MARIGOLDS DON’T HOLD GRUDGES

© 2004 By Linda Rondeau

I hadn’t seen my mother smile in nearly two decades. I was a boy of eight when Pa left. He was a trucker who passed through Crater Falls once or twice a year. I barely remember him, but Ma said he was as handsome as Robert Redford, could sing like Elvis Presley, and played the guitar like Chet Akins. Grandma Brown was so angry when Ma eloped with Pa they never spoke again until just before Grandma died. Guess she felt sorry for Ma after Pa left or maybe it was just to say, “I told you so.”

But now all the wrinkles time and worry had creased on Ma’s face vanished with the news.

“My cousin’s coming” she said as if Millie were the Queen of England.

Cousin Millie was Great Uncle Walter’s daughter. Uncle Walter, Grandma Brown’s brother, ran a small dairy farm just south of Crater Falls. The day of her sixteenth birthday, Millie packed a suitcase and left the area for good. Ma never said where she went off to or if anyone ever saw her again. She kept a wallet size photo of Millie on the living room bureau but refused to talk about her. All she ever said was, “Oh, that’s Cousin Millie.”

I leaned over to Ginny, seated at Ma’s kitchen table. She was in one of her mysterious trances. “That’s the girl in the picture on Ma’s bureau.” She roused enough to nod her head as if the question were answered before she asked it, retreating into a semi-catatonic state.

After Pa left, silence permeated our existence. All Ma did was sit like an ice sculpture and gaze out the window. Never could figure out what she was staring at. The day I graduated high school, I said goodbye and headed for the recruiting office.

I met Ginny while on leave from Ft. Hood. She was a singer at the B & B Club in Austin. Fell in love with her at first sight. She sent me a smile, and I knew I was hooked. We got married after only five days. Before the month was out Ginny announced she was pregnant. The day my son was born, I vowed I would be a better father to him than my pa was to me. We named him Colin Roy-Colin after me, and Roy after her father.

At Ginny’s insistence, I brought my family back with me to Crater Falls. We bought a trailer and put it next to Ma’s house. Ginny planted a row of marigolds in front of the old tarpaper shack, then took Ma outside and handed Colin Roy to her. Ma stepped out of her trance like putting a book down. “Hello, Little man,” she said. Soon familiar aromas wafted from Ma’s kitchen into the trailer. Like ebb and neap tides, life was predictable until Ma broke the news about Cousin Millie.

I took a sip of cold coffee, fueling up to venture a question. “You never did tell me why Millie ran off.” I didn’t expect Ma to answer. The question was prompted by curiosity why the only picture my mother had in the house was that of a pretty but sullen teenage girl.

Ma was stirring the batter for Colin Roy’s birthday cake. His sixth birthday was the next day. Inexplicably over the past year, Ginny had become as cold as a Northland winter, barely able to rise and dress each day, too broken to bake her child a cake or hold her husband’s hand.

Ma stopped stirring. “I suppose you’re old enough for the truth,” she said. The hesitation following was unbearable.

“So, what happened?” I prodded.

Ma refused to look at me and started stirring the cake batter again. “It was all my fault. We were both so naïve, neither one of us could’ve imagined that kind of evil in a person.” I got up, dumped out the cold coffee, and replaced it with fresh coffee from the pot. I had waited twenty years for this story, and I wasn’t going to miss a word.

“We were like sisters,” Ma said. “Millie was only one month older than me, and we were inseparable. We’d listen to Elvis Presley on my record player and dream of the day we could leave Crater Falls and see the world….”

I was bored with this reminiscing and had no interest in the gyrating legend, but I sensed Ma needed to talk about it. I drifted a bit while she rambled until I heard her mention Benny Hickman. “I fell in love with him the minute I laid eyes on him. Your pa and he looked a lot alike.”

Ma rarely alluded to Pa until now. “Benny Hickman came to work for Uncle Walter when Millie and I were fifteen. We were both crazy for him. He was older than us by maybe six years. He was the handsomest man I’d ever laid eyes on.”

