My Marigolds

When I was six, everything was full of color. The sky was always blue, the grass was never brown. But even when everything was bright, I knew the marigolds on our lawn was the brightest. Our marigolds shone brighter than anything in our little Mexican neighborhood, even the brilliant, scorching sun .

“Our marigolds is what brings them to our door,” My father, who turned our house into a church on Sundays, used to say. “Hospitality is of essence.”

I used to think they were the prettiest thing in the world, never failing to greet me each morning with a smile. And I could fall asleep by just looking into the undying, ever overlapping petals, rosy golden in the center and syrupy amber on it’s unfurling edges. I kissed the seven we had on our front porch( three on one side, four on the other) one by one before I went to school each morning and before I went to bed each night. The asymmetries of the plants never bothered me. My love for the plants made it impossible to see their imperfections. I was sure that my parents were the only people for miles around who could grow such beautiful flowers. I loved my parents even more than I loved the marigolds. I always felt I had to prove myself to my parents, and somehow, my child mind connected Papa’s love for the marigolds, and Papa’s love for me. I decided I would make a promise: to forever defend the delicious array of golden delight outside on our lawn. My loyalty and the flowers honor were tested later that very day. A neighboring girl, one who had always been jealous of my loving parents, stopped at my house to insult me and everything around me. Unfortunately(for her), that included the marigolds.

“Your dress is stupid.” She told me from our rainbow colored fence. I ignored her, she did this often enough. “You’re fat. Don’t your parents ever tell you to stop eating?”

I knew for a fact she was wrong. My parents may have been loving, but money was often low, running a non profit Catholic Church in a tent outside wasn’t bringing in enough to keep our stomachs full all the time. The result of this was my being skinny as a bean pole, and immune to Adella’s insults. She wasn’t smart enough to just walk away at that point, as she usually did.

“Your parents never tell you no to anything, do they?” That was absolutely not true. My parents were barely keeping us fed and in a house, but the comment still set me on edge, as it always did when she insulted my parents. She must have realized that her snubs were lost on me, and searched around for something that might hit home. 
“You love those stupid flowers so much, don’t you? Well, let me tell you, they’re even uglier than Nana Vanessa’s roses down the street.” I remembered my pact, and flew into action. Nana’s roses were the joke of the school, the neighborhood, and probably the surrounding countries. They were dead black things with gray edges, but Nana treated them like the were made of gold. She was half mad anyways. I unlatched the gate that she was leaning on, and pushed… Adella fell into the mud, screaming like I had pushed her into a pot of boiling acid.

“My dress! My dress!” She wailed.

“Your dress is stupid.” I told her, my eleven year old wit catching up just at the right time. I went back to watering my marigolds.

I lived a mostly happy childhood, full of marigolds and sunshine and joy. But then tragedy struck. My father died when I was thirteen. It was tuberculosis, and it was not a pleasant. My mother took a thousand jobs, night shifts, early morning shifts, losing them as fast as she got them. We running out of the money father left behind, which was barely anything to start with. I spent most my days hiding in my room and crying. I stopped going out to look at the marigolds.mI stopped caring when they started to wither. I stopped caring that they no longer could lure me asleep with their mesmerizing, swirling fronds. I stopped caring about anything. I would wake up, go to school, come home, go to bed without so much as a word to my mother, and do it again the next day. I became increasingly skinny, to the point where my mother worried so much she almost paid the money to have me taken to a doctor. I knew I should be getting a job to try and help my mother, but I just couldn’t. Then something changed. One day, after coming home from school, I saw the marigolds, fading, but almost as bright as ever. Like it didn’t care the my father was dead. That I was most likely dying. And something I hadn’t felt in forever bloomed inside of me. Hate. Pure and raw. Instead of being a source of comfort for me, they became a source of hate. When I passed them to go to school, a billowing rage bloomed inside of me. I swore a pact, I would say to them silently. I swore to protect your honor, protect you. But when it came down to it, you failed to protect me. My mind actually latched to them when I was searching for someone to blame for my father’s death. The marigold is the flower of death.

By loving those marigolds, my father had killed himself. Placed a curse on our family. I wasn’t about to continue repeating his mistake. So with that raw hatred inside of me, I got fuel. I got a job. Those long hours as a Walmart cashier were bearable. I am doing this because I hate the marigolds. I need to break the curse. I became promoted to assistant manager. Manager. I was making enough money to let my mother rest. I was starting to forget what fueled me. I had something else instead. I got emotion, love, feelings back. I felt guilty about making mom so scared for me, for working so hard. I worked at a job I didn’t hate, making lots of money, actually going to college. There, the marigolds were forgotten. I fell in love, got married. I moved and settled into a new house, making sure my mother had plenty of care. And I was happy.

Several years later, my mother died. After the funeral, my husband suggested we go see my old house, see what my mother had left behind and for memories sake. I agreed. We spent a evening at the house, picked up some old furniture, showed my husband around the neighborhood. My husband had packed up all the stuff we had decided to keep in the truck, and told me he’d be waiting for me inside the car in case I wanted to say my last goodbyes. I did. But just as I was leaving, I spotted the marigold pots, empty and rotted. All my earlier hatred had disappeared. Instead, I was thankful. I realized that I was wrong for hating them, and they were what had gotten me a job. Even if it was hating them that made me fix my broken life, they had repaid me. And I kissed all seven of the marigold pots on our porch(three on one side, four one the other), one by one before I left the yard, and left my old life, for good.