October 16, second post
Why did Van Gogh bleed bold color and strokes on canvas? Did he go crazy because he chose wrong? Have you ever made a decision and been plagued with second thoughts?
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Ten minutes after teaching her last class, Starr climbed the steps of the two-bedroom cement block bungalow buried in foliage run amok where she grew up. Since she married Jackson, she’d probably stepped foot into her mother’s house less times than she’d birthed children.
Stale marijuana smoke crawled around the door to where Starr stood, conjuring her childhood emptiness. She hated how smells shot her back decades to a life she’d never choose to revisit.
She reached a hand toward the door and hesitated, unsure whether to knock or turn the knob.
She’d been ridiculously naïve to think Henna wouldn’t supply Cal with pot. She wrenched the door open.
Henna’s loose white bun flopped behind her when her head popped up. “Starr!” Her eyes lit up. The shiny, age-mottled skin of her face stretched into a smile. She set People magazine beside her on the sofa.
Starr marshaled the anger dance and an afternoon of teaching had only tamped down. “Cal wouldn’t have gone to jail if you weren’t giving him pot.”
Henna’s breath sucked in. Her face whitened.
Tears formed in the back of Starr’s eyes, and made her angrier. She didn’t want to lose control. “How can you keep undermining his life?”
“Freedom sings. Cal has the freedom to choose just like you did. You turned out like a charm. Cal’s my baby, too. I’d give him the world.”
A painting Starr had never seen of Henna’s house drenched in sunset stared at her from the wall behind Henna. Henna mothered Cal when she’d never mothered Starr. The unfairness of Cal’s and Henna’s love for each other fed her anger. “I saw Cal smoke a joint for the first time today.” The words ripped from Starr’s throat.
“You’re making a mountain out of a sand hill.”
Starr glanced at the wing-backed chair she’d curled into as a child, covered in cat hair, and chose to stand. It was the same old argument. She would never convince Henna or Leaf that marijuana had robbed her of a childhood. And they would never convince her that happy smoke was happy.
“Cal’s started down the same road Leaf took.”
Henna shrugged a shoulder, dislodging the patchwork sweater draped over her red muumuu. “Leaf picked himself up by his own boot laces. He always brought home the hot dogs, and his home was where his heart was—with me.”
A cynical laugh coughed from Starr’s chest. “Maybe his heart was home, but his body sure wasn’t.”
“I like a man who isn’t under foot all the time like a bad penny. The THC girls are my family, too. Forever friends are sisters.”
And I’m a mistake. A nuisance. Your burden to bear. Starr sighed. She wasn’t here to come to terms with her past. She was fighting for Cal’s future. “What might Leaf have accomplished if every ounce of his ambition hadn’t been anesthetized by marijuana? You can’t tell me you didn’t want more from him.”
“You make your bed, then you sleep in it.”
“Well, Cal’s sleeping in it, too. He’s going to turn into Leaf if you keep giving him weed. Is that what you want?”
Henna leaned forward, placing her hands on her thick knees. “Different strokes for different folks. Jesse’s like-father-like-Jackson. Let Cal find himself.”
Starr crossed the nubby rug to Henna, knelt, and grabbed her hand in a fierce clasp. “I’m begging you. Stop giving Cal pot.”
Henna stared at her with milky blue eyes, the corners of her lips twitching. “Starry, Starry Bright, if it means that much to you….”
Starr peered into her mother’s eyes, maybe the first time she’d really looked at her in years. She saw a woman, raised by a father, who never learned how to mother. A woman who had never been loved enough by Leaf.
Or by her daughter.
Starr rolled up to her feet. “Thanks, Mama.” The word felt like a stone in her mouth that lodged at the back of her throat. Last time her mother pledged to quit giving pot to someone, nothing changed. Starr had been a little girl begging Henna to cut Leaf off.
May it be different this time.