THE ROOTS THEY PULL
HALF-HIDDEN IN creeping wisteria, I whisper the name like a secret.
“Jo.”
The rose hedge that stands like a locked door between our estates rustles as if disturbed by the wind. But there is no breeze here, deep in the secret glade. There never is.
“Boo,” Johanna hisses, popping up behind the hedge. There are smudges of soil on Jo’s light brown skin, leaves in their hair, stems growing from their head—silky black, enticing in the gentle brush against their shoulders. Some nights you can barely see the roots, obscured by the tuck of hair behind ears or a knit hat pulled tight. But tonight, they’re on full display. I itch to tug on the fragile vines, to test how deep they go.
“You’re a terror,” I say instead.
“And you are a night-blooming flower.” Johanna extends an arm across the hedge. In their hand is something soft, glowing pale pink in the twilight.
“Jo,” I scold, lurching—instinct. I stop myself inches from the hedge. I can almost feel its surprise at being plucked, its indignity. Its rage. No one touches the rose hedge.
No one but Jo.
“They’re just sitting here, growing aimlessly.” There’s enough light left to see the gleam of Jo’s grin. I can read the unspoken rest of the statement on their face: Just like us.
“It’s dangerous,” I argue. But my own lips are already turned up in a smile. As always, Johanna is unharmed. They turn the outstretched flower between thumb and forefinger and let out a huge, dramatic sigh.
“If you don’t accept my gift, I will have to assume you do not love me.”
Blood fills my cheeks. Johanna has stolen roses before, but they’ve never given me one. I reach across the hedge—careful to avoid the prickly white thorns—and snatch the rose. Its scent intoxicates the air, poisons releasing from its petals as I draw it close, poised for malice. I can almost hear Aunt Rhoda’s voice in my head, warning me of the bodies of countless careless children that lie beneath the rose hedge. Victims of curiosity or disobedience or unruliness—or perhaps a bit of each. A crucible of sins.
But I breathe with relief when nothing happens. Just as with Jo, the dangers the hedge cultivates don’t seem to work on me. Petals smooth and pliant as butter set out all day slip between my fingers as I caress the rose. On its stem is one white thorn—a flag of surrender.
“Thank you,” I tell the rose. “It’s beautiful.”
Johanna laughs, harsh and ugly. “It’s hideous. Just like the rest of this thing. The rest of this place.” They kick the hedge, and its leaves jostle with the movement. I freeze until the noise stops.
“Don’t say that,” I mutter. But what am I defending—the estates or the hedge? Is there a difference?
Johanna looks me over. “I promise not to say another word if you come over here.”
The taunt is familiar; we both know crossing over is impossible. Even if the hedge has chosen to leave us unharmed, it’s still impossibly dense. Whoever set themselves the task of wading through it would suffer the scorn of a thousand white pricks. The hedge stretches for miles in either direction, then veers sharply into each of our houses, growing into the cracks of the foundation. It may as well be made of stone.
Somewhere, a door slams. Birds take flight from nearby trees. The playful glint in Johanna’s eyes vanishes.
“I should—”
“Yes,” I finish, listening for the telltale rustle of cloth. Any moment, the arc of a lantern’s swinging light will slice through the dusk-gloom like a scythe, and then Jo might not be able to come back next week. “Here,” I say, thrusting the rose over the hedge.
So gently, Johanna says, “Keep it.”
And then they disappear into the overgrown foxtails. Fuzzy heads wave goodbye at me, and I stay rooted to the spot until it’s too dark to see them anymore. The lantern light never appears.
***
Three days later, the pink rose has lost most of its color, its petals flimsy. It barely looks like a rose anymore. I tuck it in my corset and wear it around the house, petals just peeking out from my breast, aware of my aunt’s watchful eyes when we pass in the halls. I imagine her stopping me and demanding to know who my suitor is.
Jo, I would answer. She wouldn’t know who I meant, not from the name. I would glow with the secret, writhe with the potential of giving it away. With all the words aching to burst from my chest. Jo is short for Johanna. Jo is not who you think. Jo is . . .
And if Aunt Rhoda dares to reach out—if she tries to take the rose from me—
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t demand a name for my suitor. She doesn’t even give me a second glance. Over the course of the week, she keeps a distance from me that I’ve only ever dreamed of, paling whenever I’m near. There is only one word I hear her mutter when she brushes past me and catches a whiff of the flower, her nose wrinkling, features curling in on themselves like the pit of a sour fruit.
“Rotten.”
***
A broken wisteria branch signals our spot. I turn left toward the hedge. The air is thick with cloying August humidity, and I work for a good breath. Each one feels thinner than the last, like broth strained too many times. But I’m at our spot, and it’s our night, and Johanna will be here any moment. They’ll smile at me like they always do, and I’ll pretend it doesn’t make my heart demand freedom from my chest, and everything else will fall away.