A woman of few words, Ma was never a gabber. I think she talked more that afternoon than I’d heard her talk all my life. The more she talked, the more she stirred. “I really didn’t know any better. I was silly enough to believe that Benny was as much in love with me as I was with him. He ushered me into womanhood before I was old enough to understand love was more than a feeling. Benny broke it off with me just before school started that fall. Millie and I didn’t see very much of each other, but she did ask me to her sixteenth birthday party. That’s when she told me.”

Ma said it like I was supposed to know what it was Cousin Millie told her. I got the feeling she stopped talking to me and was saying things to herself. I couldn’t let it rest there, so I nudged again, “Told you what, Ma?”

She shifted as if waking up from a dream, poured the batter into the baking tin, dropped it three times to get the bubbles out, and placed it into the oven. I tried to be patient. “She told me she was pregnant.”

She hesitated slightly then added, “and Benny Hickman was the father.”

“A girl in love is selfish, Colin,” she said trying to excuse what she did next. “All I could see was green. I ran and told Uncle Walter. I had no idea he would chase Benny Hickman off with a shotgun and Millie would run off after him. I just thought if he knew, he’d make Millie stop seeing Benny and then maybe he would want to start seeing me again. That day was the last I saw of Millie or Benny.”

“And you never tried to find her after that?” I asked. I couldn’t believe a friendship that strong just ended like a balloon bursting.

“I was too ashamed, and I didn’t think she’d forgive me. Until now.”

“So that’s what the letter’s about?” I said.

Ma nodded, then continued. “I married your father two years later, and then you were born. I just got busy with living and let the past slip away. Maybe I should have told your pa about Benny before we were married. When you were about eight, I realized how much I missed Millie. I wondered about her baby, and I thought she might like to know that I had a family, too. So, I told your father the whole story.”

Ma did it again. Stopped at the point my starving curiosity was about to be satiated. She took the cake out of the oven and put it on a rack to cool, forgetting she was in mid story.

“And?”

“Colin, he had a look I’ll never forget, as if I had taken his heart out and stomped on it. I guess maybe he just couldn’t abide the fact I wasn’t pure as the snow like he thought I was. Hurt his pride, I guess. He never said a word. Just picked up his coat and walked right out of the house.” In one movement she took off her apron and gestured toward the kitchen door.

If there had been time to digest what Ma had just told me, I might have been relieved to finally know what drove Pa to abandon us—that it was something I had no control over and that I could finally stop blaming myself. But just then, Ginny bolted out the door Ma’s apron was pointing at.

“Go to her,” Ma said.

When I got to the trailer, Ginny was pacing the floor like a caged animal. Her arms were scratched and bloodied as if she had been digging at them. She stopped pacing for a few seconds. Then I asked the question I’d dreaded asking for nearly a year, “What’s wrong, Honey?”

Her words were blunt as they tumbled out like ice chips from a dispenser. “A week before we met, I was raped.” She probably said more, but the instantaneous realization Colin Roy might not be my son deafened me to anything else she might say. Anger rose as the sun descended behind the horizon, casting shadows on the yellow marigolds that lined the path from the house to the trailer.

I don’t know how long I remained frozen in that instant like a Polaroid picture. When I realized Ginny had stopped talking, I walked out the door, got into my car, and drove to the Red Rooster. The old Main Street diner was like a beacon, calling to me in times of trouble.

The diner was void of customers accept for the bearded mechanic Sally was waiting on. “Take a seat, Dandelion. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

Only Sally got away with calling me Dandelion, the moniker Crater Falls hung on me when Pa left. “Why he’s nothing but a little weed,” they’d say, “Just like a dandelion.”

Sally always had time to listen when the bullies at school roughed me up. She made the days Ma hugged the window seem less stark. I didn’t see much of her after Ginny and I came back, but found the diner a place of comfort when Ginny got heartsick. Sally Mae was like a big sister—a substitute for the family I lost when Pa left. She was as wise as she was tender hearted.

“You going to order something, Dandelion, or just sit there and cry?” Sally Mae knew I only came to the diner when something troubled me. She listened intently as I spewed out the day’s events.

I was expecting sympathy, not condemnation. “Dummy,” she said as she hit me side of the head. “You’ve held a grudge against your Pa for walking out on you, and now you think it’s okay to walk out on Colin Roy?”

