【by Allison Chabala】

Sal’s mother had liked lilies more than any other flower. Sal didn’t see the appeal – they were too pungent.  They made her nostrils flare, as if igniting a sense of indignation within her. Their scent permeated the entire room, drowning out everything else that was there. They were overwhelming, just like her mother was. As Sal got ready to go to the store and slipped on her shoes, she imagined her mother’s voice when she brought lilies home from the store. They represent purity and rebirth, did you know that, dear? They’re just beautiful, her mother would say with a sentimental voice, her tone wavering as she looked in awe at the flowers. Sal would smile back at her and say that she agreed, trying hard not to roll her eyes. They’re just flowers, for fucks sake, Sal thought. They don’t represent anything. In spite of her bitterness, Sal would never even consider sharing her opinions with her mother, or with anyone. But this only made her more bitter, and made her feel like she was about to fracture from everything that she stifled inside of herself. 

Sal would like to think that her idea of buying her late mother flowers for her birthday wasn’t spontaneous. She would like to think that she did this every year on her mother’s birthday. But she didn’t. She was now acutely aware of the growing hole in her life where her mother had previously resided, a cavity that she reluctantly acknowledged now harbored more resentment than fondness. 

Sal had, with much effort, overcome her unwillingness to drive to the store. She drove on a road parallel to the interstate that she was always too scared to drive on. She hated driving in general, but she figured she would have to do it eventually. Her unyielding grip on the steering wheel made her fingers turn a ghostly white and made her chewed off fingernails throb. 

The seatbelt now zipped back into the corner of the seat as Sal hopped down onto the pavement. Her eyes lingered on the backseat of the car for a moment, where, as a little child, she used to sit and smile at her mother through the rearview mirror. She looked at the Flower Mart sign that hovered above the door of the unassuming, dilapidated building across the street. She brushed down her clothes with sweaty palms, trying to ignore the lingering feeling that this visit warranted her wearing something more formal than her grungy jeans and tank top. What would her mother have said if she saw that her daughter was wearing a cropped shirt with no bra, jeans, with gaping holes in them? Sal did not want to entertain that thought, partially because she already knew the answer. All the times that her mother called her a slut and a tart as Sal left for school were now ringing in her ears.  She suddenly felt immodest and bare, even though the sunshine was unrelenting and made her perspire heavily. She gripped her phone and fought an urge to unlock it and mindlessly swipe her fingers over the different apps with her head bowed down.  

Instead she looked up. The sun rested right behind the chimney of the building, illuminating it with an ethereal light. For a moment it seemed more like a place of consecration than a sketchy store where teenage boys would buy corsages that they later would realize didn’t at all match with their dates’ flowy bright dresses. Sal shielded her face from the sun and kept her gaze fixed down again as she crossed the street, looking for a penny on the ground to make her feel lucky instead of alone. But all she saw were cigarette butts – remnants of careless, transient indulgences, laying neglected on the ground, ready to be stepped on again and again. 

Her phone started ringing, and Sal chose not to answer it in spite of how obnoxious the ringtone was. Her father’s contact name flashed on the screen, harkening back memories of their fight the previous night, memories that Sal in desperation wished were more distant in time than they really were. The moment when he said that Sal would have been a disappointment to her mother was replaying in her mind. Although his words were searing, she was more upset with herself for her inability to give a meaningful response. “Well, so-rry” was all she had retorted in the wake of his words.  

He would hopefully think the flowers were a ‘kind’ gesture to her mother and perhaps ‘ease up’ a little bit and stop being an asshole, thought Sal. This, with an air of stubbornness, was what she would consider to be her only motivation in going to the store. Sal tried her hardest to neglect the guilt that started gnawing at her following last night’s argument.  

Her mind continued to drift as she walked. I’m like Mrs. Dalloway buying flowers, Sal thought with a sour taste in her mouth. The novel that she read so long ago and to this day made absolutely no sense to her – her mother’s favorite. Her mother had loved it because Mrs. Dalloway took heed of every detail, which, by contrast, Sal found irritating. The narrative resembled Sal’s own life, she pondered. A life that felt laborious, in which each moment was stretched and yet which she still couldn’t understand.  

As she walked, she took out her phone to look at her messages,  and bumped into an elderly man holding a bouquet of peonies who was leaving the store. 

