A Flood of Posies

by Tiffany Meuret

  Beyond the middle school was another cluster of homes and then the elementary school. About two blocks ahead, she could still hear the kids playing on the playground. The school closed at four, but kids climbed the fences and played anyway. She headed there, toward the noise, because she had nothing else to do.

  By the time she reached the playground, the school had nearly cleared out. A couple younger kids stopped playing and stared at her as she slunk toward the swings, and she wondered if she knew them. They seemed to know her, because as soon as she sat down, they dropped from the monkey bars and skipped away, giggling. They looked back at her over their shoulders until they were out of sight.

  The lights surrounding the playground were dimmer and fewer than the military-grade spotlights of the middle school, so she twirled on the swings in the dark, as she’d done many times before. Sometimes a janitor or a teacher would spot her out there by herself and shout at her to go home. Most of the time that’s all they did, because they didn’t care if she went home or not, and a complacent nod from her would satisfy. Once or twice there’d been a stubborn adult who would sit and watch until she got off the swing and began walking away, but she knew the shadows better than they did—she’d hide in the darkness underneath the acacia trees near the bus pickup at the back of the school.

  There was no one there tonight, though. She had the place to herself.

  Thea would like it here. The dark wouldn’t scare her. Doris could push her as high as she wanted on the swings, and Thea would laugh.

  She started swinging, pretending Thea was on her lap. Sand sprayed as her feet skidded against the ground. She was too tall for the kiddie swings, but she didn’t care. She’d push until she was so high the chains went slack and the weight of her slammed down as she fell back to earth. It was what flying must feel like—total weightlessness, touching nothing but air. The creak of the chains rocking to and fro was the most comforting sound she knew. She dreamed of it. It crushed her to leave them behind when she started middle school.

  She stayed on the swings until the moon sat atop her head—a few hours at least. There was no one around to stop her. Her legs were wobbly and sore on the walk home, and by the time she reached her front door, she was exhausted. She didn’t even bother trying the knob; everything would be locked.

  A large boulder by the back fence allowed her to hop into the backyard without opening the squeaky gate, then she crept to her bedroom window. The shades were drawn, but she knocked anyway.

  It only took a moment for the window latch to lift with a click. Doris slid the window open from the outside and was greeted by her sleepy-eyed sister.

  “Hi, sissy,” she said.

  The comforter on Doris’s bed was rumpled into a ball from Thea’s restless sleep. Kicking off her shoes, she straightened the covers and slid underneath, still in her clothes. Lifting a corner of the blanket, Thea scurried into bed after her. Within minutes, both were fast asleep.

  There weren’t many things Doris hated more than hearing the words we’re going shopping on a Saturday morning.

  Ma stuck her head through her bedroom door. “Get dressed.”

  Pulling the covers farther over her head, she wished her mother would let her sleep late just once. If it wasn’t shopping, it was chores or prayer or family breakfast. She often chose to go to church service alone. It was one of the few things she couldn’t bully Dad into doing with her. Not that there was anything wrong with going to church. Doris wouldn’t mind attending herself if her mother wasn’t involved.

  She didn’t even consider pretending to be asleep. Last time she had, Ma had torn the covers back and dumped a cup of ice water on her face. Good girls didn’t loaf.

  Thea was already up and squawking about the house. As Doris dressed, she heard her break into a shriek that permeated the drywall.

  “Not those!” she screamed. “No ruffles!”

  Ma mumbled back a threat that Doris couldn’t hear through the walls, but whatever she’d said hadn’t resonated because Thea streaked down the hall naked. Ma hobbled after her, heavy bangles clanking with indignity.

  She might have gotten another slap if they weren’t going somewhere. Thea knew it, too. She was always at her worst right before it was time to leave the house. It was generally the highlight of Doris’s morning. That is, until she took it too far, as she often did, and it suddenly became Doris’s problem. And once the Thea train got going, it was almost impossible to stop.

