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“Open up wide.”
Luisa glares at Rose, and her lips press together in a thin little line. “You aren’t a dentist, Rose. You looking at my teeth isn’t going to tell you why my tooth hurts. I already looked in the mirror and I can’t see anything and—”
Rose grabs Luisa’s chin. “I told you to open up wide.” She rubs her thumb along Luisa’s skin. “Be nice, and maybe I’ll be nice to you later.”
Luisa’s eyes widen, and her mouth drops open from sheer shock – not because Rose had requested it, not because she actually expected her to go through with any of it.
It hasn’t even been a month since they moved into the little house that Rose had showed her on her computer after their visit to Belle Reve, and it’s been longer than that since that day. Luisa may have promptly agreed to the plan Rose had suggested, but she had still had to convince her dad to let her take her mother out of Belle Reve, still had to convince him to get a second look over her mother’s records, still had to convince her dad to trust her with her mother’s health, and then still had to actually get her mother checked out of Belle Reve. Add to that the time it had taken to actually move into the house, and, well, it had been a while. Months, in fact.
Mia had moved into her room yesterday. Belle Reve had started her medication changes at Luisa’s request the week before, but it would take a while before there was any real change to be seen – if there was any there at all. Luisa hoped there would be. She couldn’t count on it, but she hoped for it.
Currently, her mother is napping in her room. She had seemed to recognize Rose the day before, when she moved in, when Rose had helped carry the boxes and wiped her brow with the back of her hand, when Rose had worn that blue bandana to hold back her bright red hair, when she’d somehow – surprisingly – still worn something with long sleeves despite how horribly hot it was outside—
Rose had said something about how she was a fragile redhead who burnt too easily and thin sleeves were better than having to apply sunscreen every ten seconds, but Luisa isn’t sure she believes that. On their first meeting, all that time ago, Rose told her she ran hot when she slept – and that Luisa can attest to – but even sleeping, Rose always wore something with long sleeves, the same long, thin sleeves similar to those she had worn the day before. They were pretty, of course, but they weren’t Rose.
But that isn’t the point. The point is that there is no way that Rose would actually “be nice” to Luisa in the way she is currently suggesting – not in the way that Luisa really wants and has absolutely refused to mention to Rose. In fact, when she’s done any little bit of flirting with the redhead, she’s fairly certain that Rose just thinks she’s joking. She’s let her think that. It’s easier.
Luisa still doesn’t have a girlfriend, and her mother still knows that she’s hopelessly attached to Rose. If her mother even remembers that conversation. She’s sure her mother remembers the conversation because Mia had looked at Rose and then looked at her and signed pretty again, and Luisa hadn’t flushed a bright scarlet but her cheeks had gotten a bit warmer (and then she’d passed that off as just hey, we’re doing a lot of moving and it’s hot outside and then shuffled the box from its spot to the next one)—
Rose cups her chin and pulls down and Luisa’s mouth has already dropped open and with Rose peering into her mouth, Luisa lets her eyes drift to the edge of Rose’s sleeves, peering inside of them, trying to see just why Rose is always wearing longer ones. The most she can see is a trail of freckles moving from her wrist and further back. She knows the freckles, has seen them on the back of Rose’s hands. Maybe that’s what Rose is trying to hide?
Her gaze moves to Rose’s face. Without any make-up on this early, Luisa can see the freckles covering her skin, and she realizes that, on a normal day, after Rose has her make-up on, they’re completely hidden. That has to be it. It has to be. She just doesn’t want people to see her freckles.
Why?
Then Rose pokes one of her fingers into Luisa’s mouth, her nail digging at the sore tooth, and Luisa snaps her head back all at once. “What are you doing?”
“Hold still! I think I’ve found the—”
Rose sticks her finger back into Luisa’s mouth, digs with her nail for the slightest of seconds, and then the pressure is gone and the pain is gone and Rose is moving her finger back out with a smug grin. “Feel better?”
