The Beauty of the Dandelions

Aunt Julie’s yard needs mowed but Fredrico the landscaper won’t be here until next week. The yard is full of dandelions. Their yellow tops shake in the wind against the backdrop of the bright green grass. The dandelions remind me of a time I don’t want to revisit, but the memories push through as an image of my mother’s face dances across the tops of what Aunt Julie calls these “pesky perennials.”

When I was five, my boyfriend from school, Jimmy Torrence, gave me a bouquet of dandelions he’d picked from the school yard at recess. My teacher, Ms. Hopkins, gave me a paper cup of water to keep them in until I got home. After school, I walked home real slow so I wouldn’t spill any of the water. As I walked through our back door and into the kitchen, I saw my mother and her boyfriend at the time, Steve, hunched over the kitchen table.

“Look, mama,” I’d said as I held the cup out to her.

She’d looked up and sneered. The white powder that framed her nostrils reminded me of the powdered donuts our neighbor used to give me on Sunday mornings as I’d ride my big wheel up and down the sidewalk.

“What’s those?” she’d mumbled.

“Flowers,” I’d replied.

My mother laughed. “Those aren’t flowers,” she chided. “They’re weeds!”

“Weeds,” Steve echoed.

They bent back down over the kitchen table, and I’d sauntered off to my bedroom, their laughter following me. The next day, I’d found the dandelions in the trash. My mother had come into my room that night, took them, and threw them away.

I never showed her anything ever again. Those dandelions are still the only thing that anyone has ever given me, and looking back, I know that it had broken my five-year-old heart that she’d thrown them away.

Anyone who says a child that young can’t comprehend pain never had a mother like mine.

Later that same day, Nykem, my brother, had come into my room with a folded up paper towel. He told me that he’d gotten into the trash and rescued my dandelions. As he’d unfolded the paper towel, I’d held my breath. There, in his palms lay the remains of Jimmy’s gift -- the five dandelions, beginning to wilt from starvation of water, their yellow tops turning slightly brown. Nykem told me he was going to keep them wrapped and in his room where they’d be safe.

He was ten years old then, but even at ten, he was wise. “Sally,” he’d said, “These are just weeds to Mom, but to us, they’re beauty.”

*****

Central Illinois in May holds no beauty. There’s not much to look at except flat, dry fields. No mountains. No water. There are the clouds; clouds drifting high above, most looking like tufts of cotton candy. I had cotton candy once. It was pink. My mother had won money on a scratch off. Half her winnings went to an eight ball. The rest she used to take me and Nykem to the summer carnival that was in town. I didn’t want to go; didn’t want my friends to see her. But she’d dolled herself up; looked clean, acted clean. That night, she was the mother we’d always needed and wanted her to be. She laughed, rode rides with us, bought us food, and played games with us. She didn’t even flirt with the carnies. Nykem and I were the only two things that mattered that night. She made me believe that she’d changed.

That night I’d forgotten about the dandelions. My mind, though, however young it was, was too smart for its own good. I knew the new and improved Mom wouldn’t last. And she didn’t. But at least we had that night. At least I had cotton candy, the pink kind that reminds me of the clouds in Illinois that now float above me; but they’re clouds that remind me of back home, a place I will never return to.

So, there’s not much to look at in Central Illinois. Nothing pretty. Except the clouds. And maybe Aunt Julie’s yard. It’s unseasonably warm, near 80, and there’s a slight breeze that reminds me it’s only early spring, yet the heat on my pale arms and legs tell me I only have four months left before I leave for college. Not that I haven’t enjoyed my time here on Aunt Julie’s farm, but it’s not home. What’s a home, really? Where you live? Where you’re from? Home, to me, is a place I’ve never known, but as Aunt Julie says, you do the best with where you lay your head at night. Sometimes it really is that simple.

Julie, she’s not really our aunt. She’s my mom’s aunt, which makes her our great aunt. Semantics, you know? Still blood. Still family. She’s family. My mother: she’s just blood, but that doesn’t make her a mom. Here’s the thing about blood: no matter how painful or strong the stench of it, you can’t wash it away. Julie is the only family my brother and I know; the remnants of the sparse mother things our mother did long forgotten. Or are they?

I feel my shoulders begin to sting. I’m tempted to get sunscreen, but the thought passes. My mother never used sunscreen a day in her life and she spent every day she could in the sun. Granted, the day she left us to go to prison, her face looked like an old, stretched out leather baseball glove.

My friends have already begun their pre-prom ritual of tanning, but I hate community tanning beds, so a little real sun won’t kill me, right?

The memory of the last time I saw my mother flashes through my mind; another memory I’ve tried to forget, but the dandelions, the weeds, coax it through and I squint against the sun, against the pain.

It was bright and sunny the day my mother left us. Nykem and I stood at the end of our driveway; Nykem angry and me confused and crying. Neighbors stood in their yards, pointing and whispering. Our mother told us she was going away to get help. It would be years before we found out the truth. Her hands clasped a pack of cigarettes and a pair of Ray Bans. She kept brushing her blond hair, stringy and oily, out of her face. I was twelve then, Nykem seventeen. She leaned against the county sheriff, smiling; no doubt flirting with him, maybe asking for a lighter. Maybe begging for him to release her. He kept pushing her back against the car; not forceful to hurt her, but in more of an awkward, polite way. She finally gave in and moved to the back of the cop car. She turned to smile at us. Her face looked ragged and botched, her eyes bloodshot. She was forty then but looked sixty.

