The Gardenia

Gardenias


I sometimes think back to a gardenia plant that lived in a large earthenware pot in the windowed corner of our porch-room. It was a very old plant with a trunk that was a good two inches thick in places as it twisted and gnarled its way into a canopy of deep, shiny green. I always thought of it more as a small tree than a plant, not only because it looked tree-like, but because I had never seen flowers on it, although my mother had always said that, in time, it would have creamy white flowers that smelled of heaven.

One day I noticed that there was a single, fat bud on the gardenia plant. I shouted for my mother who was busy reading the day's mail to come look. "Mom, Mom, it's going to bloom. It's finally going to bloom!"

My mother came into the porch-room carrying a letter from my Great-aunt Mary. Great-aunt Mary would be coming for a visit in two weeks. My mother was so busy thinking and planning for my Great-aunt's visit that she barely acknowledged this wonderful change in the gardenia plant.
The two weeks went by in a flurry of activity. Yet every day when I checked the gardenia, it still hadn't bloomed.

Mom made me get all dressed up, gloves and all for picking up Great-aunt Mary. Just before we left for the bus station, I checked the plant, one last time. The bud, clothed in a swirl of light yellow-green seemed to be fatter.
We arrived at the bus station just in time to see a large woman in a flowered dress and a purple hat carefully descend the steps of the Greyhound bus. She, too, was wearing gloves and had on a purple necklace made of stones that pushed into my cheek when she hugged me. I took a deep breath after her hug, and oh! My Great-aunt Mary smelled wonderful!

"That's my gardenia perfume," she told me. "I just love gardenias."

All the way home, I kept trying to tell her about our gardenia plant, but the grown-ups kept talking about all sorts of other stuff instead.
The minute we walked in the door with my Great-aunt, I knew something was different. The air smelled different. It smelled like Great-aunt Mary. I ran to the porch-room.

There in the corner of the porch-room was my gardenia plant with not one, but three blooms filling the house with their sweet scent. I had never even noticed the two other buds at all. Everyone was joking that the plant had waited for Great-aunt Mary to arrive to bloom.

I wanted to touch the blossoms. They looked so soft and pretty, all creamy and smooth, like vanilla ice cream half-melted and swirled with a spoon. My Great-aunt said that I really shouldn't touch the blooms because gardenias are very fragile and bruise easily. Even the softest touch could make that long awaited flower turn brown and die. It was all a matter of perspective she said. All I knew was that I had to be content to sit on the cool concrete floor and admire it from afar.

The gardenia bloomed again and again while my Great-aunt Mary was visiting. The day she left, I carefully ran my finger over the last remaining blossom. I was as gentle as I could be and the petals felt softer than the velvet on my Christmas dress. A short while later the petals turned brown around the edges and the last blossom died.

The plant didn't bloom again until the next time my Great-aunt Mary came to visit. That time I looked and smelled, but I didn't touch it at all. I thought that maybe it would bloom for me if I treated it the way Great-aunt Mary said I should. But when she left it didn't bloom again for a long time.

Then one day I saw a bud on it again. Was Great-aunt Mary coming? My mother said she wasn't, but sure enough, a few days later, Great-aunt Mary showed up for an unexpected visit, just in time for my birthday! She gave me a small vial of gardenia perfume and a long "you're a young lady now" lecture. She said that I should always be true to my self; that I was as precious as a gardenia blossom. I remember wondering when I would bloom.

Ten years later, light-years and several thousand miles away from my parents and the gnarled gardenia that hadn't bloomed since Great-aunt Mary died, I was in the Army and stationed in Alaska. Married and expecting my first child, I was very excited about our new apartment which not only had a small bedroom for the baby, but a green-house that jutted out over the carport.

I would spend my off-duty hours puttering about in my tiny, green jungle staving off the dark, Alaskan winter with fluorescent lights. After months of searching, I had finally found a gardenia plant to add to the hanging ivy, the African violets and the spider plants. I babied it and fussed over it, and even told it about my Great-aunt Mary. Still, it hadn't so much as grown a bud, let alone bloomed. For months I had been waiting for the gardenia to do something. This was more than wanting, this was a need. I really needed that plant to bloom.

