April Write-A-Thon: Day 27
Almost there people!! Here is another Wild Card.
I watch them come by every day. All the children come in with their parents and gawk at the flowers on display.
“That one!” they cry. “I want that one.”
Sometimes the parents indulge their child's request and sometimes they don't. When they do my heart thumps. It's happy, yet painful. Those are my friends, going to new houses, destined to be loved and cared for, but I am just a cactus. No one loves a cactus.
However, there was a moment, a glimpse of hope, when a child called our their desires, and for once their finger was pointed at my shelf. Even more, it was pointed at me. I stood straighter. Taller. Proud of my spines. As you should be, a cactus is beautiful and strong. My grandmother would say that to me if I had one.
My shelf was lower than the other, but it was the perfect height for the boy in front of me. The boy with scratched knees and dirt caked on his face. His hands reached out to me. I would have done the same if circumstances were different, but I didn't need to. He grabbed hold of my pot and looked at me. Admiration stirred in his eyes. I was picked! He picked me! There was no time to say goodbye to the others that lined the shelf I had called home. I was being swept away and taken to the checkout counter.
Above his head, I was held, out to his mother. I could barely see over the counter but I looked nonetheless. The boy’s mother turned to me. I smiled wide. She snarled. Then she gasped. Then she screamed.
Before I knew it, I was falling from the boy's hands listening to the woman berate the man at the counter.
“How dare you have such dangerous things where a child can reach them! I should have you sued!”
I had no idea what ‘sued’ meant but it didn't matter. The ground had come, sooner than I would have hoped, and my bright red pot shattered.
No one gasped. No one cried. The woman pulled her son away from me and my, now, crooked spines. She paid for her things and stormed out. My little boy, I mean the little boy looked back once, then never again.
Time passes slower, or was it faster? Time passes when you are on the linoleum floor, shattered and broken. I lost any care for what happened after. Every plant knows what happens after you break; recycle and compost.
So, when I was picked up and taken away, I tried to think nothing of it. I was forced to when, not only did I pass the compost bin and the recycle, but I was placed into a styrofoam coffee cup.
“I will have to do better when I get you home,” a voice said.
I looked around and saw that the voice came from the man at the checkout counter, who looked much more like a boy than a man. I couldn't be sure that it was him, but, from the little I saw at the counter, he was wearing the same beanie.
“Listen, I have to go back to work, so I will have to leave you in my locker for now.”
He kept talking to me, not at me. It felt nice. I had no clue what a ‘locker’ was but I soon found out it was a dark, stinky (but not the good kind), and small room with a door. At least it wasn't the compost. So I waited.
I waited until it became even darker and the sound of the crowd outside silenced. When the locker finally opened, it was the same boy.
“Oh good. You're still here,” He smiled as he took me out, then the items that had been surrounding me. It was another long wait as he locked up the store.
I was outside for the first time.
It was marvelous. I wished that the sun hadn't gone away and I could have felt it. The boy took me to a moving object and we when to his home. His home was much smaller than mine, but he didn't seem to be bothered by it. Once inside, we were greeted by a strange animal. It was all black and was missing a tail.
‘Milky’ vibrated and snuggled around the boy’s legs. He let the animal do its routine and then went to get its food from the kitchen. From there it was pretty simple. The boy got the animal's food, then his own, then he watched a show on the television. It took a while until he brought his dishes back to the sink that he remembered me.
“Let's get you a new home.”
He opened cabinets and pulled out a white porcelain mug with a mustache on it. “This should do,” he muttered to himself. I was transferred over to the new pot. It was roomy. I had lost most of my dirt in the fall, the only stuff I had left was what stuck to my roots. The boy set me down and walked outside, coming back with a handful of new soil.
I was given the most delicious water, my dirt was packed in tight, and I was brought to a shelf overlooking the living room with a window behind my back.
The boy looked at me and smiled, something he must have done often, but it gave me a better chance to look at him. He had taken off his beanie and a mop of black hair was freed. Black seemed to be his color. It was under his eyes. It was all he wore. And it colored the donuts in his ears.
My inspection of him stopped. Partly because my heart did, and partly because he walked away. He must have noticed the spines, on the top of my head, were missing. Gone. Broken. Left on the floor of the store waiting to be swept up.
I had begun to think that he would never come back, but he did.
“You look like my step-dad. Balding.”
His words made him laugh. He came over to the shelf I was on and showed me what was in his hands. “I couldn't decide which one fit best for the occasion.” He held up three crocheted items. “What do you like? The wizard hat? The nurse hat? Or the cowboy?”
I would have shrugged, but he kept talking.
“They might be a little big, ‘cause I made them to fit Milky, but they should work until I can get around to making you a new one.” He paused and looked at the hats in his hands. “I think you are more of a cowboy.”
The hat was set atop my head. It would have consumed me had it not been for my remaining spikes.
“You look good. I think I’ll name you… Chip. Kinda like Cookie, but not so generic. Anyway, hello Chip my name is Tyler. A pleasure to meet you.”
He took hold of one of my spines between his fingers and shook it.
I think I am going to like it here.