Star

Wildflowers #2
V.C. Andrews
Copyright (c) 1999
ISBN: 0671028014
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When my grandmother drove me to Doctor Marlowe's for my second group therapy session, I sat in the car for a few moments and thought, girl, just have her turn around and take you home. What good is it going to do you to tell your troubles to these three rich white girls, although I did think Cathy, or Cat as Misty called her, wasn't as well-to-do as Misty and Jade seem to be.

As we drove into Doctor Marlowe's driveway, I saw Jade's chauffeured limousine pull away, so I knew I wasn't the first to arrive. I couldn't help wondering if Cat was coming back. The whole time Misty talked yesterday, Cathy the cat looked like she was sitting on a cold, wet park bench, ready to leap off and scoot into a dark alley the first chance she got. She sighed and squirmed and looked at the ceiling and the floor, everywhere but at us or at Doctor Marlowe. I think if she could have crawled under her seat, she would have.

My story wasn't at all like Misty's. It wasn't about spoiled rich boys and big houses with ballrooms and such. I wasn't going to complain about all the meaningless toys and dolls and clothes I was given. What I was given probably wouldn't fill a corner in one of their rooms anyway. And I wasn't going to describe parents who couldn't see eye to eye about their egos. The last thing my momma worried about was her makeup, her complexion, and whether or not her hair and clothes were in style. I couldn't even begin to imagine Daddy going to fancy gyms and wearing expensive sweat suits. If Cathy the cat thought Misty's descriptions of what she called a hard life were hard to swallow, she'd surely choke to death in Doctor Marlowe's office once I began telling about, my life.

The thing is, did I want to begin? What were these girls going to tell me about me and my troubles that I didn't already know myself, huh? What did Doctor Marlowe expect out of us? I couldn't tell Misty anything that would help her yesterday. She wouldn't be able to tell me anything that would help me today. And that Jade. . . I was sure she'd be sitting there with her nose pointed at the ceiling, refusing to lower herself to look my way. I bet she'd make me feel like she was doing me a favor just staying in the room while I talked.

I had tossed and turned and fretted about it quite a while last night, worried they might laugh at me or think my story was beneath them. I didn't want to go in there and have to look at their smiles of ridicule.

Granny looked at me, surprised at my hesitation.
"What do you plan on doing, Star, just sitting there in the car all morning? You know I got chores to run."
"Coming here is a waste of time, Granny." I looked at her. "It is!"
"Yeah, well the doctors and the judge don't think so and that's what counts here, Star, so you just better get on in there. I can't abide any more trouble. Not with this old heart ticking down like some tired old grandfather clock," she said.
Granny knew that was all she had to say to get me to do what she wanted. There was nothing I feared more for myself and my brother Rodney than her having another heart attack. She was the only one left in the world who cared about us and loved us, and she was the only one we cared to love.
I opened the car door and started to slide out.
"Okay," she sang to the front window, "I guess there's no sugar for me this morning."
I shook my head and leaned over to give her a kiss on her plump right cheek. Then she grabbed my hand as I turned away and held it so tightly it sent a shiver down the bone and into my spine. Her face was like one of her pieces of antiqurethina, full of tiny cracks, still beautiful, but on the verge of shattering the moment it was tapped a bit too hard.
Granny and I had the same eyes, only hers were just a bit rounder and somehow still lit up with hope more often than mine However, this morning her eyes were full of worry, making them look heavy, so heavy she looked like she wanted to just close them and lay her head back on that double down pillow she claimed was full of good dreams.
How I wished I had a pillow like that.
Granny had had so many troubles in her life, troubles she had buried so deeply in her mountain of memories, I never even knew about them. She didn't want me to know. If I asked her too many questions about her own youth and her own hardships, she would just shake her head and say, "You don't need to feed the hatred living in your heart anything extra, Star. Your momma and daddy done enough to provide it with a feast that's kept it too fat as it is."
"What is it, Granny?" I asked as she squeezed my hand.
"You give Doctor Marlowe a chance to help you, Star. Don't shut up all the doors and windows, child, like you done so many times before. You're too young to become someone's lost cause, hear? Your momma likes to wear them shoes, but you kick 'em off."
"Yes, Granny," I said smiling.
If I had inherited just a small piece of that steel spine of hers, I would surely make it through all the rain and wind on the road ahead of me, I thought, and there was plenty still to come.
She let go and I continued out of the car.
"And don't look down on those other girls just because their families got some money," she warned me.
I shook my head at her.
"What do you know about people with money, Granny? You haven't ever had any rich friends to complain about, have you?"
"Never mind your smart mouth, child. I don't have to have rich friends to know having lots of money doesn't mean you don't need any sympathy and a helping hand. Those other girls wouldn't be here otherwise, would they?" she pointed out.
She was a smart one, my Granny. I guess something could be said for the school of hardship, too. Granny could be the valedictorian of that school and graduate with honors, I thought, not that it was something anyone would want or be proud of, especially Granny.
"Okay, Mrs. Anthony," I said. Whenever I called her by her name, she knew I was teasing her.
"You hold your tongue in there, child, and be civil, hear?" she warned me firmly.
"Yes, Granny."
"I'll be back the same time as yesterday," she said and started away.
I watched her drive off, a little old lady, not more than five feet four inches tall with shoulders still capable of holding up the responsibilities my much younger mother couldn't tolerate. Granny still had plenty of grit and walked proudly with her head high.
Granny always kept her smoke-gray hair brushed back and tied neatly in a bun. She wore just a touch of lipstick, but no other makeup, ever. Her eyeglasses were really the only frilly thing she

