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The Flower Girl

Mehreen Ahmed

    “Push, push,” the mid wife screamed as I bawled to get the baby out.
    “One last push, with all your strength. C’mon girl you can do it.”
    I did and the baby slithered out.
    I looked at this marvel that grew within my womb, his little face all wrinkled and fresh. The nurse said that she needed to take him away to the nursery. The staff walked like apparitions through the stark walls. Surreal. No one knew where they went.
    The psychiatrist looked solemnly at Mary. He gave her a script.
    Mary left. She stopped at the corner store to buy a packet of cigarettes at the bus stop. Sliding her smooth, unmarked fingers into her long, black coat pocket, she took a cigarette out of the box and lit it. She bent down to do up the boot laces. She side-glanced at a pair of pointy black shiny shoes. She liked them. Mary continued to look at the shoes until she stood up abreast with the person. It was a middle-aged gentleman, waiting for the bus just like her.
    “The bus is late,” she said looking at him.
    He looked at her grimly and nodded.
    “I’m new here,” he said. “Do you know if buses come this late?’
    “They usually don’t. I wonder what’s wrong.”
    “Well, why don’t we sit down on that bench while we wait for it?”
    “Sure, why not?”
    “Do you smoke?” Mary asked.
    “No. Not much.”
    “Would you like one?”
    “Hmm, okay, I’ll have one today.”
    Mary gave him a cigarette out of the packet. She lit it for him and took another one for herself. The man coughed a little as he blew out a tiny round of smoke into the air.
    “What do you do?” he asked.
    “Me?”
    “Who else?”
    “Yeah, I sell flowers.”
    “Oh, that’s nice? Do you have a flower shop?”
    “I work in a flower shop.”
    “Oh, I see.”
    “Although, I do believe that one day it could be mine.”
    “How so? What do you mean?”
    “I mean the flower shop. Maybe that I would own it, or partially at least.”
    Mary did not say much after that, but looked up at the grey sky on the eastern corner. It was a harsh, Canadian winter that was drawing towards an end. Her face looked somber. She parted her pink, thin lips in anticipation of something. She thought for a while. Her rosy, chiseled cheeks dimpled and her lips curved into a slight smile. The man looked at her childlike expressions and into her almond-shaped, greyish blue eyes. His gaze travelled over her small face and it fixed on the black, round mole right under her nose. Mary felt a little self-conscious. She tried to look away from the intensity of his gaze and even blushed.
    “I don’t think any bus is coming this way today,” she said.
    “Maybe not,” he said as he continued to look at her.
    Mary averted his gaze and added. “There’s a storm coming on. I got to go.”
    “How?” he asked puzzled. “I mean, do you mean to call a cab?”
    “Not sure. I think I’ll walk. My shop is not too far. A good fifteen-minute walk should get me there. Besides, cabs are expensive in Halifax, so you know.”
    He looked up at the sky, as the storm brewed.
    “Hey, don’t leave me in the storm.”
    “I’m not your keeper. I fly, like a free albatross. Don’t hold me back,” Mary turned around to tell him. Her lilting voice faded as she took off. “I’ll tell you all about the shop one day, if we meet again.” She laughed as her lithe body moved like a tender twig of spring.
    “I wouldn’t know where to find you.”
    “Oh, find me at the flower shop on the corner of Barrington Street.”
    A few days have passed since the storm.
    The man sat at the desk editing his book. He looked out of the window. Broken branches lay across the road, and loose electric wires left over from the havoc of the stormy day. He wondered how the girl was; he thought about the girl. She did mention that she worked at a flower shop on the corner of Barrington Street. What seemed like a cold mid-morning, turned out to be quite mild, now that the days were changing? What a long winter it was?
    His chest distended at the thought of the girl. There was something about her which pulled him towards her. The age difference was much.
    He boarded a bus for Barrington Street corner. He got off and looked for the flower shop. He entered one. There were several girls working here. They gathered garlands and bouquets of scarlet, crimson, and russet into brilliantly vibrant arrays. He went up to one of the girls.
