RoseBlood(3)
“It said in the brochure they coordinate their calendars with public schools in the states. That means it’s already one month in here.” I wind my hands together, an attempt to quell the pain in my heart at the thought of Dad’s absence—the wound that never heals, even after a decade. “Do you know how hard it is to make friends so close to the end of the first six weeks?” Not that I plan to try . . . but true intentions take a backseat when it comes to guilting Mom.
“It’s not unheard of,” Mom rebuts. “Lots of people are scrambling to send their kids, even late. Doesn’t that say something to the credit of the school? Only two years in, and there’s already a wait list. There were at least twenty names in front of yours.” Mom looks out her window where the wet trees have thickened to multicolored knots, like an afghan gilded with glitter.
“My point exactly.” I tap my fingers to some endless rhythm turning inside of me . . . an operatic aria I heard in an elevator earlier. It’s reawakened, and that’s not a good sign. The melody will writhe like a snake on fire and burn holes behind my closed eyelids in the shape of musical notes until I sing it out. It’s physical torture, like a constant spark in my skull that scorches my spine—vertebra by vertebra. “I’ll be winning friends left and right once they hear I jumped the list via my bloodline.”
Mom clucks her tongue. “Well, according to you, there’s still the phantom. I’m sure he’s not too picky about who he hangs out with.”
My jaw tightens as I suppress a snort. Touché.
I trace the window now curtained by mud, imagining the glass cracking and bursting; imagining myself sprouting wings to fly away through the opening—back to America and my two friends who were tolerant of my strange quirks.
Aching for another glimpse of the sky, I trigger the automatic window to swipe the pane clean, allowing a fresh, cold wind to usher in a spray of mud and rain. I smile as the moisture dots my face and neck, easing the sting of the song in my head. Mom yelps and I send the window up again.
“Rune, please.” She tightens her plump, red-tinted lips to a frown. Working her fingers through the dirty droplets in her cropped hair, she digs a Kleenex from her purse.
“Sorry,” I whisper, actually meaning it. Using my velvet scarf, I blot my cheeks then sponge the leather seat.
Mom’s scrubbing shifts to the taupe crepe jacket and pencil skirt, which hang like tissue paper on her small frame. With each movement, her signature fragrance wafts over me: Lemon Pledge. She cleans other people’s houses for a living, and can never seem to shake off the stench of dust solvent and Pine-Sol.
With her delicate bone structure and striking features, she missed her true calling. She did some print modeling back when Dad was alive, but she wasn’t tall enough to be on the catwalk. Once he got sick, she needed “job security” to help pay bills. Housekeeping filled that niche, but I know a part of her has always regretted switching professions. And now she’s determined to see that I don’t lose my shot at something better, something she thinks I was born to do.
Gray light and purple shadows take turns gliding along her high cheekbones as we pass through the trees. People say we could pass for sisters. We share her ivory complexion, the tiny freckles spattered across the bridge of her nose, the wide green eyes inside a framework of thick lashes, and her hair—black as a raven’s wings. The only difference is, I inherited my curls from a father whose laughter I still hear when I dance in rain puddles. Whose face I still see in the water’s reflections, as if he’s beside me.
Without being at home, close to our garden, my only remaining connections to him are the music he loved and his family, each inseparably intertwined with the other. Since Mom’s parents passed away before I was even born, she had no one to lean on once Dad got sick. So, Grandma Liliana came from France to live with us in Harmony. She was a lot of help in the beginning, but a few months after Dad died, she left our lives in a blaze of horror, literally. The last time I saw her she showed up at my second-grade Valentine’s Day party and purposely started a fire that almost wiped out an entire class of eight-year-olds.
She was carted back to France and has been locked away in the city of Versailles ever since, at a prison for the criminally insane. Ironic, considering that was her second attempt at killing me. Although I often wonder if I imagined the first . . . if the details got mixed up in my seven-year-old brain because I was fighting so hard for my life. According to what Grandma told Mom, it had all been an accident.
I shiver and rub the scar on my left knee that peeks through the rip in my jeans, a reminder imprinted on my skin. A reminder of the splintering wood I kicked my way through . . . a reminder that, accident or not, I didn’t imagine it.
“You have a gift.” Mom’s statement rakes across the intrusive memory, ripping through the cobwebs and dangling dead hopes in my heart that have settled where a loving and sane grandmother should’ve been. “This place will help you realize your potential. Be grateful for the opportunity.”
Mom doesn’t get that I want to be grateful. I miss how singing once made me feel: free, unique, complete.
But what if Grandma was right about me . . . about everything?
The aria I heard earlier in the elevator bumps against my ribs once more, making my breath shallow. From the time they started dating, Dad taught Mom French. He’d done the same for me since birth, and she continued his tutelage after we lost him. Because of that, I know enough to be comfortable here. But the opera piping through the speakers had sounded Russian. I have no idea what the name of it is or what it’s about. I don’t have to know. Now that the notes are woven within me, the words are imprinted alongside them. Whether or not I can translate what I’m singing, I’ll still remember how to form each syllable on my tongue when the time comes to release the song.