mom’s special
by Erin Dawkins
In the back seat of an ‘83 Chevette the cigarette smoke is thick, and the sun’s rays are bright through the tightly shut windows. My jaw ached from squinting. The same pain you get from chewing bubble gum until it becomes flavorless and stone-like, hard enough to crack a tooth. Bonnie, my mother’s friend, with the wicked queen’s laugh, was driving. My mother sat in the passenger seat. Bonnie’s been around more, especially since we moved out of our house and into her apartment.
The car stopped abruptly and I jerked forward, the nylon seatbelt tightened across my lap. At first, I couldn't see where we were. I pressed my palm to the spotty window and tried to look through it. Then, she tapped the gas and braked again. The car hummed impatiently from uncertain cues.
“It doesn’t look like he’s here.” Bonnie said. “Go. Now.”
Bonnie pulled a pair of gardening shears from between my mother’s legs. Her hands were firmly gripped around its wooden handles. I didn’t know if it was the blinding sun, or the polluted air inside the car, but my mother’s face looked different. Younger. It was as if she had stepped back in time, and I was there, merely as a spectator.
She opened the door, and I wiped the window with the cuff of my shirt. We were parked in front of a house. Our house. The one we lived in with dad. The house where I once saw a rat in the kitchen. It chose a house where it knew it wouldn’t be noticed. I scoured the house searching for it, looking in every dark corner, every closet, under every pile of dirty clothes. Hopeful to find it and keep it as a pet.
It was where my father put tabasco sauce on my waterlogged thumb, the way one would apply lemon juice or vinegar to a piece of furniture to keep a dog from chewing. He told me I was too old, and my teeth were starting to shift. He set down his Miller and shook the glass bottle until driblets of liquid ran down my thumb and onto my lap. It burned into the wilted skin. Circles like fresh blood spread on my nightgown. He sent me to bed, and the acidic smell on my skin and clothes stayed on my bedsheets for weeks. Perhaps that is what sent my pet away.
The house was right where we left it, after we fled quietly in the night. My mother with a bag slung over her shoulder and me resting heavily on her hip. We walked to a bus station on the main road and waited until Bonnie arrived to pick us up.
“Can we go inside to get Sammy?”
It wasn’t only Sammy, the stuffed dog, who had been left in the house. All of my everything was still inside.
“What about daddy? Can we see him?”
“That’s enough!”
My mother’s youthful radiance disappeared, and she was back to herself, her mouth upside down and statued in sadness. She took the shears from Bonnie’s hand and opened the door. She crept onto the lawn and knelt in front of the garden. She hacked at the stems with the sharpness of the shears. The flowers, once erect, were toppled over on their side, and quickly gathered up into a bunch.
When she returned, she kicked the door with her foot. Bonnie leaned over and opened it and carefully collected the shears. A handful of blooms were in her other hand, the ruffled petals falling off as she resituated in the front seat, creating a heap of purples and whites on the middle console, and on the car’s floor.
Strands of my mother’s hair were glued to her skin by a mash-up of tears and sweat. Bonnie laughed her wicked laugh, and cupped her hand around my mother’s shoulder, the way a coach would congratulate their star player after a win.
”I wish I could see that asshole’s face when he gets home.”
She turned to the back seat and handed me the bundle.
“Mom’s Special,” she said. She wiped her forehead with her elbow.
She shook them insistently. I reached for the stems, uneven, powdered with dry dirt.
“The flowers. That’s what they’re called. Mom’s Special.”
She turned back and Bonnie started the car. Bonnie put a cigarette between her lips and lit it. She inhaled deeply and handed it to my mother.
I looked down at the newly bloomed flowers that grew fully without attention or care. Without water or seed. Plucked before they’re primed, soon to brown at the edges and wilt.
Photo of Erin Dawkins
BIO: Erin Dawkins is a writer from Detroit, Michigan. She is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago, and holds an MA in English with a specialty in Creative Writing from Wayne State University. Her work has been published in Wild Greens Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Five Minute Lit, Half and One, Sky Island Journal, Still Here Magazine and forthcoming with Whisper House Press. In 2025, she received an Author's Fellowship from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. In addition to writing, she runs a business and teaches creative writing to middle school students. Erin is a long-distance runner and uses her mileage to listen to audiobooks and to craft new stories. Additional writing can be found at https://runsthroughlife.com/.