    “May I help you sir?” she asked.
    “Yeah, I’m looking for a young girl of about medium height.”
    “What’s her name? Do you have a name?”
    “No, not really. She had to go before I could ask. But, she smokes. She smokes, quite a bit, in fact.”
    “Lots of girls smoke here sir. Can you describe her?”
    “Hmm, greyish blue eyes, dark hair, coffee-coloured skin.”
    “Like you sir? Did she look a bit like you?”
    “No, no, I don’t think so.”
    “Well, I’ve seen a girl that matches your description, but she has a mole right under her nose. She works in the next shop. Could it be her?”
    “That’s right, the mole! Of course, it slipped my mind. Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
    Awkwardly, he rushed out of the shop. He proceeded next door. At the entrance, he saw the girl arranging a huge bouquet. She looked at him briefly.
    “Hi!”
    “Hi,” he said.
    “I, umm, came by to see if you were hurt in that storm.”
    “No, I wasn’t. I got in just on time,” she said simply, her eyes dancing. “But, it’s awfully nice of you to check on me. I can’t seem to remember anyone who might have done it.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “That’s okay. Is there anything you wanted?”
    “Yeah, I was thinking that maybe,” he paused.“Could we have a private chat somewhere?”
    “About what?”
    “Oh, just to get to know you a little better. That’s all.”
    “That’s a strange request.”
    “It is a bit strange, but not entirely unheard of.”
    “No, it’s not. I agree that a lot of great friendships started like this.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Look, I’m on my lunch break now. Could we perhaps go to that café across the road?” she suggested.
    “That would be lovely.”
    “Can you give me a minute? I need to finish this task at hand.”
    “Certainly, I’ll wait for you outside.”
    The man walked out of the store. She picked up the bouquet from the stool, away from the afternoon light, and went inside through the curtains behind the door. The parted curtains faded almost into white. She waited there and looked at him through the glass door. The man standing outside seemed kind.
    “Who are you looking at?”
    Mary jerked around and looked at the speaker standing in the shadow of the foliage. It was Mark, her boyfriend.
    “No, no one. Just thinking of lunch, I guess. You gave me such a fright,” she said.
    “Don’t get any funny ideas, okay?” he said.
    “Of course not, Mark, why should I?”
    Mark was the owner of this shop. Mary moved in with him. She worked in his shop five days a week, kept his bed warm at night, and in return got the minimum wage, which came with the promise that one day, she could own a share of the shop. She was happy with this agreement and thought that she had done well at nineteen. Had it not been for those nightmares, she would have had a decent life otherwise.
    She should not keep the gentleman waiting at the awning. She joined him upfront and they walked together towards a cafe. ‘What could this man possibly want from me?’ she wondered.
    At the cafe, they looked at the menu together. While he ordered the soup of the day with a slice of buttered rye, Mary ordered a vegetable pizza.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Anthony, Anthony Chang. But, people call me Tony.”
    “What’s yours?”
    “Mary.”
    “Just Mary?
    “Yes.”
    “No surname?”
    “No.”
    “How come?”
    “I don’t know who my parents are.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be,” she said politely. “I was raised in a church.”
    “Oh, for how long?”
    “About eighteen years?”
    “Eighteen years?”
    “Yes. I didn’t want to be a nun, so I left. I was lucky to have found work here at the flower shop.”
    They both ate quietly. The girl was pretty thin. Did they not feed her properly? he thought.
    He asked, “What’s the name of the church? If I may ask?”
    “Why do you want to know?” Mary asked.
    “Just curious, that’s all.”
    “I got to go,” she said.
    “That’s okay. Run along then. You don’t want to get into trouble with your boss.”

