The Garden

Rose keeps the tears at bay, blinking them back as she tries not to relive the way she received the news that had been shared with her the day before: She had just stepped off the stage after receiving her Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering. "I'm sorry," the messenger said.

She's in her car on the driveway of her destination. For some reason, she can't let go of the wheel. As if her body wanted to still believe that she was still on the way to this... dump. Or even backing out and driving away. Dread builds within every fiber of her being.

She can't stop the tears. Why is she crying over that man? He was a drunken bastard. He hit her. He abused her. He drove her mother away. Rose rubs over the faded scar on her left eyebrow, leaving her with a hairless slit. She wipes the tear from her dark-skinned cheek and takes a deep breath.

Rose glances in the rear-view mirror. A pair of determined, leaf green eyes urged her to move -- to go and remember one last time; for his sake. She opens the door of her car and steps out onto the cracked driveway with her black and white converse shoes. She closes the car door. The sound is too loud -- echoing through the old neighborhood. She breathes in deep. It smells like cigarettes. 'The neighbors,' her brain supplies in disgust as her petite Nubian nose scrunches up at the smell. She looks up at the grey sky. Though there is no sun, it's bright out. A gentle breeze picks up her modest, black, short-sleeved, mid-thigh length dress and runs through her curly black afro.

She stands in front of a small white house. Perhaps calling it a "house" was giving it too much credit. The white, dutch lap exterior was an ugly grey color, stained from years of rain and dirt -- some parts were cracked; the roof shingles were barely covering the roof (not to mention the full-blown hole that made a few pieces stick up); the storm door's net was ripped; the windows were broken and boarded; there are dead, dried up bushes in the flowerbed along the front wall; half of the house that was covered in dead vines and moss. Even the grass is half dead.

Rose's vision blurs with tears. She blinks her sight clear. For a moment she sees the small white house. It was much bigger -- 'like a mansion!' her childhood brain supplied. The grass was green, the bushes in the flowerbed were alive. She sees a little girl, no older than five, flying a kite with flower designs (roses, of course) on it -- a smile, shining through all the features of her face: From her crooked buck teeth to the crinkles around her eyes to the dimples on her cheeks. She has her curly black afro in pigtails that make her look like Micky Mouse. She's barefoot in the vibrant, green grass. A man with a familiar jawline and matching dimples is sitting on the stairs leading to the front door. He's thrown his head back, laughing as the girl trips, her smile as wide as ever as she too begins to laugh.

Rose shakes her head. Stop.

A familiar chain-link fence catches Rose's eye. It's rusted. She wants to run through the gate and see the garden. The garden.

She closes her eyes. Vibrant colors flash. The beauty of the purple lilac, the hue of the yellow tulips, the smell of the rosemary bush. She hears the man's laughter again. She sees the little girl again. She waves to her and runs through the broken gate.

"Wait!" Rose calls a little too loud. She runs after the girl. The man's laughter grows louder. Louder and louder and louder and it's shouting now. His voice is angry and raspy. Rose hears the whiskey bottle break. Familiar, phantom pain burst's from her head. The slit in her eyebrow is burning. She's soaked in the poison from the bottle that struck her. "Stop! Please!" Rose looks up.

She's in the backyard. In the garden. Tears spill as her vibrant green eyes meet a brown wasteland.

What was she expecting to find here; Rose didn't know. She wasn't planning on attending the funeral. She figured she's at least pay respect to him in the place that they began to build this doomed garden. It was better than seeing the body in the coffin, better than everyone expecting her to say something in his memory. What good could she say? Perhaps... the garden? No. There would be too many lies to make the story happy. Rose recounted the memories in her head...

The garden started as a Daddy-Daughter project. Her brightest childhood memories lingered here: She and her daddy, watering the flowers with a hose, then Daddy turns the hose on her. She's laughing and soaking wet. "Tag, Daddy!" She'd yell some days. And other days, "Ready or not here I-" she opens her eyes and giggles "-I found you Daddy! You're too big for the bushes!"

One day, Momma and Daddy began to fight. Daddy began to drink and the flowers began to wilt. Rose continued the Daddy-Daughter project on her own. She would run outside every time the voices shouted too loud.

One time, Rose doesn't leave fast enough. She sees Daddy raising his fist. Momma flinches, then leaves. She never comes back. The garden becomes Rose's haven: Her retreat from the problems at home. Since Momma isn't there to take the punches anymore, Rose is there in her stead.

When Rose turns 18, she moves out of the house and finds a way to get to where she needs to be. She blooms and grows in the sunlight of her freedom. She doesn't look back to the darkness that wilted the beauty of the little blooming flower that she was.

Now, standing in this wasteland, Rose sniffs and her gaze hardens.

It seems fitting, she thinks, that the Daddy-Daughter project sums up to the same thing as the Daddy-Daughter relationship:

A waste.