Pink for Carnations & Green for Grass

by: Amanda Rae Nichols

• • •

I laugh and sashay along the top of the rock wall—twenty years and nothing has changed. The same mounds of white drift overhead, the same sun warms my face, and the same breeze tickles my nose. The green sea of Daddy’s garden stretches out on either side of me like a lush carpet. Sweet-smelling flowers and velvety butterflies quiver in the breeze. “Hey, Daddy, look at me.” With my arms curved over my head I twirl, transforming my world into a blurry whirlwind of color. A rock in the wall shifts and the illusion dissolves. I gasp and thrash my arms in the hollow air. A strong hand reaches up to steady me—nothing has changed.

“You’re always there to catch me, aren't you, Daddy?” I say, grinning down at him.

“I do my best, Breena, I certainly do my best...”

Daddy helps me down from the wall and points out the newest additions to his garden. As we wander down paths smothered in cascading blossoms he cups each bloom in his calloused hands and examines it for imperfections.

“Can I?” I ask hopefully when we reach the daffodils. He smiles and nods—agreeing to sacrifice a few blooms for my pleasure. I love to scatter their blossoms in colored water and watch them turn shades of blue, red, green—any color I want. With a fist full of flowers I wander up to the porch where Daddy has settled into the worn swing. I stand in silence watching the flowers dance in the wind.

“I could never get you to leave that rock wall alone,” Daddy says, taking a puff on his pipe.

“It’s not a wall it’s a bridge—right through the middle of the garden, and bridges beg to be crossed...Besides, the best view is from up there,” I say, sitting down beside him on the swing. I love the smell of his pipe. It reminds me of endless childhood summers. Lazy smoke doughnuts dissolve into the sunny sky, and I smile and rest my head on his shoulder. He smells like damp earth and sunshine.

“Remember the time you fell and I didn’t catch you?”

“Yeah...but tell me about it.”

“Again?” Daddy asks with a smile. I nod. “Well it was around the time when your Mother started getting sick. We had just turned out the lights to go to sleep when I heard you scream. I ran to your room, but you weren’t in your bed and your window was open. I panicked and rushed outside. I found you on the ground next to the rock wall whimpering. Your arm was twisted up like the ivy vines climbing the chimney, and the lilies you landed on were in worse shape. As I we drove to the hospital I asked why you snuck out of bed to climb the wall. You just looked up at me with those big fawn eyes and said ‘Well, Daddy, I was just thinking, maybe God will hear my prayers for Mommy better if I stand on the garden wall—I’ll be higher up.’ After that we’d go out to the rock wall every night before bed. You’d climb up and pray for Mommy while I held your hand.” Daddy takes a puff on his pipe and grabs my hand.

“Sorry I squished your lilies,” I say, as he tries to inconspicuously wipe a tear away.

“Allergies,” he says, when I give his hand a squeeze. “The time we spend together means the world to me, Breena,” Daddy says, “but I won’t be around forever, you know.” The afternoon sun casts long shadows revealing the familiar wrinkles around his eyes.

“Don’t be silly, Daddy,”

“Well sweetie, you never know what could happen. I’m not getting any younger.”

“Daddy, you’re sixty-four, come on,” I say. He gazes at the sky and chews his pipe. The sun is sinking and fireflies begin to twinkle.

“Well, Daddy, it’s getting late and I should head back to the city.”

“Ok, but before you go I want to talk to you about something.

“Yeah?”

“Well, you need to be prepared to care for your mother, not to mention yourself, if anything should happen to me.” He looks over the rims of his glasses and creases his eyebrows with the same anxious look he wore when he revealed the devastating truth about the tooth fairy.

“Dad, nothing is going to happen to you—and besides, I do care for myself.”

“I know, but you just need to realize that life can be hard. You’ve still got a lot of growing up to do.”

“I’m a grown up now. I’ve been out of school for six years and I run my own business...I’ve gotta go, I’ll see you next weekend.” I stand and stomp through the middle of his garden to my car. Daddy shrinks in the rear view mirror as I drive away. He is waving.

• • •

Three days later salty tears drip off my eye lashes. I stare down at my black dress and shoes and a lump forms in my throat. My heart is pushing its way up to escape the pain. The minister rambles. His face is plastic and his words are empty. Empty and unknown like the gray sky hovering overhead.

I found him in his garden. Only his feet stuck out of the foliage. “Daddy, quit joking around. You’re going to catch cold laying in the dirt like that...Come on, Daddy, get up. “

He never got up. Keeled over in a bed of lilies, shovel in hand, eyes wide open. I lay down next to him, put my head on his chest, and cried. I stomped his flowers and now he’s dead.

“Coronary artery disease,” the doctor said. “His arteries have been hardening and narrowing over the past few years, resulting in diastolic heart failure. He never informed you of his condition?”

