Look at Flower Read online

  I’m up at 6 a.m., still an early riser (all those cows growing up), and needless to say nobody else in this huge house is stirring. I slept like a rock, but I still dreamed (was it dreaming?) that people were coming in all night. I pull my extra-large T-shirt down to my knees and head into the kitchen, flouncing my wild blonde bed-head hair. I love this: There are boxes of cereal all lined up along a counter, must be twenty of them. All my favorites. I spy a box of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies with the Krispie elves boogying on the cover, pull it down, take out a bottle of milk from the fridge, and make myself a nice bowl of cereal.

  The Krispies are chattering away when a girl I haven’t met before comes into the kitchen. She looks about my age, well, my fake age, and, look, she’s wearing a nightgown with a big sunflower on her chest.

  “Hey,” she says, “you’re up early.” She peers at me through pale blue eyes. “I don’t know you, do I?”

  “I’m Flower,” I say. I’m up on my tiptoes, bobbing before her, letting her take in my own misty blue eyes, my hand out. She has a very smooth hand, shaking mine.

  “I’m Loretta.” She gives me a smile. “You just crashing here?”

  I shrug. “Yeah, I was dancing in the park yesterday, and Jerry said I could come stay here.”

  Her finely plucked eyebrows go up at the name Jerry. She’s pretty, too. Light brown hair, skin smooth as cream, those cool blue eyes. “So how long you staying?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t really have plans, you know.” I lift my arms. “I’m like a—” I twirl about, arms out “—you know, I just sort of float around.”

  “Cool,” she says. Then: “Hey, you want to hang with me today?”

  “Sure. Yeah, that’d be righteous.” I hear myself. I’ve been using that word righteous a lot more lately. Not sure where I picked it up from. I remember that preacher guy from the day before, wonder if he found any young chicks to save. Am I saved? I gotta tell you, from where I came from to get here, in my own way I’m feeling pretty fuckin’ saved.

  Just look at Flower, yeah, she’s sitting in a sunny kitchen eating her favorite cereal and having a sweet conversation with a brand-new friend, and I think back to last winter, still at home, the gray dawn pounding down, Dad in his overalls, our big, sad dog Rufus padding about, Mom walking around silent and eternally reproachful; and there’s that underlying tension that’s been all I’ve known there since I was thirteen, four years back; it’s something upstairs (they have me sleeping in a room off the back), and it’s secret—sad and secret. Something between Mom and Dad that keeps her going to the Pentecostal a lot and leaving Dad out on his tractor. That keeps her upstairs on Saturday night while he plays solitaire on a card table with cards so worn only he can make out the number and suit. That on Sunday, after she’s forced Dad and me and Kevin and Doree to go with her to church, to sit there staring deep into space while Reverend Overbridge speaks his words, makes afternoon family supper last for even more of an eternity. That makes the whole farm this stifling, uptight place that keeps Flower bummed and morbid when she should be lifting her arms to the sun. . . .

  “So finish up your cereal,” Loretta says, “and let’s head on out.”

  - - - - -

  Look at Flower blowing bubbles. Look at Flower jangling the beads around her neck. Look at Flower dancing, fingers catching in her long, wind-blown hair, stepping and grooving with her new friend Loretta.

  Loretta takes me to her secret spot. It’s about fifteen minutes into Golden Gate Park, down a short path, inside a copse of pines. Toto rushes in ahead of us. There’s a circle of stones there, for fires, Loretta says, surrounded by rocks tall enough to sit on. I take one, Loretta the next. Toto settles at my feet.

  “Some nights,” she says, “the tribes gather here. We build a fire. Make music.” She winks at me. “Ball.”

  “Really, outside?”

  “Oh, that’s nothing.” She leans in close. I can smell her breath, fragrant with the strawberry gum she chews. “Sometimes we have sacrifices.”

  “Of what?” I say, alarmed. Then I think of my history class and say, “Virgins?” I remember the Aztecs. “Any of them around?”

  She looks at me curiously then. It’s a little spooky. “You are, aren’t you?”

