As Nola left her home, a gust of wind whipped through her straight, black, greasy hair. She walked as an old movie star with grace and a sense of purpose. She was not tall or short. Nola was just Nola, a girl who hid her beauty with second hand clothes and well-worn tennis shoes. Arriving at the end of the block, Nola focused on a small yellow flower sprouting from underneath the white cement. I waved hello. She tucked the flower in her shirt pocket. I remember she always had a flower in her pocket or hair. It seemed as if flowers bloomed in her hands, as if she willed them to life.

On several occasions, I spent the night at her home. We danced to music played on the radio. Nola made believe she was the singer, whether it was a woman or a man, she pretended. One night, I watched as she became an invention to a song I never heard. I think the song was about birds, sunshine, and freedom, or something along that line, yeah that what it was, freedom. She sang as if I wasn’t there. A few moments passed, and I observed Nola become someone else. She swayed with the music. Her lips quivered, and her eyes were full of sorrow. Emotions mingled outside of my skin. They twirled in the silent air with breath and breath as an overt leaf in a wisp of air. I wanted to jump out the window. The feeling of teeth endured for an extensive moment. Then, as the last word departed, the sorrow left her eyes and her lips smiled. I sat on the bed and watched as she cupped the air in her hands. She then waved to something beyond the room. I looked in the direction and wondered if the magazine cut outs of Audrey Hepburn and Dick Van Dyke cared. Nola, sensed my discomfort, and she coughed and laughed until I wasn’t afraid.

“Who were you singing for?”

“No one.” She said at first. Then she admitted that she sang for her father. “I lip-sync for my mother and sing for my father.” Her response swirled in a hint of pain and for a moment her father was palpable. Her mother moved out last year and when I asked what happened, “Just had enough,” Nola said. Whenever I visited, her father was never around. The first time I met him was at the La Valencia Supermercado. Nola acted as if she didn’t see me.

“Hey, Nola, is this your boyfriend?” She looked surprised at my joke. I thought she was going to run out of the store.

“I am her father.”

Nola’s dad stared at me with the intense look of a predatory bird. He had the eyes of a hawk, as if searching high above a meadow for his next meal. I turned my gaze toward Nola. She walked down the aisle, leaving me with her father. I felt his eyes on my skin, and when we faced each other, he didn’t say a word. Those eyes pierced my skin. He saw the flow of my blood. He saw the blue of the veins. He saw and that’s what made it creepy. He merely smiled and watched me walk away. His intensity followed as a shadow. A few weeks later, he said hello as he walked out of his house. Nola was at the top of the stairs with a book in her hand. She educated me about various roses that day until we no longer felt the truth. I never knew the extent of her fascination with flowers. The way she explained it was admiration not fascination. 

“You know Grace; most flowers can take care of themselves. In the wild they die but come alive again and again. They’re incredible.”

I agreed as if I were aware. Nola said she had something to show me. She didn’t mention what it was, only that I needed to trust her. We walked to the end of town. The houses became scarce and the aroma of grass and flowers invaded our sense of smell. We went under a barbed wire fence. My shirt got caught in the wire and we laughed as Nola pulled me to freedom. After a few more yards, we were in a meadow of flowers. Nola invited me to lie down and close my eyes. 

“What for?” I asked.

“To emancipate, within. Imagine you are one of these flowers. Think about it. If you were one of these flowers, no matter if someone plucked you out, or chopped you down, as long as you were solid in the ground, you would always come back. Flowers always seem to survive.”

“What? Nola you’re trippin.”

She laid next to me, looking at the sky. I don’t know what she saw. I didn’t see freedom. No, there was no freedom. When I closed my eyes, I saw what was beyond light. I saw the things that crawl around in your thoughts. Scary unfocused things, within a deep dark. I think Nola saw the same things; her eyes fluttered under her eyelids. She turned on her side as if she knew I could see her.

“All I need is a moment. You know, some time.” She said.

“A moment for what?”

“Just to get away from those eyes.” She whispered.

“Did he touch you?” I asked.

“Not with his hands.”

“Then what happened? What did he do?”

“I don’t know- those eyes don’t let me sleep. They float in my memory, invading every new thought. I see things in his eyes. Sometimes I see my mom in there. He did something that made her leave. I can’t put a name on it, but he is strange. Those eyes, there is a knowing in them, and he knows something about her, about why she had to leave.”

“I understand,” I said as if comprehension would appear in seconds and make the previous moments a beam of light. “It will be different when we graduate. We can move out of this place.”

“Sure, Grace.” She said.

“Nola, what did you see in the darkness?"

“I saw a bird.”

“What did it look like?”

“When you get past the pieces of black feathers and the strangeness of the silent sound, you begin to see patches of color. Then you smell them. It smells like these flowers.”

“Sure, Nola.” I said.

Two weeks later, the police cornered off the street leading to Nola’s house. The extent of my experience with her father didn’t justify a screwdriver through the ribs. He was strange and his eyes devoured mere mortals. We all deserve to die, but not like that. The next day the police asked me the whereabouts of Nola.

A young cop handed me his card and requested I call when I see her. I shrugged my shoulders and suggested they search Texas. “I think she has family down there.” The next morning, I closed my front door with silence and walked. I found her in the meadow of flowers. An indentation lay on a bed of purple and yellow, her attention on the sky above.

In one hand, the petals between her fingers drifted off into the wind, in the other a faded stem. I closed my eyes and tried to see beyond the pieces of black. I tried to see her color. I opened my eyes and plucked a flower for Nola. As I walked home, a bird circled the sky and I heard the silent sound as I tried to remember the whereabouts of the police officer’s card.

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