The Voting Machine

A Tale of Two Flowers

We drove past Barstow, the last city before the long stretch of no man's land that takes you to the Nevada border. Annabelle filled the time by telling me about her interest in voter outreach and the Salinger campaign in Las Vegas.

"The key is to connect to people, Temo. We walk door-to-door. We call people in phone banks. We set up booths in busy areas like post offices and DMVs and discount stores. We ask everyone we meet about voting and make sure they're signed up. Then we tell them about Salinger.

"He has a story that can reach many types of people. He's lived between different races, different cultures, different classes. People can see their better selves in someone like that, they see someone who can overcome divisions and build bridges to the future.

"The way he helped us bring the Sunflower Foundation into Nevada is a perfect example. Nobody in the state government wanted to spend any money on drug treatment programs. They wanted to just lock everybody up and throw away the key, even small-time possession offenders. So they'd put kids away for getting caught with a joint or some meth or a line of coke and then the kids would come out of prison with ten times as many problems.

"These people weren't hardened criminals when they went in, they weren't robbing or murdering, they had psychological problems that were treatable. Instead, they got sent to prison. And prison isn't a mental hospital, it's not designed to heal people and make them productive again. Salinger sold a proposal through the legislature based on Sunflower's success in California. We got money to co-fund pilot centers in Las Vegas for three years."

"Have the rehab centers been successful?"

"Yeah, they've been a huge success. The clinics have been so effective that they've become targets for the drug gangs because they're taking customers away. This is even worse outside of Nevada. Last year, one of the cartels went into a clinic by the Mexican border and executed all the staff and patients."

The image sent a chill through me, bringing back memories of my encounter with Juan Ricardo in the jail cell.

"My job now is to help other people and protect them," Annabelle said. "You can never truly be happy just doing things for yourself. Someone told me that in counseling when I was a teenager and I didn't believe them. So I spent so many years just trying to satisfy my own desire and forget my own pain. I was never happy. Now I realize they were right; happiness comes from serving others.

"Whenever I get weak and crave my old addictions, I think about my mission now. And this mission keeps me going. Because for a long time I thought my life would never have a purpose."

I watched Annabelle as she drove. I was so lucky to have this woman as my savior. She was so lovely and intelligent. And she believed in me completely. Yet I couldn't help but look at her and remember the sadness that seemed to cover her like a cloud.

"This assignment will be easy for you," she said. "Being good and helping others comes to you naturally. For me, it's different. It's like wearing a dress that doesn't fit. I don't have it in me naturally to be a good person. I am selfish. I am angry. I am empty. So I have force myself to do the right thing."

"Why do you say that, Annabelle? Why are you so hard on yourself?"

"I don't know," she said softly.

"Did someone hurt you?"

"No one did anything. That's the point. I always wanted to blame my life on someone else. I was mad at my father and my mother for the divorce and the girls at the private school for not accepting me and the boyfriends who didn't treat me right. Then I realized maybe the problem wasn't someone else. Maybe it was my fault all along."

"You were young, Annabelle. You can't blame yourself for what happened when you were a kid. That's what I did for so long."

"But nothing happened to me, Temo! That's the point. My parents got divorced - but so what? They gave me the best life they knew how. I had all these advantages that most people would never even dream about. I went to the top all-girls prep school, Our Sacred Lady. I was rich, pretty, healthy, loved. I had every reason to be happy and content. But I wasn't. I blew it. I couldn't be the person that everyone expected. And there was no good reason why I couldn't be that person."

She wiped her face and laughed suddenly.

"You know why I call it the Sunflower Foundation? It goes back to Our Sacred Lady. All the girls there were beautiful and popular and destined for great things. They called us roses at the school, like we were going to blossom into the most wonderful things in the world. There was a tradition for all the girls to get rose tattoos, to show that we were sisters, to show that we were part of an exclusive circle."

"So I went to Hollywood one day with some of the other girls and they told me I had to do it. They told me it was my turn. So I went under the needle in the tattoo parlor and the whole time I had this image in my head. You know what I was thinking? I was thinking in my head that I wasn't meant to be a rose. I had this image of a sunflower, because that was always my favorite flower. But I knew they wouldn't let me to get a sunflower tattoo because that was weird and stupid. And so I had this idea that I was supposed to be a sunflower but they were trying to turn me into a rose. And when you try to turn a sunflower into a rose it gets stunted; it withers, it becomes frail and hollow. It turns into something unnatural"

"That's the past, Annabelle. You can be anything you want to be. And you're doing it."

"I know. That's why I named the foundation as a reminder to myself. I can be who I want to be. I don't have to be what they expect me to be. But I was afraid to be myself for all those years, Temo. Those memories haunt me. And when they do, I feel the urge to take a hit. I feel the craving for the drugs again."

I wondered why she brought all this up. This had to be connected to the hints of sadness I'd seen earlier, the signs of fragility underneath her powerful new persona as a virtuous foundation director. "Did something like that happen recently? Did something trigger a memory from your past?"

"Anything can trigger a memory. The past doesn't leave us. It's everywhere. Before I would cancel out the past with the drugs. But I am clean now. I cancel the past out by thinking about my dream and how I am going to change things. That's become my fix."