“Death is no excuse to stop working.”
I wrote this in two sittings for a four-days writing challenge from my college club.
The Reclaimed
Miriam was not particularly known for her kindness. She scowled often, she glared at all the kids who came by her house. She lived alone in a small house surrounded by camellias, and only her more observant neighbours knew that she had one child, a daughter, who visited her every other weekend. Miriam was old, older than most people would guess, but she looked much younger. Or would have, if she smiled, which was not a thing that she did. Every morning, Miriam would go outside to water her plants, and then she’d sit on her porch, either reading or weaving one of those intricate quilts people had seen decorating her windows.
She hardly speaks. She was never seen going out to town. She had her groceries and gardening tools delivered to her home. When the ladies of the neighbourhood invited her to their regular gatherings, she’d accept them with a gracious frown, and never attend. People had speculated at what she did, or what she had done, for a living. Most simply assumed she was sitting on a huge inheritance. Others guessed her to be a member of some died-out royalty. They all agreed on one: she had always been there, doing her nothing, for as long as they could remember. She was here when the oldest of the ladies moved into the neighbourhood. She was here when the city rebuilt itself after the fire. She was here when the mayor was a young boy.
“Be careful of the woman down the road there. She doesn’t like children,” parents had said to their kids, because they remembered Miriam’s silent disapproval when they were children themselves. “She’s a witch,” the kids whispered to each other. “Don’t get caught in the witch’s eyes or you’ll be cursed.”
Miriam, it seems, did not mind the peace and quiet that that sort of rumour would entail. She woke up and watered her plants every morning. She worked on her weaving. She read her endless selections of books. She disappeared at midday, and returned to her porch in the late afternoon with tea and biscuit and a pair of watchful eyes to the small, quiet world around her.
“Mother, don’t you get lonely?” Alice asked on one of her weekend visits, as she always asked in one form or another on all her visits. “You can invite people here, you know. Some of your friends are still alive.”
Miriam shook her head. “I do not need anyone anymore. And banish that thought. All my friends are dead. Those who aren’t are too frail to leave their homes. They might as well be dead.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Alice went on. “But you’re right. I suppose.” She got up from their seat and put the empty cups they had used to drink on the tray and carried it to the kitchen sink. “You can still invite your neighbours. I saw the greeting cards you put in the foyer. They want to get to know you.”
Miriam shook her head. She went to the massive bookcase at the sides of the room and picked up one book, seemingly out of random. “I don’t need them.”
Alice sighed. She whispered, more to herself than to her mother, “They might need you.”
They set the pyre at the back of the house, right next to her father’s grave. There were flowers growing around it, as ripe and as lively as the flowers Miriam had nurtured at the front of the house. With a practised indifference, Alice pulled those flowers up to their roots. She collected them into a basket, then dusted the land that was left, taking care that there wouldn’t be even a single petal forgotten. Afterwards, she brought the basket back to the kindling fire. Her mother was already there, with her own basket of flowers. Those flowers she’d picked from the collection that she’d grown herself.
The two women nodded at each other, then they each took a flower, and, together, they threw them into the flame. The fire ate them easily, growing as it did. They picked another flower and threw them again, and again, and again, until the basket was empty, and the fire was roaring up to the sky.
Alice decided to wait for another moment before saying what she had wanted to say. Miriam watched the flame with sadness in her eyes.
“I’ve always hated this,” Miriam said, breaking the silence. “Your father would have preferred to live as the flowers forever.”
Alice sighed, but it was a knowing sigh. She’d had this conversation every year. “We give back what we received eventually, Mother.”
“I can’t understand why the fire, you understand. Can’t nature reclaim us any other way? When the mortals die, they don’t have to break themselves down. They just die, and the earth does the rest.”
Alice decided it was time to tell her, before her mother grew any more spiteful. “Mother, I have something to tell you.”
“Yes?” Miriam was scowling as usual, but there wasn’t anything anyone can do about that.
Alice took a deep breath. “I’m going to marry someone.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Miriam asked, “Is he…?”
Alice shook her head. “He’s mortal.”
“Oh.”
There was another long moment of silence. “I see,” Miriam said. “So you’re leaving me.”
Alice could see the venom she’d inserted into her words, but she had known her mother so long, she also saw the feelings beneath it. She loved her. She longed for her visit every year. She was the only reason she had kept herself in this home for so long.