The minister belts out another hymn and reads more verses about weeping and gnashing of teeth. My dead dad-in-a-box is propped up in front under a tent for all to see. Like a circus only everything is stiff and cold. Step right up. We walk past the box. Daddy’s glasses have slid down on his nose a little, so I push them back up and keep walking. It’s all part of the show folks—all part of the show.

“If there’s anything we can do...” the acquaintances say. I smile politely and thank them, trying to hide the fear in my eyes.

Eventually, they’ll lower the box into a hole. A bulldozer will push a pile of dirt onto my Daddy tucking him into the moist earth like a seed.
My car bumps down the dirt road back to the city. I concentrate on the emptiness. Blank and nothing, I will not cry. I am an adult. I am detached. My minuscule car is a fleck on the globe. First continent on the left. Driving and winding through the hills. Insignificant and small. Pain does not matter, not really.

• • •

My apartment is quiet and dark. I make a cup of tea and put on my softest pajamas. I climb into bed and look at the yellowing pictures on my cork board. Camping trips, fishing at the lake, my very own tree house...Daddy. The tears come, and then darkness.

I jolt awake from a deep sleep. My eyes are swollen and I struggle to focus on the clock. Eight am. I push the sick feeling back down into my stomach and go to work. I am a grown up.

It’s raining outside. Raining and cold. Cold, but not snowing. I once thought puddles were little gifts from heaven. Daddy and I used to play in the rain. Everything is peachy when you’re eight, but now I know better. Peaches rot and rain is cold.

Bells tinkle when I unlock the door to Nostalgia. I opened the shop three years ago; Daddy filled out the paperwork and cosigned the lease. Rows of shelves are cluttered with hand-painted toys, snow globes, and children’s books. Wooden puppets dangle from the ceiling grinning jauntily. Shimmery veils of fabric billow from ceiling to floor. The only light comes from strings of Christmas lights tangled in the rafters and the big glass doors that lead out to the garden. Nostalgia is my business.

I stay in my office most of the day. I sit at an antique desk almost too small to write on. Shelves lined with blue glass jars harboring relics encircle my desk. My collection—feathers, river rocks, bones, dried flower petals, seeds, birds’ eggs, sand...Daddy and I used to go exploring. He’d pull me in my little red wagon. We found such wonderful things. Tears sting my eyes as I move the picture of us above my desk into a drawer and concentrate on inventory. Inventory. One dead Daddy. One forsaken little girl.

I hastily blink away tears. They spatter on an order invoice. Ink runs down the page like blood. I slam the paperwork into a drawer and throw my pen at the wall. It clatters to the floor. He should have told me, he knew...I toss the keys to the assistant manager and tell her I won’t be in for the rest of the week. The bells jingle as the door to Nostalgia slams shut.

• • •

As I walk back to my apartment I try to ignore the antics of the street lady who lives in the alley beside the shop. I fail miserably. Today she is draped with multicolored scarves. She wears little girl’s sunglasses with heart-shaped frames. The lens is missing from one side. She has a clover chain around her head and a jumbled knot of Mardi Gras beads around her neck. She hums and twirls faster and faster until she is a blurry mass of color. She reminds me of a fairy. A demented fairy with the mind of a child.

“Come swirl!” she says. I look down at the sidewalk and increase my pace. “Swirling and spinning—arms and legs. Twirling and whirling—have some eggs,” she sings. Laughing, she swirls and spins away down the alley.

I need to tell mom.

• • •

My mother lives 20 minutes away. I haven’t visited in years. Daddy made me go the last time. It was Easter. She could hide her own eggs I told him, but he still made me go.

I park my car and wait for the song to end. Then I collect all the gum wrappers from the floor and pile them in the ash tray. I double check my lights. They’re off. Windshield wipers? Off. I sigh and step out of my car into the cold drizzle. Gasoline rainbow waves lap at my soles.

Picturesque flower beds and a wrought iron fence line the lawn of the old plantation house. Frail old ladies with walkers totter down the front stairs. With their umbrellas they look like mushrooms. Inside the beautiful exterior is a tortuous maze of stark white halls smelling of death and medication. This is grown up. A nurse escorts me to my mother’s room. The walls are bare. I sit in a stiff arm chair and gaze at my mother’s feeble frame. The twin bed is swallowing her alive.

I can see every vein through her thin skin, and her scalp is clearly visible through her wisp of white hair. Her eyes are empty blue glass and she blinks each time the clock ticks. A tangle of beads encircle her neck. She still wears the scarf I gave her for Mother’s day when I was seven. Daddy helped me pick it out. Pink for carnations and green for grass.

“Your daughter is here to see you, Mrs. Larkins,” the nurse says, propping what’s left of my mother up with pillows.

“My daughter?”

