Chapter 6
Venus
I can’t sleep in the loft’s upgraded guest bed, despite its plush linens and comfortable mattress.
By three in the morning, I’m irritated and restless.
I tug my boots on, grab my hammock, creep outside, and attach my trustworthy sling of a bed between the weeping willow and crepe myrtle at the back end of Dad’s garden.
When my eyes open, the afternoon sun beats down through the branches, heating my face. My head hangs nearly upside down off the side of the hammock, hair grazing the ground, and one leg spills from the other end—I’m barely hanging on.
I hear laughing.
Finding my footing with my untied boots, I see my father and Christie, each carrying a mug at different levels near their faces, watching me like I’m a creature in an exhibit. This is a rare Venus in her natural habitat. Don’t provoke her. She may become… difficult.
A glance at my watch reveals I’ve slept twelve hours.
Christie snickers at my clear confusion.
“Travel exhaustion. Here, drink this.” He hands me a mug, which warms my hands and fills my nose with delicate smells—cinnamon, ginger, and lemon.
I inhale deeply, awakening my senses. I’ve been all over the world, and nothing compares to my father’s homemade teas.
“Thank you,” I mumble.
“Are you unwell, Venus?” Dad’s forehead scrunches with concern.
“I’m fine.”
“Was the bed uncomfortable?” he asks.
“You’re the first to sleep in it,” Christie explains.
“It’s not the bed… It’s the lack of movement,” I say, standing and stretching.
“She has sea legs. She has to get her land legs again,” Christie summarizes.
“Ah, it may take time to adjust your equilibrium,” Dad agrees. “Come inside. We fixed you a late lunch.”
Over tea and grilled cheeses at the small table near the front window, Dad skims the local paper through his reading glasses, occasionally hmming or commenting.
Meanwhile, Christie giggles and gasps over his paperback.
I fetch my journal, perusing pages in my lap so they can’t see, while I eat and sip.
Despite the addition of Christie, this is how we used to eat our meals—Dad, Ivy, and me.
It’s oddly comforting—our version of normal.
“Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you to the university to get you acclimated,” Dad announces softly. “Classes begin Monday at nine.”
“Is it too late to make it a virtual class?” I ask.
“Yes. Most students prefer a classroom experience,” he says, “with discussions and camaraderie.”
Christie’s eyes cut to Dad’s like they’re sharing a secret.
“As the professor, you’ll have control,” he adds. “You’ll enjoy that, I think. It’s an entirely different dynamic than you remember from school.”
“So, I get to torture students this time?” I say, deadpan.
While Christie snickers, Dad and I share a look that carries an entire conversation.
Hmm, torture seems an exaggeration.
Torture is the intentional infliction of suffering. Not an exaggeration.
No one intended to hurt you, Venus. Some of your teachers might argue that you tortured them.
Scoff. I was a child.
A child, yes, but not always an innocent one.
I stood up for myself.
Knocking others down in the process. Academic showdowns with teachers and conflicts with peers—you didn’t make things easy for anyone, least of all yourself.
I didn’t realize that making things easy was my responsibility. No one made it easy for me, either.
You insisted on proving that you were the smartest in the room. You didn’t give them a chance to love you.
Christie clears his throat with a giggle, breaking our unsaid conversation. But Dad’s words from long ago ripple through my thoughts like a rock plunked into a creek. He never knew the whole story—no one did because I didn’t tell them. Minimizing the damage felt safer than expounding on it.
Dr. Broderick has since validated my feelings and experiences, and assured me that I was worthy of being heard—then and now. But if nothing changes, what’s the point of it?
I recall my first-grade teacher admonishing me for questioning the efficacy of recycling.
When I offered suggestions for in-home recycling, she told me to hold my questions until the end of class.
She couldn’t answer me then either, but instructed me to log my questions and research the answers myself.
She curtly refused to let me report my findings to the class the next morning.
She wanted my silence, not my contributions.
That made me feel so small.
“She’s kidding, Richard,” Christie says, “Venus won’t torture them. I’m sure.”
Dad looks unsure. “Hmm, in my experience, it’s better to have a torture-free classroom. It’ll make the summer go by quicker.”
“Time won’t move any faster regardless,” I huff.
“We’ll discuss the syllabus over milkshakes in the quad,” he adds, knowing sweet treats are my weakness, “and have lunch at Roma’s. What do you say?”