As I enter the scattering of trees that form the glade, I cup the rose carefully in my hand. It’s brittle now. Fragile—like Johanna’s hair. I wish they wouldn’t hide their roots. I want to see them; I want the rose hedge to see them. Our families. The whole world, if Jo would allow it. When Johanna appears, I’ll reach across the hedge as far as I can and grab a fistful of those roots—I want to pull them out and feel them, smell them, taste them.
Absently, I run my fingers through my own hair, nails dragging along my scalp, testing, searching. Could I grow them too?
Fireflies wink around me, keeping far from the hedge. Something feels off.—Normally, the glade is a haven, a place where Jo and I can be ourselves together even while we’re apart. But this evening, it’s weighed down by something I can’t see. Is it the lack of rain? The way the clouds are filled to the brim and yet can’t find it in themselves to have mercy on us? Twilight fades as the sun slips behind the trees. Cicadas wail while other unseen creatures murmur and twitch and consume.
The bones of my corset press in on me like fingers, my skin sticky with sweat that clings to the thick fabric. Fidgeting, I peer over the hedge in the direction of Johanna’s house. Worry germinates inside me. Where’s Johanna? They never arrive after sundown, and now even its orange afterglow has nearly bled itself dry.
Then, finally, I hear a rustle of cloth against foxtails.
“Jo,” I breathe, a smile forming on my lips. “I thought—”
But the person breaking through the clearing is too tall to be Johanna. Too broad. The sudden flare of a lantern hurts my eyes, and I stumble over the hem of my skirt, falling to the ground.
“Who’s that?” the man demands, raising his lantern above the hedge at a careful distance. It’s Mr. Glasgow, Johanna’s father. I can see him in the light: white skin, black stubble on his cheeks, sun-roughened skin, eyes that harden as they take me in. “You the reason my girl’s been creeping around back here?”
I cringe at the word, at how wrong it is. Anger flares in my chest. But I can’t speak; I can only shrink.
“She won’t be coming around no more,” he says. “You go on home. I’m sure your folks expect you back.” He gestures with his lantern, but it’s lazy, insincere. His gaze drags over my figure, lingering on all my soft parts. “Or maybe I’ll just let them know you’ll be late?” He grins, then begins to laugh. Halfway through, it seizes and becomes a horrible wet cough that disturbs the leaves of the hedge standing between us like a sentry.
A sudden thought grips me: If it weren’t for the rose hedge, Mr. Glasgow would be on top of me by now, the whereabouts of the child he’d just scorned forgotten.
I scramble to my feet and run.
By the time I reach the stone steps, Johanna’s father is far away, but I can still hear his laughter in my head. As I catch my breath, I unfold my clenched hand. Crumpled tufts of pink look back at me in the dark.
***
The next two evenings, I go to the secret glade and face an empty hedge. Johanna’s father does not come back—but neither does Jo. I stay until the crickets begin to play their melancholy song and my ankles are bitten to shreds by bloodthirsty mites.
By evening of the third day, I’m desperate. The rose hedge mocks me. Every rose is Mr. Glasgow’s laughing, gaping mouth. Each thorn is a white snarl of teeth grinning through shadows. I take a pair of shears and lift it to a twisted branch with shaking hands. But I can’t bring myself to cut the hedge. It kept me away from Johanna—but it also kept Johanna’s father away from me. I can’t commit this act of violence against the one thing that protected me. And I can’t force my way through it.
I’ll just have to go around it.
My plan lurks in my head for the rest of the night. It stirs up rage I didn’t know I had. I get little sleep as I begin to understand what it will entail, as I start to see the shape of it—muddy at first, a silhouette in the dark, then lighter until it’s so clear I can’t stand to look at it straight on. With the rising sun comes a clarity that weighs on me like chains around my bones as I dress in the corset Johanna likes best. They’ve made it abundantly clear they would much rather see me without one at all, but this—my oldest, most worn corset, with embroidered green vines curling intricate designs across the chest—is the one they’ve disparaged the least.
But not even Johanna’s favorite corset can keep the anxiety at bay. What I’m about to do is unacceptable. A breach of etiquette, Aunt Rhoda would say. We never go next door—haven’t in all the years we’ve lived here. No one visits their neighbors. It simply isn’t done. And because it simply isn’t done, I’m as discreet as possible when twilight finally falls and I snatch Aunt Rhoda’s moldy green coat off its iron hook, then slip out the front door.
I’m sweating by the time I climb the decrepit wooden steps to the Glasgow Estate. When Mr. Glasgow answers the door, I flinch. Ridiculous. I’ve only ever had one interaction with the man, and he didn’t—couldn’t—come anywhere near me. But my body seems to understand something I don’t as I’m hit with a damp, bitter smell that turns my stomach.
“Hello,” I manage. “I’m here to borrow a pair of shears.”
Mr. Glasgow’s glassy eyes sweep over me again, the same way they did before, indulgent. He seems to hear the words slowly or not at all. The way he looks at me makes me feel small yet too large at the same time—unworthy of the attention and unable to escape it.
“Shears. For the . . . garden,” I stutter, then rush to cover my uncertainty. “Our pair is rusted, and the wisteria needs trimming.”
