The scent of marigolds..

The scent of marigolds....

I believe that the smell of marigolds will always be with me. My
mother grew them in abundance. Small, nasty ones with deep reds and
sick yellows. A medicinal odor like iodine.

Punishment was her way of loving herself. I would be out of her sight,
she would tangle with her conscience, and become even more of a tyrant.
Rage ruled her mornings, her afternoons, dinner, and bedtime was a
simple occasion of verbal vomit.

If I did not finish my food on my plate, it brought two options. One, I
could sit and shovel greasy, cold food til morning, or if I fell asleep
at the table, then I would be promised that the food would be waiting
for me at the crack of dawn. If I would dawdle too long, then she would
bark these options, at the same time shaking my chair violently. One of
her favorite follies was watching me eat hardboiled eggs and dry
spaghetti, with no glass of milk or water.

She wanted me to work at housecleaning, she declared. And at 5 years
old, she handed me a bucket of ammonia and a rag mop and sent me to the
front porch to scrub. I had to drag the bucket and then since I could
not wring the mop drier, she stood with folded arms and demanded that I
dry it with rags. I cried. She became another part of herself, and
plunged me into the bucket. I sat in the filmy, grey coldness, sobbing.
As I wiped my eyes, it began to sting. If I did not hush, then my mouth
would sting from a salt scrubbing.

Spankings were from another side of her. When she was in tears from her
own anger, then I was the intended target. A belt, a curtain cord, or a
maple branch switch that she kept behind the couch, would be close at
hand. The yardstick was harder to find. I kept hiding it.

She would get quite disturbed if I wanted to get out my coloring book.
I treasured crayons. They were my way to go into someplace else that
she could not. I would always exclaim that I was coloring this page for
her. She would laugh and ask me what would she want with scribbles from
a crybaby like me. On occasion, she would melt my crayons, paper and
all, and I would find them poured into a tin can. Once, she poured them
into the sand of my sandbox.

The coal room was her secret weapon, and one that my Dad never found
out about until many years later. One or two tons of coal would be
delivered for our stoker furnace. It arrived by the side alley and ran
down a chute that sent up choking plumes of dust. It was oily and the
smaller chunks would have sharper edges. My Mother, coming forth from a
cob-webbed personality, would send me to that coal room whenever she
was putting me there instead of killing me. She would send me in with
no shoes, a cardboard box, and tell me to count out 2 or 3 hundred of
the coal pieces for her. My fingers bled. She would call into me,
periodically, to up the count. No light. Not much fresh air. I would
emerge a charcoal effigy of myself. At seven, I began to hate her with
dignity.

Paper dolls were my family. I could have a beautiful Mother. My
cardboard Mother was mute. I could dress her as I chose. I loved her.
She was my real Mother, I dreamed. She burned them all one day when her
cake fell in the oven.

Not having a sign of a social life, my Mother spent most of her time in
her flower beds, setting, pruning, and troweling. Marigolds were
pampered while I watched with skinned knees on the sidewalk beside her.
She would drone on about how I should like them. They were hearty and
lovely, she said. Not weak and puny like me.

I had secret funerals in my sandbox. A twig that I chose as my Mother,
wrapped in a leaf. I always adorned the grave tastefully with bouquets
of marigolds.

Copyright Margaret LaVonne Hall
8-25-2003 all rights reserved