I tried to defend my actions, “But….”

“But nothing. Maybe Colin Roy isn’t your flesh and blood, but does it really matter?”

I protested, “You don’t understand…”

“No, you don’t understand. Colin Roy could still be your son, you know. It shouldn’t make a bit of difference. What makes a father, anyway? He loves you and calls you Daddy. Isn’t that good enough? Some folks would give all the money they had for that privilege whether he was theirs or not.”

Sally had a way of getting to the heart of an issue without mincing words.

“You still love Ginny, don’t you, Dandelion?”

I nodded.

“You’re acting as if Ginny had a choice. It’s not her fault she was raped.”

I felt small. I had been too wrapped up in how Ginny’s confession had affected me. Until that moment, I had given no thought to Ginny’s pain. Was this secret the cause of her sickness?

“You have a simple choice to make, “ Sally Mae said. “You can keep your wounded, manly pride and run off like your pa did, or you can be more of man than he was. Colin Roy needs a daddy whether he’s your blood or not.”

It was dark when I got back to the house. I was still not ready to face Ginny. I saw the lights on at Ma’s so I went in. Without asking any questions, Ma said Colin Roy was down for the night and looking forward to his birthday.

I walked into his second bedroom—my old bedroom—where I had cried myself to sleep every night for the first year after Pa left—until I realized no amount of crying would bring him back. I never cried again after that.

In sharp contrast to my boyhood, Colin Roy slept oblivious to trauma, snuggling under the covers with his favorite Teddy Bear. Moonbeams cascaded through the window as if a legion of angels guarded his sleep.

I went back downstairs and into the kitchen. Ma poured a cup of coffee and handed it to me. “You’re not like your father, Colin.”

“You know?”

“I’ve known about a year. I saw myself in her when she started staring out that window. I knew she was hiding a powerful hurt. I pulled the truth out of her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Now it was a conspiracy.

“Ginny made me promise not to. I told her she had to let you know. It wasn’t right to keep it a secret. She had to give your love a chance.”

Ma showed me a letter written on flowery paper, presumably Millie’s letter. “I think you should read this,” she said.

“Not now, Ma. I’ve got other issues on my mind.” Ma’s look told me to sit. She read the letter aloud:

Dear Gertie,

As I write this, I am shedding tears over our wasted friendship. I was so angry that you snitched. Now I think Papa did us both a favor when he chased Benny away.

Papa sent me to a boarding home to have the baby, but it was stillborn. I vowed I would never go back to Crater Falls. I got a baby-sitting job for a wealthy family on the condition I finished school. After I graduated, I went to college where I met and married a wonderful man, a preacher. Could you ever imagine me being a preacher’s wife?

I’m widowed, now. We never had any children, so I am alone. I decided to come back to Crater Falls to make peace with my past. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for not trying to find you sooner. I’ll call you when I get into town. If you’re willing, I’d like to see you.

Millie

Ma folded the letter like a precious piece of cloth and put it back into the envelope. “Imagine that. All these years I was hoping Millie would forgive me, she was thinking I aught to forgive her. It’s not important who’s right, Colin, as long as the matter gets settled. Folk should be more like flowers, Colin. Marigolds don’t hold grudges or ask questions when the wind blows. Maybe that’s why they’re so hearty. They last all summer long and well into the cold fall. When I saw the marigolds Ginny planted, I finally realized it was senseless to hold unto my sorrow. I gave it to God and found the strength to forgive your pa. Go to her, Son. Listen to what she’s got to say before you do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”

Ginny said nothing when I came in. Her eyes were red and swollen. I took my bride into my arms, not to forgive, but to beg her forgiveness. I had been impervious to her pain, fearful to confront it for fear I was the reason for it. In some respects, I was right. I had caused the barrier that kept Ginny from telling me the truth—my puffed up pride and arrogance. I held her in my arms until the sun cracked the darkness.

From the bedroom window, the marigolds seemed to burst with color that August morning. I stroked Ginny’s hair and smiled. “Wake up, my love. Today is Colin Roy’s birthday.”

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