“Hey Mom,” I say, trying to smile.

“Hello dear, and what might your name be?”

“Breena.”

“Breena, what a beautiful name!”

“Yeah mom, you have excellent taste,” I say. Mom stares at me blankly. I wonder why I came. I watch her as she looks absently around the room forgetting I’m there. Her thin neck looks like it will give out under the weight of her head. She smiles softly and begins to hum. She is gone. She lives in an illusionary dreamscape.

“Have they been treating you ok?...Mom?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, the weather is nice isn’t it...” A clap of thunder shatters the still and drowns out her voice.

“I want to show you something,” I say. My chin starts to quiver, and I hold out a picture of the three of us. We’re in the backyard. She’s holding me in the tire swing and twirling her hair. Daddy is pushing us.

“What a nice picture, a handsome family.” She wraps her tuft of hair around her finger and gazes out the window.

“Mom, he—he’s gone.” Tears hover on the edges of my eyelids threatening to pour. Mom continues to peer out the window into the rain.

“What are they doing?” she asks, gesturing towards two old men with umbrellas hunched over a chess board on the front lawn.

“Do you understand me, mom?”

“Understand what?”

“Daddy is gone,” I say raising my voice a little.

“Who, dear?”

“Your husband, my father, is dead,” I almost yell. I have to make her understand. She stares at me with wide eyes. I lean toward her. “Mom...what should I do?” I whisper, and her face softens into a knowing smile.

“Well dear, put the shortening in and then the flour, otherwise you’ll get lumps.”

The nurse knocks and informs me that it is time for my mother’s nap.

“Hello dear, and what might your name be?” my mother says to the nurse with a smile.

I stumble to my car in tears. Daddy is gone and Mom has been for years—I’m an orphan. I drive back home struggling to see through a haze of tears and pouring rain.

• • •

At home, I crawl into bed and drift in and out of sleep. I sink into a surreal fog. The walls enclose me. The pain gnaws through my heart. I hear myself moaning. All I know is the sting of loss. Dreams emerge. A seed sprouts from the sharp pang in my chest. It grows into a strong tree and its roots anchor me. My mother sits at the base of the tree, and she is singing. I slip into a cocoon of warm darkness. Hush little baby, don’t you cry, Mommy’s gonna sing you a lullaby.

Bright light glows through my eyelids. I squint at the sun shining through my gauzy curtains and wiggle my toes. My head is full of cotton. For a wonderful moment nothing is wrong. Then I remember...Daddy. But I have no more tears to cry.

I ease myself out of bed and go to the kitchen to make eggs and toast. A shower washes the dirt and tears away leaving behind a narrow ring of salty scum that will harden with time.

• • •

I reach into my sock drawer and uncover an old metal box. Pale pink carnations adorn the lid. The hinges squeak as I pry it open. Smells of the past waft out, smells that I had forgotten. Inside is a a tube of lipstick, a pearl necklace, a vial of perfume, and a small framed photo of Mom and me baking gingerbread.

I set the photo on my night stand in front of a picture of Daddy. I dab the perfume behind my ears, drape the cool pearls across my neck and wander to the kitchen.

“Well dear, put the shortening in and then the flour, otherwise you’ll get lumps,” I say to myself, as I begin combining ingredients.

Soon the sweet aroma of fresh bread seeps into my stagnant apartment. I smile and open a window. I strip my walls of pictures, keepsakes and memories and carefully pack them into a box. After carefully wrapping the gingerbread and box in sparkling white tissue paper and tying it with a bright blue ribbon, I leave. Glistening puddles reflect the soft blue sky. I stomp through, splashing away the remnants of the storm.

• • •

The sun is shining, and the 20 minute drive doesn’t seem nearly that long. I wave to the two men playing chess on the front lawn. The crisp white hallways smell like apple pie. Mom doesn’t ask my name, but I introduce myself. She smiles and shakes my hand.

“I brought you something, Mom.”

“Oh dear, you shouldn’t have. I didn’t bring you anything at all,” she says looking down and blushing. I hand her the package. Mom beams, sets the package on her night stand and begins pulling at a string on her bedspread.

“Come on Mom, open it.”

“What, dear?” she asks with surprise. I open the package and cut her a piece of ginger bread. It’s still warm in the middle and slightly gooey. Her taste buds haven’t forgotten. She hums and nibbles the bread.
I open the box and tack photographs on the wall until it is completely shrouded in memories. I lay Daddy’s pipe on her night stand and set a jar of my favorite marbles on her dresser. The sunlight hits them casting an array of shimmering light on the photos and bringing each one to life. She glances up, points at a photograph of Daddy and I on the rock wall, and smiles. I leave her to enjoy the scenery.

I drive to the country, to Daddy’s garden. I climb the rock wall and pray for Mom, with no one there to catch me.

• • •

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