Dead Flower

Chapter 2

Today was perhaps one of the busiest days of my life since I took over Sunshine’s Flowers. It’s no secret that the business wasn’t exactly the most popular and I always just managed to scrap by, just enough to be able to buy more seeds to plant my trees and keep the lights on. Besides that, I relied on the monthly allowance that my parents sent me and some of my savings that I tapped into on certain occasions. But it wasn’t like the cost of living in this town was like the cost of living in Malibu, California. It was small town living, grocery shopping wasn’t too expensive and everything was in walking distance so I didn’t see the need for a car. But because I was prepared for situations where some of my clients would require me to drive to certain destinations, I made good use of Daisy’s VW van.

Sunshine’s Flowers also had a competitor, and I wasn’t the only flower shop in the town. The town had a much larger and more successful flower shop that was situated in the richer part of town.

This flower shop had all the different flowers that you can think of and even though they were so successful and stopped anyone from finding it necessary to come to my little flower shop, I couldn’t hate them. I loved them because just like me they had the same passion of spreading nature’s beauty throughout.

The Flower shop was a store of dreams with a large greenhouse and plants that were so exotic and expensive, I found myself saving up some pennies so I could purchase from them. No doubt they were the ones who managed to get the big events like the one I’m doing, so it was all the more reason that I felt both honoured and determined to do my best for these clients. I wanted to show them that even though my store wasn’t as large and didn’t have exotic plants like my competitor, I could do just as good as a job because I love it and I have a passion for it.

So that’s why I made sure that I put out all of my best flowers and plants for tonight. By the time the clock had struck 17:00, I was walking through the front door of Daisy’s quaint home and heading straight for the shower because I was sweaty from the labour that I did all by myself. I didn’t have any employees because I couldn’t afford them, so I was running up and down around my store, cutting and trimming my plants and my flowers just right before I loaded them in to the van.

I knew that the event was black tie but my plan was to arrive an hour early and set up the place before I would leave the party and be on my merry way. So I didn’t exactly match with the theme of the black tie, I still wore one of my colourful dresses because that’s the kind of person that I am. I was wearing a fruit print front knot button sundress that reached just above my knees with a pair of brown flat sandals and I had a Marigold flower behind my ear because it felt like a Marigold flower behind my ear type of day.

I’m a very particular person and I always follow through with whatever plan I have set in mind. It’s because my parents raised me in a disciplined manner because they too were disciplined individuals in everything they did. So when I put my mind into completing my work in an hour, I was certain that I would do it and I would not take a minute longer. So, half an hour after I entered my home, showered, ate and changed, I was driving the VW van to the other side of town, up the hill towards the lone mansion that looked over all of the houses in the entire town.

Balerno is the name of the town and in the months that I have been staying here, I’ve noticed the different classes of people. Much like everywhere else in the world, there was a lot of division. There were the slums, the run-down apartment building filled with the drug addicts, prostitutes and the poor. I wouldn’t wish for my worst enemy to stay in those buildings but in my defence I don’t have any enemies. I can’t find it in me to hate anyone, or even dislike them because I’ve never had any reason to. Even those who have called me racial slurs under their breath and I happened to hear them, I forgave them because their hatred for people like me was eating them alive while I was happy and hate-free.