Orchids

CW: Contains symbolic references to suicide

The sun was a spotlight, dangling above the set dressing of swings and seesaws. There was laughter from the children. Those women tended to their kids with easeful synchrony, scooping them in their arms, a seamless interplay I had to calculate and measure every time I tried with my daughter. She was full of surprises. From the bench, I watched her dart from place to place around the playground. And it was like I was tracing a spinning atlas; each time I tried to halt the spinning, it slipped from the pad of my finger—dizzying me. Round and round, my eyes follow her, delayed, until somehow, I’d forgotten how I’d gotten myself here. How I’d crawled from that town in the middle of nowhere, to a high-rise, where the world was farther from me than it had ever been. Then I had my daughter. I saw her as some unknown part of me with eyes and ears that made a face, and looked back at me, begging me to recognize her, a limb I never knew I had. She had patient eyes, even as a baby, waiting for me to come closer. For an answer, but I’m out of answers, and she looks elsewhere after these standoffs—for another guide.

As a child, I wasn’t much concerned with what could talk to me; I didn't like to respond. I’d rather tend my mother’s garden, wait patiently for a sprout. Plants were simple, they wanted to live, even if they’d tangled or die too quickly, it was never their wish to do so. I think we are more fragile than orchids. The sun was cruel that day at the playground, the kind of dizzying heat that could lull me to sleep. The kind of heat in the afternoon I watched my father’s orchid stem buckle and snap.

A child’s whine sliced the air, something intelligible amongst the chatter. A woman in a purple blouse, like orchid pedals, tended to the crying child below the monkey bars. She was middle aged, experienced with children—it seemed, yet she was rearing her head in every direction, searching. And by the time I realized it was me she was searching for, a circle of mothers had found my daughter. She was sitting in the mulch with scraped knees, the mothers immediately interpreting her cries. I took the stage, and played my part, late. 

“Come here, come here,” I gathered her in my arms, a spectacle. I glanced at the audience before I continued my part. I stroked her hair and patted her back as she cried against me. The woman in the orchid blouse asked if we needed band aids—I followed her. She seemed like some kind of sign. 

#

I patched my daughter’s knees on a bench near the woman’s car. I felt that she knew I was struggling with my performance. But she was patient, helping make my daughter giggle and smile. I couldn’t keep up. Instead, I watched her in awe. When she looked at me, it felt that she knew something I didn’t—but it was like she was hopeful that someday I’d figure it out. Her copper-colored eyes were magnified by her glasses into something delicate. Like a damaged fawn, taken somewhere, healed, wounds licked, recognizing something in me. Or maybe I wanted her to; I thought if she could be my mother, and heal me too. If she could spot the wounds on me and tell me how to stop the bleeding… To stop the blood from finding my daughter. 

“Are you alright?” The woman asked me.

“It’s just the heat.” We said our goodbyes, and my daughter went quiet. 

#

Where do we go from here? She didn’t like ice-cream, or candies, we didn’t have a favorite fairy tale. She didn’t like the television, although it would put her to sleep. Her father was just as clueless as I was. He’d dropped her in my lap, waiting for some instinct in me to take over, so that he could come home after a duration of business trips to his little flower sprouting further from our marble floor. I didn’t know where she’d go when she’d run off in the apartment. All my daughter seemed to like was hide and seek. 

I said her name, she looked at me, waiting. “Careful next time, okay?” I said. She nodded quickly, and I couldn’t tell if she was restless to escape from me, or the park. “Do you want to go back–” she stood up, interested in a yellow dandelion at the foot of the bench. I hadn’t noticed her eyes had been wandering there. I didn’t know she liked to pick these. She gestured it to me, and I accepted it with bewilderment.

“Can you save it for me?” She asked. I nodded. I proposed the idea of hide and seek, only if she played it with the other children in the park. She sprouted from the bench, already a few steps ahead of me and I grabbed her hand before she could slip away. She joined the mix of children who’d grouped and dispersed around the playground. Finding shadows, disappearing into the mouth of a tube-shaped slide, in the tower, behind rocks and bushes. Slowly, the number of discovered children accumulated until it became a group effort. "Something's not right..." I muttered, and I joined in.

