Bleeding Violet (2 page)

I averted my eyes and presented the sandwiches, like an offering. “Do you want any?”

She drifted toward me in a red sleep shirt and bare feet, seeming to bend the air around her. Her mouth was expressive, naturally rosy, and mean. Just like mine. Our lips turned down at the corners and made us look spoiled.

“You broke into my house to fix a snack,” she said, testing the words, her East Texas drawl stretching each syllable like warm taffy. “I better be dreaming this up, little girl.”

“It’s no dream, Rosalee. I’m here. I’m your daughter.”

Her hands clutched her sleep shirt, over her heart, otherwise she didn’t move. Her oil black eyes raked me in a discomfiting sweep.

“My daughter’s in Finland,” she said, the words heavy with disbelief.

“Not anymore. Not for years. I’m here now.” I reached out to touch her or hug her—any contact would have been staggering—but she stepped away from my questing hands, her mean mouth twisting as she spoke my name.

“Hanna?”

“Yes.”

“God.” She seemed to recognize me then, her gaze softening a little. “You even have his eyes.”

“I know.” I marveled over the similarities between us. “Not much else, though.”

Rosalee looked away from me, tugging at her hair as if she wanted to pull it out. “How could he let you come here? Alone. In the middle of the night. Did he crack?”

“He died. Last year.”

She let her hair fall forward, hiding from me, so if any grief or regret touched her face, I didn’t see it.

After a time, Rosalee stalked past me and stood before the picture window. “If he died last year,” she said, “why come to me now? How’d you even know where to find me?”

I sat in the red chair, clashing violently in my purple dress. “I stole your postcard from Poppa’s desk when I was seven, the month before we moved to the States.” I went into my
pack for the postcard. It was soft, yellowed with the years. On one side was a photo of Fountain Square, somewhere here in Portero. On the back was my old address in Helsinki, and in the body of the card, the single word “NO.”

I showed it to her. “What were you saying no to?”

Rosalee glanced at the postcard but wouldn’t touch it. She settled herself against the window, her back to the lowering sky. “I don’t remember what question he asked: to marry him, to visit y’all, to love y’all. Maybe all three. No to all three.”

I put the postcard away. “When Poppa and I moved to Dallas, the first thing I did was go to the public library and look up your name in the Portero phone book.”

I’d gotten such a thrill seeing her name in stark black letters, Rosalee Price, an actual person—not a legend Poppa had made up to comfort me whenever I wondered aloud why other kids had mothers and I didn’t.

“I memorized your address and phone number. For eight years I recited them to myself before I went to sleep, like a lullaby. I didn’t bother to contact you, though. Poppa had warned me what to expect if I tried. That’s why I just showed up on your doorstep—I didn’t want to give you a chance to say no.”

She regarded me with a reptilian stillness, unmoved by
my speech. “Who’ve you been staying with since he died?”

“His sister. My aunt Ulla.”

“She know you’re here?”

“Even our feet are the same.”

“What?”

I took off my purple high heels and showed her my skinny feet—the long toes and high arches. Exactly like hers.

“I asked you about your aunt,” said Rosalee, still unmoved.

I admired the sight of our naked feet, settled so closely together, golden against the icy sheen of the kitchen tile.

“I didn’t even know I looked like you. I figured I did. Poppa told me I did. I knew I didn’t look like anybody on Poppa’s side of the family. They’re all tall and blond and white as snow foxes. And here I am, tall
ish
and brunette and brown as sugar. Just like you. My grandma Annikki used to say if I hadn’t been born with gray eyes, no one would have known for sure that I belonged to them. And I did belong to them, but I belong to you, too. I want to know about you.”

That Sally Sunshine act won’t work on her
. Poppa warned.

But it
was
working. As I spoke, Rosalee’s gaze remained focused on me, her unswerving interest startling but welcome in light of her antagonism.

“Poppa told me some things. He’d tell me how beautiful you were, but in the same breath, he’d curse you and say you were dead on the inside. So I’ve always thought of you that way—an undead Cinderella, greenish and corpselike, but wearing a ball gown. Do you even have a ball gown? I could make one for you. I make all my own clothes. I made this dress. Isn’t it sweet?” I stood so she could admire it. “I always feel like Alice when I wear it. That would make this Wonderland, wouldn’t it? And you the White Rabbit—always out of reach.”