Though I am a proud omnivore, Roma’s Vegan Kitchen is a distinct highlight of my occasional visits.
I feel like I’m being blackmailed.
“There’s a new nursery in town. They claim to have epiphytic fertilizers and authentic sphagnum peat moss.”
His tone suggests he doesn’t believe it, and I concur with his skepticism. Most nurseries cater to hobbyist gardeners, rather than academics and experts who understand the differences between peat moss, natural fertilizers, and truly nutrient-rich soil.
“We could check it out after lunch,” he suggests.
“Ah, that sounds like the perfect day!” Christie coos. “A little father-daughter time would be nice.”
I nod and ask, “What time should I be ready?”
The next morning, I descend the stairs at 8:25—five minutes earlier than Dad’s suggested leave time.
He waits for me at the small kitchen table, arms folded and staring into the wood grain, his gaze strangely transfixed as if he might be daydreaming.
My journal sits uncomfortably close to him, thankfully closed, though off-center from where I left it.
He perks up when I step into the kitchen and smiles with a nod to the door.
“Shall we?”
“We shall,” I answer.
His Land Rover rumbles into his assigned space just outside the Environmental Sciences Building.
With summer sessions starting on Monday, the campus has entered a brief dormancy.
It’s a beautiful place, compact and tucked away in a peaceful oasis of trees, ponds, and pathways.
Common shrubs, meticulously trimmed, and azalea bushes line our short walk to the building.
Dad takes me to his office first—a cluttered corner room on the top floor overlooking the wide walkway outside that leads to most academic buildings.
The musty smell of books mingles delightfully with my father’s spiced tea smell, instantly lifting my spirits.
He’s added a cushioned window seat, a coat rack armed with umbrellas, and more of my artistic gifts, framed and scattered across his overflowing wall of bookshelves.
I pick up one of the small images—a luna moth I drew when I was around ten.
I remember mixing three different shades of green with a silver acrylic to achieve the right lime-green coloring and moon-like glow.
I left it on his bedside table and didn’t think anything of it when he didn’t mention it.
“They’re so accurate that I use them with my students sometimes,” he tells me. “Actias luna is a favorite, but students love your flytrap scene the most.”
He motions to the framed print perched on his top shelf.
I stretch to reach it, and holding it in my hands, I’m overrun with memories.
I had long forgotten this painting, even though it’s larger than most, and took me a week of concentrated effort to complete it.
It’s a Venus flytrap, surrounded by moss and shadowed by pitcher plants.
Each of its jaw-like traps is in a different stage.
One is open wide, its pink interior concave and waiting for its prey.
Another has a guest, a fly, tickling its inner triggers to snap at any moment.
Another is partially closed, having captured a cricket, but tiny ants are moving through its teeth, too small to keep.
Another expels the dried carcass of a tiny frog, done with its meal.
Surrounding the active stems are blackened ones because that’s what happens once flytraps serve their purpose. They turn black and shrivel and die.
That’s how I felt when I made it, like my heart had turned black.
This wasn’t a project I enjoyed—it came from a place of anger at the world for the way it takes, traps, hurts, uses, and spits us out.
And for how small and insignificant we are.
How easily we’re hurt and how difficult we are to love.
It was the first summer Henry was forbidden to play with me. I broke an unsaid social rule by arguing with Dale about smoking around Henry. Explaining the dangers of secondhand smoke should’ve been illuminating—not upsetting.
He didn’t appreciate it, though. “I don’t want that know-it-all bitch around Henry. Why doesn’t he hang out with boys? Normal kids?” Henry and I overheard him with Maggie. She later overreacted to a minor incident at school, telling me that it’d be best for Henry if I stayed away that summer.
The injustice sparked big feelings and led to negative impulses—destroying our lean-to, racing into storms, uprooting the garden we’d planted—until Dad insisted that I, “Create rather than destroy.” I endured two weeks of the ban before I calmly demanded a meeting with Maggie to plead my case and beg for her forgiveness.
She eventually agreed to supervised visits.
“I threw this away,” I say to Dad.
“I rescued it.” He tugs it gently from my hands and returns it to the shelf.
My fists clench at my sides. It feels like a violation. “I don’t know how I feel about that,” I admit, my voice edged with frustration.