    Tony sat down and wrote a new story:
    The boat suddenly found itself in the middle of this raging storm as the ocean rocked it violently. A young man woke up and looked for his wife beside him. Along with ten dozen other refugees on the boat, they were destined for Canada. It was a long voyage from the orient, and they were on this boat for days with people starving, vomiting, leering, and in the end stages of death. Not everyone died; some survived; those who did, survived through the hottest days, the hungriest hours, and most perilous of times.
    Tonight, he could not find her. The young man went outside and looked for her. As he stood on the deck, a cry came from behind. He looked back and found his wife struggling to crawl towards him, clinging to the steel boat rail. She kept receding. The boat swayed and tipped sideways; the tempest was tumultuous. He hurried towards her and hoped to save her from this approaching danger. Before he could do so, the strong winds swept her away, nearly to the rear of the boat. But the man did not give up. He went after her and grabbed her arms.
    Tony read what he had just written, took a printout, and edited it again and again until he deemed it perfect. Then he put it away on his desk and sat down in the cozy comfort of his room. He relaxed in the soft chair by the calm firelight. He stared at the fire, burning brightly and watched as the logs crackled and the debris flew everywhere within the fireplace. However, there was another fire, a fire within him, which he was now in a mêlée to tame. He felt like an imprisoned cat, caught up in the devil’s rope on edge, trying to climb the barbed wire.
    Thinking of her mole under the nose, he went back to his desk and took out his briefcase from under his table. It contained papers. He opened it with trembling fingers. It also held passports. He took two passports out and opened them one after the other. He could not stop his fingers from shaking. The pictures on the passport were those of a young man and a woman. Not a spitting image as such, but the woman had a mole exactly in the same place and just the right size as the girl he met; they had the same eyes, too. Tony sat down on the high-backed chair at the writing desk.
    “Oh, my God! Can this be true? True indeed?” he whispered.
    He needed to find out more.
    Mary was at the flower shop, early in the morning. There was a tug in her heart that gave her an irresistible desire to be near him. ‘Come on,’ she told herself, ‘he’s old enough to be your dad and that too was something he couldn’t be.’
    Mary had not realised that Mark came in and stood behind her.
    “Mary, what’s wrong?”
    “Nothing,” she said.
    “Something’s missing.”
    “Like what?”
    “How should I know? You tell me.”
    “I’m fine! Leave me alone!”
    “You weren’t the same last night. You were distracted and that was quite obvious.”
    “What do you want from me? Go away!”
    “Are you asking me to go away?” he sneered.
    Mary kept quiet. She wanted to tell him that she felt like pouring hot oil over him while she cooked. She felt like telling him that she wanted to block such thoughts, such harmful thoughts, and get them out of her mind. It was awful that she could not. However, she would not tell him any of this, for she was afraid that he would want to get out of the relationship, leaving her out in the cold. No way, Mark must never know that she had a mental illness and she had been to a psychiatrist. Mary was frightened. What if he hit her tonight or fired her and did not give her the promised share of the shop? Could she go back to the church? Did she want to?
    It was a bright, quiet morning. The delivery truck dropped off more flowers and the delivery boy winked at Mary. He expressed at some point that he wanted to have tête-à-têtes. Oh, how insufferable! She gave him the cold shoulder. Important issues were on her mind today. Lunch with Mark was really important as she needed to ask him about the shop. When was he going to transfer the partial ownership? Find out about proper documents and all that. Then, she would be set for life. The sky could not have looked bluer, not a single patch of clouds anywhere.
    She felt a sudden boost in her heart when she went in to check Mark’s diary for the day. He was free at lunchtime. But, as she closed the diary, there was a strange noise coming from the back room. Stumbling accidentally on the door’s threshold, she fell down. There was a shadow on the floor. She looked up immediately. A man stood there, in the dark. It was not Mark and it frightened her. Mark suddenly appeared out of nowhere, startling her again.
    “Why don’t we have lunch today?” she asked
    ‘Yeah. We’ll leave in half an hour.”
    “Sure.”