“Yes! Yes.” Luisa wraps her arms around Rose’s waist and rests her head on Rose’s chest. “What did you do, you magnificent, wonderful person?”
Rose flicks something off of her finger. “You had something stuck back there, and I just got it taken out. You’re feeling better now, then, right? So just trust me next time. I know what I’m doing.” She grins and she’s a little too close and all at once she freezes. “You can let go of me, you know.”
Luisa nods. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.” She doesn’t want to let go, though. She is quite comfortable right where she is. But she can feel Rose’s discomfort in the tensing of her entire self, so she does, drops her arms and scoots back on the top of the toilet where she has been sitting while Rose messed around with her mouth. “Next time I have a toothache, I will come to you first and foremost, and if you can’t fix it, then I’ll just have to go see a dentist or something to get them to fix it, or maybe I’ll just leave it for a few days and it’ll go away, or—” She takes a deep breath and forces herself to stop. “And if you need any help if you have a toothache, then—”
“Then I will find someone else to help me,” Rose says all at once, and she steps back, running her hands under warm water and cleaning them. “Because lawyers are very good at finding and picking at flaws, but psychologists just want to cover issues up with medication and good feelings.”
Luisa’s eyes narrow. “That is not at all what psychologists do. We find the bad things and we help you dig them up and we work them out so that you become a better, more whole version of yourself.” She crosses her arms and leans back, sticking her tongue out at Rose. “And because we can prescribe medication, which I don’t think lawyers can do, it definitely makes us better in a toothache-y situation because we can give you something to numb the pain while you wait on your dentist to make it better. You just pick-pick-pick until you get someone to bleed.”
“Oh, really?” Rose’s brows raise as she begins to dry her hands off. “You have much experience with lawyers, Luisa?”
“I remember when my dad and my mom finally divorced. I remember sitting in the board rooms when I was thirteen and listening to lawyers fight over who I would belong to.” Her gaze shifts away. “Not my mom, certainly, because she couldn’t fight for herself, but my grandmother – Allegria. She loved me, once.” She bites her lower lip. “But lawyers picked and picked and picked at her and her lawyers picked and picked and picked at my dad and in the end, they both hated each other more than they loved me.” Then she shrugs. “But Dad got me. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? To divorce his mentally absent wife and still keep his daughter and go out and find him a new wife.” She leans forward. “Wives. Most of them are absolutely horrible. I hate them. And don’t just of course you hate them because he stepped out on your mom because that’s not—”
Luisa stops all at once. She doesn’t want to talk about this. Or, well, she does want to talk about it because it feels like it’s been bubbling beneath the surface for a while now – feels like she isn’t really even mad about it anymore because it’s been so long since it happened – but it’s still there, just existing, living there in her mind rent free, all these feelings – and maybe she should be the one seeing a therapist. She shakes her head. “Sorry. That’s not on you. I’m sure you’re a better lawyer than all of that.”
Rose shrugs. “No. I’m not. Just like you aren’t any better than other therapists.” She pastes a smile onto her face. “But if we’re going to live together, maybe let’s not talk about that – your embittered hatred of lawyers and my embittered hatred of therapists.”
Luisa thinks on that later, with the door shut behind her (unlocked, because she never locks the door to the bathroom when she showers and Rose always does), with the soft spray warm against her skin, looking up at the light pink paint peeling around the soft blue tiles. She’s never mentioned hating lawyers before, but everyone hates lawyers. It’s not personal, certainly.
But Rose has never mentioned hating therapists before. There’s got to be an experience there. She wonders and she picks at the uneven skin along her arms and she wonders.
“So you’re Mama Alver,” Rose says by way of introduction the first time that Luisa leaves the two of them in the house alone together. Her hands fiddle awkwardly with the signs – she’s had the scant few months between the first time she’d seen the other woman and this moment to learn sign language with Luisa, and although she’s tried to get into the habit of naturally signing as she spoke, it’s hard. She doesn’t understand how Luisa can do it – years of practice over her months, probably. “I’m Rose.” She finger signs her name.