“I saw her walking to the trees,” said a little boy. Then there were the mothers again. I didn’t have an answer for them when they’d asked if I’d been watching her. I knew that if I saw my daughter appear it would be some kind of mirage from the heat. She was patient, she waited to be found. I had forgotten how long I’d been sitting on the bench again… Forgotten how I’d gotten there.

A lump swelled in my throat; my ability to breathe was on limited time. The forest behind the park stretched along a lake, a ring of trees that didn’t tell you where to go. I disappeared into it. I only heard myself: my footsteps compressing the leaves, twigs cracking as if they were bones and my heartbeat ringing in my ears. I tried to tell myself it was just a game, it wasn’t real, and that I’d find her in some hidey-hole in a seated fetal position like an idle. The forest narrowed into a never-ending tunnel of tree trunks and gangly shrubs. Duplicating, and mirroring each other. I shouted her name until my throat went dry and numb. Time escaped me as I sloshed through the leaves. If she heard me calling her, would she think it's still a game? Would she come out? The forest didn't tell me a thing, I wished more than ever that it could speak to me. 

I imagined the worst; these were cruel possibilities. She’d been swallowed by a door in the forest that I couldn’t see. She was in the lake, in somebody’s car, alone, losing hope every second. They were just thoughts, but as the seconds passed they manifested into vivid images—haunting me. You’re too late. And if my cruel visions were a reality, I’d snap my orchid stem and float like an ornament in the trees, like my father. I wasn’t religious, but I wished for something to speak to me, the sky, an angel, the trees, or for the copper eyed woman’s reappearance. My chest hurt too much to let myself cry, if I did, the pain would've killed me. The only bit of me that wasn’t numb yet was my feet. I stumbled through the forest, like prey. What would those women do? The same as me, I’m sure. I don't think any of us knew our way around the forest.

The trees cleared at the opening of the lake. It was anything but a relief. Just a steel blue plate of brutal silence, unwilling to share its secrets. I tried to have patience, but all I had was desperation. I had no other guide. I couldn’t find her in the forest, if not the lake, where I had open range—then where else? I screamed her name at the lake, to deafen the cruel possibilities that screamed much louder. I submerged myself in the water up to my knees. I searched for anything: a shoe, the color of her clothes, fragments of her. But the water went on, and on, and it tempted me to continue my search until it swallowed me into its depths. And in the stillness, I faced the shore—looking back at how I’d ended up here. My weight returned to me after running through the forest so numb. My limbs felt like sandbags, my heartbeat was a mallet. 

I heard the snap of twigs, something besides myself. A little girl emerged from the woods. She moved slowly, as if somewhere she shouldn’t be, seeing something she shouldn’t. I felt dizzy and faint, and perhaps what I saw was due to the heat, or rather, I'd already snapped my orchid stem because only heaven would allow me to believe I’d gotten a second chance. My daughter ran towards the water. I put my hands out in front of myself. 

“Stay there! I’ll come to you sweetheart. Just stay there. I’ll come to you.” I looked at her like I was watching sunshine crack through the clouds, long overdue, like I’d woken from the longest dream, and just for a moment… The fog broke. When I reached her, I wasn’t prepared for the dam holding my tears to break. They erupted from me, violently. I didn’t know how to navigate those messy, ageless tears. My eyes swelled with them, and they trickled onto her. She was warm and smelt like her hair wash. I held her small body against me, anchoring ourselves to each other. 

“Where did you go mommy?”

“I was looking for you sweetheart, I found you,” I told her between breaths.

“They said they saw you walking into the forest.”

“No, no I was looking for you... I was–” I looked between her eyes, expecting to find a kind of child-like fear after being lost in the forest alone. But all I found were those patient eyes, waiting for an answer I couldn’t provide.

“Oh, it’s just the heat,” I said.