Rose Petal Rosary
Montana Rogers



 
We sat in the living room, some of us on the couch, others on the floor. We'd all come, cousins, aunts, uncles. The living room was quiet. A few of my cousins' children played on their phones, their faces lit by the screens. It was getting late. The street lamps outside flickered on and I could make out the chiming of the church's bells striking seven.
 
I'd arrived late. Missed the McDonald's dinner someone had thought to bring and now found myself stuffed between my aunt and the armrest of the soft, leather sofa, hungry and waiting. My shoes pinched my toes and I longed for a warm bath and the left over lasagna in my refrigerator at home. But this was family.
 
“It's time. She's going,” My mother had phoned me as I left the office. I usually travel to and from work by train, but the urgency in my mother's voice encouraged me to hail the first taxi I saw. Now that I was at my Great Aunt Maria's house, I realized I'd misinterpreted my mother's tiredness and sadness for urgency. I rested my head back against the couch and closed my eyes.
 
Over the years, we'd spent hours in this house, Christmas dinners, Easter brunches, and Sunday afternoons. In those days, the house had been alive with voices, movement, and rich aromas wafting from the kitchen. Now the house was still and we didn't speak, as if our voices might rise to the second floor and disturb Great Aunt Maria's remaining, peaceful hours or startle her into a quicker death.
 
Great Aunt Maria was not old. She was ancient. And, until last year, she had been the matriarch of the family, hosting every family event: baptism receptions, wedding receptions, wakes. Her movements had slowed since I was a child and by two o'clock in the afternoon at most events she could be found sitting in a chair by the window in the kitchen, too tired to stand. But that hadn't stopped her from shouting out orders. From her chair in the corner, she would direct the younger women in their preparations of the meal. We would ask if she wanted to go rest in her room, but she'd rally around four o'clock and find her place at the head of the dining table.
 
“Why do you still insist on hosting family events at your house? My house is bigger and it would be less work for you,” I had heard Great Aunt Maria’s oldest daughter ask her a few Easters ago. I had watched Great Aunt Maria from my station at the stove, stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce.
 
“My house is closest to the church,” Great Aunt Maria had said, taking her seat by the window.
 
I hadn't believed my Great Aunt Maria. It was true that her house was closest to the church, but I suspected she enjoyed seeing her house bursting with family and conversation and food. In fact, if Great Aunt Maria came down the stairs now and saw us sitting around without food and void of conversation, I imagine she'd use the last of her strength to whip up some coffee and bring out the cookies she always kept on hand from the Italian bakery down the street. “Tell me something new. Natalia, how's work?” she'd get the conversation rolling.
           
“Natalia, you can go,” My mother invited me up the stairs. Only a few people could visit her at a time, but almost everyone had spent a few moments with her earlier in the afternoon. I was the only one who worked in the city and had the longest commute home.
 
I climbed the stairs. I hadn't been in Great Aunt Maria's room in years, but nothing had changed: still the same, flowery curtains in the windows and white blanket across the foot of her bed.
 
Great Aunt Maria was tucked under crisp sheets. Her head leaned back against a pile of three flat pillows. Her eyes were closed and her face was soft. Her hands trembled as she rubbed her thumb against her forefinger, in a slow circular motion. I tried to take one of her hands, but she pulled away. She continued to move her thumb against her fingers. I looked across the bed at my aunt and uncle. They watched her with drawn faces.
 
“Does anyone know where her rosary beads are?” my mother whispered. Great Aunt Maria's daughter and son both shook their heads “no.”
 
Great Aunt Maria kept her rosary beads wrapped in a yellowed piece of parchment paper, tucked beneath her underwear in the top drawer of her bureau. I knew this because one Sunday when I was nine, I had seen her pull open the drawer and arrange them in the paper. The beads were mostly a pale pink, made from the petals of roses. One bead near the top was a bright red and the one below it a warm orange. I hadn’t recognized the red bead, but the orange reminded me of the daisy's my Great Aunt's youngest daughter had used at her wedding the previous year when I was eight (I'd been the flower girl). Before closing the drawer shut Great Aunt Maria had brushed her fingers over each bead. Then she had retreated down the stairs into the kitchen.
 
I wasn't supposed to be in her bedroom, but I had been hiding behind the wing-backed chair in the corner next to her bureau. I was avoiding the kitchen. I always got stuck standing on a stool, hovering above the big pot of homemade spaghetti sauce, stirring it with a big wooden spoon as my cousin sprinkled in fresh basil. The smell was overwhelming and made my mouth water, but when the sauce really started cooking it bubbled and boiled and little red saucy bullets launched themselves at my arms, stinging and smarting. Whenever I had complained of being burned, my Great Aunt Maria would hold up her cracked and weathered hands, pointing out the scar from the 1983 Easter Lasagna Dinner Incident that landed her in the ER with 2nd degree burns. “Natalia, the burns teach us to be more careful in the future. The burns are the things that show God we lived life fearlessly.”
 
“You know how important they are to her,” my mother started opening the nightstand drawer, looking for the beads.
 
“Let me,” I said. I went to Great Aunt Maria's bureau. The top drawer squeaked as I opened it. My eyes watered from the smell of roses. Pushing aside the folded underwear and wool socks, my fingers brushed against the package. The paper was almost brown now, and it had been folded and unfolded so many times that tears had started to form. I opened the paper on the bureau and lifted the beads. At the top of the strand there was the red bead and the orange bead, then a green bead, a purple bead, a yellow bead, another red bead, a dark almost-black bead, a bright pink bead. Almost all of the pale pink beads had been replaced by an array of small, colorful spheres. The dark bead, reminded me of the flowers from my uncle's wake four years ago, the purple one towards the bottom of the bouquet of flowers I had been given when I graduated from business school last year. A pale blue bead fell to the ground; it had not yet been strung. The newest addition was identical to the blue flowers that had decorated the hospital room where my little second cousin had been born a few months ago.
 
“Did you find them?” my mother asked behind me.
 
I nodded and untied the bottom of the rosary. I removed a pale pink bead and slid the blue one on next to the bead that commemorated my graduation. I tied the rosary strand once again. Then I turned and placed the rosary in Great Aunt Maria's hands. Though her eyes remained closed and she didn't speak a word, with years of memory she tightly clasped the top bead and started working her way down.  










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About the Author: 
​Montana Rogers is a writer and educator from the United States. Currently, she is continuing her studies at The Writer's Studio of Simon Fraser University.

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