For a moment, she considers. She always considers with first introductions, but if she is Rose to Luisa, then she might as well be Rose to her mother, too, to this woman who mostly stays in her room and stares out the open window and has never once really looked at her. Maybe she could sign one thing and say another, but that would be cruel. Not that the other woman is actually paying attention to her signs.
Mia’s room is depressingly empty. It isn’t nearly as void of life as her room at Belle Reve had been – Luisa has made sure of that – the house landlords have allowed them to paint the rooms and make any improvements or changes they want. Rose hasn’t indicated to Luisa that the house might be more pay to own, if they want to stay permanently, because what would be the point? No one wants to live in a little house just next to their old university for that long, not unless they’re extremely caught up in their alma mater, and they don’t want to be those kinds of people, do they? – Luisa has put the pictures she’s taken from Belle Reve on Mia’s dresser, on her walls, and one has pride of place on her bedside table, one that Rose knows is a tiny little Luisa, happy, with her father, happy, and her mother, who might be happy and might be something else entirely. Rose has never been very good at puzzling out confusing and complicated emotional displays. The bed is covered with a soft cream-colored comforter with sea creatures etched into it with different shades of blue string – the sheets and the pillows are that same soft cream color, although there’s definitely at least one larger bright blue octopus pillow usually set dead center in the middle of the others on the days when Luisa has taken the time to make the bed.
But Mia is in the bed just as often as she is out of it. Today, the sheets are crumpled because Luisa hadn’t had time to fix them before leaving and Rose isn’t going to take the time to do it for her. (Rose, who always makes her bed, and Luisa, who never makes hers.)
Rose thinks, if she were Mia, she would say something along the lines of, You don’t have to stay here and watch me all the time. They didn’t even do that in the psych ward. They let me be. But Rose doesn’t want it on her head if something should happen to mother dearest while she is here and Luisa isn’t. She doesn’t think she could stand under that pressure.
“I think, at the end of all this, that you will hate therapists, too.”
Rose doesn’t know why she says it, sitting on the rocking chair in one corner, pulling out a book and opening it, fingers fiddling with pages until she finds the last one she was on. It’s a small thing – and she doesn’t even sign it because her hands are occupied with her book – but it’s there all the same, hanging in that empty room and ricocheting off the walls and Mama Alver still doesn’t acknowledge it.
She takes a deep breath and settles and starts to read, but instead of reading the story in front of her, as Luisa had suggested she do – to keep her mother entertained, of course – she finds herself saying something else instead, not knowing why she does it. Perhaps it’s the knowing that this woman isn’t really paying attention, perhaps it’s the knowing that she’s admitting it to herself more than to anyone else.
“Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Clara. She loved her parents. She thought her parents loved her. But her mother left and her father got drunk and her stepmother hated her but gave her enough money to get her out of her hair. Still, she thought she was just a normal kid who loved to run and play and get torn up on trees and drink from the river. She thought learning how to whittle like her father was average. She thought everyone could be easily distracted during class, especially when she knew what they were teaching and she was so bored.”
Rose doesn’t look up. She stares at the words on the page in front of her. Its words don’t swim. They never do.
“Her father got drunk and drank too much and her stepmother ripped her away and threw her into therapy because a neglected child must have something wrong with her and they poked and prodded and she felt like an experiment more than an actual real life human being. And in the end, if she lied to them to get them off her back, what of it? And in the end, if her stepmother was so afraid she would hurt her little brother, what of it? She got out and away. It was easier than being there.”
Rose shakes her head. “I don’t believe you made things up for your therapists to hear. You don’t talk enough for that. But they always expect something to be wrong, and they get upset when you act like you’re perfectly fine with your parents being kind of horrible people. They think that something must be wrong with you – that either you’re too detached or you’re suppressing everything when, really, if your father is that horrible, sometimes you’re okay with him being gone, when, really, if your stepmother is still horrible, you know that there are only some things you can say. You learn to give in to what those therapists want to hear, and they feed you drugs you don’t need and you don’t want. And the worst of it is that they always say they’re trying to help you when really they just make things worse.”
