Dead Flowers | H.S.

Chapter Four

It was easy to sit in church. That's what I liked about it; how mind-numbingly effortless and second-natured it had become to me at the tender age of nineteen. It was only natural that it became easy, as I'd been trained like a Doberman, to sit in the first pews with clasped hands and ironed skirts for as long as I could remember. I sat there every Sunday, head slightly bowed, skirt tickling my shins, legs still and hands steady. My mother and father sat beside me always, dressed in their best linen and polyester, but their chin's were raised solemnly. They were God-fearing; I was not.

"But why do we fear Him if we love Him?" I had asked whenever I was twelve. It was a question I had been chewing on for weeks. I had even prayed for an answer.

"Because the Lord knows each of your sins. He has known you since before you were born and He will know you after you die. He is the controller of your fate," my mother had sighed back, not raising her eyes from the pie crust she was desperately rolling with flour-dusted hands.

I did not fear Him, though, and I never had. He watched me lie on my back in that hotel room after the Christmas party and He held my hand after I pressed the ring into Griffin's palm. He was an unspoken presence in my life, felt most strongly whenever I needed a hand to hold.

"Let us end today with Exodus 20:12, 'Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you,'. In Jesus' name I pray, amen," Pastor Wilson concluded, a smug smile painting his thin, dry lips. He clasped his hands together decidedly and nodded at the shuffling that filled his humble little church as the women grabbed their children and the husband's grabbed their wives.

"Anything you'd like to discuss with Pastor Wilson?" My mother questioned, eyes tired, but lips twitching into a smug grin.

It was like a child sprinkling salt over a slug and watching it sizzle.

"No, ma'am."

My mother stared into her marbled compact mirror and plucked her already-groomed eyebrows while my father drove with two hands on the wheel. As I sat in the backseat of the family station wagon, I wondered when I had finally grown up. When had my brother stopped attending church? When had I stopped caring? Why, as I sat in the backseat as a perfectly young adult, was I aching for the days that Rudy and I would bicker over toys and pull each other's hair until my mother would threaten to have my father pull onto the side of the road?

They did not answer me when I asked if Rudy had finally come home.

"Mom," I whispered, afraid of her response.

"Jane, I don't know. That boy does whatever he wants with that girl."

That girl. It was always that girl and never Vivienne. My mother refused to call her by her name whenever she was not in earshot and even found ways not to say her name to her face. She said things like "darling" and "sweetie" to Vivienne whenever she was around. Her voice was always sugar coated in sweetness, but her chest vibrated with hatefulness, her throat caked with hostility whenever she spoke. It was just enough kindness to lure one in, just enough to make one wonder.

"Did you know that she took Rudy to the disco last week?"

My mother furrowed brow and grimaced.

My father did not so much as blink.

"No, dear," my father said, voice flat.

"Well, I just don't like the idea of our boy going to the disco with that girl. She could get him killed, taking him to her part of town."

"Yes, dear."

"I think she's nice," I hardly whispered.

I closed my eyes so as to not see my mother rip around in her seat, mouth opened like an ugly tear in a pair of old pants.