You Can Find Me in the Marigolds

Nature is a force with the power to end or begin things as it pleases. It exerted this faculty over my life in a constant cycle of creation and destruction. Starting and stopping. Ebbing and flowing. It made me dizzy how it giveth and taketh away without bias. But I’d learned to find the gratitude for all that was and wasn’t. And so it was on that winter night, as I drove home to my Mama for the first time in years. I was simply grateful, for what was coming and what was leaving.

The moon was the color of bone, cushioned against the velvet night and gossamer clouds. I’d been chasing it all night, driving to the home I’d left five years ago. The aches in my body told me I needed to rest soon. And the movement in my belly reminded me that my little Peanut was advocating for the bathroom.

I pulled into the rest stop, stretching as I got out of the SUV. I grabbed some snacks from the vending machine — Snickers and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Lil Peanut had a thing for spicy, and I needed my chocolate fix. After relieving my bladder, I went back to the truck. My breath puffed out in front of my face, a testament to the dropping temperatures.

I’d always loved the winter. The purity of snow, the contrast of the crisp air with the blinding light of the sun. There was something sophisticated about winter. Summer was lazy. It asked nothing of us. But winter made you work for it. It forced you to wear thick layers, to shovel snow and scrape ice, to gather firewood, and to prep warm cocoa and cookies on Christmas Eve.

In the distance, a coyote howled. I wondered if it was alone somewhere on a mountain, or if it was surrounded by its pack, comforted by its family. I felt the call of Nature starkly, wondering what it would take or give tonight. With a chill in the air, I climbed back into the truck and cranked the heat. I looked at the clock. It was nearly midnight. Another seven hours to go.

Back on the road, I thought about the last time I was home. I’d left home to go to California but I’d ended up in Phoenix. While staying with friends, I met James. We had started dating, and my Cali plans were derailed in favor of his ego and demands. I fell hard for the pretty lies that tumbled from his lips. And I followed him like he was the pied piper, me dancing to his tune without a care to the cliff he was leading me over. It went on for years. But then I got pregnant.

At five months, I was still barely showing. Dr. Fallon said it was the stress. I had strict orders to remove everything bad from my life. So I left everyone behind, including James.

Mama didn’t know she was gonna be a grandmother. I listened to the Christmas songs on the radio, thinking about what the future held. I was eager to make it home before dawn. I wanted to surprise Mama with the news of the baby. I hoped she would forgive me for being gone so long once she found out the gift I was giving her.

Our last day together was the day after my Nan passed. I’d been inconsolable. Mama had wrapped her meaty arms around me, stroking my hair as I cried into her shoulder. Nan had been my everything. She’d taught me how to make her famous Chicken Potpie and potato candy. When she’d been diagnosed with arthritis, we’d spent a year growing a field of wildflowers in her backyard. She always loved the marigolds. Said they were sunshine growing on earth.

“When my time is up, Lilybean, this is where you’ll find me. In the marigolds, basking in the sun.”

I’d gotten mad at her then. “Don’t say that, Nan!” I hated when she talked about dying. But she was always practical about such things.

“No use in pretending. I know I’m going one day. I just want to make sure I do everything right before I do. We are only immortal if we leave the right legacy. And you’re mine, babygirl.”

Four months later, Mama called me crying. Nan had gotten lost, wandering barefoot downtown. She’d taken two buses to get there, swearing she was meeting her husband for lunch. But grandpa had been gone for ten years. They told us later it was probably dementia. It got worse after that.

Mama and I both moved in with her then. And we took care of her for another three years. Then one morning she didn’t get up. She looked peaceful. Mama was just glad she didn’t suffer anymore. But I was devastated. It’s why I left.

As I got closer to home, large snowflakes began to flutter lazily from the sky. It was glorious—Mother Nature’s snow globe. Icicles hung from the undersides of tree branches and everything shimmered in the moonlight. I wanted to capture it with my camera but I didn’t dare stop—I was too eager to get home.

Ten miles outside of town, I felt the stirrings of peace. Lil Peanut was kicking like crazy. We were going home. Mama would make it all better. Just like she always did. And I would go sit in the marigolds, looking for the sunshine growing on earth, just like Nan did.