She stares at the words on the page in front of her and she dares them to swim.
They don’t.
Of course, they don’t.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Clara and her mother left and her father died and her stepmother threw her into therapy where she lied to keep worse things from happening and they put her on drugs that fucked with her head and then she almost died, too, because they thought the drugs were helping her more than their side-effects hurt her but really she was just good at hiding it the way she hid everything else. But death isn’t a side-effect, and wanting to die isn’t a side-effect, it’s a cause, and that means more medication to regulate that, more shifts and more changes for something she’d lied about from the very beginning just to look normal like everyone else when she was never really normal to begin with, she was just a different sort of abnormal than she thought they wanted.”
Rose takes a deep breath. It should rattle. It should shake. But there’s nothing. She doesn’t feel anything.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Clara, and she got tired, and she flushed the pills down the drain, and then she became this again, and maybe it’s broken and wrong and abnormal and horrible, but she has a new name and a new face and a new way of living that works for her, and maybe she’s completely numb even without the pills, but she’s so used to that she can live with it.”
Her fingers clinch on the edge of the book.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Clara who grew up to be a sociopathic mess.”
Rose grins, and her head tilts, and there’s a hand gentle on hers, and she starts and looks up. Luisa’s mom isn’t looking at her, not really. She’s looking just above and beyond her. But as Rose stares at her, the older woman signs, easy, the word pretty, and Rose laughs. “Yeah. Pretty. Pretty fucked up.” She pushes a hand through her frizzy red hair and takes a deep breath. “Let me read you a happier story. I don’t think that one will have a happy ending.”
She looks back to the book in her hands and takes a deep breath. A normal person would be shaking or crying or something. She feels nothing. There is no point in wondering if she would have felt anything if she’d grown up differently. That way lies madness. She takes a deep breath.
“Once upon a time, there lived a little girl named Antonia. She lived in a big house with her mother and father, and for the first few years of her life, everything seemed happy. Her mother and father both loved her, and she loved them, and they loved each other.
“Then one day, her mother disappeared….”
Rose always locks the door when she showers.
Luisa stands just inside of the bathroom, and she stares at the bathroom door with its full-length mirror framed in a bright blue, and she wonders if maybe she should start locking the door, too. But they have a way of things now – Rose is up so early that Luisa doesn’t need to barge in for anything anyway, and while she can be late to class, Rose can’t be late for her internship, which means that Rose needs to be able to barge in and do what she needs to do, even if Luisa’s in the shower.
Besides, it isn’t as though Luisa actually much cares about Rose being in there while she’s in the shower. She would actually really appreciate Rose being in there with her, but she doesn’t think about that and she certainly isn’t going to say that, not seriously, anyway, because that would be…. Phew, that would be fucked.
She leaves the door unlocked.
Time passes, as it always does, and little changes.
Summer comes with heat and fire. Rose’s first internship ends, but she takes another one right on the heels of the other. She’s gone most mornings, and when she isn’t gone in the morning, she’s gone in the afternoon, but she’s always back before early evening. Sometimes she’s so tired of everything that she locks herself into the bathroom and sinks into the tub, her head leaning back and bright red hair floating about her, eyes staring at the popcorn pocked ceiling as she takes deep, stilling breaths. She is reminded that she doesn’t feel nothing; she feels anger and frustration and anger. But she can’t share that with Luisa, and after that day of telling so much to Mia, she hasn’t left herself alone with the older woman if she doesn’t have to, doesn’t let herself start talking about herself at all. She sits and watches – and doesn’t turn the television on, because she remembers that Mia doesn’t want that – but is careful not to say anything else at all.
