The Flower Child - Katherine Churchill (reading cloud ebooks txt) 📗

The rain drops danced along the smudged window of the Greyhound bus. Beyond them were skies of the deepest grey. Zoe’s eyes followed the mingled race of water down the window, watching closely to see which drop reached the lower edge first. The bus driver’s raspy voice interrupted her trance - a muffled cough and an inaudible voice came over the speaker. Although no words could be made out, she interpreted that the bus would be stopping shortly, and this was her stop. Adjusting the wrap around her shoulder, she kissed her baby’s forehead lightly and gently pulled her in closer. The baby’s warm head rested on her left breast, right above her heart. The baby stirred, but did not wake from her infant sleep. Zoe took the strap of her crocheted messenger bag, with its frayed peace sign, once a symbol of her young alternative lifestyle - now turned diaper bag; it was a symbol of her new responsibility. Patiently, she waited as the bus turned onto the exit ramp and entered her childhood town.

The bus groaned as it pulled into the station. Carefully, Zoe made her way down the narrow aisle, sporting both a baby and a purse. She seemed to be the only one getting off at this stop. Outside, Zoe pulled the wrap over the baby’s head, shielding her from the cold rain spitting down from the open sky. The bus driver, with a forceful grunt, pulled out her luggage and set it on the ground. She braced herself and pulled the eighty-five-litre camping backpack onto her back. All of Aelan’s and hers possessions were inside that backpack - everything they owned. With her left hand, she grabbed hold of her scratched guitar case, the instrument that had channelled her emotions for as long as she could remember. Balancing the weight of everything at once, she began the ten-kilometre walk to her mother’s house.

Her mother didn’t know she was coming; in fact, Zoe hadn’t seen or spoken to her mother in the last five years. Back then, when Zoe was seventeen years old, she ran off with a few people on a road trip, with no intentions of ever returning. While her mother was passed out drunk on the couch, Zoe hastily gathered all of her belongings into that eighty-five-litre camping backpack, grabbed her guitar and left a scribbled note for her mom, saying only, “Gone to live life”. As she walked down the road, she felt an odd feeling – the sweeping déjà vu that runaways so rarely experience. Today, Zoe was an echo of her seventeen-year-old self; she seemed the same, but she was so different. She still had the guitar case and backpack, although her messenger bag had a few tears and a strained look, and her long gypsy skirt was frayed along the bottom. She had a washed out look about her, and a baby strapped to her chest.

She did not know how her mother would feel about her return. There was a lot that Zoe did not know nor understand about her mother. Now that Zoe had her own child, a strange feeling possessed her - it was love like she never knew before, for this tiny infant. Such maternal love was a feeling absent in her own mother. As Zoe grew up, her mother fell deeper and deeper into depression. Turning to pain-relieving substances and away from Zoe, she only reached out to inflict her internal pain upon her family, upon Zoe. She was a ticking bomb; Zoe never knew when she would go off, or what would set her off. When Zoe was five years old, her father left, unable to deal with mother anymore. In an attempt to get back at him, Zoe’s mother cut the link between Zoe and her father.

Underneath the wrap, Aelan’s whimpers broke the silence. Zoe peeled the damp fabric off of her face, and Aelan looked up and made eye contact before closing her eyes and breaking into a howl. Zoe knew that howl - Aelan was hungry. Glancing around, she saw a bus shelter across the street. Zoe looked both ways before crossing the street – something she never would have done before when she was only responsible for her own life. Once inside the bus shelter, she set everything down and sat on the vacant bench. Pulling a baby blanket out of the messenger bag, she set it over Aelan and began to nurse. Zoe took the quiet moment to observe her surroundings, and noticed just how empty the town had become. Thinking back, however, she couldn’t ever remember it being lively. Zoe’s mind wandered to British Columbia… now that was where she had truly felt alive. The last five years just blended together - a blur of marijuana, music festivals and many, many people. She had lived in tents, in the backs of cars, and even slept under the night sky. That life was magical - but once she became pregnant, she knew it was no environment to raise a child in. Zoe felt a responsibility to give her child a stable home, and so she had returned to the only small stability that she had ever known.