“Well,” Miriam went on. She kicked at a stray twig near the flame. “I suppose this fire business will stop eventually.”
Alice knew that it wouldn’t stop for, what, fifty years, sixty years? It would be like nothing for her mother. It would be for Alice too, but her marriage would change everything. A lifetime would be enough, as it is for everyone else.
“After you die,” Miriam said nonchalantly. “I’ll go. And God can’t blame his flowers for overgrowing the lawn.”
Alice swallowed. “You should get to know the neighbours, Mother. They might help.”
“Ha! They wouldn’t even live that long.”
The fire flared, the pile of flowers in it turning to ash.
Franz loved Alice with all his being, but her mother was such a nightmare. She glared at him when they met for the first time. She showed him courtesy, served him tea, let him have his seat, but each time letting him know through gestures and eye contact that he was a foreigner in the house. When she asked him questions, they were never very deep, as if the details of his life did not interest her. Just the usual where are you from (“Edinburgh”), who are your family (“My mother was a teacher. My father’s retired from the army.”), and what do you do for a living (“Archaeology”).
He noted that she had smiled at that last answer. It wasn’t a very friendly smile.
Their visit was short. Alice’s mother had told them that she couldn’t come to their wedding, but hoped for the best anyway. After saying which, she went back to tending her garden of flowers.
Franz mentioned it to Alice on their way back. “Your mother seems to care more about her flowers than us.”
Alice was quiet for a bit longer than he’d expected. “She might be. Don’t blame her for that.”
Miriam never spoke of it to anyone, but news of her daughter’s wedding spread like wildfire throughout her neighbourhood. They looked at her differently then, whispered different things. She couldn’t come to the wedding, they said, because she was too old and sickly. So, in lieu of that, they sent her gifts, cards, flowers. Some managed to knock and be accepted into her sitting room. Most left feeling like perhaps they shouldn’t have come. None saw her smile.
But in a way they could tell that the strange woman was happy. She came more and more often to her garden, in sight of more and more people. She scowled when they waved, but she responded all the same.
Loren was a curious boy, and rumours that the woman at the end of the lane was a witch only roused his curiosity. When his schoolmates told him that the witch would hex him if he passed by his house, he ignored them. When his parents told him to steer clear, he sneaked our when no one was watching and into her backyard.
It was how he knew that on one day a year, the old woman would gather the flowers that had grown around one of the two graves in her yard and made a bonfire to burn them, along with some flowers from her front yard. Loren had always thought it a waste. His mother was a florist, and she’d talk at length about how beautiful those flowers at the end of the lane was.
His mother never dared to ask the owner of those flowers about having them, but Loren was a fearless boy. One day, a week or two after he had saw the second burning he’d seen, Loren came up to the strange woman’s porch as she was tending to her endless beds of flowers.
“Hello,” he had begun, for his mother had taught him to be polite.
“Hello,” Miriam answered, her voice unwelcome.
“Those flowers are very pretty, Ma’am,” said Loren.
“So they are,” Miriam replied.
Loren waited a while before asking his question. “Why do you burn them?”
The woman’s fingers, which just a moment ago were tenderly pulling a weed from the ground, stopped. She sat there between her flowers, just staring at them, as if Loren’s question had stopped time around her. Then she sighed, and stood up. “It’s the only way we can return what we have,” she said.
There were no bonfire today, but as she had done all the previous years, she went to his grave and pulled out the flowers that had grown around it. She glanced at the two graves next to his. Grasses and flowers grew around them, but none as wild as the flowers around her husband’s. She nodded to herself. The earth can reclaim them on its own.
“Dear,” Miriam whispered, as she used her strong unaging arms to pull the roots from the earth. “No fire today. I’ve made a deal with a local florist.” She picked up the flowers she had pulled up and put them into her basket. They would take some work; she’d have to cut off the roots, cleaned out the dirt, but then she’ll have them ready, and that boy Loren would have a gift for his mother, and the world.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to die as flowers, instead of as ash?” Miriam went on, as she pulled out more flowers. “You’ll decay, but so do the mortals, so do everyone.” Something formed in her lips that hadn’t been there since her daughter died. She looked at the the flower she had picked, and put it to her lips. “And I’ll be with you too, so you won’t be by yourself.”
After her basket was full, and his grave was clean, she went to her front yard, and picked out the flowers she had grown herself, with her efforts, and her own hand. She didn’t put down the basket she was carrying. She put her flowers next to his.
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