Wildflowers |
The white lines of the highway lanes had begun to cross as her heavy eyelids fell slowly over her eyes. The rough terrain of tires treading on gravel and grass startled her awake. She swerved her car back into the lane and blinked her eyes repeatedly to wake herself.
Cold, damp air battered her face after she cracked the window to fight off her overwhelming sense of exhaustion. The smell of fresh pine mixed with the cold air and filled her nose. She thought back to the towering trees around her childhood home that formed an aerial canopy and only allowed slivers of sunlight to pass through. It was often that she lied on a bed of pine needles and strategically placed her face under one of those sunlight slivers. The warm, blinding shards of light pierced her eyes into closing them. During those times under the sunlight slivers, a childhood in a setting of simplistic surroundings granted her the simultaneous sounds of nothing and everything in motion. She now understood the luxury she had in that simplicity.
As she left the highway to exit onto a road, the sun was breaking the sky into dawn and painting it from bronze to blue. Further up the narrowing road, she saw a lone gas station enveloped by the desolate dark that hadn’t yet met the approaching dawn. She checked her fuel gauge and immediately knew the quarter tank that she had left wouldn’t be enough to get her through the winding, constricted roads on the mountain.
Her heartbeat grew more erratic in her chest as she drove into the parking lot of the gas station. She checked over her face and makeup to ensure there were no stray hairs stubbornly pushing through her foundation, that her eyebrows were still the shapes of separate arches, that she gave no indications of anything less than full femininity. When she was satisfied with her appearance, she took three deep, cleansing breaths. “I am here. I am valid. I am enough,” she recited.
As she filled her gas tank, she noticed a gathering of Christmas roses surrounded by the drooping, white petals of snow drop flowers growing in the vacant field beside the gas station. “Wildflowers don’t care where they grow,” she sung to herself.
The outlining red in the flowers conjured another childhood memory. Her mother wore red lips at Christmas. Those painted red lips made her kisses linger longer on the cheeks and mouths of everyone she greeted on that day. She remembered the Christmas she wanted to leave lingering kisses like her mother, before she understood that was an act of kindness only reserved for women and girls.
She ran into the small family room filled with visiting relatives, climbed into her Aunt Sadie’s lap, and planted a lingering kiss on her cheek. “I got red lips like momma,” she said to her Aunt Sadie.
Aunt Sadie’s eyes grew to the size of silver dollars and looked almost as metallic. She didn’t notice Aunt Sadie’s eyes until these later years in life; how they were more so a silent plea for normalcy, and how they were a warning of harm. She didn’t hear his heavy boots hastening towards her as she sat on Aunt Sadie’s lap. She didn’t sense the leering hand ready to beat back all that was not conventional. She just felt the dizzying wallop on the side of her head that sent her tumbling to the floor.
As her mother used a damp cloth to wipe away her flowing tears of confusion and the lipstick that allowed for lingering kisses, she said, “You can’t wear red lips like momma, baby.”
She crept her car further up the narrowing road as she looked for the secluded route that would begin her trek up the mountain. Again, she felt the rough terrain of tires treading on gravel and grass as she turned her car onto the secluded road. Her five years of absence made her forget how scary the journey can be.
When she was last on these cramped roads, she was walking. She walked between the towering trees making aerial canopies, through the cold, damp air, around the fields of stubborn wildflowers that refused to wane in the cold conditions. She walked away from the other head wallops, slaps, punches and kicks that occurred during those frequent times when she was deemed to be acting too much like a sissy.
As the budding slivers of sunlight rose with the dawn and provided her with a more lit path, she began to relax. Her thoughts trailed to her reason for her return.
It was fitting that her father died a week before Christmas, and even more so pleasurable that his funeral would be on Christmas Eve. He transitioned her life from a childhood filled with the luxury of simplicity to one filled with fearfulness and intimidation on that Christmas morning when he violently reminded her of who she wasn’t.
“I am here. I am valid. I am enough,” she recited again as a reminder.
As the mountain grew steeper, and the tires repeatedly lost and regained traction against the gravel and grass. She felt her heartbeat grow erratic again. The fright didn’t come from her slipping car, but from the realization that she was nearing the life she left many years ago. Her father would not be there to malevolently remind her that she was unorthodox, but there may be others who would willingly take his place. Briefly, she thought about letting her car slip back down the mountain and driving back to the safe life she had painstakingly built over these last five years. But as she turned by the marker that indicated the long driveway up to her family’s home, she again said, “I am here. I am valid. I am enough.”
At the end of the driveway, she saw the weathered, clapboard house she once called home. A woman walked out onto the decaying porch with puzzlement slowing her steps. She smoothed her wispy strands of gray hair, being blown unruly by the cold wind, away from her face and showed her trademark of red lipstick reserved for this time of year.
As Kris got out of the car she said, “I got red lips like momma.”