  I bring a hand to my mouth. I say, “How do you know?” before I can even think to not say it.

  “Special powers,” Loretta says with her own laugh. “I can just tell these things. But no, we don’t sacrifice virgins. Or cats . . . or dogs. Or anything like that. Mostly just things from our old lives.”

  “Like—”

  Loretta shrugs. “Like clothes, letters, phone messages from our parents—”

  “Where do you come from?” I ask.

  “Um, I like to say Elizabethan England, but truth is, Petaluma.”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s this chicken town north of here. And you?”

  “Bend.” Like anyone would know.

  “That’s in Oregon, right?”

  I nod brightly, then say, “Cows.”

  Loretta laughs. “I thought I smelled something. . . .”

  “That’s what I’d sacrifice,” I told her. “That damn smell from home.”

  - - - - -

  So here’s Flower, the virgin of the Summer of Love. Not that I want to be, really—well, maybe I guess I do, ’cuz if I wanted to ball someone, I could just head down to Haight and wait for Harley to drive by on his bike. I bet he’d do it in a minute. But I just don’t want to. So what it’s the Summer of Love! I’m here to be free. Truly truly free. My own kind of free. . . .

  Look at Flower and Toto back spare-changing on Haight. Wearing my patched jeans and embroidered shirt, clean because I made enough the other day to hit the laundromat. Thing is, our hearts aren’t in spare-changing today. Loretta’s got me thinking about back home. I don’t miss it, really don’t. . . . Well, maybe sometimes I get a little homesick, in a general hollowed-out-inside kind of way, and sometimes I miss some of my things, especially my books, my dolls, and this one lemony-yellow dress Mother bought me that I always felt so clean and pure wearing . . . but, really, I can sit there and pet Toto and pretty soon I’m not wanting those home things at all.

  When things began to change, like I said, I was in middle school. My folks were never hip—ooh, la, la—but when I was young they were kinda O.K. Dad would work too hard and then just want to sit in his easy chair staring at boxing on TV, but Mom would want to go out, to a dance at the Hall or to visit her sisters down the road, and there’d be some this-and-that, but they’d always work it out; Dad would usually be a good sport, and off they’d go. My older brother, Kevin, was out with his high school pals, and I’d be enlisted to babysit my sister, Doree, who’s five years younger than me. She’s sort of dopey but she’d listen to me, and I didn’t mind taking care of her. I want to be a mother someday myself, and it was good practice.

  Anyway, Mom and Dad would go do whatever, and when they came back, sometimes he’d have her up on his shoulders, carrying her into our house. He’d call her his “bride.” They’d be laughing.

  Then they weren’t. There was a flurry of doctor visits, then there weren’t. After that Mom started to get more uptight and distant, and I could tell Dad tried to reach her, but it wasn’t working. They stopped going out at night together, ever. Mom was going off to the Pentecostal at all hours, and Dad started in with his solitaire. I know he tried to talk to her, but she was sphinxed-up most of the time.

  How did we get by? If Mom wasn’t around, I’d be made to take care of Doree after school, which was O.K. And I had my books, my lovely books I could disappear into. Kevin took a job at a lumber store and worked there as many hours as he could. Dad just looked . . . like the world was squashing him down.

  What exactly happened? All these years, I still don’t know. Was Mom sick? She didn’t seem any different, and nobody said a word. Money? But we seemed always to have at least enough. It was just something tense and unresolved th
at led to this horrible gray silence that got thicker and thicker. Like you’d turn around and walk into a big wall of ice. Like you’d say something joyful and see the words fall from your mouth like they were frozen. Like you could see the cloud come in the door and float up the stairs; and you’d wrap your sweater tighter around your shoulders to try to keep warm.

  But that’s not why Flower left. Unh-uh. I left because I saw this news report on the TV, and even though it was in black and white, I saw these free spirits in their flowing cotton dresses and loose pants dancing loosey-goosey ’neath the San Francisco sky, homemade music floating, just these happy-happy grins on their faces; and I thought to myself, Cynda, when was the last time you felt free and happy? When was the last time a puppy grin erupted on your face? When was the last time a rainbow came and sat on your shoulder?