I barely hear what I’m saying. My thoughts are consumed with the darkness behind Mr. Glasgow, the off-putting smell. The quiet. Something is wrong. Where is Johanna?
Mr. Glasgow opens the door wide, and I step in. As soon as the door closes, I know I’ve made a mistake. I should not have come here alone. The foyer leads into a cluttered room whose only saving grace is a sliding glass door that leads out to the field of foxtails. Here, the damp, not-right smell is at home, and I realize what it is: mold. Water drips from a crack in the ceiling. It hasn’t rained in a month.
“Over there,” Glasgow says, nodding at a low table near a blackened fireplace. He hovers at a distance, watching me.
I drift to the table in a haze. Already I know what will happen, and the knowing is a poison—one that seeps through my skin and turns my blood to vinegar. Wet, like the smell of the mold that I can’t see but I know is there. Sour, like the breath over my shoulder. His hands are on me before I reach the table. They clamp hard around my arms; tomorrow, I will have bruises.
“Don’t fight,” he grunts in my ear. The command is like a spell. My limbs go rigid, terror seizing me as the older man’s hands creep toward my chest. He opens my coat—my aunt’s coat, Aunt Rhoda’s coat, not mine—and yanks it from my shoulders. Pulling, tugging, ripping, as if I am soil and he is tilling me. Everything happens too fast. Velvet falls around me like a moss shroud, clattering on the hardwood floor. The shears I had stashed in the pocket of Aunt Rhoda’s coat are out of reach, and suddenly, I’m shivering. Mr. Glasgow tears open my corset, and my breasts spill out, along with bruised-pink petals.
“The hell,” Glasgow mutters, distracted by the soft petals grazing his fingers. The rose Johanna plucked, tucked away between me moments earlier, has crumbled to ash on Glasgow’s skin. I smell something acidic, and then—burning flesh. The man wrenches away from me.
“You . . . ” Slack-jawed, he points one festering finger at me.
Red in my peripheral vision. I glance down to find blood running in a thin line to my navel, originating from the smallest puncture wound between my breasts. The single white thorn had nicked me. I wonder how long I’ve been bleeding. Since the moment I pressed Johanna’s bud to my skin? Since before then? I’m no longer shivering as I dig the shears from the burial moss.
Glasgow is on his knees now, staring at the flesh no longer on his hands. White bones shine through exposed tendon. His face is pale, too shocked even to scream. I can’t speak either, but if I could, I know what I would say.
For Jo. I plunge the shears into his neck, turning away at the last second. A gurgling sound fills the room. It seems to go on forever. Then there’s a thump, and I stay still for a long time, unable to move. Unable to look.
A familiar flicker through the glass door tugs me from my temporary paralysis. Twilight has painted the field of foxtails a battered purple. My heart pounds. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I start to shake again. And then—there—near the hedge—
An arc of light.
I scramble to the door, tripping over something soft and fleshy on the way. Clamping a hand over my mouth doesn’t keep the vomit from sliding up my throat as I wrench the door open, leaving rainbow stains of sweat and blood on the glass. I stumble out into the field. Jo. Jo. Jo is there, waiting for me. They’re okay.
My dress becomes an obstacle as I run, and I tear it the rest of the way off, shedding it like too much skin. Foxtails brush my bare hips, graze my bloody navel as I spot the opening to the secret glade. It’s different over here from Johanna’s side, but I would know it anywhere, wisteria hanging sorrowful over the hedge.
From here, I can see into the well-kept field of my family’s estate. Looking around, I search for the light. But the only glow comes from insects floating in the air around me, drifting like bodies on water.
“Jo,” I mutter. My voice is hoarse. How long has it been since I used it?
An answering rustle disturbs the hedge. I fall to my hands and knees. Numb, eyes closed, I climb into the green that was once a dense, impenetrable wall. It seems to welcome me, and I crawl over branches that crunch like bones and vines that slide like veins. The familiar warning blares through my head. No one touches the rose hedge. No one but Jo. But I’m inside, and the earth is wet in my hands. Why—It hasn’t rained—
I wade in farther. Thorns pull me back or push me on—I can no longer tell. The hedge kisses my skin with its sharp teeth, accepts my blood as sacrifice, and I give it—I give it all. I can’t feel the sweet sting of brambles or taste the copper in my mouth or smell the rot settling in. Rot. Rotten.
Soil gives way to soft ribbons. Threads—so many of them. Hair. And something else that feels familiar between my fingers.
Wet on my face now. I dig my hands deeper into Johanna’s roots. They’re so soft. So fragile. Gently—so gently—I pull at them, the way I always longed to from the other side of the hedge.
The way I never could. Just to see. To feel. To know. At last.
***
I don’t know how long it takes me to grow my own roots, there in the safety of the rose hedge. It cradles us like a secret. Like cupped hands around lips, holding in words until they’re ready to be spoken. Like home. The earth dries and wets and dries again, and we grow roots, stems, petals, thorns. We remain. And someday, someone else comes to the hedge and gently—
—so gently—
—plucks a rose.