black gold for the hungry roots of plants.
What looks to the untrained eye like a pile of twigs can be powerful medicine.
Vera and Ana have been quiet, careful since Chief Royer paid his visit. The Knowledge and its dangerous power is only just
starting to dawn.
The girl Daphne had come to me during the school day. She’d stayed home sick and walked the long distance between her house
and mine. A friend had told her about the tea that can end a very early pregnancy, a potent blend of pennyroyal, mugwort,
blue cohosh, and bitter parsley, among other things. I generally don’t deal with children, and at seventeen she was exactly
that.
“They’ll kill me,” she said, shivering at my table. “My parents. They’ll never forgive me for this.”
Something about the way she said it, about how pale and afraid she was. Normally, I’d counsel her to talk to her mother, even
offer to help her have the conversation. Once upon a time, a woman had no choice but to harm herself to end a pregnancy; now
there are safe and legal ways to do so, a right we’ve fought for and won. But I sensed there was something else, something
Daphne didn’t want to share. She was poised, in possession of herself, and had the bearing of a much older person. It was
clear to me that she’d made her choice.
“The levels of toxin required to end your pregnancy could also be harmful to you. You will, at the very least, be extremely
ill,” I warned.
She nodded, her strawberry-blond hair framing her freckled face, her pouty pink mouth. She twisted at a silver locket she
wore around her slender neck.
In this culture, we don’t have dominion over our bodies, not really. We are not allowed to say when we will die. As women,
we have often been prohibited from preventing or terminating pregnancy, as if our bodies were just vessels to be filled by
men.
My work is to give people, women especially, back their power.
I went to the kitchen and retrieved a bundle of the tea from my stores.
It is by far my bestselling cure. I ship it all over the country for “menstrual discomfort.” In history, women have died from drinking this blend, but never from mine.
It is ancient, this brew, with stories of its use in texts from China, India, and the African and Latin American continents.
Over my years of study, I have refined my recipe.
But I would never claim that it’s safe or even always effective.
Nature and the human body, the mind and the spirit, how they all mingle, is an unpredictable tangle. Modern medicine will
claim that they have it all worked out with their processes of chemical synthesis. They don’t.
I told all this to Daphne, and she seemed to understand. She looked at the bundle in her hand, then up at me.
“Am I a bad person?” she asked.
She was so young. And already she’d internalized the message that as women we are not allowed to choose the course of our
lives, that we belong to our parents, then to men, then to our children. That we’re not allowed to say yes, or no, that we
will or won’t.
“It’s your body, your life,” I told her. “You choose the course.”
She nodded uncertainly, staring down at the muslin pouch in her palm. “How will I know if it worked?”
“You’ll know,” I told her. I gave her instructions. Told her how to dispose of the tea bag when she was done. She lingered
a moment as if uncertain. Then she nodded, offered a payment that I refused, and then she left. I watched her disappear down
the path. I don’t usually doubt myself, but then again, I don’t usually deal with children. Twice I almost called her back.
Finally, I just let her go. I believe strongly that a woman should have dominion over her body, even a young woman who is
not necessarily of legal age, another thing determined by men.
Now I feel the heat of Vera’s gaze.
“You nearly killed Daphne,” she says. It’s like she’s been carrying it. Waiting for the right moment to set it down.
She’s tying a bundle of pink, white, and red tea roses with a skein of blush ribbon. Ana’s working on a boutonniere, clipping thorns from white roses, wrapping the stems in floral tape. A young bride and groom are to be married in the park this afternoon.
“There are risks associated with the cures,” I say, touching a gentle finger to a rose petal. The rose is a bit hackneyed,
but I appreciate its perfect beauty, its delicacy. Its oils are healing if brewed fresh in tea, soothing for skin, antiseptic,
with antibacterial properties.
“And if she’d died?”
“She knew the risks.”
“Are you always so sure of yourself?” asks Ana.
What a question. “I’m sure of The Knowledge, the science. I’m aware that things don’t always go as planned in this work. That
unintended consequences are the norm.”
