Stealing Flowers Read Free Page A

hard
perplexed eyes. His bald head had a sweep of grey hair on the sides
and he wore a trim grey moustache. He looked vaguely like a cop,
and if it hadn’t been for the sad, almost anguished eyes, he would
have looked like a mean one too. The irony of this thought wasn’t
lost on me, he was actually a police-officer of sorts, and I knew
it, it’s just that at the time, I equated cops with the men in the
blue uniform.
    “He has more color today,” the plump nurse
said softly. I recognized her voice but didn’t look at her face.
“I’ll get the doctor.”
    My sleep-encrusted eyes wouldn’t go from
face to face. It was just too much, and I was mortified they’d been
staring at the lump on my stomach only half hidden under the linen
sheets. I rubbed my eyes harshly and forced myself to sit up a
little on my pillow. I quickly felt my head to find the gauze had
been removed. Only long narrow bandages covered the lump on it now,
but it was still gross to touch.
    “How do you feel?” Mrs. Abbibas said softly,
an East Indian woman, who though dressed in Western style, always
managed to look as though she was in a silk sari. She coiffured her
graying hair in smooth waves, and her compassionate eyes were full
of affection. Her black dress was covered in a large grey silk
shawl as though she was a person from a mysterious land who hid out
in New Jersey and wished to return home, but couldn’t find the
secret path back.
    She had these deep-set eyes and a smile on
her face that seemed the definition of maternal love. Many times
she had talked to me, and appeared always magnanimous, but I could
never really understand what she said. Not that it mattered.
Outside of taking me home, what could she do? My mother was dead,
my father, nonexistent. I’d no standing or money. I was sleeping
with Lloyd, living in a broken-down halfway home on Carling Street,
and had been arrested for truancy three times. Who wanted to adopt
an eight-year-old with a history? And one caught stealing from
perhaps the wealthiest family in New Jersey no less?
    I nodded and she lightly rubbed my hand. I
recognized the man with the friendly blue eyes and moustache. He
looked down and smiled again. This time he was dressed in casual
clothes. “I’m Stan Tappet,” he said in a rather timid voice. “This
is Una.” I darted a glance at the big black woman with the
formidable magic.
    Una was an opposite type to Mrs. Abbibas.
She dressed in a loose bright red-yellow floral dress, and her eyes
were playful and full of inquiry. ‘The Tappets perhaps owned New
Jersey,’ her eyes said, ‘but people like me built it.’
    “Do you know why we’ve come?” she asked
loudly.
    Indeed, I’d guessed it, but shook my head
and got out from under her gaze. Stan was to be my new father. I
could see he was afraid that I’d turn him down, that for some
reason, that somehow, I wouldn’t understand what was being offered.
I think he was afraid that I was thick as a brick. I saw that I
held sway over him. He’d been sent out by the lady with the voice
of authority and wasn’t to come home without me. They were used of
getting what they wanted. I remember feeling exactly that! Power.
Perhaps it was the first time in my life I had it over someone and
I didn’t even know why, but I wouldn’t willingly give it up.
    Sally strode in from behind the people in
the room, her face kindled with delight, a bright red tin of
Coca-Cola in her hand.
    “Hi,” she mouthed.
    I saw that she had recognized inside herself
the seed of love I’d planted there from our first meeting. No
shyness came to her eyes either. They were fountains of
translucence whose depths were unimaginable. I had to have her—I
became greedy for her. It was deplorable but urgent as well. I had
power over someone for the first time, but he’d taken it all back
by bringing his daughter who had power over me. With her in my
life, the taste of Lloyd could be rinsed out and my past thoroughly
rejected. Through