  And, hey, I was almost eighteen. What could stop me? I walked out to the road past the farm one morning even ’fore Dad got up, stuck out my thumb, and five rides later I was walking down the Panhandle here in the Haight.

  It was really the first time I’d been away from home except for church overnights and the occasional basketball game we’d all drive to, and it was scary, of course, but I took right to it. I had no problem finding places to crash—though none as cool as this Dead house—and found I could always panhandle enough to get a sandwich or eat for free at the Digger feed. I got lonely, sure, but it was still never as bad as I felt every day at home. Then I got Toto—my savior. (A dumpy chick named Mushroom gave him to me; she was leaving the Haight, said she’d had enough and was hitchhiking home.) Toto, little ball of fluff Toto, he’s the best buddy a girl ever. . . .

  Look at Flower, she’s started to cry. That happens to me now and then, for no reason. Tears just flow out of me; my eyes turn into two watering cans. I got these daisies I like to paint on my cheeks, and the tears always mess ’em up; and like that, there’s yellow and blue dye running like messy fingerpainting down my chin. If I’m not careful, it’ll get all over my nice clean, white cotton blouse—

  Oh, it’s a real disaster. I swab up what I can, then clutch Toto closer to me and think where I can go to mop up my face. That’s one of the hard things about living out on the street like this, where to find running water. My favorite place, the Standard Oil station on Stanyan, just padlocked its bathroom ’cuz of all the hippies, but I have my new secret source: a hose that runs out to a small garden a half a block up the hill on Frederick, in front of a big white Victorian. I stop my tears and tuck Toto into my blouse and head up there to wash off.

  I like climbing up the hill, the whole Haight-Ashbury circus melts away and there are just these quiet streets and great old Victorian houses; they remind me of all those fat English novels I read back under the covers at night. Up here, the air feels clearer, too, more like it was back home. San Francisco is one seriously beautiful city.

  It’s a hot day, and once I get the dye cleaned up, I put the hose over my head and let the water run through my hair. Oh, that feels good! I’m leaning over, and the hose water cascades down the front of my head, puddling on the street. I’m bending down to let Toto drink from the water spill when I hear this voice; it’s like a cawing in my ear. I straighten up and see an older lady standing there. She’s wearing a floppy-brimmed hat, silver hair underneath it, a thick corduroy shirt and thick leather gloves on her hands. She has clipping shears in her right hand. She’s behind a white picket fence, and I’m on the other side of it, her hose in my hand.

  “What do you think you’re doing, my dear?” she says. Her voice is rumbly but stern, and her eyes are sharp.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am, it’s so hot, and I . . . I had these flowers on my cheeks, and the paint . . . well, my face was just this mess . . . and I just borrowed your hose. . . .”

  Her nose is long but straight, with a little flip to the end, and she looks at me down it. “You children, you just think everything belongs to you.”

  I smile at her and say lightly, “Doesn’t it?”

  She glares at me, but I’m smiling back at her—love bombing her, we call it—and Toto’s peeking his bright eyes out of my shirt, and like that her face softens. “Oh, youth!” she cries, then turns and starts walking back into her garden.

  Ten paces in, and she turns back. “You seem like a sweet soul,” she says. “What’s your name?”

  “Flower.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “No, it is.”

  “Is not.” Her eyes are gleaming. She says this like she wants a fight.

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because you’re spending time down there on the Haight, and you’ve read Life magazine, and you think you’re supposed to act a certain way, and so you do.” She has her arms folded tight over her chest. I look more closely at her face. She has a gazillion lines, radiating it seems in circles around her eyes and her mouth; but her face isn’t really mean, it’s sort of kindly. The thought of the grandmother in Hansel and Gretel pops into my head.

  “No, we’re the new world,” I say. “It’s nothing like in the magazines.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen plenty of new worlds come and go—”

  “This is my new world,” I tell her. It’s funny, we’ve both been getting closer to the picket fence, and now it’s like we’re both right up in each other’s faces.