  They ate quickly, Thea through defeated tears. She looked like a marshmallow in her fluffy dress, a flower girl with nowhere better to go than the corner grocery store.

  Doris wore her khaki knee-length skirt and a white collared shirt underneath a navy knit vest. She pulled her hair into a bun and placed a single black barrette above her ear. Ma appraised her appearance with a snort, but thankfully said nothing further.

  They loaded into the car, both girls in the backseat, and drove wordlessly to Kroger. Aside from Ma’s recent dabble in Christianity, this was her religion, and everyone had their parts to play.

  It was the usual weekend fare at the grocery store—busy and angry. They parked, and Doris silenced Thea’s incessant ruffle-scratching with a firm grip to her wrist. She grimaced, but otherwise did as she was told.

  They walked to the entrance. It hummed like the airlock, threatening to consume her.

  Like always, they entered by the produce. Doris pulled her arms tight against her sides and breathed through her nose. Thea burst toward the flower display and pointed. Like always, it was Doris’s job to chase her down.

  “What’s wrong with those flowers, sissy?”

  “They’re just flowers.”

  “They look mean.”

  Doris reached for the tag to see what they were.

  “Vulgar things,” Ma said.

  “Actually, it says they’re Stargazer lilies.”

  Ma scrunched her face. “Go get strawberries. And make sure you turn them over first and—”

  “Check for mold, I know.” Engulfing her sister’s hand in hers, she headed toward the berries.

  Thea insisted on touching everything, and Doris simultaneously swatted her away and checked the plastic bricks of strawberries for bruises and mold. Most were fine, but not fine enough, and she had a small hill of rejects to the right of her before she found a good bunch. She was turning it over in her hands when she saw her—Colleen Simpson. She and Ma were lowkey rivals, but Colleen’s daughter Jennifer was Doris’s worst fucking nightmare. Jennifer was charismatic and witty, as vicious as broken glass, and maintained Doris perpetually in her sights. She wanted nothing more than to kick Jennifer’s perfect teeth into the back of her perfect head, but whenever the opportunity arose, Doris always found herself missing a backbone.

  To make things worse, Colleen was nothing if not wonderful, forcing upon Doris a mixture of fury, envy, and admiration that made her act like more of an idiot than everyone already thought she was.

  She tried to duck away, dragging Thea behind her with one hand, but it was too late.

  “Doris!” Colleen waved her over.

  She wished she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t paused. Then maybe she could have pretended to not hear her. Grinning, Colleen pushed her cart toward them while Doris forced a smile that made her cheeks burn.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Don’t you two look nice. Such good daughters. You should give Jennifer some tips. I couldn’t drag her out of bed on a Saturday morning for a tornado, let alone to help her mother get the groceries.”

  Doris might have cackled in her face if Thea hadn’t piped up before she’d had the chance. “I hate ruffles.”

  Colleen smiled, the real kind that happened when a person thought something was funny or cute. “Well, they look darling, anyway. Where’s your mom off to?”

  Like always, the mere mention of her made Ma manifest li
ke a demon.

  “Colleen! Hi, how are you? Hope the girls are behaving for you.” It wasn’t a threat, but a declaration. She wanted Colleen to confirm it out loud.

  “Of course!”

  The women leaned in for a perfunctory peck against the cheek and smiled. Ma placed a hand on Doris’s shoulder and left it there.

  “Did you find the strawberries?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ma hissed through clenched teeth. Yes. The correct answer was yes, not yeah.

  “I was just saying how nice it is that the girls come with you to shop every weekend. I couldn’t bribe Jenny to come if I wanted to.”

  “Oh, you know. Sometimes a girl just needs to do girl stuff with her mom. I’m sure you and Jenny have plenty of little things to do together.”

  Colleen nodded, gaze fading into the background before she returned with her usual white grin.

  Doris watched her search for words. She started to speak, if anything to break the spreading awkwardness, but Ma gripped her skin and tugged.

