Once Flor’s name in her native Spanish tongue meant flower. If she had been sweet, her name could have been Rosa, or if she’d been sunny and friendly as a yellow-headed daisy, Margarita. As a young girl, she often imagined growing up somewhere tropical, where she could have been Jasmín. On days when she could still dream herself away from the pueblo, when she imagined she could remain unplucked, like a single bloom on the side of a cliff’s edge, like una Malva, she smiled. Quizás.

But everything changed as soon as she came of age when, with her father’s best wishes and intentions, of course, she was married off to an older Anglo preacher man—her complex white Saviour, called Xavier, when she became a flower bed. With her name in his mouth, she changed overnight to Floor. After he deflowered her he took her to his homeland, where her sole duty after church, marriage and chicos, was to lay down, serve and endure.

‘Floor, bend over so I can reach the cupboard.’

‘Sí Señor,’ Floor said, getting down on all fours, assuming the stance of a small table.

‘Ah, Floor get closer and keep still. I can’t reach the top shelf if you keep moving like that,’ Xavier scolded.

‘Of course, perdón,’ she replied but breathed no more words, not even when her husband’s hard-soled shoes stepped sharply into her spine.

No sooner did he alight, that their daughters, Malicia and Marlita, clambered up, one, then the other.

‘Floor! Floor! Go higher! Higher!’

‘Oh!’ Floor gasped at their combined weight, but she didn’t complain even though it hurt her when they called her by this name, not even when her not-so-little hijita, Marlita, kicked her head with her crusty Croc sandalias on the way up and once again on the way down.

‘Closer Floor!’ the older Malicia ordered, stomping on the middle of Floor’s back with her sparkly heels and smiling not-so-sweetly when her mother’s back made an involuntary crack.

Once her daughters got their snacks, they sat on Floor and ate greedily, never offering their madre a nibble much less a bite. When they were well and truly stuffed, in one synchronised choreographed move, the girls wiped their oily hands on Floor’s hair, then got up and left her there.

But there was no time to hang about as not long after, ¡din-don! went the front doorbell.

‘Floor!’ clap clap. ‘Aren’t you going to get that?’ Xavier barked.

‘Yes Floor! Aren’t you going to get that?’ Malicia and Marlita repeated, echoing their father, while one snapped her fingers and the other pointed to the door.

At that, Floor stood up, smiled lovingly at her husband and children as she brushed several greasy crumby strands of hair from her face and dirt off her bruised, blood-speckled knees.

On reaching the front door, Floor opened it wide, then lay down on the ground. Their white neighbours, on seeing her there splayed out flat, immediately forgot who she was and saw instead a floral doormat. As they all wiped their muddy feet on her, Floor became the floor and as such did not mind lying low a little longer, as there was in fact nowhere lower to go.

After the guests left, Flor decided it was better not to rise or get up but live down to la posición the name Floor had given her. Though initially her husband, Xavier, felt something was missing, he couldn’t quite put his finger down on what (or who) it was, but being a very entitled and evangelical man, he continued on demanding so much so that Malicia and Marlita, who took after his ways and looks rather than their poor old mother, began snapping to, revelling in how his barks commandeered immediate action, not to mention his at long last undivided attention.

Both girls started competing, taking orders and direction from him, that all too soon like Xavier, they forgot what or who Floor was, although they all enjoyed stomping and wiping their grubby and muddy and hard soled heels on their new fleshy floral doormat.

With each passing day and with every new step pisando el piso that was her back, Floor felt herself not being ground down, but becoming one with the ground. After one particularly long and tiring tirada, after many days de dolor and terrible weeks of being trampled and trodden on, so pisoteada and stomped on, her familia finally exited and the front door slammed meaning no one was at home, Floor sighed and cried:

‘¡Ay!’

Floor attempted to stand up but being so weak and worn, so wallflower paper thin, flattened practically into oblivion, that with her first step, she disintegrated into particles, tiny granos, no bigger than seeds. She soon slipped and slid away through the cracks in the dark wooden floorboards. Some of Floor’s particles immediately got caught up in the impending Spring backdraft, and in a fierce gust and blast of hot humid air she became airborne and one with el viento— la caricia del aire in some random passer-by’s hair, the rustle in the leaves of the nearby eucalyptus trees, the estornudo of pollen and sí, the spreader of seeds.

La Niña’s warm breath mixed in with the last of Floor’s broken body particles: she was lifted up and up and blown far, far away, across oceans, across seas, into deserts and cliffs and rainforest trees. She became no one but one with everything that shared her original name.

As her semillas settled on the ground, she became Flor again, florecida, you could say, as she started germinating, sprouting, growing stronger every day, at last blossoming into a phenomenal worldwide blooming belleza.

Suzanne Hermanoczki is a writer and teacher of creative writing. Her critical and creative works on death narratives and photography, trauma and the immigrant journey, gringos, magic realism, code-switching and bi/multi-cultural identity, have been published in local and international publications. She first began studying Creative Writing at The University of Hong Kong while living and working in Hong Kong. She holds a PhD and Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne.