Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered. Someone whose fingers are a poem.

I gazed up as if I hadn't heard, but what I was thinking was, tellme more about the pretty girls. I was embarrassed for wanting it, itwas base, what did pretty matter? I had thought that so many timeswith my mother. A person didn't need to be beautiful, they justneeded to be loved. But I couldn't help wanting it. If that was theway I could be loved, to be beautiful, I'd take it.

I felt beautiful but also interrupted. I wasn't used to being so complicated.

To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful.

I took my mother's knife and played johnny johnny johnny on the playhouse floor. I was drunk, stabbed myself every few throws. I held my hand up and there was satisfaction at seeing my blood, the way there was when I saw the red gouges onmy face that people stared at and turned away. They were thinking I was beautiful, but they were wrong, now they could see how ugly and mutilated I was.

The decor bowled me over. Everywhere I looked, there was something more to see. Botanical prints, a cross section of pomegranates, a passionflower vine and its fruit. Stacks of thick books on art and design and a collection of glass paperweights filled the coffee table. It was enormously beautiful, a sensibility I'd never encountered anywhere, a relaxed luxury. I could feel my mother's contemptuous gaze falling on the cluttered surfaces, but I was tired of three white flowers in a glass vase. There was more to life than that.