“Why do you have blood on your dress?”

Her intense scrutiny made sense now. She hadn’t been interested in me, but in my bloodstains. I followed her gaze to the two dark smidges near my waist.

Sally Sunshine and her bloodstained dress
. said Poppa, disappointed in me.
I told you to change clothes, didn’t I?

I fell back into the red chair, the skirt of my dress flouncing about my knees, refusing to let Poppa’s negativity derail me.

“What makes you think that’s blood? That could be anything. That could be ketchup.”

“That ain’t ketchup,” Rosalee said. “And this ain’t Wonderland. This is Portero—I know blood when I see it.”

I nibbled my food silently.

“Whose
blood
is that?”

Tell her
. Poppa encouraged.
I guarantee she won’t care
.

“It’s Aunt Ulla’s blood,” I said. “I hit her on the head with a rolling pin.”

I risked another glance into her face. Nothing.

Told you
.

“And?” Rosalee prompted.

Did she want
details
?

“Aunt Ulla’s blood spurted everywhere, onto my dress, into my eyes.” I blinked hard in remembrance. “It burned.” I fingered the smidges at my waist. “I thought I’d cleaned myself up, but apparently—”

“Hanna.” Despite her apathy, Rosalee addressed me with an undue amount of care, as though I were a rabid dog she didn’t want to spook. “Did you kill your aunt?”

I ate the last bit of grilled cheese. I licked the grease from my fingers. “Probably.”

“It’s no use,” I told Rosalee when she unearthed a cordless phone and asked for Aunt Ulla’s number. I poured myself a big tumbler of milk and resettled into the red chair. “If telephoning the dead were possible, I’d be talking to Poppa right now.”

We are talking
. Poppa said, his voice a snug little bug in my ear.
Who needs phones?

Rosalee, meanwhile, waited with the phone in her hand, as patient as an Easter Island statue that had stood a thousand years and was ready to stand a thousand more, if that’s what it took. So I recited Aunt Ulla’s number and watched her dial.

If she wanted to find out the hard way, so be it.

Rosalee’s finger froze in the act of dialing, and she studied me head to toe, her face taut. “This aunt of yours … was she mean to you? Did she hurt you?”

I nodded. “She hurt my feelings.”

“Feelings?”
Rosalee finished dialing, her face relaxing back into its mask of indifference.

“Emotional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse. Worse! You can heal broken bones; you can’t heal a broken mind. Not easily.” But Rosalee wouldn’t hear it. “She’s not going to answer.”

“I remember how Järvinens are,” said Rosalee, disturbingly patient. “None of y’all ever pick up within the first minute. ‘People who hang up quickly—’”

“‘Never want anything important,’” I finished. She knew us!

I made a baby with her. She couldn’t help but pick up a few things
.

“You’ll wanna talk to her, I guess,” said Rosalee, waiting and waiting for my dead aunt to answer the phone.

“I have nothing to say to her.”

“Well, she’ll have plenty to say to you, that’s for sure.”

I shrugged and drank, smugness pouring into me along
with the ice-cold milk as the wind manhandled the sweet gum on the lawn and sent its branches scraping along the house. The wind wasn’t manhandling me. My brief day of homelessness had ended with me sheltered and well fed, not by Child Protective Services or a pimp, but by my own mother. How many other runaways could make that claim?

“Ulla?” Rosalee stopped pacing and leaned against the counter. “This is Rosalee Price. Yeah,
me
.”

I almost choked on my milk, my smugness evaporating into sour gas.
“She’s alive?”

Rosalee put her hand over the phone. “Sounds like it.”

I slammed the glass to the table.

Rosalee slanted a dark look at me but spoke into the phone, “I
know
that. She just turned up on my doorstep.”

I heard Aunt Ulla’s heated voice all the way from my chair. Rosalee had to hold the phone away from her ear.

When the screaming died down, Rosalee said, “
How
many stitches? Oh. Too bad. Well, what do you want me to do? Burst into flames? I
said
it was bad.”

Louder, angrier yelling.

“Don’t yell at me. Yell at your niece when you pick her up. Well, you
have
to see her again. She’s your family. Don’t put
that daughter shit on me! I never even seen her before today!” Pause. “What? Diagnosed as
what
?”

