Black Hellebore

I began every morning at 6:30 with the task of watering the hanging fern. It lived in an old rattan basket that hung over the tattered sofa in our living room. The sofa sat in front of a big, dusty picture window, which looked out into our jungle of a back yard. Our back yard backed the rail road tracks and Auburn Elementary and Middle School in Auburn, Kentucky: population thirteen hundred or something like that.

The plant looked as though it were about to die all the time; more and more dry leaves fell off every day. But I never gave up on it, even when it looked so dead that I could practically hear its roots begging to be pulled up and put out of their misery, I kept watering the damn thing. I always wondered why I even cared. Why couldn't I just throw it into one of the compost bins my mother insisted on keeping in our tiny kitchen? I always assumed that subconsciously, I was appeasing my inner flower child. My next task of the morning was to feed all of the animals in our household, which was no easy task. It was no easy task, but it tied into the whole hippie love thing.

My mother fancied herself a new age nature witch/bleeding heart animal lover, turning our entire house, including the front and back yards, into an herb, flower, and vegetable garden/animal sanctuary. She made enough money to pay the cable bill by selling smudge sticks and magic herbal potions. That and her job as the town bootlegger let us lead a reasonable comfortable life.

My father had been a botanist, but he died when I was three. It was a freak accident, really. One night, after getting stoned on a potent strain of Jamaican cannabis with a Quaalude chaser, he ate several of the prized black hellebore plants he'd grown to display in his university's botany lab. The plant, commonly called the Christmas rose, sent him into bradycardia and his heart slowed to a stop. He was either too stoned to call for help or didn't realize he needed it. I'd been ashamed of this my entire life. Whenever anyone asked me how my father died, I would say just about anything. No matter how far fetched a story, anything was better than the truth.

He was hit by a train, stung by a hoard of angry hornets, or shot by a group of angry mobsters. He got lost in the desert and died of a mixture of dehydration and starvation. He was retrieving a kitten from a tree when he fell and broke his neck. He shot himself in the foot and bled to death. He was killed in a climbing accident in the Himalayas when a Yeti confused him for a female.

Finally, I settled on a lie that wasn't so far fetched. People started feeling sorry for me when I told them that my father ha some kind of monstrous cancer. I'm told that children who live with only one parents are starved for attention, so I kept up with this one. But my mother, a woman known for her brutal honesty, never backed me up. Any time a friend from school would come into our house, she was delighted to tell them the story of her late husband.

She laughed after telling the story every time, which I'm sure was what freaked them out the most; her cackling uncontrollably and miming her husband shoving plant matter into his mouth like there was no tomorrow. My schoolmates would immediately run home, claiming they'd heard their mothers calling them from down the street or even across town.

“Summer is so strange.” I heard kids whisper in the hallways at school.

Another reason I couldn't keep friends was because of the type of friends I actually did have. All of my friends were animals. Some were a little exotic, probably not what your local ASPCA would approve of as a household pet, but to be fair, I did have domestic animals. I had four dogs: a bronze Newfoundland named Cocoa, twin Border Collie mixes named Scuzzy and Fuzzy, and a Chihuahua named Javier. There were also a dozen cats, each named after a condiment, from mustard to mayo. I kept the celebrities in the back yard: a trio of goats named Dean, Frank, and Sammy, a pair of peacocks named Elvis and Costello, and a pair of pink Yorkshire pigs my mother had named Simon and Garfunkel. I also had two birds: an African gray parrot named Bart, because he sang “do the Bart man” whenever anyone came within two feet of him, and a yellow crested Cockatoo named Lady, because she screeched the catchphrase “Hey, Lady!” to welcome any male or female into our house.

The cats ate from a large pan on the porch, with the exception of the two Siamese, Soy and Sriracha, who ate from TV dinner tray tables in the living room. Scuzzy and Fuzzy had to be fed in my bedroom, separate from Javier, who ate on top of the kitchen table where no one could get to his food. Cocoa ate in the laundry room with Bart and Lady, whose cage was in the entry foyer, took her food in the bathroom on top of the medicine cabinet because she refused to eat in her cage and it was the only place in the house she could get to without being bothered. The peacocks were given special game bird food, the pigs ate most of the fruits and vegetables from my mother's garden, and the goats kept the grass mowed down.

As I was filling the pigs' trough with water from a hose, pleading with Simon to stop ramming his snout into the backs of my knees, and trying to keep the hose away from the beautiful birds that circled me like curious puppies, my neighbor appeared. Bobby Palmer was the cutest boy at Logan County High School and he was standing on the other side of the fence that separated his immaculately manicured back yard from my overgrown swamp. I'd had a crush on him since we were around two years old, when he moved into the house next door. We went to each others' birthday parties until we were old enough for him to care about who he was being seen with. Now he was just my neighbor and I didn't really know him anymore. You think you a lot about a person until they stop sharing their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with you.

“You're a little tangled.” he commented, nodding toward my hose-wrapped ankles.