Aelan’s coos replaced the sucking noises, and Zoe removed the blanket. Aelan gurgled up at her as Zoe sat her upright to burp her. About five minutes passed, and Aelan let out a belch and gurgled, contented. Patting her bottom, Zoe noticed her diaper was quite heavy. Checking inside the diaper bag, Zoe realized she only had one clean cloth diaper left. She changed Aelan’s bottom and put on the last clean diaper, contemplating where she would be able to access a washer and dryer. There was Zoe’s old babysitter, Mrs. Sullivan, who would be into her fifties by now. Zoe spent a lot of time there as a child, and still regretted leaving without saying goodbye to her. Mrs. Sullivan was even farther away than her mother’s house, which was just less than five kilometres away now. “Well”, Zoe thought, as she packed everything up, “Either way, I have to keep going.”

As Zoe walked, Aelan slowly rocked back to sleep inside the wrap, now quite damp from the rain. “It’s moments like these I truly appreciate having a good baby”, she thought. Soon, she reached the house she had once called home. The tiny bungalow was still sitting atop the same unkempt lawn. The small house seemed to sag, the tattered curtains hanging loosely in the windows. The screen door was open and moving in the wind, but the inner door was shut tight. Making her way across the lawn littered with garbage, Zoe knocked on the big door. Her knocks echoed throughout the house. When nobody answered, she gently opened the door and stepped inside. “Hello?” her unanswered cry echoed throughout the empty house. Making her way throughout the house, Zoe quickly noticed that everything was missing. Not only was her mother missing, but so were most of the furniture, the heat and electricity, and even one of the back windows had been smashed in. In disbelief, Zoe dropped her things to the ground. This was it; she was at the end of the world. Tears silently rolled out of her eyes, and she slowly fell to the ground clutching Aelan. She curled up against the backpack, her arms holding the infant close to her.

Aelan’s cries woke Zoe from her sleep. She didn’t know how long she had slept, or how long she had laid there crying. It was still light out, looking to be about late afternoon. Numbly, as if in a zombie trance, Zoe nursed Aelan and burped her. Afterwards, Aelan was still crying, and, sure enough, Zoe checked and her bottom was heavy. She reached into her messenger bag to grab a clean diaper only to come out empty-handed. Slowly she remembered that she had run out of clean diapers the day before. “I suppose my only option is to go to Mrs. Sullivan’s”, she thought. Yet again, she gathered up her belongings, and tucked Aelan under the wrap, only slightly muffling her cries. “I’m sorry, baby girl. Just hold out for a bit, okay?” Zoe murmured.

She left the empty house that she’d once called home, and started down the sidewalk with a screaming baby. She saw her old neighbour, Jeffrey Tucker, coming towards her. “Jeff! It’s me, Zoe! Do you know where my mother is?” she called out to him. Jeff said nothing and stared at Aelan as he walked closer to her. “C’mon,” he grunted at her, and led her into his house nearby, still not making eye contact with her - but rather staring at the baby, who was still screaming.

Stepping into the dim light of Jeff’s house, it took a moment for Zoe’s eyes to adjust to the light. She set her bags down in the hall and followed Jeff into the living room, trying to hush Aelan along the way. Sitting on the flowered sofa was Zoe’s mother, smoking a cigarette. She looked at Zoe, then looked down at Aelan, all while taking a long drag off of her cigarette. Slowly, she blew out the smoke, looked at Zoe and raised her eyebrows. She said nothing.

“Hey, mom... I want you to meet your granddaughter, Aelan Raine,” Zoe said as she took Aelan out of the wrap. Thankfully, Aelan had momentarily stopped crying, and stared at the new people.

“That’s really why you came back to visit?” Zoe’s mother answered, eyebrows still raised.

“Not to visit… to stay. At least for awhile - take it one day at a time, you know?” Zoe hesitated, not sure whether she was making a statement or a question.

“No,” her mother replied bluntly.

“No?” Zoe asked.

“That’s right, no. You expect that you can just walk right back in whenever you feel like it? It isn’t a revolving door, Zoe, you made your choice. I lost my job, lost the house, and Jeff here was kind enough to take me in. I have my own life to sort out, and I have to support myself. I can’t be taking care of my daughter, who only comes around when she needs something. And with a baby, might I add? Speaking of which, can you please do something about that crying, it’s getting a little ridiculous,” she replied, motioning her hand towards Aelan, who had started crying once more in Zoe’s arms.

“Mom, this isn’t just about me. This is your granddaughter, doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Zoe pleaded.

“So what, you get knocked up and expect me to have sympathy for you? What’s the matter, your little hippie boyfriends don’t want you anymore now that you have a child, so you come running back here? You only came back because you needed something,” she snapped.

“No, it’s not like that-” Zoe began.

“Then what is it like, huh?” her mother interrupted.

“I just, thought that, I don’t know… I don’t know what else to do. I have nowhere else to