  “My little miracle baby, this one. I have a hard time letting her out of my sight. She hates me for it sometimes, I swear.” Ma laughed and laughed, even though it wasn’t funny.

  She continued, and Doris turned away, watching as a breeze blew through the parking lot, whipping up abandoned bags and other garbage. She squeezed Thea’s hand while her mother went on and on for the thousandth time about how Doris had been born blue and not breathing.

  “Two full minutes to get her to breathe . . . We thought we’d lost her . . . When I touched her, that’s when she started screaming.”

  Doris always smirked at this part of the story. Ma claimed that she’d leapt out of the hospital bed when her baby wouldn’t breathe, that the nurses had tried to keep her down, and that Doris had started breathing only at her mother’s touch.

  This may have been true, but not for the reason’s Ma liked to think.

  “But look at her now.”

  Ma nudged her before releasing her shoulder, pulling her close to her side in a half hug.

  “A great girl,” Colleen said. “Two great girls.”

  “No!” Thea said, agitated like a caged puppy. “I hate ruffles.”

  Ma dropped her grip and clamped onto the handle of the shopping cart. “Can’t have it all, I guess. Can we?” She cackled again, a little too loudly. A teenager restocking the bananas turned to look at her, and Ma pinched her lips together.

  Doris imagined all this bottled crazy going home to the Simpson house like rotten takeout—Colleen opening it up at the dinner table so the family could poke at her life like maggots and mold.

  “Didn’t you say we needed milk?” Doris said.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I suppose I should finish my shopping, too. I’ll tell Jenny you said hi, okay, Doris?”

  “Oh. Sure. Great.”

  Colleen sprang away from them as if her shoes were biting her, carrying with her another week of torment at the hands of her crappy daughter.

  The three of them marched alongside one another toward the deli.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I saw you talking. What exactly did you say?”

  “Nothing. Just hi and stuff.”

  Thea ripped her hand away from Doris and scratched at her dress. “I hate ruffles!” she said again, louder now and with more urgency.

  “You aren’t lying to me, are you? Because I need to know.”

  “I didn’t say anything, Ma. I swear.”

  Thea looked up at them. “Mama.”

  “I saw the way she was looking at you is all. Like a nosy deer. She loves to sniff around you.”

  “Mama!”

  Ma didn’t even face her youngest as she chastised her. “You will hush when I’m speaking to your sister.”

  “Maybe she just likes me.” Doris desperately wanted to believe that this was all it was.

  “She looks at you like you’re abused.”

  No one said anything after that, and neither of them noticed that Thea had fallen behind. Doris was too far in her own head, thinking of all the satisfying things she could say to her mother. Ma had busied herself studying price points of varying brands of Swiss cheese when a hundred thuds of a falling display jerked them both out of the stupor. Thea had taken hold of a banana gondola and was shaking it.

  “Earthquake!” she said, screaming it louder and louder while store staff sprinted toward her like an oil spill.

  It would have been funny—and in fact, many people did laugh, because it’s funny when other people’s kids are assholes but not yours—but the blood drained from Doris’s face with such vigor she expected to see it pooling at her feet.

  Ma was a guided missile. It was a true feat of physics that landed her nose to nose with Thea before the child could take a breath. Doris positioned the shopping cart between herself and the debacle.

  There was apologizing while Ma hefted yellow bunches back onto the display. A clerk helped her while Thea flung herself onto the floor in a tantrum, having inherited Ma’s incendiary temperament and none of her sense of social propriety. Once or twice Ma cast a glance over her shoulder in search of Doris, who, much to Ma’s chagrin, would not be coming over to help.

  People moved on, stopped watching, and after what could only have been a minute, Ma had returned, dragging Thea behind her. Doris pulled her fingers from the handlebar of the shopping cart as if frozen—bones cracking, muscles and skin sore.