“What?” I asked, making the mistake of looking up from my task.

Just as the word flew out of my mouth, Simon knocked me over the water trough and sent me flailing face first into the mud puddle it quickly created. I rolled over and laid there, whimpering as the pigs came to lovingly sniff my muddy hair.

“Are you okay?” Bobby asked, making no attempt at hiding his laughter.

“I'm fine.” I said slowly, nudging Garfunkel away from me and using his back to pull myself up with, “Thanks for asking.”

“No problem.” he said, “You don't look that bad.”

“Your hair looks really nice.” I blurted out before thinking.

He shot me a smile that was both confused and disgusted before wordlessly going back inside. I immediately ran into the house, slipping in the mud and almost falling over again.

“Idiot!” I screamed at myself.

“Summer?” my mother called, coming out of her bedroom in her bra and a pair of paisley printed lounge pants.

“I am an idiot!” I shouted on my way into the bathroom.

“You're muddy.” she commented, “Why are you muddy? Did you try the natural mask I suggested? It really cools the skin, doesn't it?”

I drowned out her voice with a shower.

On the ride to school, after hearing the story of my conversation, or lack thereof, with the school's hottest basketball player, my mother smiled kindly at me and said, “I think that the comment about the hair was very sweet of you.”

“Shut up, mom.” I rolled my eyes childishly.

“Do you think that you're hostile because of the Bobby situation or because of your adolescence? Because I was reading this book...”

“I don't want to read one of your self-help books, mom.” I said, “And I'm not an adolescent, I'm a teenager.”

“You're sixteen, so they're one in the same, darling.” she explained.

“I'm an idiot.” I whined.

“You're not an idiot.” my mother reassured me, “You're just a perfectly imperfect mess.”

“Yeah?” I asked, opening the door as my mother pulled her ancient Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight behind a school bus, which she'd been told not to do about a billion times, “And you're a brain fried hippie.”

“Feel better?” she asked, adjusting her rose colored glasses on the bridge of her nose.

“Yes.” I sighed, “Thank you.”

This was our routine. Every morning, I became frustrated with life and it took it out on my mother. She was an easy target and took it really well. We had a good relationship, considering the fact that she chose to do almost everything at home in the nude and kept four different compost bins in the kitchen, making it smell like rotten eggs and old coffee. When she wasn't making her own booze or gardening in the nude, she was performing star clad nature spells in the front yard, which was set up as her own little nature oasis. When I would argue with her about it, she'd simply say “We were born naked, Summer, and the midwives never averted their eyes or clicked their tongues. It's natural.” Sure, it had been embarrassing as a young child, but she was my mother and she was nice to me. She'd been treating me like an adult since I was about six years old, and I liked having her respect.

At school, I made it through to lunch period without falling asleep, at which point I went out behind the cafeteria to smoke pot with the janitor, Mr. Theodore Alfonzo, which he insisted on being called. This had been a daily tradition since ninth grade. So for two years, I had been getting high with one of the men responsible for scraping gum out from underneath the desks. He never mentioned having any education, barely spoke English, and may very well have been a sociopath. Well, I just assumed it was a possibility because he laughed at the most inappropriate times, had no reaction to the sight of dead animals, and was the quietest, most polite person I had ever met in my entire life. These are just the characteristics of sociopaths that I learned in psychology class.

Mr. Theodore Alfonzo was a man of very few words, most of which were very philosophical. But I had learned this much about him: he had grown up either in South America or Mexico; he'd given me two stories, and he was the father of fifteen children, which I found hard to believe considering the fact that he looked to be no older than thirty-five. His arms were covered in tattoos of cherub angels, crosses, several versions of the Virgin Mary, and dozens of symbols that only met anything to him.

Anyway, every afternoon I would go and smoke pot with Mr. Theodore Alfonzo and I rarely said a thing. More often than not, we shared a comfortable silence. He was aware of when the bell was about to ring so when I had to go inside, I never had to say goodbye. And since he knew I was coming, I never had to say hello, either. Every once in a while, though, he'd share some little nugget of thought with me. Like once, I commented on how warm it was for being early April, and he'd said “If you think it's warm now, wait until the sun explodes and consumes us all.” I didn't have a response to that one. All I knew was that Mr. Theodore Alfonzo knew something I didn't, and I'm not talking about the art of waxing floors. I just hadn't figured out what it was yet.

That particular day, there was a slight breeze in the air and I had my back to it. Mr. Theodore Alfonzo sniffed the air like a bloodhound would if he were tracking an animal, and he looked directly at me.

“Summer, I'm going to tell you something.” he announced seriously, “You smell like cat food.”

I nodded my head slowly, letting my hair fall out of its ponytail for the fifth time that day. Then I walked back into the cafeteria to feed my munchies with French fries and chocolate milk.

I always took the bus home from school because I never knew what my mother was going to be doing when I arrived at home. I enjoyed freaking out my bus mates, especially the kids that went to the junior high. It was often my only entertainment. But she wasn't in the front yard that day.