    Mark looked at Mary and tried to comprehend her disposition. Their need for each other was mutual. Not only was she as lovely as those flowers, but she was na•ve about the world as well. The closed doors of the nunnery kept her much in the dark. He enjoyed her innocence as he attempted to ensnare her in his net. Mary fell for everything that he ever told her and she trusted him.
    Mary went to the back room and looked for Mark, but he was not there. It was now fifteen minutes after. Mark had stood her up. She decided to go for a bus ride.
    A few minutes into the ride, Tony walked by and sat down beside her.
    “Hi there,” he said.
    “Hi, now let me ask you, are you stalking me or something? I’ve already told you I’m not interested in you.”
    “I suppose you’re interested in that jerk. He’s just using you. You should know that.”
    “Using me? How do you know? You don’t know that. On the contrary, he loves me.”
    “Some kind of puppy loves but maybe it’s not real. I can assure you.”
    “Look, I don’t want to talk to you,” she said, pulling the chain.
    The bus stopped. She got off in a real hurry. He looked at her through the double glazed window of the bus. It fogged up in no time from his heavy breathing. She looked back at him. A bittersweet aftertaste remained. However, a foray of inkling, entered her mind. The force of the inkling was into him as well.

    After dinner that evening, Tony sat down at his writing desk. He wrote:
    The young man pulled his wife back into the cabin of the boat. By now, the leaky boat went adrift and it started leaking even more. People jumped into the high seas from the boat. Poseidon’s wrath surged and the ocean darkened to a terrifying menace. Absolute mayhem of dunking heads of men, women, and children on the waves. They gurgled and screamed in desperation. There were no lifeboats to be lowered, only a few life vests. Luckily, there was another boat nearby, a bigger one that came to people’s rescue.
    People cried to stay afloat on the ghastly big waves. These screams were carried through by the tempestuous gale of the night and were heard by the soul, seizing sirens, who responded unequivocally until they became a mélange of cries in the darkness. They appeared from nowhere and took what they had desired. Before they plummeted, they performed a light-footed ritual of synchronised summersaults. Then, they swiftly disappeared into the depths of the blue seas; no Mariner’s vision could be compared to this, no rime was sung, although, all the boards did shrink.
    They were taken on board. The young man and his wife were amongst the lucky ones who made it to the new boat. The others were not so lucky. Luck began to dwindle for this young couple too. The pregnant wife went into early labor the moment they were taken aboard. The turbulent waves were relentless and people threw up everywhere on the swelling seas.
    The wife howled in pain, but no one paid attention. The young husband sat by her and the birth of a beautiful baby girl soon followed. The umbilical cord was cut with the Swiss army knife that he had in his zippered shirt pocket. The wife smiled, and immediately fed the baby. Later that evening, still afloat, a terrible infection and a high fever ravaged the wife. The pain and desperation were too much to bear. She died, leaving the young man to take care of this new addition. On the boat, the wretched travellers gaped at them. The storm went down and the ocean quieted. The serenity was restored just as the boat reached the shores of Halifax in Nova Scotia.
    Tony stopped typing. The sound of the keyboard reverberated around the walls of the silent room. He felt that he had become the quintessential ‘hollow man,’ bereft of compunction even though his sins were purged and atonement made. The printouts were taken and put inside his briefcase along with the rest of his manuscript.

    Mary slept alone. Mark had not come home. He had not called her either. The next morning, she got dressed to go to work. She ran a comb through her hair and attempted to get out the knots which hung over like a mass of tangled web. The lights were on all night last night, still she heard voices, saw thousands of crawling spiders on the ceiling above. Shop or no shop, she could not wait for Mark to return. She was a prisoner of her own shortcomings, the caterpillar, who weaved its cocoon diligently, waiting for the day she would become a butterfly. But, as her life’s partner, she needed Mark to share her life; a life, she hoped was going to be free one day from drudgery, voices, and shadows.
    Then she noticed Tony, standing across from her apartment on the street. No, not again! But, it was too late. Tony saw her and signalled that he was coming upstairs.
    “What do you want from me?”
    “Which church took you in?”