  Suddenly she laughs, not mean but sort of radiant. I find I’m smiling, sort of surprised. “O.K., dear, here.” She pushes open a swinging gate. “Come on in, let me feed you some lunch. You look hungry.”

  I dig in my heels like I’m going nowhere, but truth is, I am hungry, and Toto’s hungry, too, and I find I’m kind of digging this old woman.

  “Can you feed my dog, too?”

  “Oh, child,” the woman lets out in a kind of hiss like a balloon leaking air. Then: “Yes, yes, come, come, come.”

  The house is full of funny things, the first I notice is a white ivory statue on the table in the foyer with hands unfolding off it—eight different hands, every which way. (Later she tells me it was a gift from an artist friend of hers named Marcel Duchamp; I never heard of him.) Farther back is a library with what looks like thousands of books.

  “I’m Kay,” she says when we’re seated at a round white table in her sunny yellow kitchen. She’s taken off her gardening hat, and her silver hair, whipped into intricate waves, catches the overhead light.

  “Flower.” I wink at her, then hold out my hand.

  She looks at my hand hanging here, then says, “Tell me your real name.”

  “No.”

  She jumps up, her hands whooshing before her. “I like a little impudence, child. But only a little. Up. Get up! You’re leaving now!”

  What? Wait, this room is so nice, and she wants me to . . . just like that?

  “Cynda,” I say.

  She stops.

  “Short for Lucinda, but I like it like that. C-y-n-d-a. With a y.”

  “That’s a fine name,” she says, backing off and going to the refrigerator. “A lot better than Flower.”

  “But Flower’s my name now.”

  She holds up a wrinkled hand, defensively. “O.K., I got it. Flower.” She makes a face, like she’s holding her nose, and I have to laugh.

  I shrug. “O.K., call me Cynda.”

  “And what’s your last name.”

  I tighten up inside. “I don’t have a last name.”

  “Don’t play with me, child.”

  “I don’t want to say it.”

  She’s looking at me long and hard, and then she relaxes. “We all have our secrets, oh, yes.” A faint smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Well, there’re meat sandwiches, and homemade potato salad (with, Kay tells me, homemade mayonnaise), and a huge bottle of Pepsi that I keep filling my tumbler out of. Kay chops up some of the meat and puts it in a little bowl on the floor for Toto, who wolfs the whole thing in a flash.

  We talk. Kay’s a writer and a teacher at the local college, and knows more thin
gs than anyone I’ve ever met. We really hit it off, I feel. She’s telling me stories of where she grew up in the Midwest and when she lived in Paris when she was in her twenties, right after World War I.

  I remember something from school and say, “Did you know Ernest Hemingway?”

  She’s looking down her long, thin nose. “What do you know about Ernest?”

  “I read a couple of his books in high school.” I look at her; she’s wrinkling up her nose. “Liked them.”

  Finally she nods. “I knew him, yes.” She lifts her shoulders, and I’m sure she’s letting me know she didn’t think much of him.

  I wonder why, but what I say is: “That must’ve been an exciting time.”

  She nods, then says, “We were wild then, too, but not that wild.” She fixes her sharp gaze right on me. “And we never took up silly names.”

  “Did you change the world?” I ask her, maybe a little too directly. My belly’s full and all of a sudden I burp really loudly. I flush red, then excuse myself.

  Kay doesn’t say anything. I’m not sure she heard my question, and I don’t really want to say it again, but then she says softly, “I think we all like to think we did that.” She looks sort of past me and adds in a whisper, “What’s the point if we haven’t?”

  “Well, that’s what we’re doing. Every day.”

  “By what, begging on the street?”

  “Inventing things. Changing things. Showing people different ways to be.”

  She’s very quiet, then she says, “Well, Godspeed, child.”

  We talk more, but it’s just general stuff, but then Kay says in her high voice, “It sounds to me, Miss Flower, like you might need a place to stay.” She throws out her arms. “I have a couple of guest rooms downstairs. You’re welcome.”

  I’m thinking I don’t know how long I can stay at the Dead house, Jerry didn’t give me any kind of time thing, but it’s so cool there, so I tell Kay thanks but I’m all set for now.