Sleeping On Daisies

Preface

My hair is and has always been considerably short.

I prefer it this way, not only because I have never known my hair to be any other way —except, maybe, when I was a mere toddler— but because it suits me well.

I sit in the cosmetology chair, watching as my stylist grace my hair with her dexterous fingers. Their long and frail, almost as if their built for this exact purpose: to style hair. In this case, to trim hair. She joins her thumb and index finger together, enclosing the blades of the metallic scissor between a thick strand of my hair. Dark, brunette locks fall to the wooden parquet flooring. This repeats for another fifteen to twenty-five minutes until my hair ends are no longer split. 

“Done,” Ms. Andrea says in her slight caribbean accent.

She swirls the chair around, taking the round hand-mirror from my hands. I feel a kink in my neck as I look up into the vast mirror. It has more width and allows me to see myself at all angles. My hair stops just above my shoulders and coils inwards towards my chin. There’s a slight part in my scalp that directs my hair to fall over my forehead, and instead of making me look even more childish, it protrudes the bone structures in my cheeks and jawline.

“Thank you,” I say, rising out of the numbing chair and embrace Ms. Andrea.

“You’re welcome darling,” she says, then releases me.

I fish sixty-five dollars out of my clutch and pay her for the job well-done. She kisses me on both sides of my cheeks and tells me to come again soon. I give her my word and exit the salon, leaving the gossip and smell of hairspray and peppermint behind.

 

                                                                                        ***

As I cross the intersection between 63rd and Halsted, a row of two-story bungalow houses comes into view. From afar, I could make out their low-pitched roofs with overhanging eaves, and their rectangular-shaped exteriors, having more length than width. Every lawn is mowed down to the dirt, the patches of brown grass reveals the poverty in the neighborhood. 

1422. 

I search for that address until I came across the mailbox. The house is yellow-ochre; a complete contrast to inside of the home. The walls are red with white tiny lotus flower designs. I can smell the jasmine tea leaves burning on the oil furnace as I kick off my sneakers before walking on the white carpeted floors. Mother stands in the kitchen, wearing her flowing gray and black dress. Her hair is in its usual one long braid, cascading down her spine.

“You’re late,” she says without eye contact.

I walk over to her and greet her with a soft peck on the cheek. “I loss track of time,” I say in a hushed tone, careful not to wake my grandfather.

The man alseep on the sofa.

He goes so well with the decorations, being as ancient as the large China cupboard against the left wall, and the wooden boxed television with the two antennas wrapped in tinfoil. The only time he leaves that spot is to either eat or use the bathroom, but that is it. There is never a time I come home and he is not there. 

“You need to feed Dandy,” Mother says with a cold edge in her tone.

She finally takes a glance at me. “He’s been purring all day.”

I nod, making my way over to the cabinet underneath the sink. I retrieve the bag of dried cat food and go over to Dandy’s cracked cat bowl. It could never keep any milk or food if I weren’t the one pouring it in. Mother was too selfish to fulfill some of my responsibilities for me. She believed that I could take care of myself on my own, only needing her assistance in providing for the necessities of survival —shelter, food, and clothes. She only offered me her love when she felt like it. 

As for my grandfather, well, he was always asleep. 

“Here you go Dandy,” I say. He nimbly pads over to me from his place on the center of the persian rug and takes a bite of his food. 

I smile as he purs in gratitude and guide myself to my bedroom. 

As soon as I am in, I gently close and lock the door. I head over to my bedside and kneel beside it, peeling back the bedspreads. Lifting up the mattress, I outstretch my arm and retrieve my bible. Its thick and leather with a red ribbon bookmark. I open it to the page where the ribbon settles and a square carving engraved in a layer of pages is revealed. 

A year ago, I’d succumb to the conclusion that the best place to hide money is in a book—specifically the bible. I used a scalpel from my mother’s medical kit and dug a carving into a quarter of the chapters Psalms and Proverbs, stashing all my money in there. People, my mother in particular, barely ever touched the bible. The only thing that would arouse her suspicion and tempt her to touch is the bible itself, and that’s simply because my mother identifies our family with the Buddhism religion, not Christianity. But the bible is hidden under the mattress, and so my money should be safe.

I count all of the money and confirm that its all there. It is.

One of these days, when home doesn’t feel like home anymore, and life’s become too much of bother to live anymore, and I grow tired of my identity and itch for a new one—I will runaway. I have no idea where to, but it will be somewhere, with someone. I will be free, and I will live peacefully.

Until then, I will be assisting my mother in preparing our oriental dinner.