    The words flew out of their mouths simultaneously as Tony reached her door’s threshold.
    “Why do you want to know?”
    “I’ll tell you later.”
    “Why won’t you tell me now? I’ll have to tell Mark about you.”
    “You think that he can protect you? You’re just a flower girl in a flower shop, eating him out of house and home. That’s all you are to him?”
    “Of course not. Why would he promise me the shop then?”
    “Do you think that he’ll ever give it to you? How can he give you something that he doesn’t own in the first place? He belongs to the underworld, my dear. And, that shop is just a front.”
    “What? What do you mean? How do you know? Get out of here.”
    “Never mind how, but that’s the truth. Now tell me the name of the church and I’ll go,” he insisted.
    “Protestant Orphan’s Home on North Park Street.”
    “Thanks and goodbye. I’ll see you soon. Don’t be afraid. You might not be alone after all.”

    At the shop, Mary stood under the awning. A BMW stopped at her shop. A beautiful lady stepped out of the driver’s seat, dressed in an Emerald silk skirt and a floral green matching top. The air thickened with her expensive perfume. It reeked of an unpleasant odour mingled with the fragrance of the flowers around.
    “Good morning,” she said.
    Mary looked up at her curiously.
    “I’m Margaret. Margaret Deshong. I’m the new owner of this shop. I have come to introduce myself. Mark won’t be the manager anymore. You’ll have a new manager.”
    Mark was the manager? Not the owner? Mary felt dizzy. Margaret went inside and began throwing her weight around with everyone to whom she spoke. Where was Mark now? What else did he do? Mary went inside to get her bag, she found two girls whispering in the shade of the foliage in the back room.
    She left without a word. She came home and collected the day’s mail. She found one addressed to Mark. Mary ran upstairs and opened her door. She flopped on the sofa, in the living room, and decided to open them. There was no letter, just pictures.
    These were pictures of guns and bullets that she had seen on television. She was not sure. She turned on the television for news. The news would start any moment.The news started and the first footage was on arms smuggling. Then there was Mark’s picture on television. He was in handcuffs with two other people. They were caught red-handed in the morning and charged with smuggling arms to terrorists. The police were onto them for some time.
    The news did not make much sense. It was complete gibberish,‘words, words, words.’ She sat awkwardly on the sofa with legs joined together and arms crossed over her chest. Her shallow breathing and twitchy movements started almost immediately. She slouched and fidgeted with her clothes. She looked at her feet and kept looking at them until she began to shake uncontrollably. This was followed by the tapping of her feet. She lay down on the sofa, trying to breathe normally. She had nowhere to go, nowhere at all, anywhere.

    Tony went to the Church and tried to speak to the clerk. He asked him about a baby girl, who should be nineteen years of age now. They confirmed that an orphaned baby was left in their care around that time. Could they call him later in the day? Tony agreed and decided to go home.
    He jotted something down on paper:
    As soon as the rescue boat arrived on the shore, the refugees were processed. The young man had nothing on him except for the baby in his arms. He stood in the queue with the others even though he needed emergency help for the baby. Famished and dehydrated, the baby had become lethargic by now. She continued to cry from hunger and exhaustion. Soon a nurse came and took them out of the queue. The other refugees eyed him enviously. They went to a detention centre and the nurse asked his name.
    “Anthony, Anthony Chang,” he replied.
    The nurse wrote down his name on a form she was filling out. In her clinical professionalism, she made no mistakes; no loose ends were left untied, and no amendments to be made later.
    “What do you intend to do with the baby?”
    “I want to give her up for adoption.”
    He winced in pain and his face became distorted. But, he forced the words out of his mouth. Inwardly though, he knew that she would surely die if she was left with him. He did not think he could give her the proper care the baby needed.
    “Okay,” said the nurse. “I’ll ask the sisters at the church to take her away. You need to sign these papers.”
    “Also could I give you this, for keepsake? The one thing in o’ the world I have to bequeath,” he paused. “Please let her have it, when she comes of age.”