“Oh, sorry”, Sal said, still looking at her phone and brushing past him.  

“It’s ok, dear,” he replied in a soft voice. 

Her gaze was only drawn up from her phone as she entered the store.  She looked up at the place where the bells jingled above the door frame. The refrigerators in the store thrummed in a monotone. Sal strolled down the aisle, secretly noting how beautiful the colors were. The bright reds of the roses remained in her retina even as her gaze flicked past them. She was like a knight going down the chessboard, moving a little bit to the side as she moved forward to get a better glimpse of the flowers on each side of the aisle.  

After having picked and paid for the bouquet of lilies, Sal exited the store. Her gaze was immediately averted from the flowers as she saw an ambulance careen down the street, accompanied by the sound of honks and wailing sirens.  

She dropped the bouquet, but did not hasten to pick it up. The sight of the ambulance immediately summoned images of her mother following her fatal car accident, memories that were far clearer in her mind than their age might suggest them to be. Memories of holding her hand in the hospital as she slowly drifted from life, Sal’s space encroached upon by a darkness that could longer be abated from her mother’s warm embrace. Seeing the ambulance doors pop open no longer made Sal think of how she would feel immobilized and pinned in place in her mother’s presence, but rather of how she felt punctured by her mother’s absence. She felt just as punctured then as she did now, though she seldom acknowledged it.  

Sal sniffed and rubbed her nose with the hand that had dropped the flowers. The pangs of guilt and grief that she always tried to ignore were now released with this reminder of the suddenness and unpredictability of loss. She stood firmly in place yet she felt unmoored on the inside.  

***** 

An outside observer who was passing by may have observed that Sal stood there, eyes glued to the truck, for a long time. But for Sal, the moment felt even longer, because she was overwhelmed by every single emotion at once. Her feelings were a blurred cacophony that continually piled on top of itself. It was only after many moments that Sal continued to the car with trepidation, something that was now more than ever a reminder of that moment that haunted her. h

Sal drove to the cemetery, still preoccupied with the image of the ambulance. She walked past the trickling fountain that was filled with pennies at the bottom. Pennies that were baptized with wishes as they flew from the air and submerged in the water, wishes for the returning of loved ones. They were wishes that Sal dearly shared but that she always chose to hide. 

 She felt a sense of anxiety as she trekked up the hill on top of which lay a vast expanse of graves that stretched to the horizon. As she approached her mother’s grave, Sal cleared her throat, like she had to warn her mother of her presence because she felt so obtrusive when she was around her. Even when her mother was no longer really there. She was absently brushing her thumb and forefinger over the delicate petals of the white lilies, which summoned a feeling of tenderness. Akin to the tenderness that emanated from her mother’s touch while she smoothed her hands over her communion dress all those years ago as she hemmed it. Or from when her mother brushed Sal’s hair. This, of course, was before soft smiles receded from their relationship and begrudging sighs emerged. Before her hair stopped being soft and turned into the unkempt mass that she now had to keep swiping away from her wet face as she looked at the grave. Before Mommy turned to Mom. Before Sal stopped thinking of the love that was shown between them, but of the dissonance between them that was becoming increasingly hard to conceal.  

Sal, in spite of her Catholic upbringing, wasn’t a very devout person. When her family would say grace before meals, she would mutter the words with a vacuous expression, like they were words of a foreign language that she didn’t really care to understand. The only time she prayed independently was when she wanted superficial things and she felt she needed to summon a higher power to attain them. But when she bowed her head down at that moment, she knew that this prayer was important. Yet she knew that nothing would ever come of it – she couldn’t resurrect her mother, even though at this moment it was all that she wished for.  

She simply told her mother how even though they had drifted apart, she still loved her. Pain was easily discernible on a face that was usually a drought of emotions. Sal, even though her life was filled with fake apologies, insincere compliments, and hidden emotions, knew at this moment that she was finally being sincere. Being sincere was a remedy to the parts of her that felt broken. A feeling of self loathing came over her. How was it that she could only communicate these feelings when it hardly mattered anymore? 

“Happy birthday Mom”. Her tone wavered and she sniffed again. 

She laid down the lilies, their scent only making her cry more. Perhaps they did represent something, and she was only just now able to see it.