Cultivating marigold, p.6
Cultivating Marigold, page 6
“What do you have going on tonight, then?” I asked, since she rarely turned me down.
“I’m behind in English, and if I don’t get this essay done, I’m not going to get it done. I have too much to do this week before my next meet.” Her voice sounded older than she was.
Courtney shouldn’t have been stressed at her age, and there was nothing I could do to relieve her of her worries. I didn’t know enough about gymnastics to be more than comic relief during her practices.
“You can always come to me for help with writing, you know?” It was the one thing I could help her with.
“Thanks, Goldie. But this is the first essay I’ve ever had to do. I should try and do it on my own.” She lifted her chin up as she said it, and I saw myself in the set of her jaw.
The walk home seemed to take forever, and the damn beam didn't feel mini at all by the time we slogged into the house with all our stuff. Not for the first time, I wished my stupid mother would let me get a license, and borrow her car.
“Goldie! The dishes need to be done,” Mom called from the other end of the house.
Welcome home. Thanks for picking up your sister.
Courtney and I dropped our things by the door, and she trailed me into the kitchen.
“I’ll help with the dishes,” she said, pushing her sleeves up her arms.
“Thanks, kid,” I said, poking her in the side so she giggled, while my phone chirped in my pocket.
Pulling it out, I saw a text from J.
Are you and our future medalist home yet? Call me.
I showed the text to Courtney to see her smile again. The weird thing was, I didn’t begrudge my sister her status as favorite. I wanted her to be spoiled because I thought she was great. I just wished that I was given the same level of concern from Mom more than once a blue moon.
“Call Jackson. I can get started on my essay. The dishes can wait,” she said, stepping back from the counter.
“No big deal. I can do both.” I pushed up my hoodie sleeves, and got started on the dishes while I dialed J, then tucked my phone between my shoulder and my ear.
“Guess what I just got in the mail?” he asked by way of hello, picking up right away.
“Um, some new game?” A total shot in the dark. I couldn’t very well joke, and ask if it was porn because my little sister was standing right next to me, taking the first plate from my hands.
“Did you really forget?” He waited for me to answer until, by the protracted silence, it was clear I did forget.
“College brochures and applications are finally here,” he said, with a five second dance party I could see in my mind's eye even if I wasn’t in the room with him. “You have to come over later so we can pick a school, and get this shit started. This is the beginning. You're getting out, G.”
Relief flooded me. It was the beginning. This was what I killed myself for with as many hours as I could get at work, being a techie backstage for the drama department as an extra-curricular activity, saving all my money, and trying not to make my mother hate me more. And now this poetry contest. All for the chance to start over. For me, and for Mom.
Courtney exaggeratedly mouthed, What’s going on?
“J got college brochures in the mail, and he wants me to come over to look through them. But don't worry, I can help you with your essay first, and then head over,” I said, scrubbing a stubborn bit of food from a fork.
“That’s awesome. You should go as soon as we’re done. Really, I want to do the essay on my own. College is important,” Courtney said, proving once again why I loved my sister.
“Courtney said it, G. No excuses. As soon as you can, head this way.” J hung up right after the direction was out of his mouth. I wiped a hand, and put my cell down on the counter.
“Yes, college is important, but what are you talking about?” Mom asked, walking into the kitchen and taking a diet soda from the fridge.
I couldn't help but tense up. I had yet to talk to Mom about my plan to head away for college, and I had no idea what she would think. I didn’t want to know what her plans were for my life after high school, and I was hoping by the time we had the conversation it would be too late for her to derail my plans.
“Jackson got a bunch of information from colleges we think we might like to apply to, and he wants me to come over to look through them,” I said to the pot I was scrubbing clean.
Mom was behind me, so I had no clue as to how she took that information. Courtney darted glances at me, but otherwise her face was blank.
“Well, as I said, college is important, Goldie,” Mom said. “I should probably have this discussion with you now so it can inform your decision. I always hoped you would go to a local community college and live at home for the first two years to save money.”
I scrubbed harder on an already clean pan.
“If you get into a great school…well, I know you aren’t likely to stay at a local school. So, here it is. There isn't as much in your college savings account as you’ll probably want, and you'll still need to take out loans. But I have twenty thousand dollars for you.”
My fingers lost their grip on the pan I was washing, and it clanged into the sink as I whirled around to stare open-mouthed at my mother.
This woman, who I wasn’t sure even wanted me in her house most of the time, saved twenty thousand dollars? For me? If it wasn’t for Courtney, she didn’t spend money. Her Volvo was so old that the odometer stopped working at 300,000 miles last year.
“Mom...are you serious?” I asked, as sudsy water dripped onto the floor.
“First, clean that up. Second, don't look so shocked. And third, yes. You have an account for your school that won't be used for anything else,” she said.
Courtney handed me a towel as she bent down to wipe up the mess I made, and I wiped my hands in frantic movements. Then I almost tripped over my sister in a mad scramble across the kitchen to where I flung myself into my mother's arms.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said, hugging her tighter than I had since before my dad died.
