Past the roses, before the palms, Leslie comes to a section marked Cactus. Someone has drawn quills along the edges of the sign. She picks up a pot, Sempervivum Oh My, another called Oddity, a tiny pot labeled More Honey. She holds them in her hands; they are almost weightless. They require little care, thrive on neglect.
A kid calls out “Mom?” from somewhere near the citrus trees with their blossoms as big as half-dollars, from the space that smells like fruit tea, from the cage that holds the Greenwing Macaw. The exotic bird store next door is in cahoots; caged birds hello from the nursery corners. The Macaw climbs the chain link, asks again, louder and impatient, “Mom?” Leslie freezes. A dozen mothers turn.
Leslie fills her basket with succulents. More Honey will produce a cluster of tiny offspring in a tight orbit around itself. It will flower, then die, its progeny circled around its skeleton. Oh My will blush pale pink to crimson if left in the sun too long. Oddity looks like tiny pointing fingers with red-painted fingernails.
The Macaw calls, “Mom? Mom?” and a Congo African Grey responds, “Where are you?” from behind the Japanese boxwoods. Leslie’s chest tightens. The shopping mothers stiffen in the spine, tilt their heads.
“Excuse me,” Leslie says to a young man in a green Plant World t-shirt, “but that bird.”
“I’m aware,” he says. “We’ve had prior complaints.”
“Can’t you do something?”
“No one will buy him.”
“Too disturbing.”
He nods. “He has made women panic. Cry. Right here in the store, they just lose it.”
Leslie shakes her head. Then she steps to the back of the checkout line with her basketful of the tiny More Honey, the Oddity, the Oh My. She is counting the waiting customers, digging change from her pockets and listening to this bird in the corner begging, “Mom?” searching, “Mom?” in its staid and practiced way.
The line stretches six deep. She finds in the basket a sharp spine, pushes down until she draws blood.
Beth Thomas lives and writes in the desert Southwest. Her stories have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Wigleaf, NOO Journal, Pank Magazine, FRiGG Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other places.
great story!