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Wild Violets

Terri Muuss

My father’s hand tight around a fistful of pennies. They shine like mirrors as he counts them out on the edge of my Holly Hobby bedspread at midnight. One, two, three, four... I am paralyzed watching him. I am waiting. I want those pennies but what must I do to have them? They are painfully new, reflectively shiny. They dazzle me. I know how cold they will be until warmed in the tiny palm of my hand. They are such a precious thing. I want to put the pennies in my mouth. In the sides of my mouth, those copper pennies will taste like blood. He gathers me onto his lap and strokes my knee. In my right hand is a folded picture from one of my father’s hunting and fishing magazines. I like to look at the pictures of the fish: their glassy eyes tinged with blood, their clipped fins. I stare for hours at the huge fingers which push themselves under the fishes’ vermillion gills as they are held aloft into the white air. Their gills are red, so bright, held by men with yellow, crooked teeth and dark smiles. As I tighten my grip on the wrinkled paper in my hand, my father begins to smile, too.
Later, I escape outside and stoop to collect violets and put them in the white wicker of my bicycle basket. I carefully pick each one at its base and kiss its delicate head before bundling them with bits of string or paperclips. I ride for long hours up and down Ellen Street, leaving small gifts of freshly picked dandelions and violets in my neighbors’ mailboxes. I ride my bike until my Achilles ache and the sun drips down the sky, leaving a wash of watercolor. “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” I pronounce to the sky. At dusk, I go into the open field on our street to lie down in the tall grass and listen to the crickets sing until the streetlights come on. Most days, I run home so as not to be late. But some evenings, I lie for a few extra moments and allow myself to fade into the backdrop of night: to be lost, invisible, and yet a part of something larger than myself. Soon, I hear my mother’s call summoning me back to our house, the one with the peeling paint and secrets. But for a few seconds, I am free. Returning to my bike, I find the dry carcasses of violets wilted into the cracks of my white wicker bicycle basket.

*originally published in Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013)

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