Luisa sets about taking care of her mother. It’s harder than she first thought it would be, but she gets used to it. She rattles off information to the older woman – not about her day, because they spend their days together now, but about her life and how it has been for the past few years. She talks about college; about her younger brother, Rafael; about meeting Rose and how much the redhead absolutely hates Christmas – amended by a statement, her head lowered, grin softening to a gently fond smile, “Well, she doesn’t hate Christmas. She just think it’s a waste of money and that we should celebrate family all year long, and not just one day a year. I think I can agree with that. But I still want Christmas trees and twinkling lights and presents.” More often than not, as summer wanes and leads into fall, Luisa takes her mother out to the garden that she has created and lets her mother sit in the warmth of the sun while she weeds and plants and waters.
Once, Rose returns to their little house early enough to catch Luisa outside, bent over at the garden. Luisa stands as she returns and brushes her dark hair out of her face, and as she does so, the spray from the hose catches the light and sets a soft rainbow around her. Rose stops and stares, and there’s a moment—
—quickly ruined by Luisa turning the hose toward her and blasting her with water until she is sopping wet.
Rose locks herself in the bathroom and stays there until she is certain that Luisa is asleep, forcing her breathing to slow. She leaves her ruined outfit out to dry as soon as it’s clean, and it smells a bit like honeysuckle and wood smoke. The scent of smoke is gone the next morning. She must have imagined that. But during her internship, she catches herself doodling on a notepad this image of a dark-haired woman, her form blurred by the spray, and a soft, iridescent rainbow hovering around her with the stalks of sunflowers just behind.
Mia still doesn’t speak, but she seems to become more and more aware of her surroundings. There is hope, but how long it might take for that hope to be rewarded is unknown. Sometimes Luisa creeps into Rose’s room, when things are too hard, and Rose lets her hide there. It’s easy. They’re friends – they’re roommates – and while they aren’t Mia’s parents, they are taking care of her the way a parent might with their child.
Some days are better than others, and some days are worse. Rose comes home in a furious rage, tramples the flowers just outside the front door, and breaks a glass as she tries to wash it. She refuses to let Luisa patch up her hand and leaves. When she comes back, she finds that Luisa has been drinking. There’s too much and not enough, and she spends the early hours of the morning holding Luisa’s hair back as she gets sick. In the end, she goes back to work the next day, and Luisa, hungover, watches over her mother with a pounding headache until Rose gets back. They stare at each other, and they don’t bring it up again.
Time passes, as it always does, and summer fades away into fall.
School begins again, and Rose finds herself spending more time with Mia as Luisa’s classes start up once more. Of course, she had known that this would happen. It was inevitable. She couldn’t avoid it.
But Rose doesn’t know Mia nearly as well as Luisa does. She doesn’t know her mannerisms, the ways she communicates – the ways she communicated before she’d slowly lost the desire to do so, before it had been slowly stripped away from her – so she doesn’t recognize the signs of growing awareness the way Luisa would.
Maybe if she had, she would have been aware enough herself to stop things before they happen.
But, then, that wouldn’t have been the best result.
The sun shifts through the leaves of the one overly large tree they have in the backyard. Rose sits just underneath it, propped up against its thick trunk, wearing a straw hat overhead to keep her face from being burned and one of her many long, thin-sleeved shirts to cover her arms. She closes her eyes against the patterns of sunlight and takes a deep breath before letting it out. Mama Alver sits in one of the lounge chairs nearby; Luisa has constructed a little seating area next to the tree with a canopy over a small table and three chairs – one for each of them. Rose has never been very big on chairs when it came to spending time outdoors; if she were alone, she might have scaled the tree instead, the way she had when she was young. There are limbs just low enough to start with, and she’d easily have the thing scaled in ten – twenty minutes, tops. Then she could get from there to the roof of their little house, where she could spread out a blanket or a towel and just lay out, watching the clouds as they moved. This would end with her sunburned, though, and her face turning just as bright red as her hair and her name. It would be better when it gets dark, when she can watch the sun setting and the stars coming out, the moon draped in all her finery.