  Doris waited for Ma to regain control of the cart, but instead Ma pushed it into a corner and walked away, leaving Doris to figure out for herself that they were, in fact, done shopping and would be leaving the store empty-handed.

  Thea had calmed considerably by the time they reached the car, confused more than anything. “Mama. Mama. Mama!” She beat the word into the back of her mother’s head but was ignored enough to know to stop trying.

  Not even Doris reached for her hand now, as if doing so admitted complicity. Thea wiggled in her booster seat, but quieted.

  The ride home was silent and felt constrained, like when there were too many people in a small space. Doris breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth and counted the blocks until home. It was a short ride, but still she breathed in deep when they stopped.

  Ma turned off the ignition and fiddled with her purse for a few moments before exiting, slamming the door behind her.

  The girls stayed in the car until it was certain that Ma wasn’t returning.

  Thea asked if they were going back to the store, and Doris could only shake her head while unbuckling her seatbelt. There wasn’t much else to say. They were both in the deepest of shit.

  “Why did you do that, Thea?” She wasn’t even sure her sister would understand what she was talking about, but Doris couldn’t help herself. “You know you can’t play earthquake around Mom.”

  Thea stared at her, expression flicking between confused and accusing.

  “No more earthquake.”

  Thea clamped her mouth shut, so Doris got out of the car and held open the door as she stomped past her with a childlike emphasis of feet that could never be as loud as she wanted.

  Doris trailed behind, feeling eclipsed, dreading the hell sure to pay. But she waited and waited more, and nothing came. Every moment of silence ticked by heavier than the last, like a spring-wound trap overdue to strike. Even Thea sulked herself into a corner, turning her back to Doris every time she neared her.

  Ma kept to her room, leaving only once to loudly make tea—so loud Doris swore the teacup was seconds from shattering from the force of her mother’s stirring. The clanging echoed in a house so perilously silent.

  For Doris’s part, she desperately wanted to leave—hit the swings and let the moon swallow her—but something rooted her in pl
ace. She wasn’t sure what it was, but every time she grabbed the door handle, a pit of nausea in her gut began to bubble.

  There was no dinner that night. Dad folded his paper in his lap, the disturbance too thick in the air for even him to ignore. Doris held a sliver of hope he actually went into the bedroom to confront her mother, but the conversation was shockingly one-sided—his side. Ma didn’t say a word. He emerged, square-shouldered, and skulked into the kitchen. All hope of any regularity dimmed when she heard him cursing over a jar of pickles.

  Thea joined him, sprinting toward the commotion in the kitchen. Dad handed her a pickle, which she promptly dropped onto the floor because it was slippery and then she cried. Shame rolled over Doris—Thea hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Doris, with all her worry and mounting dread, couldn’t even think of food, but Thea was only three. She had to be starving.

  Annoyed, Dad fled the kitchen, leaving his littlest daughter to cry alone, and got into his car.

  When Doris tried to go calm things down, Thea kicked the pickle at her and stuck out her tongue. The tears had stopped, and her little toddler rage consumed her hunger, at least long enough for Dad to return with a pizza.

  The food seemed to perk her up, and by the end of her first piece, Thea was setting the pizza on top of her head and giggling in her small, infectious way. Even Doris, who felt obligated to remove the pizza from her hair, allowed herself to laugh. The release was palpable. Surely Ma was conjuring up some dire punishment for what had happened earlier, but whatever it was appeared to be waiting until tomorrow.

  So she thought. The evening passed as uneventfully as the day, and Doris was just on the verge of considering herself lucky. She and Thea brushed their teeth, changed into their pajamas, and curled into Doris’s bed like always to read another story out of her Brothers Grimm anthology. When they were done, Doris clicked off the light while Thea burrowed under her comforter like a giggly little mole. Ma had been suspiciously absent from all of this, where she usually would breeze by with the laundry or yell at them for not wiping the toothpaste from the sink basin.