Chapter Thirty-Four #2
Marigold laid everything out, swept her fingers across every wrinkle and fold.
Not a single spark. Last was a yellow dress with polka dots, bright and busy and unlike anything Marigold could imagine her austere mother wearing.
It felt different from the other dresses, its thin cotton stitched with memories old and buried deep; like an inexperienced pianist, she could only grasp at the notes.
Giving up, she noticed a pillowy lump in the dress’s pocket and fished out a carefully rolled pair of long white gloves.
They smelled musty and parts of the lace trimming were already fraying from age, but the weave of the fabric was fine. Good quality.
Warily, she poked a glove.
The spark was quick, a gentle staccato note on her fingertip. The vision, as swift as the throw of a dart. She glimpsed a young girl climbing down the downspout on a stately white house, giggling boisterously.
That was all. It was over.
Marigold poked again.
No spark, only the soft silk tickled her fingertips. She heaved a sigh of relief, then gently picked up the gloves. They hadn’t been worn in years. Whatever emotion they’d once carried had faded away—which made them perfect.
As she put them on, Helen appeared with soup.
Displeasure pleated her mother’s forehead. “Where did you get those?”
“The gloves? In that suitcase.”
“I didn’t say you could go through my things.” Helen’s lips thinned. “Put them back.”
“But my hands are cold,” Marigold lied.
“I’ll buy you a new pair.”
Words her mother had never spoken before in her life. Being the second daughter meant Marigold’s entire closet was Peony’s hand-me-downs. Marigold’s curiosity was piqued.
She pretended to shiver. “Can I wear them for now? I’m cold.”
“No.”
“Please?”
Normally no amount of pleading would crack Helen’s resolve. But inexplicably she relented: “Only for today.”
Helen snapped the suitcase closed. “Finish your soup. I’ll be back soon.”
A few minutes later, Peony padded up to the attic. It was obvious that Helen had sent her, but Marigold didn’t mind. Her eldest sister could be trusted.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you actually like it up here,” Peony said. Concern laced her usually bright tone. “Why is Mom making you wear those gloves?”
“She’s not making me wear them, I want to. My hands are cold.”
“Bull. You’re sweating. What’s going on?”
Marigold took off her glasses and rubbed the bumpy scar near her eye. “Don’t tell Rosie, but—”
“Don’t tell Rosie what?” interrupted their youngest sister from the stairs.
Marigold sighed. It was an irrefutable law that the sisters could never keep a secret from one another, even when they tried. They were like a three-way call—every word that came in through one receiver went through the other two as well.
“The old lady says you’re not allowed to come down,” said Rosie. “What’s she raggin’ on you for this time?”
“I’ll tell you, just get in.” Marigold ushered her youngest sister into the attic, then closed the door. She reached under the books for where she’d stashed her notebook. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad, but sometimes when I touch things, I can see . . .”
Feelings. Secrets. Memories. Marigold struggled to land on the right word. Nothing felt exactly right, especially after what touching Helen had shown her.
“Ghosts?” suggested Peony.
“Please say lottery ticket numbers,” said Rosie. “I’m tired of being poor.”
“We run a bakery and we’ve got a car and TV,” Peony pointed out. “We’re not poor.”
“We’re too poor to go to the movies or buy popsicles with cream inside.
We don’t even have a piano,” Rosie said, the yearning deep in her voice.
Uncle Francis had given her his old guitar, but Helen never let her play it.
Their mother hated music. “Look at Marigold, she never gets to buy any books of her own.”
“I don’t mind,” Marigold spoke up. “I like going to the library.”
“When I’m rich, I’ll buy you your own library,” Rosie declared. “And P, I’ll get you a pink Cadillac. We can drive it to Blum’s for coffee crunch cake like all the rich ladies.”
“Can you see me driving a pink Cadillac?” said Peony dryly. “All I want is to keep Three Flowers running.”
“And I don’t need a library,” Marigold said.
“Then what do you want?”
Marigold leaned back against a stack of boxes. Her sisters had already forgotten about the secret she’d wanted to share. Maybe it was better this way—she didn’t want to worry them. She’d share a different secret instead: “I want to go to college.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “That’s not a secret.”
“I want to go to Stanford,” Marigold clarified. “I’m going to be a doctor.”
Now that was news. “Since when do you want to be a doctor?” Peony asked.
Since she was always getting sick. Since she was tired of being told that the prickly feeling in her fingers was from her nerves and there was no such thing as missing shadows.
Since there were riots and sit-ins downtown against the war in Vietnam every other month.
Since she’d felt helpless in the aftermath of the protest at People’s Park, when bloodied students gasping from being tear-gassed flooded the bakery asking for ice and bandages. The list was endless.
“Who’s becoming a doctor?” interrupted their mother in Cantonese.
All three sisters snapped to attention. Helen had slipped inside so quietly that none of them had heard her.
“Marigold,” Rosie spilled. “She’s going to Stanford.”
“Stanford’s too expensive,” said Helen. “And girls don’t become doctors.”
“Ten percent of med students these days are women,” Marigold said matter-of-factly.
“You’re not healthy enough to work in a hospital.”
“I could get better. Dad’s asthma got better.”
Helen ignored her and waved at Peony and Rosie. “You two, downstairs. Marigold needs to rest.”
Rosie left first, while Peony hovered at the door. “I think Marigold would make a great doctor,” she spoke before descending the narrow stairs.
Helen grimaced.
“When can I go back downstairs?” asked Marigold.
“We’ll see. Finish your soup. Don’t get those gloves dirty.”
“Were they yours?” The fingers looked too short for her mother’s elegant long ones.
“Who else’s would they be? Enough questions.”
Marigold drank her soup, for once hardly perceiving the bitterness of the herbs. Her mind was too busy working, her thoughts roiling.
Over the years she’d accepted that her mother had no shadow. She’d even convinced herself that the disappearance in the Sears parking lot had been her imagination.
But then came the sparks. One touch, and she was swept into a person’s past, experiencing their memories, unearthing their secrets.
So why, then, when Helen had touched her forehead, had she entered a dark void? Marigold shivered just remembering the nothingness and the cold.
Most chilling of all, to her mother . . . it had felt like home.