But she isn’t alone. Luisa has asked her to make sure her mother gets out of the house during the day, making mention of a pool – or perhaps it was a pond or a lake – that Mama Alver used to bring up so long ago. To that point, Luisa has tried to make a koi pond out in the back, but it is currently only half done. Rose is convinced she won’t have it finished until it is too cold to have the fish make their move, but she hasn’t said anything to discourage her. It’s something to do that isn’t the constant drudgery of school work, after all.
Rose flips to the next page in her book and takes a deep breath. Outside, she doesn’t have to regale Mama Alver with stories, so it’s far easier to stay silent. She’s found herself more often than not getting lost in her own reading – right now, it’s another book in the same series she had started last December, the first book of which she had been reading when she first met Luisa. It quickly draws and maintains her attention, so she doesn’t notice when Mia stands and crosses over to her. In fact, she wouldn’t have noticed at all if the woman hadn’t grabbed her wrist and pushed the sleeve covering her arm back in one smooth motion, her thumb tracing along the long, thin scar tracing from her wrist up to her elbow.
“What are you doing?!” Rose snatches her arm back out of Mia’s grasp and pushes the sleeve back down, covering her scar. When Mia reaches for her other sleeve, Rose slaps her hand away. Anger bubbles inside her, and she grits her teeth together, bites down on her tongue until she draws blood, so that she doesn’t say anything in the heat of the moment. She glares at Mia.
The woman nods once, and she points to herself. Her fingers aren’t long, but they’re wrinkled with age. Rose can imagine them as the fingers of a crone or an old witch. That doesn’t soothe her in the slightest.
Rose’s brows raise. “What?” she asks, and in that moment, it feels less like the other woman is someone she should be caring about and more like—
“Me, too,” Mia croaks. Her voice is raspy and soft from disuse, and she coughs twice, covering her mouth with one hand, before pointing at herself again. “Me, too.”
“That doesn’t give you the right—” Rose barks before swallowing her words. She knows that the appropriate response right now would be excitement or joy that the other woman has said anything at all, especially after how long it has been since she’s spoken last; she knows that she should feel special that Mia has spoken to her when she hasn’t spoken to anyone else at all. There are a lot of things she should feel and doesn’t, and she won’t be upset with herself for not feeling what she should here. She can’t – not when all she does feel is the anger swirling in the center of her chest and aching to be let out. “That is an absolutely shit way to treat someone who is trying to help you,” she finally allows out as she continues to glare at the other woman.
Mia nods, points to the side of her head, and then brushes her hair back until a small, small scar becomes visible. “Shit,” she murmurs. Then her fingers begin to move.
Rose still doesn’t know sign as well as Luisa does, and in the months since they’ve moved in together, it hasn’t gotten much better. Luisa signs primarily when Mia is in the room, of course. When it’s just her and Rose, though, she doesn’t sign at all. There’s been no real reason for Rose to learn. Luisa has indicated that she should sign when Mia is in the room, too, but Mia can hear her and understand her, so what is the real point? This is it – the practice would have made her ready to understand this.
She can pick up some signs – jump and bridge and big rock – and Rose holds up a hand, stopping her. “Luisa said you almost jumped off a bridge.”
Mia’s eyes narrow, and this time when she signs, she is incredibly clear and intentional. I jumped. She didn’t see. I hit my head. She takes a deep breath. It is hard to speak. She sits on the ground next to Rose. Never be ashamed of where you come from. It makes you stronger.
“It didn’t make you stronger.” Rose leans back against the tree and looks up through the leaves, shutting her book and placing it on the ground next to her. “It also isn’t anyone’s business but my own, and when people see something like this,” she gestures at her arm, now covered by the sleeve, “they don’t mind, but wear your scars in public and people make judgments or want to ask questions and it isn’t something I want to talk about. This is easier. It’s formal.” Her head angles just enough for her to look at Mia. “And I don’t owe you an explanation.” She huffs, her gaze moving to the bits of sunlight drifting through the leaves. “I don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
Mia taps her arm, and Rose flinches. The other woman is kneeling now, the edge of her dress getting covered with dirt. Rose still doesn’t know who picks this woman’s clothes – Mia certainly didn’t choose them herself, unless they’re just that old (and it wouldn’t have surprised Rose if they were). Maybe Luisa did. Maybe her father did. She hopes the nurses at Belle Reve hadn’t, and that if they had, all of those choices had been thrown away and abandoned before Mama Alver ever made her way here. No one deserved that.