I took the last horseshoe curve before the city limits, careful of the slush in the road, watching the metal railing as I rounded the curve. The wheels started to turn, hydroplaning on the slush, but I righted them and turned into the curve, rather than away from it. I braked just in time. My heart was pounding, but I let the relief flow through me. This time, I watched the railing, following its arc carefully as I slowly took the last turn.

But I didn’t notice the oncoming car.

There was nothing I could do as we slammed into each other, dancing across the shiny pavement in a horrific metal waltz. It felt like time stopped as we swung in circles. The fatal dance ended and our cars twirled and somersaulted in different directions: one in a ditch, upside down, the wheels still spinning in a desperate attempt to get to its destination; the other car wrapped around a tree, music wafting from the speakers, windshield gone, wipers still swiping at empty air.

Eternity lay in the stillness of chaos’s aftermath. Time shifted back and forth—minutes felt like hours. I tried to stay conscious, to focus, to breathe. The cold seeped into my bones, into my blood, into my thoughts, chilling me. I waited for a long time, talking to the baby, keeping myself awake and alert. It took forever for help to arrive.

I could see the other driver. Pinned to his seat by his seatbelt, his car upside down. His blood dripped into the snow, scarring its purity with crimson veins. The burning scent of burning rubber hung in the frigid air, smelling of tragedy.

Then there was noise to fill the awful silence. Helicopter blades whipped through the air, their woosh-woosh sounds like soft drums, causing a windstorm that chilled the air more. But I no longer felt its frigidity. I heard the footsteps crunching loudly over the hardened snow. Heard them talking to me, but they didn’t seem to hear me when I answered. Firefighters stooped low to the ground near the other car. Their breath puffed out in tufts that floated upward, disappearing like angels in the night.

A pleasant numbness was spreading throughout my body, from my head to my toes, mind to heart. I felt peaceful, interrupted only by the caterwauling of the other driver as firefighters cut through the last piece of metal, pulling him free. Paramedics held gauze to the wounds on his face, asking him questions to keep him conscious. His responses were guttural and angry, high-pitched and nonsensical. His pain ripped through me, slicing through the numbness for just a second.

I couldn't help but think how beautiful the snow looked with the blue and red lights reflected against it. The scene was morbidly beautiful and my photographer’s eye did not discriminate. I found myself wanting desperately to capture the images.

More paramedics rushed from the helicopter, laying the driver’s crippled body on a stretcher. The gash over his eye was still bleeding, the blood sliding down his face like tears. I felt bad for him. At least I wasn’t in pain.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the hospital, I watched the other driver while doctors tried to save what they could of his damaged body. I waited, even though I felt ill. They cut through clothes, stuffing wounds with gauze. He lay there, unaware of everything: the nurses, the sound of the steady beeping, the death that hung in the air.

Time passed. I slept too, drifting in and out of darkness. In sleep, I replayed the crash in slow motion: I was still singing to the radio, taking the curve slowly, but also watching from the sidelines as our cars slammed against each other like linebackers, thrown in separate directions from the sheer force of impact. Over and over it played, looping in my mind until I wanted to scream.

I woke and heard Mama outside the door. She was sobbing as she spoke to two policemen. I wanted to run to her, but I was stuck. They must have given me drugs to make me sleep. I drifted back to the blackness, an empty dream with sounds but no pictures. I could still hear them, their words woven together in a strange pattern, layered between thick strands of incoherency and denial: blood alcohol content, inevitable, the conditions of the road.

Time shifted again.

When I woke up the next time, Mama was there, her presence radiating warmth and sorrow. I watched her lay across the other driver’s chest, her body shaking with great, heaving sobs. Mama always said she could feel anybody’s pain as if it were her own, just by touching them. She stood up, dragging a chair to his bed. She held his bandaged hand and prayed while he slept. She prayed for a long time, so long I thought she was asleep. But then she stood up.

“I forgive you,” she said and left.

She walked down the hall, into a NICU room. Amid the beeps and wires, a small, pink hand wrapped around Mama’s finger.

It crashed into me then: a tornado of fire and ice, past and present, life and death. Air was sucked out of my lungs like a vacuum. My skin tingled and burned and every feeling, every thought, every emotion I’d had in my life simmered beneath my skin, exploding inside of me. Then it stopped.

Nature had wielded its power to give and take away without favor.

But sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can find me in the marigolds, basking in the sun.