My marriage was dying. I had miscarried my child. The only things growing were all the other plants in the green-house. I couldn't figure out why my husband had turned so cold towards me. Lately he had been threatening me and the threats were turning into shoves and punches. Everything I did didn't seem to be enough. Everything that went wrong seemed to be my fault. He wasn't happy with my cooking, my attitude, or my performance in bed. I never knew what mood he would be in when he walked in the door from work although it usually would be somewhere between bad and ugly.

I'd tried talking to the base commander, but his only advice was to straighten out my act. My parents seemed very far away, and I didn't have enough leave time, or money to go see them. My best, indeed only, friend said I should leave him, but to go where? I wasn't earning enough to go it alone, and he'd already insinuated what would happen if I tried to leave.

Yet sitting there that evening, curled up on the couch in the green-house, I kept trying to figure out how to fix the unfixable. My husband was late again. I fell asleep waiting for him to come home after work.

I woke up in a hospital bed, lying between cool, white sheets, and hurting all over. My eyes finally focused on the concerned face of the doctor that was hovering somewhere above me.
Memory returned in waves of panic and fear as I remembered my husband knocking me off the couch and through the glass wall of the green house down to the driveway below. Aside from the broken ribs, punctured lung, fractured wrist, bruised kidneys and the concussion, I hurt even deeper inside; a heart hurt, a soul hurt.

Far beyond the hurt of bone and tissue, which would, in time, heal, my head and heart reeled from the ravages of his actions, the betrayal I felt. The anger. The fear. The tears that I couldn't stop crying and I wasn't sure what were from.

The next day I was visited by both a police officer and a JAG officer from the base. They informed me that charges were being filed against my husband for attempted murder and that he was being held without bond. Because I was in the Army, his attack on me was a federal offense.
I commented that I wished the army had been more helpful when I went to see my commander before all this happened. Both men stood there, in an uncomfortable silence exchanging helpless looks.

Eventually I felt that I had a margin of safety surrounding me. Counselors offered every kind of help I would need to get back on my feet again when I got out of the hospital. One of them told me that I was a very special person and that I didn't deserve to be treated the way my husband had been treating me. It wasn't my fault. My new commander came to see me asking if there was anything at all he could do to help.

I spent my time in the hospital thinking and healing. In all, I would be there for almost 6 weeks. Although I knew that my husband was in jail and would be for a very long time, I still felt as if I couldn't escape him. His essence seemed to permeate my hospital bed with doubt. I would second guess every independent thought. I was still afraid and that fear still controlled me.

A new counselor came. She talked and made me listen. I began to talk and rage and cry and rail and blame. She listened. Each day she would leave me with a question or a thought. When the fear returned in the middle of the night--great crushing waves of panic and mind-numbing terror, she would come and turn on all the lights. Then one night I woke up completely soaked in sweat. Amazingly, I realized I wasn't in a panic. I was soaking wet and very uncomfortable and coughing, but I wasn't scared. I wanted to get out of that bed. I wanted a shower. So I pushed the call button. When the nurse came, she had already called for the counselor. When she arrived a half hour later, I was happily, IV lines and all, still enjoying that shower.

I came to the conclusion that I could not, would not, allow that kind of mind-bruising, heart-bruising abuse to continue. I knew that I had to get out of and away from the situation. I knew that, not only did I have to do this for myself, I knew, finally, that I could do this. I realized that I didn't feel helpless any more. I finally talked to my parents and they were very understanding, emotionally helpful and full of loving advice.

The day before I was to finally go home, my friend called to make arrangements to pick me up. She had basically moved in while I'd been in the hospital and she had been over-seeing the fixing of the green-house windows and taking care of my plants. We talked about her continuing to stay there and began to make plans. She sounded so excited and her excitement was contagious. She said she had a surprise for me, but wouldn’t tell me what it was.

When we arrived at the apartment building, she was full of chatter, chasing away any demons that may have lurked in the shadows. The trip home had exhausted me and all I wanted to do was crawl back into a bed the minute we got inside. She unlocked the door and opened it for me, but motioned me to go in first.

Standing in the doorway, I smelled something. It couldn't be! I rushed past everything that had been fixed. She'd moved the plants around and added shelves full of ivy. My African violets had been repotted and the spider-plant was now in a tall urn in the corner. But that wasn't what had my attention. I turned the corner in the green house and stopped dead in my tracks.
There, in the far corner, was my gardenia plant, covered in creamy white blossoms!