Free Dreaming in English by Laura Fitzgerald Page B

hot tea melt it into pure sweetness. As I step through the gate, I clasp her cool, fragile hand, careful not to crush it in my excitement. “We can have tea together all the time now, Rose!”
    She gives me a confiding look. “I’ll confess, I was terribly sad at the prospect of not seeing you any longer. Your parents must be so pleased.”
    Ah, my parents. “I don’t know what my parents are thinking, Rose. I really just don’t know.”
    She tilts her head, curious, but when I don’t continue she encourages me to have a seat at the wrought-iron table while she goes inside to get our tea. I like it that Rose pushes me just as far as I want to be pushed, but never further.
    My heart has grown heavy, as it always does when I think of my parents half the world away, and it’s heavier than usual because of what Maryam told me last night. I dread the phone call to them that I’ll soon have to make. Our relationship feels newly false—although I suppose it’s been false all along and I just never knew it. A part of me wishes I still didn’t.
    But I don’t want to be sad. Not today. I’m a new bride, my sister’s pregnant, and I’m having tea with one of my favorite people in the world. I should be happy, and I almost succeed, except as I look around Rose’s backyard, the fresh-dirt smell of her garden reminds me of our courtyard at home, where my mother grows her rosebushes and takes her tea in the afternoons if the weather permits. She so seldom ventures beyond it that I’ve come to think of it as her pretty little prison cell. Genteel, a decaying glory, it reflects her, too, with its chipped concrete birdbath and mossy walls. Leaves fallen from the tree breezes are trapped there, gentle dervishes, spinning idly around the courtyard, going nowhere in the end, unable to escape their fate.
    But Rose’s garden is delightful. The word for it, I think, is whimsical . First, it’s so colorful with spring flowers unfolding into their full beauty. Then, it’s colorful with personality. This garden could belong to no one other than Rose. There’s an old ladder painted deep pink with a potted plant on each step. She uses old tires for planting beds and has Mexican tin-can lanterns strung throughout. Her three cats roam freely. There are two altars in her yard—one created in honor of her parents, who have died, and the other a Christian one which depicts Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose lifeless body is draped over her lap. Rose is Catholic, like Ike’s family. She has a little pond with very large goldfish. My favorite part of her yard is a saying she has painted on the archway to it: ONLY MY GARDEN KNOWS THE SECRETS OF MY SOUL . While I wait for her, I wonder what Rose’s soul secrets might be.
    She soon returns with our tea, and as it cools, she asks me to fill her in on what’s new. Laughing, I tell her I don’t even know where to begin.
    “How about pick up your story from the last time you visited me,” she says. “That was the day before you were to be married to that gay man from Chicago you were afraid wasn’t very nice.”
    “It turns out I was right about that.”
    “And you also said Ike wasn’t ready to be married.” Her eyes twinkle. “It looks like you weren’t so right about that!”
    I update her on everything—Masoud’s day-of-wedding demand that I forfeit my rights to my children in the event of a divorce, about Maryam telling Ike of my visa predicament, about Ike’s showing up in Las Vegas and his sweet proposal, of his parents’ reaction to our marriage, to Maryam’s pregnancy, to my most immediate dilemma of convincing Ike we should, in fact, move in together right away even though that’s the exact opposite of what I said just a few short days ago—and when I’m done, I sit back, exhausted.
    “Whew!” she says. “You’ve had quite a busy week!”
    “And an emotional one,” I say. “So many highs, so many lows. I’m really very exhausted.”
    I look around her yard