    He signed the papers without any hesitation as though he was signing his soul away to Mephistopheles. The baby was gone. Many years had passed by the time he was released from detention. But, this release came with a price. Once he was out, he went knocking on every door, looking for her in every church. He could not find her. Even if he did, he would not be allowed to see her, for he had given her away.
    After all these years, Tony thought that he might have found her at last. But he needed to get her away from that crook. He heard Mark speak to a fellow the other day, as he stood hidden into the flower shop’s backroom. He figured that Mark was involved in some kind of a smuggling deal. Tony was behind the sofa, when Mary had barged in and barely escaped being noticed.
    He realised that the frightened girl was out of her wits. But papers, evidence, anything, and everything regarding Mary, needed to be researched. The girl had already left the room. Tony was within earshot to Mark’s conversation.
    “The flower shop is nothing to me. I am going to get out sooner than you think. My cover may already have been blown by now...,” Mark spoke on the mobile outside the back room. The window behind the curtains was open and nobody else noticed that Tony was there.
    Tony had followed him in a cab all the way to their apartment. He drove out later in the afternoon while Mary waited in the front. He left the cab once he saw where he lived and hopped on the next bus to get back to Mary with the dreadful news. Mary, however, never gave him a chance when they accidentally met on the bus.
    Now that he was almost certain that Mary was his forsaken daughter, he decided to see her at once. Tony thought he would stop by her apartment next and leave a note in her mailbox. He waited nineteen years and each moment was agonisingly precious now. The note said:
    Mary, I have something very important to tell you. Please meet me tomorrow at the same café for lunch. It’s urgent. I’ve waited a long time to see my daughter again. We must celebrate.
    There was an ambulance parked on the street in front of the apartment building. Tony got out of the cab quickly and paid the driver. A body, a dead body, covered in white from head to toe was being carried into the ambulance on a stretcher trolley. Tony mumbled something to the ambulance driver. He looked at him blankly, not fully grasping his question. The police found her this morning when they broke into the apartment with a search warrant. They found a body of a girl lying on the sofa. She died from an overdose of sleeping pills. They found the empty bottle by her side.
    The letter! Oh the letter! It arrived, but late, so late.
    Nothing moved him. No sense could knock him into a reaction; no tears of regret flowed from those weary eyes. This seemingly innocuous episode, transpired into such a great tragedy, but it left him vaguely disengaged.

    The grieving period slowly passed. And one night, when he sat down at his desk by the fireplace to write the rest of his story, he opened the briefcase and took out his manuscript. He wrote:
    The Church authorities wrote him an official letter with a little parcel attached to it, confirming that Mary was indeed the baby girl he had given up nineteen years ago. The parcel contained the Swiss army knife he gave the nurse for safekeeping. Mary did not want it, which was why it was never given to her. It was always in the custody of the Church.
    Most untimely, a death so poignant and if ripeness was all, then, Ophelia’s tragedy perhaps would have fared better, who at least entered heaven with a soul full of Hamlet’s love, which forty thousand brothers could not offer. This anonymous flower girl had none. She lived to die unseen, nipped in the first blush of blossoming. The unloved bud lay inert under winter’s callous frost. The tragedy compounded as both shared the same fate in not knowing how much love there was, one by her lover, the other by her father.
    Tony’s breathing intensified and his heart ached in a dull, spun out pain. No matter how much he lamented, the unassailable facts remained that he had given her up, found her, and lost her again.
    He put the manuscript back in the briefcase. With both hands he pressed the lid down. It closed with a click. While staring at the red, hot flame in the fireplace, he briefly looked at the briefcase. In an abrupt twist of the wrist and unflinchingly, he tossed it in. It perished steadily and burned into the smouldering fire of the night.
    The story remained untold. However, it continued to be re-read in his mind a thousand times over. This gave him an exclusive readership with his own signature on it. It was not a fable entirely, but a text of confession, of endurance, and of note.

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