Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

Nine | Marigold

"...like all planets, I turn in my sleep, I've been doing it since before I was born. My body is a nightmare, it hurts me everyday."
—Brian Ellis

• • •

"Breathe, Little Wrenning-bird," a voice chanted, strong arms cradling her like that of a child against an even stronger chest. "You have to breathe."

Bailey had always been a good girl -had always done as told so as to appease the incessant urge to never anger -or god-forbid, disappoint- someone she cared about. She absolutely loathed the feeling of disobedience, and therefore made a conscious effort to do any and everything within her power to never experience it. For the most part she succeeded; however, there was one instance -much like the one she was experiencing presently- that stuck out in her mind when she failed to do so. To this day, it pained her.

Or rather, it haunted her really.

"What did I tell you?" Renée hissed, tugging on a seven year old Bailey's arm. Her grip was tight, nails digging into the soft flesh of her bicep as she pulled her forcefully behind her out of the living room and into the backyard. "What did I tell you, Bailey Wrennyn?"

"I-I-" the words stayed lodged in her throat, unwilling to come out in fear of saying the wrong thing. It was never her intention to knock over the glass figurine. She was being a good girl, dusting the glass countertops just as she'd been told, and if she hadn't looked down at the last second, she might have almost missed it. "T-there was a s-s-"

"I didn't ask for an excuse!"

Snake. That's what she had been struggling to say. A snake so long it rivaled that of her arm all the way from shoulder to wrist. Running lengthwise against the white crown-moulding of the house, the brown Western Diamondback Rattlesnake went by almost unnoticed as it laid idly by. Bailey had seen its kind before -recognized it from one of the hundreds of pictures old man Jodie had taped up on the stucco walls of his snake-shack back in Acoma- and knew by the white and black striped tail and rattle that it was quick to be defensive and venomous in nature. Her Gran had never particularly approved of her midday venturings to visit the snakes caught by the grey-haired man who wore feathers in his braids that he picked up off the ground, but she had never tried to stop her either. "A right old coot, that man is," Edith had always told Bailey when she found her slipping on her shoes by the front door. "But I suppose he's lonely enough as it is," she'd concede, sighing as if it physically pained her to gift the man any semblance of the small amount of pity she had tucked away inside her heart. "Might as well go with you to say hello and tell him to stop filling your impressionable young mind with those bat-shit stories of his." Then she'd roll her eyes at Bailey's widened ones. "Excuse my French, dear." And off they'd go.

But her Gran wasn't there this time -she had dropped her off in Phoenix to spend a week with Renée and Bella for Summer break.

"You're so reckless!" Renée ranted, never loosening her grip around Bailey's arm as she continued pulling her along to the back porch, other hand clenched around a dustpan carrying all the broken pieces Bailey had scattered across the floor. "I've never had to discipline Bella, but because my mother clearly isn't doing her job right, it looks like I'm going to have to do something about you." She sighed then, as if the weight of the world had suddenly slid down on her shoulders and Bailey was the sole cause of that weight in the first place -which, she supposed, was true. "Now you're going to sit here," she decided firmly, pushing down on Bailey's shoulders until she collapsed into the dirt across from the porch, "and you're going to stay here until you've managed to glue each piece of that ballerina back together again." Then she shoved the dustpan and a tube of gorilla glue into Bailey's arms and stomped her way back inside.