All I remember thinking is that I never wanted to see her again, and I never want to look as bad as she did that day the sheriff took her away to the state institution for women where she’d serve a ten-year sentence on drug charges.

*****

The screen door of the patio slides open and a second later, clicks closed. Nykem appears beside me, throwing a tube of sunscreen in my lap.

“You want to be burnt in your prom pictures?” He asks.

I smile as I flip the Aveeno tube open. “Thanks.”

“Watcha doin’?”

“Watching the dandelions,” I reply. “What’s that?” I point to a canister at his feet.

“Julie wants me to spray the weeds.”

“Isn’t that Fredrico’s job?”

Nykem shrugs.

“Where’ve you been today?” I ask. Nykem works at the town’s only video rental place, but I know today is his day off.

He shifts his weight from foot to foot before he sits down across from me at the patio table. He and I look nothing alike. I suspect we have different fathers, but I can’t be sure. Our mother never bothered to share such information, and when Nykem would press the issue, she’d get mad and slap him. I favor her looks: blondish brown hair and blue eyes. Nykem has black hair and brown eyes. He’s a good looking kid, according to my girlfriends, but he’s weird, a loner. He doesn’t date. That I know of.

Nykem digs dirt from his fingernails before answering. “Hey, you know that girl across the street?”

“Who? The skinny blond?”

Nykem nods.

“She’s sorta young for you, isn’t she?”

Nykem sits up in the patio chair. “I’m not asking like that. Just curious about her.”

I rub sunscreen on my shoulders. “Why?”

“I found diet pill boxes in their trash.” He looks proud of himself as I meet his gaze.

“Could be the mom’s,” I say.

He shakes his head and pushes his bangs from his eyes. “Nah. They’re hers. You see how skinny she is? Shoulder bones sticking out and all.”

I sit the tube of sunscreen on the patio table and nudge Nykem’s foot with my own.

“What,” he says, in defense.

“That’s none of your business,” I say. “Besides, what are you doing digging through their trash?”

“Nothing,” he replies. “Looking for recycles.”

He’s lying, I know, but I don’t force the issue.

“Julie said that Fredrico said that Mario’s going to ask you to the prom,” Nykem attempts to change the subject.

I twirl my hair between fingers, looking for split ends. “Yeah?”

Mario is Fredrico’s son, a year behind me at school. He plays football and always makes the honor roll.

“Julie said he could take you,” Nykem continues. “She okays it because they are legal and all and Fredrico does a good job with the yard.”

“Nykem!” I blush.

He shrugs. “Hey, not my words. You know how Julie is.”

I smile. “Think he’ll get me a corsage?”

“He should. He better. He’s a nice kid. You should go with him. You’ll have fun.”

Two squirrels run across the yard and stop in a patch of dandelions, their tails swishing against blades of grass. “He has to ask first,” I say.

Nykem stands and grabs his canister. “He will.”

“Hey,” I reach out a hand.

“What?” Nykem sighs.

“Don’t spray. Not today, okay?”

He hesitates. “Julie will have my butt if I don’t.”

I shake my head no. “She won’t. Just don’t, okay?” I look back out over the yard. The dandelions cast shadows as the sun shifts in time.

“What do I tell her if she asks why I didn’t?” I hear the clank of the canister hit the concrete patio as Nykem sits it back down.

I lean forward with my elbows propped up on my knees. Tears form in the corners of my eyes, running down the bridge of my nose, stinging where the day’s sun has already set. It dawns on me, this day in May, that there are weeds and there is beauty. I can choose which I want to be. I look back over my shoulder at Nykem. He has one hand on his hip and the other on the back of my chair. “Look,” I tell him as I turn back and point to the yard, his gaze following my finger. “Tell her you didn’t spray because the beauty of the dandelions stopped you.”

His silence tells me he gets it. Nykem pats the back of my patio chair. A moment later, the patio door clicks closed behind me and the image of my mother fades away.

Christy Lynne Trotter grew up in the Dayton area and attended Sinclair Community College and Wright State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in mass communications. She also graduated from Antioch in Yellow Springs with a master’s degree in creative writing, and now teaches English as an adjunct at Clark State Community College in Springfield. She placed first in the 2014 Dayton Daily News’ and Antioch Writers’ Workshop short story competition with “Gramma’s Wringer Warsher.” Trotter has had pieces published or set to publish in Sinclair Community College’s sponsored journal Flights at the end of the summer. In November 2014, I also placed first in the adult category of the Dayton Metro Library’s yearly poetry contest, for my poem titled “Champa Romance.” For their June 2015 edition, Mock Turtle Zine selected one of my poems titled “Smoke Rings” for publication. In addition to writing and teaching, she works for Meijer at the distribution center in Tipp City in Operations Management Personnel.