tsarina

CUTTINGS

Mary Morris

      I've taken some of Bob Hope and a little Eternal Youth.  Spring Passion didn't do well this year so I opted for All That Glitters.  I've had no success with Dog Days or Tropical Storm.  But my heroes -- Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, and JFK - are all in bloom.  

      I don't know how it began.  These little thefts, a cutting from here and there.  I walked around the neighborhood, scissors and satchel in hand, on the lookout for interesting plants.  I've taken fistfuls of phlox and snatched hollyhock seeds.  Plucked evening primrose out of the ground.  But in the end it's roses that captured me.  

      I'm not a big fan of cutting other things - nails or hair, or for that matter, skin.  I just want what I see - a little piece, a small prize.  I want some part of something to be mine.  I used to do bulbs - daffodils, hyacinth, tulips in the spring. I'd buy them in August, but I had trouble remembering to put them in the ground. I'd find myself in December, clawing at the earth, a gravedigger in winter.  In the end it was the cuttings I wanted.  Little snippets from the Robertsons' or the Wilkeys' yard, a piece of someone else's life.

      I got Because It Is Bitter from the Pearsons with the disabled child.  Black Dragon from the Lesbians down the block and they have no idea.  I remember when they moved in with their beagle and statue of the Virgin Mary which they put in their front garden.  I didn't have a problem with them, but Joe did.  He said who needs that next door?  But then Joe had problems with lots of things. I didn't want to say, well, there are bad things that happen inside lots of homes; it doesn't just have to be them.

      My Black Dragon does better than theirs, but why wouldn't it?  They do nothing for theirs and anyway I've heard they're splitting up.  It's a multi-petal bloom blue black as night.  I suppose it makes a difference, living on the north side of the street.  The south side never gets all that much sun.  The peonies, the roses, they do better here.

      You can notice the difference in lots of ways.  The way the leaves pile up on the south side, or the way the ice doesn't melt so quickly on theirs.  Our flowers bloom earlier, but of course their back gardens are brighter and sunny, but I'm happy with my front garden.  From my parlor I can hear the neighbors stop by and admire.  "Oh, look at pink."  "That's redder than blood."

      Of course they don't know that they're admiring cuttings from their own plants - the stems I've cut and pruned.   Once Jeff Robinson said, pointing to the orange and yellow sorbet blossoms of his own hybrid tea, "Well, that looks just like our old rose bush, the one that died years ago."  If only he knew.

      I didn't let on.  "Well, feel free to take a cutting if you like."  Jeff Robinson, always butting his nose into people's business.  Who is he anyway?  His own son doesn't talk to him.  But then who am I to talk?

      I'm not sure when this started for me.  If it was before or after Sally left.  Probably before, though I don't remember much from then.  I'd like to name a rose for her.  I'd call it After Sally. Or just Sally.  On gloomy days I think I'd call it Sally Come Home. I never thought I'd think this way. Before and After. Here and Now.  Then.  I remember once when she was little, someone said I had a green thumb.  This bothered her a lot. She'd spend days, weeks, looking at my thumb to be sure it wasn't really green.

      Cancan Girl is doing well, but I haven't gotten a bloom yet from Mrs. Peach.  Stubborn Mrs. Peach.  Who names these roses?, I want to know. Moon shadow. Yesterday. Good as Gold. Wish I knew.  When I take a cutting this is what I do. I put it in sand.  That's it. people want to know my secret and I tell them.  Sand.  Like what you build castles with.  What you like to feel through your toes.  What slips through your fingers.  Just sand.  And water and sun. No one believes me but they sprout roots.  They grow.  Plants want to live, that is their secret.  They want to take root and grow.  Not like some people I know.

      Romeo My Romeo and Pink Petticoat are intertwined. I like the way the pink sets off the orange.  It's as if they belonged together this way.  I was thinking of grafting them together, making a hybrid plant, but in the end I just like the way one stem twists around the next as if they were meant to be.

      When Sally was little, she'd prick her finger on the thorns.  I'd tell her be careful.  Don't do that.  I'd suck her finger when she bled.  When she started cutting herself, a little nick here or there, I didn't know.  A small slice at a time.  The bathroom door was always locked.  How was I to know?

      When Joe died, actually when he killed himself in the basement of our building, Sally said we need to move.  We've got to get out of here.  I said no.  I dragged my heels.  She lifted her shirt and showed me.  Her chest, train tracks, riddled with scars.  Going no where fast it seems.  Her thigh, rippled like a stream.  But what about my roses? I said.  In the end I never moved.  It was Sally who went away.  

      Autumn Leaves, Over the Rainbow, Dream Lover.  They all grow here.  I mulch and prune.  I flick aphids off.  When no one's looking, I pierce my flesh on their thorns.