When I walked into the house, she was in the kitchen wearing two white towels, one on her body and the other wrapped up on top of her head, turban style. She was throwing walnut leaves around the kitchen window, letting them fall into the sink. I smelled burning sage, juniper, jasmine, and maybe sandalwood. She was playing her Zen CD, which consisted mostly of Led Zeppelin and Janice Joplin.

“What are you doing?” I asked, dropping my book bag by the front door.

She looked at me as though I'd grown a second head, “I'm calling the trees.”

“Oh, okay.” I nodded, heading toward my bedroom. “I knew that. I don't know why I asked.”

“Yeah.” she scoffed, incredulous, and went back to tossing leaves.

I closed my bedroom door and thrw myself onto my double bed. My head landed on a cat and it meowed loudly, squirming to get away. I lay there for a minute before hearing a tapping at the window. When I sat up to investigate, Bobby Palmer was standing in the side yard, throwing pebbles at the window like we were in some kind of teen comedy. It was stupid, because he was only about two feet away.

“Hi.” He said when I finally opened the window.

“What?” I asked, confused. It came out as more of a command for information than a question.

“Can I come in?”

“What?” I repeated, still disoriented.

“I've got weed.” he said, holding up a cellophane baggy.

“I already got high today.”

“By yourself?” he asked.

“No.” I shook my head. “With Mr. Theodore Alfonzo.”

“Who the hell is that?” he asked, scrunching up his nose.

“The janitor.” I said.

“Oh.” he nodded, as though he expected nothing less from such a strange girl.

“You can come in.” I relented. “But only for a minute, because my mom's calling the trees.”

He looked up at the sky, as if to ask for divine guidance, and I pulled him up through the window and onto my bed.

We both sat quietly for a few minutes as he expertly rolled a joint. Before lighting it, he looked up and sniffed, “It smells like...”

“Cat food?” I suggested.

“I was going to say...” he sniffed some more, “Something's burning.”

“They're just herbs.” my mother said, practically throwing the door open. It brings balance, calms the good spirits, and gets rid of the evil ones. Sage is not only a repellent, but it's a... oh, where are my manners? Hello.”

Bobby nodded his head at my mother in greeting and carefuly hid the joint in his hand.

“Don't bother.” she flipped her wrist at him. “I don't mind smoking. The government lies to us all. Marijuana isn't a drug. Go on, enjoy yourself. Don't mind me.”

She sprinkled leaves in front of my dresser and leaned over my bed to toss more out the window.

“Mom.” I sighed. “There aren't any evil spirits in here. I promise.”

She gave me a skeptical look and then threw some leaves behind her back, like a chef throws salt for good luck.

Bobby looked out the window, as though he were contemplating an escape. I didn't blame him.

“I just realized who you are!” my mother practically shouted. “You're Bobby. You lie next door. Are you staying?”

“I...” Bobby shrugged, looking horrified.

“It's alright. I doubt you eat carob, anyway.” my mother matched his shrug, “I'm not offended.”

“Okay.” Bobby said, looking at me.

“Have a nice time studying or whatever.” she sang on her way out the door.

“Your mom is weird.” Bobby whispered.

I nodded slowly, “So I've heard.”

“What's wrong with you?” he asked.

“I'm hostile. I'm an adolescent.”

“Nuh-uh.” he shook his head. “You're a teenager.”

“They're one in the same. There's a book.”

“A book?”

“Yeah, you should read it.”

“I don't really read. What's it called?”

I shrugged, “You should probably go. She's gonna come back in here with the leaves any minute now.”

Bobby nodded and climbed out the window, “See you at school.”

“Yeah.” I said and started to close the window.

“Hey, wait.” he stopped me.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Did you say you smoked weed with the janitor?” he almost whispered.

I nodded, “Uh-huh.”

“That's really cool.” he said, “Maybe I'll come hang out with you guys some time.”

“Okay.” I said, unable to hide the smile.

“Bye.” he waved, grinning at me.

I shut the window and then the curtains and then I laid back down. My cheeks felt hot and the burning smudge sticks were making me sleepy. For a second, I imagined that there was a gas leak and I would end up sleeping forever. Or maybe Mr. Theodore Alfonzo would be in the neighborhood and save me.

Before falling asleep, I made a point to ask him why he insisted on being called by his full name.

I woke up at five o'clock the next morning and went into the living room. The smell of smudge sticks was still faint and there was a full pot of carob stew in the crock pot. My mom was out in the back yard, talking sweetly to Simon and Garfunkel. She wasn't naked yet, but she was in her bathrobe. I wondered how long it would take.

The hanging fern was barely visible in the window. I moved closer to see what the deal was and saw the the stems and leaves were lying completely flat against the potting soil. I took a deep breath and pulled it off its hook. Then I threw the contents into the compost bin that read “leaf and plant matter” and saved the container for my mother. Maybe we'd grow a black hellebore plant. Just in case we ever got the munchies.