Page 14 of Compassion
Outside of Teacher Appreciation week and Employee Appreciation weeks, the last time I got flowers was the Valentine’s Day the year before Chris died. Hehatedbuying flowers. Called them a waste. Told me it would just be easier to put the cash directly in the trash. There was always a big hub bub about why they were worthless, yet every Valentine’s Day, he bit the bullet and bought a dozen. Er…correction. Had hissecretarybuy me a dozen and pick out a card, although he did sign the card himself. That…counts for something, right?
By the time I’m headed through the employee only entrance, my mind has managed to venture past the initial excitement of receiving such a sweet sentiment to the dangerous, obnoxious why zone.
Why’d he flip out last night? And I mean you saw him. He freaked. The. Fuck. Out. One minute he was about to speak – or at least I hope he was about to speak – and the next he was grumbling and rumbling and then fumbling away. Is hethatafraid of the cops? Would it have brought him comfort or more horror if he knew I was a cop’s daughter? Was it something else?Couldit possibly be anything else?
“Morning, Miss Jenkins!” A little girl cheerfully greets, putting herself directly in my path to the library.
“Morning, Sandy!” I warmly acknowledge in return. “Oh! What a beautiful bright purple bow you have on today!”
Reaching out to fix it is done at the same time she announces. “It’s da same color your jacket!”
Rather than reprimand her for the missing words – like too many parents do – I straighten out her accessory while verbally rewarding the accurate comparison. “Itisthe same color! You are so smart.” Once the oversized object is where it rightfully belongs in her blonde hair, I meet her glowing blue gaze again. “Do you remember how to say purple in Spanish or French?”
“Violette!”
“Ohmygod, look at you! Learning your French vocab words!”
“I am! I am!”
“Maybe we should readPurpliciousduring your library time today.”
“Yeah!”
“No, Justin, I’d rather take the effing Greyhound than effing fly coach,” her mother scoffs, Bluetooth conversation still in progress in spite of the fact she should be focused on getting her daughter to her classroom. “Ugh! Come on, Sandy! You’re making Mommy even more late!”
“Bye, Miss Jenkins!” She giggles seconds before her mother yanks her away by the hand, worried more about her phone call than the small human in her care.
Unfortunately, that shit right there is pretty common. You get used to it. Even if you wish you couldn’t.
Resuming my trek for my office space, I allow myself another brief inhaling of the sweet scent from the object I can’t believe I’m still clutching.
Where should I put this? On my desk in my back office so I have a little piece of him here at school or on the kitchen table at home so it feels like he’s finally taking me up on my offer to come inside? Am I maybe…a little…toointo this stranger? Especially considering the fact he hasn’t said a single word to me. And why hasn’t he? Why leave me a thank you note – which more people really should do in general – when he could’ve just said it? Writing me a note iswaymore effort than saying those two words. Think about it. He had to find a pen. Okay. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he already had a pen. That’s fair, but he had to find paper. Or maybe…maybe he had that too. But what about the flower? The chances he had that just sitting around in his backpack are slimmer than a romance novel winning a Pulitzer Prize. That means at some pointposthis flip out, he had to go find this flower, walk all the way back to my house, and leave it there for me. During thatentireprocess he could’ve stopped. Threw away the idea of wanting to do something nice for me and just hightailed it to someplace warm, which would’ve been the smarter idea considering how cold it was last night. Hell, the couple minutes I was out there with him, I felt like that moment when Little Penguin, the star of the finger puppet books I read to the baby class, gets chilly and needs to snuggle. See what I’m getting at? Instead of safely sheltering himself from the dropping temperatures, he marched through the cold, got this flower, marched back to my home, and left it. Why? Why do all of that instead of justsayingthank you? Is it because the action says more? Means more? Did he want it to say or mean more? Did heneedit to? Uh…feel free to chime in at any point here. I’m all ears.
“That’s a pretty huge smile,” Presley Morrison, my boss, the owner of the school, and by far one of the most gorgeous women in the entire building, casually comments.
Startled by her voice, I completely lose my footing and land on the hard hallway floor, contents of my workbag spilling out.
“Ohsheesh,” Presley immediately rushes to assist in collecting my lost objects, starting with my book club planner. “You okay? I really didn’t mean to scare the living ‘ish out of you.”
I prepare to insist that she didn’t, that that’s why I shouldn’t walk while distracted yet stop to briefly observe the way so many people walk past me without even a second look. How so many individuals don’t even acknowledge the fact there’s a fucking human being on the floor potentially in need of help. They don’t know why I’ve fallen. They don’t know if I can get up on my own or need medical assistance. And from the focused looks on their faces to the way they simply swing wide or step over my scattered items, it’s clear they don’t care either way.
Is this what Mr. Green Eyes feels like? Does the world ever stop to try to lend him a hand? Maybe I was the first one. Maybe that’s why he went out of his way to say thank you. Hm. No. No way. That can’t be it. People have tried to help him before, right? Maybe? At least once? Probably atleastonce.
My boss’s voice cautiously calls out to me at the same time she offers me the notebook, “Jaye?”
“Yeah!” Shoving the item back into the bag is followed by two more objects being treated the same. “I’m totally fine. IfPete the Catdoesn’t cry about stepping in stuff, no need for me to be upset about tripping over stuff even if stuff is technically me.” The smallest giggle escapes as I rise to my feet. “Thanks for the help, though. It’s…nice to be reminded kindness isn’t an extinct thing like the Mosasaurus.”
“Is that a dinosaur of some kind?”
“Not exactly. They were marine reptiles that ruled the water in the same Cretaceous periodasthe dinosaurs.”
Her eyebrows lift in surprise at the random fact.
The realization she didn’t ask for a history lesson has me cringing and profusely apologizing. “Sorry.Lawrence needed help with his fact versus fiction school report on dinosaurs last week, so naturally he came by the library for help, and some of the weird stuff about them we learned just sort of stuck in the brain.” My shoulder shrug is innocent. “And may or may not have convinced me to add a couple moreHow Do Dinosaurbooks to our small collection. I really thought we had more than we do.”
Presley folds her light chocolate arms across her black button up shirt and teasingly grins. “Now, I don’t know if you’re smiling about whatever made you smile before or over the new books you bought.”
Warmth undeniably coats my cheeks. “Both?”