“You’re welcome—” is all she said before stepping back from me.
I almost bounced as I walked over to the sink to continue washing the last pan. I had never been happier to do the dishes. If every time I stood at the sink with a sponge in my hand I got that kind of news, I would have washed dishes as often as possible.
After I placed the last pan in the drying rack and toweled off my hands, I grabbed my phone and headed out the door in what could only be described as a prance. It was fitting, since I felt like I captured the last unicorn.
What was she on?
Nope. Actually, I didn’t care. I just wished she had more of it.
As J’s house came into view, I started skipping. I had enough now to afford the application fees, so I didn’t have to be so picky about which schools I applied to. She wasn’t upset at the idea of me going away to school. She wouldn’t stand in my way. And maybe, just maybe, I could win this competition and be free. Really free. My head floated somewhere above me in the clouds of the dreams I held for so long.
J’s house was an elegant, colonial style house twice the size of mine in the neighborhood next to ours. All the houses here were different, larger, with bigger and better yards. All the houses in my neighborhood looked identical, with the same postage stamp-sized yards. Opening the door of his house let me into the familiar world of the Carter-Simpson family. A world that, for that moment, was set to a soundtrack of old jazz.
“Goldie!” J’s mom called from the formal living room off the foyer, where she swayed to the music between stacks of paperwork that I assumed were full of the legalese she dealt with all the time.
“Hi, Mom-Andrea. J has some college brochures for us to look through,” I said, smiling at her.
“Don’t forget to plan on a bunch of campus tours with us, and, no pressure, but Pepperdine is a great school. You have the grades, so you just have to do well on the SAT.”
I giggled at her less-than-casual hint at her alma mater.
“Jackson’s in his room.” She winked at me, and waved me toward the stairs.
Bounding up the steps, running my hand along the ornate wooden railing, I was buoyed by the news of the day, and the soulful music playing below. J’s door, covered in a new painting he did of our favorite spot on Lake Whatcom, was closed, a warring beat of 90’s R&B trailing from underneath it. This house, Mom-Andrea and Pop-Patrick, were how J and I developed our taste in music that predated our time by twenty years, and sometimes more. He was listening to one of our favorite songs by Lauryn Hill, “Ex-Factor.”
Throwing open the door, I belted a line along with the lyrics.
J stood in the middle of a monsoon of brochures. He hopped over all if it, and grabbed me in a twirl and dip to the music. My head fell back, and I was so happy I could barely breathe for laughing.
He pulled me back up with one hand on the small of my back and the other on my hip. Flinging my arms around his neck, we swayed together to the saddest part of the song, that was somehow less tear-inducing today. Then the tempo picked up, and we weren’t swaying. We were properly dancing. Moving together with big goofy grins on our faces that didn’t match the song at all.
J sang along, off key and not quiet about it.
I sang the next line back to him.
The song ended, and his phone switched to another song before he hopped over to turn it off.
“Damn, G. I know the brochures are part of the grand plan, but you’re in a good mood,” he said, settling himself down in the middle of the scattered brochures.
I hurled myself at him, toppling us both onto the floor where I smothered him in a bear hug. The kind of laugh I couldn’t contain bubbled out of me. It made the blood sing in my veins, and the vibrations of it traveled down to my toes while my stomach hurt in the best way possible.
“What’s going on?” J asked around his own laughter, his hands resting on my waist.
“My mom-” my voice broke around my hiccupping giggles, and the happy tears coming to my eyes.
J’s brow furrowed, but he smiled. He looked utterly confused, like his face couldn’t figure out how to react because his brain couldn’t puzzle out what was going on. In all the years we were friends, my mother never elicited this kind of response from me. Tears, yes. Horrible, drowning tears of pain and sadness. But this? No.
I shook my head and focused on him so I could tell him the best news I had ever had.
“My mom has twenty thousand dollars for me to go to college, and with the competition I might be able to go anywhere I want,” I said.
His arms fell away from me and thumped onto the floor. His mouth dropped into an oh shape, and then he hugged me back, whooping as I laughed. His tight hold on me meant we screamed into each other’s faces with excitement, and didn’t hear his door open. Not until his dad’s laughter brought us back down to the mess of the room, us lying atop it all.
“This is the weirdest way to look through colleges I've ever seen,” J's dad, Pop-Patrick, said.
“Pop! Get Mom,” J said, helping me sit up.
“I'm right here,” Mom-Andrea said, poking her head into the room, a thick file in her hands.
“G is going to college!” J bellowed with his fists in the air.
His parents looked at each other, and then back at us like we lost our minds. It sent me and J into hysterical fits again, leaning on each other because we were laughing so hard, we couldn't sit up straight.
“We know that, honey. You’re both going to college,” Mom-Andrea said, carefully enunciating her words, like she wasn’t sure we understood her.
“No, her mom has money for her. Twenty grand!” He squeezed me to him with one arm while the other went into the air again.