There. A large bouquet for the bride, smaller ones for her bridesmaids. I’ve carefully removed all the thorns, wrapped the
stems. For a wedding day, there should be only beauty, no chance of pain.
Together we place the arrangements in a box designed to hold them. The larger for the bride in the center, surrounded by smaller
white and red bouquets for the bridesmaids. The grooms and groomsmen each get a white rose boutonniere, tied with ivory ribbon.
The boutonnieres are pinned in a narrow box on greenery. Sometimes I offer the end of something. Today, it’s a joyful beginning.
The balance of it all gives me some satisfaction.
Vera has gone silent. A lot goes on behind those dark eyes. I can tell she’s processing all the layers of this thing we do.
Ana is singing quietly to the orchids now. She’s not a deep thinker in the same way. Her mind is quick, her conscience easy.
The plants seem to turn toward her. She’s one with them.
“How much does Chief Royer know?” Vera asks. “Why did he come here?”
My relationship with the chief is complicated.
We have a history. He has come to me for various reasons over the years.
We have an understanding, a shared past. I’ve known him since we were children.
None of those things explains what I have with him.
What he knows about me and what I do. I guess in many ways he’s a protector, someone who understands that often the wrong thing might be the right thing. Or so we tell ourselves.
“He wanted to know if anyone had come to me looking to harm Daphne. The truthful answer was no.”
“And if someone had, would you have told him that?”
“First, I wouldn’t have helped someone looking to harm a child. And second, no, I would not have. The foundation of my practice
is—”
She finished my sentence, narrowing her eyes. “Secrecy. Lies.”
I correct her gently. “Confidentiality.”
Vera remains angry at me for killing her mother. Or rather for providing her the means to end her life rather than live out
her days in prison. The bouquet I brought her, brewed in a tea, was her end. The cause of death was found to be heart failure;
my bouquet was never suspected. For some of us, sometimes, life is harder, more unpleasant than death—a thing the young rarely
understand.
“It’s what she wanted,” I say, answering the accusation she hasn’t voiced.
“You didn’t have to give her what she wanted.”
She’s right.
Almost nightly I dream about my sister. In my dreams, she sips from a cup our mother used for her morning coffee. The bright
red mug was hand painted with flowers, a gift from one of my mother’s clients. In the dream, Sadie drinks deeply, nearly chugging
it.
“Thank you, Agnes,” she says. Then she starts to gag. The cup drops, shatters on the ground. As I reach for her, I wake up
feeling desperate, hopeless.
I miss my sister terribly, and wish she was still here with me. We weren’t always close; we had our battles. But we understood
each other. In the end, we followed the code as it was taught to us. But the girls and I have paid a high price. Maybe Vera’s
right to be angry.
“What’s done is done,” I say tightly.
My niece stares daggers at me, then storms from the greenhouse, slamming the door, the panes rattling. I watch as she disappears down the path. The sky has gone gray, threatening rain, as if her temper has brought on a storm.
“What’s wrong with her?” Ana asks. “You only did what she asked. No one forced her to drink that tea.”
I’m not sure if she’s talking about Sadie or Daphne, maybe both. I stay quiet, tightening the ribbon on the final boutonniere.
It’s something I think about a lot. Who is to blame? The one who delivers the poison or the one who deliberately takes it?
“If Sadie wanted to live for us, she would have. She left us.”
Ana’s angry, too, but mostly at Mac and Sadie for making such a mess of it all. She only calls them by their first names when
she talks of them. Not Mom and Dad, Sadie and Mac.
“It might be easier for your sister to be mad at me than at your mom,” I offer. I feel the sting of tears, blink them back.
Though there is much pain in this life, I rarely cry. It’s pointless, isn’t it? Sadness hobbles. Anger energizes.
Ana nods sagely. “I’ll talk to her.”
She helps me load up for delivery. The car fills with the scent of roses. As I’m placing them, arranging them just so, I snag
my finger on a single thorn I failed to clip from the stem. A drop of blood blossoms dark and fat on my thumb. Ana giggles,
girlish.
“You can never get them all, can you?”
No. You can’t. For every beautiful thing in this life, there’s pain.