Root-bound by Sharon Frame Gay

1972

“We’re root-bound.” My mother sat at the kitchen table and drummed her fingers. Strands of gray peppered her chestnut hair. I noticed for the first time the tiny lines on her face.

Mom stubbed her cigarette into the overflowing ashtray and rose from the table. She walked to the sink and set her coffee mug on the counter, then spun around and crossed her arms.

“Chloe, I mean it. We’re stuck in this house, stuck in this life. I can’t breathe! I swear to you, this place is stifling.”

I have heard this before. So often, in fact, that I asked the next question.

“So, where are we going now?”

She grinned. Lit another cigarette. “Well, I hear Florida’s nice. We could find a little cottage by the ocean, sit on the sand, and watch the tide roll in. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

My mother’s eyes are the color of the sea. Sometimes, they’re as sunlit and green as April, while other times, it’s as though she were storming from within, a pewter tint that foreshadowed her restless soul. As she spoke, they were a brilliant agate, as though she plucked them out of her head and polished them.

My heart sank. “When?”

“Well, I figure I’ll work another two weeks at this damned job, give the landlord notice, then we’ll hit the road. These people here don’t appreciate me at all, and we can’t survive on the salary they’re paying. I’m going under, baby. People give me pennies for tips. I hear there are plenty of waitress jobs in Florida. Big tippers. I’m thinking of Orlando. Maybe I’ll get a job at a restaurant at the new Disney World, and you can get in for free. Would you like that? Maybe you can work there too.”

I nodded. I learned long ago you couldn’t argue with Mom once her eyes are polished. It was only when they were tranquil that maybe I could tell her I didn’t want to go. But what did it matter, anyway? I never wanted to go. I wanted to stay. Somewhere. Anywhere. Long enough to find my way around the house in the dark and know where the corners of the furniture jut out. Long enough that the walls feel warm beneath my hands like a friend.

I am fifteen. I have been to a different school every year. One year, I enrolled in three schools in three states. Funny how the classrooms all smell the same wherever we go, like pencil shavings, child sweat, pine-sol, and lunch boxes. And how chalk makes the same sound on the board, singing out until my teeth hurt.

Are the children all the same as they grow? I never found out. I’d make a few friends, though I barely remember their names now. Then we’d move, and I never saw them again. No forwarding address. No goodbyes. Just a stealthy exit in the early dawn, the car crouched in the driveway, motor running, as my mother took one last check of our rented home, then loaded our dog Molly into the back seat and threw the car in reverse, the tires echoing a sad farewell.

Oh, how I’d want to leap from the old station wagon, throw myself on the ground, and hang on to the blades of grass. I wanted to run back into the house, but I knew the knob wouldn’t turn, the lights forever out.

My father never existed in our lives. He was a donor from a desperate night of lovemaking. My mother carried me in her womb alone, defiant and determined. Maybe she hoped I would anchor her emotions and keep her tethered to a town where we could grow up together.

But this was not the case. Mom never settled down. There were always reasons to leave. It could be the weather or the unfriendly neighbors. Perhaps the cost of living, or the landlord, or even gazing at herself in the mirror one day and deciding she’d look better in Texas or Boston or walking through the canyons of Utah. Now, it’s Florida, and she waves her hands over her head like a palm tree and does a little dance.

I got up from the chair and fed Molly, our collie and my only true friend. She’s growing old. White hairs lace her narrow muzzle, and she walks slowly, head down, as though raising it might hurt. She is all I have besides Mom. While my mother is mercury, slipping in and out of the day in her own slick existence, Molly is steady and kind. She sleeps with me, whether it’s in the car off the shoulder of a highway or a stale bed in a cheap motel. We curl up together every night, and I hear her soft breathing. A lullaby.

“Root-bound”, Mom said. Some plants thrive if they’re root-bound, I think. I’d like to stay in the same pot, curling myself into a ball like I am back in the womb, warm and comforting. I would like to stay as the pot weathers into a lovely patina as it sits on our porch, and I bloom season after season.

But, to Mom, it was the worst way to live, and she’d have none of it. She wants to yank her roots from the soil, tendrils of her restless soul that she carries with her in a cardboard box. And so, two weeks later, she locks the apartment for the last time, and we settle into the weary car and make our way out of town.