Panic sent me scurrying out of the kitchen, my pack slung over my shoulder. What was I doing sitting around like the battle was won? She knew about me now. Aunt Ulla was giving her a play-by-play of all my antics over the past year, including the incident from this morning. Rosalee would be more desperate than ever to send me away. I had to move quick and stake out a bit of earth for myself before Rosalee got off the phone.

I found a switch on the wall that lit the living room: one chair and one footstool, but no futon or foldout couch. No couches, period. Down a hallway to my left was a bathroom, a linen closet, an office the
size
of a closet, and finally Rosalee’s bedroom, which housed a twin-size bed.

I went back to the living room, worried. One chair in the kitchen, one chair in the living room, a twin bed in the bedroom. It wasn’t that Rosalee didn’t have room in her life for me; Rosalee didn’t have room for
anybody
.

Opposite the front door was a staircase. I went up expecting more of the same antisocial layout, but on opening the single door at the top of the stairs, I discovered a large, empty attic space shaped like the top half of a stop sign. The walls
were white and the same blond wood from downstairs covered the floor. A large window with brass-handled casements overlooked the dark, dreaming street.

Such good bones this room had. Such potential. It even had its own bathroom with a shower, sink, and toilet so white I doubted they’d ever been used.

A guest room. Empty because Rosalee clearly didn’t want any guests. Luckily, I wasn’t a guest.

I was family.

I set my bag on the floor and unpacked: seven purple dresses, purple underclothes, my purple purse, the big wooden swan Poppa had carved for me, and my cell phone. Since the room had no closet, I placed everything on the built-in shelves along the wall opposite the door, including my pills, which took up almost all the top shelf. I put the few toiletries I’d packed into the medicine cabinet. And that was it.

I was home.

We’re both home
. Poppa agreed, satisfied. He had been waiting to reunite with Rosalee even longer than I had.

I went downstairs and paused for a bit outside the kitchen door. When I heard nothing but Rosalee’s sporadic murmurings, I continued down the hall to the linen closet and
commandeered several thick blankets and one purple bath towel.

The purple I took as an omen—a good one.

I hadn’t packed any nightgowns, so after I undressed and washed up, I wrapped myself in the towel and combed out my hair, which was always a chore. Island-girl hair did not like to be combed.

“What’re you doing?”

Rosalee stood in the doorway of the attic room, staring at my belongings on the shelf and at her blankets on the floor.

Staring in horror.

I untangled the comb from my hair and knelt next to the pile of blankets. “I’m nesting.”

“Like hell you are! You can’t stay here!”

Aunt Ulla
had
poisoned her mind against me.

“Yes, I can.” I unfolded the blankets and piled them atop one another. “What you mean to say is, you don’t want me here.”

“That’s right! I don’t!”

I sang, “You can’t always
get
what you want.”

Rosalee stared at me as though she’d never seen anything like me before. “Are you even gone ask how your aunt’s
doing? Least you could do after what you did to her.”

“You said she’s alive.” I tested the softness of the pallet and found it lacking. I added two more blankets. “What else do I need to know?”

“It took
eleven stitches
to put her head back together. She only just got home from the hospital. You’re lucky she didn’t call the cops. You’re lucky she didn’t die.”

When I didn’t say anything, Rosalee knelt across from me, keeping the pallet between us. A shiny red bracelet encircled her left wrist, a bracelet with an old-fashioned silver key as long as my pinky dangling from it. I wondered what she’d do if I touched her hand, touched her anywhere, to see what it felt like.

“Why’d you hit her?” Rosalee asked.

“Didn’t
she
tell you?”

“You tell me.”

I stopped fiddling with the blankets. “She wanted to send me back to the psych ward so they could lock me away forever, and I told her I didn’t
want
to be locked away forever, but she wouldn’t listen. So I had to show her.”

I illustrated just how I’d shown Aunt Ulla by miming a heavy blow to Rosalee’s head. Then, unable to resist, I brushed
my fingertips across the soft silk of Rosalee’s cheek. She felt feverish. Familiar. My fingers knew her. “But I wouldn’t do to you what I did to her. Forget about what she told you. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”