Frosted Marigolds Like Buried Memories

Some great philosopher she could not name once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” The young woman lay in her bed without a single light on in the place except the blue light of her phone screen. She wanted to hear the characteristic howls and wails of the wind that signified a snowfall. When snow was on the ground from October to the first week of April, the newscasters hesitated to designate snow falls as winter storms or blizzards. If there was any hope of getting outside to engage in normal life the next day then the snow fall was insignificant.

Inside of her head she tossed around the quote along with the idea she was supposed to apply it to. In Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” two sisters planted marigolds believing the flowers would produce the magic needed to save the life of a friend’s illegitimate child conceived in grave circumstances. She rarely had anything to say in any of her classes, but she was in danger of not getting an “A” in her creative writing and critical literary theory class, so she had started to put effort into preparing something to say.

It was an exercise in futility she quickly decided. You can’t make sense out of nonsense.

She sat up and started to turn towards the side of the bed preparing to uncurl her legs onto the floor.

When you’re that messed up in the head and when your parents have made that big of a mess of your life, there’s no miracle that’s going to fix you or anything you touch.

The gray toes of her socked feet brushed the matted carpet which covered the living area. Chill settled over her like a cloak. She didn’t like a toasty home because she overheated easily and usually just kept the heat off, not that the heating system in this old house was very effective or that more than a bit of warmth ever reached her basement unit. Since sleep was obviously not going to come any time soon, she switched on the TV before heading over to her kitchenette to tease her growling stomach with all the food it would not get.

She was trying to be nicer to herself, really she was, but old habits die hard. It was a little trick she had learned to play on herself when she was just about the age of the girls in “The Bluest Eye”. She would deny herself food every time someone was mean to her or something happened that she did not like then she would place blame for her hunger on the person or event. Conversely she would tell herself that if the day went well, her reward would be a meal.

Life is so much easier to comprehend and deal with when you have something or someone to blame. When something goes wrong or you cannot make sense of what’s happening and you have nobody or nothing to blame then reality hits like a boulder and all the unfairness of life with it.

“Let me put that into google docs before I forget.” She said aloud for no other reason than to hear a voice outside of her head.

Now that she had something to say in class the next day, her body relaxed and she let the hollowness of hunger reverberate through her body. Her stomach had been rumbling and crying out all day but had received only water and a stern internal admonishment to shut up. She settled for fortified soup, canned chicken and rice soup with grilled chicken cooked quickly in butter for flavor until no longer pink riddled with salmonella and canned cheese and shredded cheese mixed in. She returned to her bed to eat the quick meal completely ignoring the card table shoved into a corner.

The way she ate soup was rather peculiar. She deliberately added water when cooking to give the soup more broth then floated her spoon on the surface of the soup and pushed it down so that it was filled with broth only. She drained the bowl of broth then stirred the now very thick soup to mix the best bits up and ate all of the solids. While she ate she thought. What would her childhood have been like if she hadn’t been so dower and could have found a little magic in the world around her and attached some hope to something as mundane as flowers?

She sipped her soup broth, listened to the howling winds, and pondered. When could flower magic have helped her? What was so bad that she had to rely on sprouting seeds to bring about a rebirth and second chance at making a life out of broken pieces?

Then it hit her.

She had no idea what a marigold looked like.

She fumbled for her discarded phone lost somewhere in the tangle of sheets.

The reddish orange hue stole her breath away. Indeed she had seen one before.

It was 2000 and something. She was just a little girl lost and alone clutching a pillow in a children’s home that the most forceful of recalls could not come up with a name for. That’s what happens when you’re a child caught between languages, cultures, and parents and neither of your parents can provide you with a stable home life or family. You end up lost and questioning in all kinds of places.

How old was she when she had clutched the pillow decorated with reddish orange blossoms in that nameless institution?

She hadn’t wanted to return to either her father or mother and she could not pinpoint exactly why.

It wasn’t anything sexual. Her mother, for all of her faults, wouldn’t look twice at any man who looked at her daughter with anything other than a passing glance. She would never have allowed anything like that to happen. There had been whispers about her mother’s childhood but since her mother’s skin was every bit as melanated as Pecola Breedlove’s the suspicions and accusations had remained just that, speculations.

But someone had. When the mother could not reach her child to protect her, someone had dragged her from purity and innocence and warped her still forming mind.

Where were you on the nights I laid awake in that jail cell of a room? When I wet my bed and needed help but was too afraid to call for anyone?

She stirred her bowl and chicken pieces and tiny star shapes preparing to finish her meal. While she stirred she marveled at the wonder of being able to cook for herself glad that the days she relied on others to feed her were long over. All those years she had stood for something without even knowing it.

She had stood for her right to be free of abuse and fear, for every child’s right to the same.

The only difference between her and Pecola’s friends was that she had stood and fought alone to free herself.