We reach the highway, and she turns east. I pull down the visor and take a look. The mirror glares in a harsh light. Dawn’s creamy presence left long ago, and now the landscape is an endless ribbon of road in a blazing sun, dust motes dancing on the dashboard. When I gaze at the reflection, I only see the road behind me, as desolate as the one in front of us. I sigh and scratch at my scalp, then stare out the window, watching tumbleweeds tangle with barbed-wire fences until they marry for life.

Molly sticks her head between the front seats. Her ancient dog breath paints the air as I rub her ears. She licks my hand, then retreats to the backseat, where she curls up and drifts away in a canine dream.

The radio plays country songs from a big station out of Oklahoma. We listen to the music through three states before it crackles and fades, and then Mom turns it off.

Hungry, we pull off the road in front of a crumbling diner and park under a sycamore tree. We sit in a faded booth, and I toy with the dilapidated little jukebox on the table, peering at the titles and wishing I had a quarter to buy myself a memory, but a quarter is too dear.

We split a burger and fries, then Mom splurges and gets us each our own milkshake. I feel the creaminess slide down my throat and groan with pleasure. Such small things, I think, that make us happy. Tiny treasures we grasp amid a world that seems too big for our shoes, too heavy for our shoulders.

Mom leaves a generous tip, muttering that she won’t under-tip like those assholes back in Phoenix. She spends a few minutes chatting with the waitress as they compare notes and shake their heads in unison over a story or two.

I walk into the bathroom and see the reflection of an awkward girl staring back into a cracked mirror above a rusty sink. The water drips like a sad song, and I press my finger under the nozzle to silence it.  

Maybe, I think, I will re-invent myself when we get to Florida. I’ll cut my hair and get my ears pierced. Join the drama club at school. Make friends with the cheerleaders and become popular.

I want to meet a boy. I hope he’ll be tall and wear a large letter jacket. He’d take the jacket off because I was cold, and I’d slip my arms inside, still warm, smelling of his cologne. It would come down to my knees, engulf me, as he’d walk me down the street and tilt my chin up, then press his lips against mine.

But I’ve been warned about boys, and I’m afraid. Why, a boy could leave me the way my father left Mom. Knocked up and alone. Like her, I could give birth in a sterile delivery room with nothing to hold on to except the identification band around my wrist. Then I’d have a little baby at my breast and a load of worry on my heart.

Sometimes, I admit, not belonging anywhere feels liberating. There are no messy relationships or goodbyes. There’s nothing but the open road and endless possibilities. Except the possibilities never flower. But in the space between being somewhere and nowhere, our souls fly free, and we simply live in the balmy abyss of being nothing at all until the car stops. Then we fall back to earth and shape-shift into ourselves again.

I realize with a jolt that I am becoming like my mother. The jagged crack in the restroom mirror distorts my reflection, like a Picasso painting I once saw in a museum. I turn my head one way or another, and it changes. One side of my face is calm and steady, and the other looks exhausted and sad. When I wash my hands, the coppery, bloody smell of rust runs over my wrists, and I think of slashing them.

Then I stand there and cry like the kid I still am.

The door swings open, and Mom stands there. We gaze at each other in the mirror. The crack appears to widen and separates us.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Her ocean eyes fill with concern. She slings her purse over one shoulder and pulls me to her. We’re the same height now. I feel her heartbeat against my chest. Her breath smells like coffee, and the skin on her neck is warm with perspiration as she draws me closer.

“Nothing,” I say. She would never understand, I decide. Or perhaps understand all too well.

She steps into a booth, brings out a wad of toilet paper, and dabs at my eyes. Kisses me on the cheek and steps back. She always appears so steadfast and brave as my spirit buckles to the floor in confusion.

It has to be hard for her sometimes. I feel a wave of pity. A trickle of pride that she keeps showing up for our lives and never leaves me behind. She’s doing her best. It’s all she can give. I love her. It’s a gut punch to my indignant righteousness, and I rest my head on her shoulder and sigh.

“Let’s hit the road,” she says, brushing a wisp of hair from my forehead.

Outside the diner, a forlorn pot of tulips droop in the midday sun. The pot is chipped and dusty, the flowers fading. Petals fall to the ground like flags of surrender. My mother walks through them as she heads to the car, grinding them into the hard-scrabble dirt. I follow, tracing her footsteps with my own as we leave the diner behind and join Molly, who is waiting in the car under the sycamore tree.