Tagetes

There was a field full of yellow marigolds where she had been born. Her Mom had sat in this field as her waters broke, watching these sun like disks dancing with her in the gentle summer breeze. Thats how she got her name, Tagetes.

She didn’t like her name much but at least she wasn’t called Marigold, Tagetes was at least exotic enough to sound foreign and hence confuse people into submission when she needed. Not that she wanted to subvert people but it was nice to have a name that people were too afraid to ask too many questions in fear of coming off as racist. This meant she could for the most part ignore the stories of her Mom giving birth in a field and the flowers around her dancing singing her name “Tagetes, Tagetes”, ‘birthing her into the world’ as her Mom liked to remind her. If it wasn’t for the flowers she wouldn't be here her Mom said as at that time, no one was at home. Her father was at work and her brother at school. It only took 2 hours for her to come and her Mom says the flowers ‘mid-wived’ her into the world. She felt so supported at the time and was in such a trance of ‘flower-dance’ that it hadn't even occurred to her to make her way back to the house and call for help.

When her Dad arrived home that evening she was there in her Mom’s arms sitting by the fireside. Her Dad was mad at first. Mad that he’s wife had called no- one, not even him and then he was astonished, in disbelief that this woman could birth her child alone. And now he brags, he tells the story at every family gathering, how is daughter was born to his wife alone, sitting in a Marigold field, her calls her ‘his little miracle’- though he always leaves out the part about the flowers dancing, singing her out of the womb, thats her favourite part. At least it was while she was growing up. But now that she’s 12, she wishes she were born in the normal way, the way all the kids at school were born; with nurses in gowns, in sterile, clean hospitals, medication and knives at hand in case something went wrong, scissors to cut the umbilical cord and gas masks in case anything went home. One of her friend’s was even pulled out by a huge thongs and hence why her head is longer and thinner than everyone else’s. Or at least that’s what she told her Biology class!

Tagetes Mom is far from conventional though. Everyday she does these weird exercises called ‘Pranayama’- Tagetes tried them a few times, and they just end up making her feel sick, as in nauseous or extremely dizzy. Her brother loves them though and says that one day he wants to teach them to people, his friends and even people he doesn't know. He wants to become a teacher you see, however Tagetes still doesn’t know of what or what she wants to become either.

To be honest, she already thought she was something. She already thought that she was a 12 year old, now ‘teenage’ girl in sixth form. She’s a student, she’s a dancer and a girl. Oh and also a ‘TEENager’ now too. She’s not sure what else she could become or even have room to be right now. ‘Maybe you stop being those things and then you get to be new things’, she thinks to herself. Or maybe you just keep adding things on like you do years you’ve been alive on the planet! Oh and she’s also a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter and a niece, as her Aunt reminded her last time she saw her, for her Birthday. Her Aunt actually wrote it all in a card to her so that she would remember, Tagetes figured.

And now it seems she has to be something else in a few years time. Before, all these other things she already is, she didn't have a choice. They were all things people told her she was, like a teenager, a student, a daughter and even her name- Tagetes; she didn't choose that, she didn’t tell her Mom that that was what she was, but she is that. She doesn't ever remember being asked if it was ok or if she would like a different name. She’s a Marigold flower, actually she’s an Etruscan God and thats it!

But now, at least as far as she understands, from what her brother says, in a while, when she’s done with school and an adult, she can be something else. Maybe she can stop being all those things and just be what she wants or ‘does she have to keep being all those things plus the one she chooses’, she wonders. It’s hard to know, no one is clear about it to her and to be honest she doesn’t ask- her plate is pretty full at the moment, what with becoming a middle school goer too in the fall.

Anyways that doesn't matter anymore, right now because tomorrow she has to dissect a liver for Biology class, a sheep’s liver to be precise. And if she can get this right she knows that she can do anything for her future lie’s in this liver.