My balcony hangs in the air on the eighth floor, with a view of Chicago’s skyline. I grasp the flowery porcelain mug in my hands, taking a sip of coffee, and admire the plants and flowers surrounding me. One might say I have a green thumb, but I think the secret is that I love gardening, not for the sake of the work itself, but for the life it creates. I encourage what I plant to grow, and I thank them and give them compliments for their beauty, for the zeal. I talk to them as if they can hear me, but even if it’s not the words they understand, they must sense the vibrations of care, so they flourish.

***

A flower can have many names. Some also have many colors. I researched the one my mother and paternal grandmother used to have in their flower garden. They come out year after year on my balcony in a few of the containers and work well as an accent flower for the new flowers I buy each year. I take advantage of this small fast-growing flower’s robust need for life. It’s sensible to cultivate and save some money. Buying fresh dirt and plants can get expensive.

I place my coffee on the round table covered with a red/white checkered table cloth and wonder why we chose these names? Someone told me it’s a way we control things by naming them. The seeds or young plants are buried and they grow into these amazing creations. Interesting how a tiny seed could become something so robust. Things buried will shoot up like the lies that faster buried in our hearts. And when they grow and become visible, we name them. Abuse. Rape. Molestation. Do we hope to gain control over these atrocities by naming them as if they were flowers? These words, for me, mask the acts that touched our souls and blackened them. These words are only names and not the actions unearthed by a simple mention, a quick glimpse into the past.

***

Gardening requires time and attention. The work can be many, many long hours. To prepare the containers for the new season. To plant new flowers. Clean up the dirt accumulating on the concrete floor. This annual flower is called Portulaca grandiflora, a succulent flowering plant in the family Portulacaceae, but depending on which country we are in, it has many different common names. Like rose moss, rock rose, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, Mexican rose, moss-rose purslane, etc. Rock flower is one of the terms used and closest to what my mother and grandmother calls them. Stone flowers. It probably got its name from how it can survive among the stones and pebbles as if it requires no roots.

***

In a way, I’m happy they keep coming back because I love their colorful petals like tiny roses extending from their long, weaving stems—full of fat, slim leaves looking like large pine needles—but they also remind me of times back home. I didn’t like them, growing up. In my memory of them in the old country, these flowers lay low on the ground, crawling over the stones, seemingly thirsty, always—like our father, uncle, grandfather—with only five petals each. Perhaps, this description of them is no longer true. People care so much more about their flower gardens and the beauty of the village these days. Life was different back then, too.

In constant fear of my alcoholic father, even at my grandmother’s we—my sister and I—found no refuge. Boredom, yes, but solace was far out of our reach. We could hear our father’s voice long before he reached the green gate of our grandparents. Nauseated, fearful, we’d try to hide, hoping he wouldn’t ask if any of us were there, so he wouldn’t drag us home, but he already knew. And grandma would tell him even if we begged not to let him know—Mom says, she didn’t want Dad to stay there, not even fifteen minutes. People on the bus would relay to him whatever morsel of truth or half-truth they learned over the week while my father was at work someplace far. They even pointed out how many potato dumplings filled with plum preserve each of us eat. I could never figure out where they got this information from, but they were correct.

***

Stone flowers, native to Argentina, southern Brazil, and Uruguay, South Asia, and the Balkans, can also be found in the US and Europe cultivated in gardens. It can live in sandy and rocky terrain and spreads easily. At least three years ago, I planted the double flower variety, and by mid-July, it reappears and begins to bloom in yellows, reds, whites, pinks, peachy or dark oranges. Now, in August, they stretch out at least eight inches long.

I sit back and take in the sun on my face, gazing at the petunias, zinnias, marigolds, geraniums, and rock flowers. I breathe in the lingering breeze and I thank God in my mind for being here, today, relaxing in the warming rays and not back there, then.

***

I once had a chance to talk to a Peace Lily. A two-way conversation. A few months ago, a couple came to our church with their singing bowls and brought her (the lily) and a weird electrical machine that could translate her vibrations into sounds that we could hear. She sang like a siren, soothing, calming. Especially when the bowls were resonating out their healing sounds toward the congregation.

The lady said after taking the flower home for the purpose of trying out the expensive machine, she asked her for her name. The flower said, “Olivia. My name is Olivia.”

The lady told her, “No, tell me your name.”

The flower was quiet for a few days, but the lady insisted. “I need a name I can call you by,” she told the flower.

“I’m a Lily,” the flower sang, and the lady called her Lily from then on. I wondered why she didn’t call her Olivia.

Afterward, when the session ended, I walked over to her to say hello. I touched her leaf, and I told her how beautiful her song was. I called her by her name, the one she first gave to the lady, and her voice resonated through my arm straight into my heart.

***

My father’s ear-piercing shouts—he was usually drunk and possessed a deep voice—would wake up the dead if the cemetery wasn’t far enough away at the end of the village, while our grandparent’s house was in the middle right behind the bus stop and post office, just five-minute-walk from the church and grocery store. My chance to live a normal life was slashed into pieces, and my dreams to achieve any greatness or meaning were stifled in this place, although the village has no significance other than being on a bus-route between two cities. We lived in the next tiny village. About one and a half kilometers away. Past the creepy manmade lake and the drying narrow river.

One time, when my father took my sister and I near the bridge, and we took a bath in the shallow water my sister was already in puberty and Dad noticed. Embarrassed, he wrapped the towel around her saying, “Oh, wow! You’re growing up quickly.”

Often, our mother asked my sister and I if Dad had touched us or if he had tried anything. She didn’t say the words, but somehow we knew what she meant. The answer was always no. I wonder sometimes why she didn’t ask about anyone else or any other men in general. She never asked about Papo. Dad wasn’t the only man around us. Didn’t she see the signs when we were small children? Didn’t she suspect something was wrong when we had visited our grandparents? Papo didn’t want the two of us to go together, always one by one for summer vacation. I missed Mom and my sister so much when they had me there for two or three weeks. I hated how they separated us. Did our father know that it was safer for us at home? I sometimes wonder.

***

I suspect, my father was a victim of molestation, too, by his stepfather, our Papo, but he never told. He just drank himself to death and took that secret to his grave. Dad’s half-brother bought us tickets—first for my sister and then me—to fly and visit him in the US and molested my sister and I, and he raped me. What did Papo do to him? How did he become so twisted? The answers are still buried and there’s no hope to uncover them, not when they are all in a dimension other than what we still live in. Papo spent years in a Siberian POW camp during World War II. Perhaps, that’s what caused him to become depraved, although it’s not an excuse to be a monster praying on the innocent.

I caress the leaves of the stone flowers and speak gently. “You’re beautiful. Thank you for being here.” I’m not sure they understand the words, but I think they know how I love them.

– E. Izabelle C. Alexander