Pretty, the older woman signs, pointing at her. Pretty.
Rose shrugs. “If you say so.” She stretches and then stands, brushing the dirt from her pants. “If you’re well enough to talk, you’re well enough to take care of yourself for a few minutes.” Her eyes narrow. “And you’re well enough to talk to your daughter instead of me. I’m sure she would enjoy it a lot more.” She smiles, head tilting to one side. “Or maybe not, if you want to pick at her scars, too. She deserves better than that, you know.” Then she grows serious, leaning down in front of the older woman. “And don’t tell her about any of this. It’s none of her business, just like it’s none of yours.”
You told me the truth.
“Because I thought you wouldn’t understand me.” Rose’s eyes narrow. “Don’t mistake that with thinking you should get involved.” She stands again. “Don’t tell Luisa. I’ll tell her if I want her to know. Don’t take that from me, too.”
Mia takes Rose’s hand. I won’t. Then she gestures to the chairs. Sit with me. We don’t have to talk. I like the company. She takes a deep breath, shakes her head once. I’m tired.
Rose stares at her. As she does, Mia smiles in that way Luisa does when she wants something and thinks a smile will help – all awkward and unsure and yet it’s still a smile being offered instead of a hand that can all too easily be slapped away. Mia takes Rose’s book from where the redhead has left it on the ground and hands it to her. She doesn’t even have to say please – it’s there in everything else she is doing, everything else she is expressing.
“Fine,” Rose says, finally, taking the book from the older woman. She takes her hand and pulls her up – Mama Alver is stick thin and weighs as much as the birds who frequent the bath Luisa has left out for them. “We can sit. No talking.”
Mia nods once, her smile fading, and it’s as though she’s saying, I wouldn’t dream of it.
Luisa comes home to find her mother resting in bed. She offers her mother a gentle smile, even though she knows the other woman won’t see it. The call of nature urges her to check the bathroom, but she finds it locked – and pressing her ear against the door, she can hear the soft trickle of water that indicates Rose is drawing herself a bath.
Fine.
She can wait.
Luisa returns to her mother’s bedroom, and she sees that the other woman has awakened. She waggles a few fingers at her, not expecting anything of a response, but Mia raises one hand and waggles her fingers back, just the same way Luisa is, mimicking her. Luisa’s heart tightens. “Mom?”
Mia smiles – a soft, fond thing – and gestures for her, patting the mattress next to her, and Luisa goes. She thinks nothing of it when Mia runs her hands along the smooth skin between her wrist and her elbow, thinks nothing of learning that her mother hit her head – more frustrated with her father for letting her believe that her mother hadn’t jumped, that there was something else that might have explained why her mother was so quiet after everything that had happened, why the doctors at Belle Reve thought it necessary for her mother to be so medicated.
Her mother kisses her forehead, and her mother doesn’t have a long conversation with her, but her mother has a conversation with her – in sign, yes, but it’s a conversation, and she’s glad to have it.
When Mia points to Rose’s room and signs pretty with her brows raised in a question, Luisa can’t hide her flush. “Very pretty,” she murmurs, knowing that Rose can’t hear her right now. “Don’t tell her.”
Mia frowns. Too late, she signs. I already told her that.
“When?” Luisa asks, her eyes widening in shock. “Why would you tell her I think she’s pretty?”
Oh. I didn’t tell her that. Mia grins. Just that she is.
It’s a little thing, but it still sets Luisa’s heart pounding. Still – it feels like she has her mother’s approval, even if she doesn’t think she’ll get her dad’s. It’s something – and it’s small – but it’s there all the same. It comforts her. Enough so that when she hears the bathroom door unlock, she decides to leave Rose alone. She’s happy where she is for now.