The pressure of the belt around my waist made me feel almost like my mother was hugging me. She didn’t do that often, or, really, ever. She didn’t have very much time for me, I’m not sure what she was doing instead, but whatever it was, I wasn’t invited.

My mother never woke up early enough, and I was always late to school. She burnt dinner most nights, or she forgot the salt. She didn’t remind me to turn in my library books, so I always had to pay the late fee. She didn’t send me to school with a check for the late fee, so I paid it out of my piggy bank.

I didn’t know that other mothers baked birthday cakes for their daughters, woke them up with strawberry flavored kisses, never burnt the potatoes or undersalted the chicken, slid library books into their daughters’ backpacks on library day, and packed their camp trunks with handwritten notes of love.

I stared at my six year old self in the mirror, took out one of my mother’s necklaces, an emerald choker that she usually kept in the bank, and tried it on. It didn’t go very well with the belt, but I kept it on anyway. Sunita, my father slurred from downstairs. Sunita, where are you? My mother’s voice came from the bathroom. I’m in the bathroom, dear. Just getting ready for dinner.

Where’d the cigarettes go, he asked, almost carefully. I smoked the last one, dear. I’ll run out and get some more tonight, she replied. You sel1sh bitch, he said. We can’t a1ord your smoking problem, he said. I am sorry, dear. If you’d like, you can go out quickly and grab some, my mother said. I’ve been at work all day, breaking my back so that you can sit around at home and do nothing, he said.

I closed the door to my mother’s bedroom. I went into her bathroom. Mommy, I asked. What is inside of that box? My mother looked up, startled. Um, nothing, dear. Now go change out of that dress before your father sees you. Mommy, I tried again. What are those tulips doing there?

My mother looked at the re1ection of the tulips in the mirror and smiled. She sat up straighter. Those tulips are here because tulips are my favorite ower, she said. Did daddy buy them
for you? I asked. Yes, she said. Go to your room. Don’t you have some homework or something to do? I’m six years old, I replied. Oh, right, she said. Why did he buy you those owers? Is it because he feels sorry, I asked. She nodded. Go play with your Barbies and be a good girl until the babysitter comes. I don’t have time for this right now, she said.

I went to my room, as I always did when my mother told me to. I heard my father stumble up the stairs and turn the corner into her bedroom. I took out my Barbies and began to brush the blond one’s hair. Some of the hair came out and got caught in the bristles. Through my door, I heard the sound of my mother pleading and crying. A crash came from my mother’s room and then my father’s footsteps down the hall and down the stairs and out the door. I could hear my mother’s footsteps, which were softer and lighter than my father’s, fade as she went downstairs and then grow louder as she came back up.

I abandoned the Barbie on my bed, and walked carefully into my parent’s room. The vase was in pieces on the oor, and my mother was sweeping up the decapitated yellow tulips, her face turned away from me. Mommy, are you alright, I asked. She turned towards me and smiled, the area around her left eye a ery red color.

The sound of my own daughter’s footsteps pulled me out of my reverie and forward, thirty years, to the real world. The mascara had dried on my cheeks. Mommy, what’s inside of this box, she asked me, her blanket trailing on the ground behind her. I’m not sure, I said. I suppose you can open it if you’d like. My daughter struggled to open the rusty closure that kept the lid shut, but she jiggled it around and it gave way.

Mommy, she said, pulling on my sleeve. Mommy, she repeated, look. I looked. Inside the box was a withered yellow tulip, surrounded by dozens of receipts for yellow tulips and a few other slips of paper. I took one of the receipts out of the box, and it had my mother’s loopy signature on it. I took out one of the other pieces of paper in the box. It read “Thank you for twenty purchases, Mrs. Khatri. Ruthie’s Flower Shop appreciates your business!”

When my mother died, I smeared my mascara trying to cry. I was unable to summon
anything more than a sinking feeling in my heart. The night after I cleaned out my parents’ house, I sat at my dressing table and held my mother’s box, hoping that this object would make me cry. I had dug the box up from the depths of a plastic bag that held the tangle of jewelry she would unravel and put on everyday during my childhood.

In first grade, I was playing dress up in my mother’s room. The box, the one I found all those
years later in a jumble of gold and silver and emeralds, sat on the dresser next to a vase of yellow
tulips. I had on one of my mother’s pantsuits that she wore when she remembered to go to a PTA
meeting. The shoulder pads were wide and almost touched my ears. The dress was a hot pink
gingham and oral combination that I cinched together with a wide belt.

Artwork of The Week:

“Duck on a Swing was part of the Incidental Project from Drawing and Painting I, and I came across a similar image on the internet thought it was a random but nice moment to paint. Although the painting is bizarre with the cow print in the background, it evokes a sense of childhood fun and returns viewers to playing on the swings in elementary school.”

Yellow Tulips

By Zoe Goor ‘24