All of them surrounded me, laughing and crying, hugging me on the floor over the brochures of a future brighter than I thought I was going to get.
“Congratulations! That's fantastic,” Pop-Patrick said.
“Oh, Goldie. I'm so happy for you,” Mom-Andrea said. “This calls for a party. Patrick, work is done for a little while. I'm ordering a pizza.” With that, Mom-Andrea and Pop-Patrick gave me one more squeeze, and left us to assess the damage we did to our piles of information.
“I can't believe it,” I said, holding a brochure in my hand to Princeton, a school I wouldn't have even looked into before for fear of crushing debt. Now, if I won, the cost didn’t matter, and I had the money to apply.
“This is amazing,” J said, bumping me with his shoulder. “You’re definitely going to win.”
“Do you…” In the overflow of my emotional high I couldn’t choke out the words, about where it all came from.
“Do I, what?”
“Well, finances in our house have never been clearly laid out beyond the word ‘broke,’” I said.
He put a hand on mine. He must have remembered the years before I could work when my jeans were always high waters rolled up to look like capris because my mom did exactly one clothes shopping trip before the first day of school. It reminded me of all the times I remained silent while other kids talked about bikes from Santa when I always got socks and underwear. It reminded me how unreal this was, to have anything for sure beyond the twelve thousand I saved myself from working since I turned sixteen.
“Is this from my dad? Do you think this is part of something she got when he died?” I managed to get out.
J furrowed his brow. “I guess the real question is, does it matter? If it came from your dad, then I’m glad it’s going to you, or maybe somewhere else along the way she came into money.”
“G, for all the fucked up-ed-ness of your relationship, she's still your mom. She still tries. She still loves you, and wants what's best for you. You guys have wildly different ideas of what that is, but she still has that in mind.”
“It’s just…” I leaned back against his bed, dragging his hand with me because I needed to hang on to something right now. “In our day–to–day, it feels like she doesn’t want me to be her daughter at all. Like she hates me. I want it to be different. So, is this it being different?”
“I think she’s better with the large gestures of love when it comes to you. She’s not good with the everyday, but she tries at the big picture.”
His words sent me thinking about the positive things my mom had been and done for me.
“The first birthday after my dad died, she threw me the biggest birthday party I've ever had. It must have cost a small fortune,” I said, and sucked in my breath as I jerked my gaze up to look at him.
“She doesn't hate you, G. It's just complicated,” J said.
He pulled his hand away from me, grabbed a brochure, and smiled the giant goofy smile he had when he told his parents. “Now let's figure out which one of these schools you’re going to spend your scholarship on.”
“I have to get the scholarship first.” I laughed, and bumped him with my shoulder, picking up a couple brochures.
“You will. I believe in you.”
eleven
J believed in me.
Ms. E. believed I had something to say.
Why couldn’t I find it?
All week I spent writing new things, most of which didn’t tie into the theme I was supposed to be working on at all. My brain just refused to cough up even a hairball of words on a subject I should have known.
My mother was once in an abusive relationship. The reality of hiding my then five-year-old sister in a closet so I could try and sneak out past the fight to call the police after he tore the phone jack out of the wall and hid my mom’s cell phone was very clear in my mind. But all of the words I could come up with were splashed in red and black. They were the image of a hand slamming into my mother’s cheek, and the ruined clothes in the trash. It was blood and terror and helplessness.
And that was the problem. The images I remembered so clearly, the blood and pain, they weren’t mine. They were my mom’s, and I needed to find my own. Something I felt so completely that I could make others feel it, too.
The night before the poem was due, I trudged up to my house after a few hours at work preceded by a whole day at school. I wasn’t thinking about the poem because I just couldn’t anymore, but about the party I was supposed to go to the next night. It was supposed to be a celebration of sorts, a chance not to think about the weight of words because they would be beyond my fingers at that point. My fate would be up to a panel of judges.
When I opened the front door, I was so lost in my head that I didn’t notice the unnatural stillness of the house. There were clues that I should have snuck up to my room. But I missed the clues until I pulled off my backpack, and caught sight of my mother and Chad, the-step-dick, out of the corner of my eye.
They stood in the family room staring at me. Mom had her arms wrapped around her middle, hugging herself, and the step-dick had his hands on the back of his head.
“Goldie, come here please,” she said, her voice tinged in warning like she was trying to tell me something, but we weren’t close enough for me to understand her secret language.
I took slow steps toward them. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good. The list of all my chores ran through my head, but I wasn’t missing anything. I was sure I did all the things they asked of me.
“When did you steal my car?” he asked.
“Uh,” I choked on my own lack of words. There was nothing I could think to say to that ridiculous charge. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Language,” Mom muttered, her habit of correcting me when I swore apparently not taking a break for even this.
“Yes, I am. My car isn’t starting, so you must have stolen it, and done something to it,” he said, sneering at me.
There was no holding in the laughter that flew out of my mouth. This was the stupidest thing he had ever accused me of, and that was saying something.
