Dead Marigolds
I’m standing on the front porch landing, and these red stilettos are killing my feet. But they’re the best pair I have. Really, they are the only pair I have, because these are the ones I had on when I left Sweeny’s place last night. And I had to leave.
I see the screen door is fixed now. I don’t even think this is the same door, which makes sense because I slammed it one too many times trying to get out that night. That seems like such a long time ago now. Most people don’t know how strong a sixteen-year-old can be. When she knows all there is to know in the universe and doesn’t need anything else explained, when she’s certain that her sixteen years is all she needs. And I didn’t know a sixteen-year-old girl could sprint down a flight of steps and break a screen door lock like that. But she can.
Grownup girls can sprint, too. I found that out last night back in Albuquerque. I didn’t have the time and had to leave my Manolo Blahniks, all the Gucci sling-backs, and even the black leopard-print stilettos that rub my ankle raw worse than these red ones.
I see they painted the shutters, too. Thank God, because I hated those green shutters. Yellow is better.
I hope nobody is up yet. It wouldn’t be polite. The polite thing would be to ring the doorbell three or four hours from now and say I used to live here, that I’m just passing through my old neighborhood to see how things have changed. They’re probably a nice family, too, with a philodendron in the foyer and honey-toned walls in the sitting room - all of it stitched neatly together like the IKEA catalogue, a nice family with a nice sixteen-year-old. Her father wouldn’t be shouting from the window framed by those damned throw-up-green shutters, telling her that he wasn’t going to have any whores living in his house.
I’m glad they didn’t paint anything orange. I’ve had enough of orange. Most people think orange is harmless, but really, it can be deadly. Yellow with a little red mixed in, and it’s deadly, like a doomed fetus in the first trimester, like the sun going down over strip clubs, like the dust of Albuquerque. I can’t do orange after Sweeney, with his million-dollar patio and his orange potted marigolds dying in the sun. Most people don’t know that marigolds – especially the orange ones - actually give off a smell when they die. You can smell it even under the stench of underarms, arthritic cream, and cigars. When you’re lying on a patio surrounded by marigolds choking under a hot New Mexico sky, you can smell death mixed with the funk of sex.
But they’ve got potted geraniums planted in the ground around the porch here, and you can’t go wrong with pink geraniums. Sweet-sixteen pink. Although, in this twilight, they look blue, like those fluffy baby-blue slippers the girl probably wears here. Probably it’s the first thing she slides into on a Saturday morning like this. The smell of bacon and eggs coming from the kitchen will wake her up in a couple of hours. She’ll pop on the slippers and head downstairs. She’ll be thinking of how she’s going to spend her allowance at the mall later.
My allowance with Sweeny was thirty thousand dollars. But he didn’t get the chance to give it to me – not with his headless torso on that chaise, and not with his fingers floating in the toilet. Most people don’t know that special people will lend you a lot of money, but you have to pay it all back. I don’t think Sweeny knew that. But all that was in Albuquerque, and now I’m back on the porch.
And it’s a good thing it’s early, because I don’t know what I would say if the lady of the house was to open the door right this minute and ask me what the hell I’m doing here. She’d give me that half-smile with limited eye contact that people give to Jehovah’s Witnesses and drunks at funerals and crazy people at the park. I’d excuse myself and leave, but I wouldn’t be sorry. Because this was my porch first.
– Morowa Yejidé is a native of Washington, D.C. Her short stories have appeared in Istanbul Literary Review, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, Underground Voices, and The Adirondack Review. Her story "Tokyo Chocolate" was one of the ten stories published in the 2009 Willesden Herald Anthology, and was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three sons. She welcomes visits to her website: www.morowayejide.com