^{permitted in her life. They were fashioned like -}
expensive designer glasses with dark frames. It gaveher just enough of a touch of style to make her comfortable with her public appearances, and she loved it when her older men friends kidded her and called her Miss America.

She was once a very pretty woman. She didn't look her sixty-eight years, despite the tensions and disappointments in her life. Granny wasn't as much of a churchgoer as most of her friends, but she had a deep faith in the goodness of people and the promise of an everlasting paradise at the end of the difficult journey. In her mind there were always people worse off, and she put more of her strength and energy into feeling sorrier for them than she did for herself. There was nothing she taught me that was more important to her than to despise and avoid self-pity. She said it was like "shackles around your ankles, keeping you chained to disaster and defeat.

Instead, you pick yourself up when you get set back some and move on until it's time to stop and put your trust in the Lord," she advised.

Maybe you had to be old to believe like that, I thought. I wasn't ready to simply accept
disappointments and defeat and move on. I refused to bend and I let whatever winds that blew at me know it. I'd break before I'd bend. Granny told me that was just defeating myself, but I still had the need to scratch and claw, kick and punch and spit into the faces of those who made my life miserable.

It was supposed to rain all day in Los Angeles and the clouds were blowing in from the northwest and thickening rapidly as the hands of the wind molded them like clay. Doctor Marlowe's large Tudor house looked darker, the windows reflecting the gray skies. It was a very big house, the biggest house I had ever been in, and here in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Brentwood, too.

There was nothing to reveal that Doctor Marlowe's house was a place where she treated patients, or clients, as they liked to call us. I guess that was deliberate. Doctor Marlowe certainly didn't want us to feel like freaks or anything. She wanted us all to be relaxed like people just visiting, but I had no other reason to come to this part of the city where so many rich people lived, no other reason than supposedly getting my head put back on straight.

However, no matter what the courts and the schools and the other doctors had said, I still didn't believe in the value of coming here even though Doctor Marlowe used words as her medicines. She prescribed different ways of thinking about things, used questions the way other doctors used X-rays and always tried to turn your eyes around so you were looking into yourself instead of at her.

I admit that she made me think about
everything twice at least, but it still hadn't made me feel any better about myself or the things that had happened to me and my brother. I wasn't going to walk out of this big house and her office one day and be picked up by loving new parents, was I? She wasn't going to wave a magic wand over my horrible history and make it dissolve into thin air like some bad dream. I'd still be what Misty called an orphan with parents.

It was a good description. My mommy and daddy weren't dead and buried, but they were dead to me even though there were no funerals. Instead of a procession to the cemetery, there had been a parade of lies and crippled promises limping along from the day I was born until today, until this moment, all of it parked outside, still following me everywhere, waiting to be told where to go.

Me too, I thought, I'm waiting to be told where to go. Doctor Marlowe wanted to take me to some second chance, some new start full of new hope. She wanted me to believe that the only thing holding me back was myself. She made it sound like I didn't long for a real family and a nice home and nice friends, and I had to be talked into it. Right.

It made me angry just thinking about how she wanted me to blame myself. She expected me to discover what was wrong with me and fix it rather than point to a drunken mother and a deserter and deadbeat for a father. I wasn't ready to excuse them or forget them and it would be a cold day in hell before I would ever forgive them. Granny was right about the hatred gnawing away at my heart, but for now, I didn't see anyplace else for it to be.

Doctor Marlowe's maid Sophie opened the door for me and stepped back quickly as soon as she set her eyes on me. Maybe she thought I had something contagious. The doctor's sister Emma was nowhere in sight, which was fine with me. She was a big, heavy older woman who always looked at me as if she thought I might steal something from the house. I know I made her so nervous she couldn't wait to get out of my sight. I didn't want her there, anyway.

As it turned out, I was the last to arrive. They were all sitting where they had sat yesterday with Doctor Marlowe in her chair. She wore a navy blue dress and had her hair brushed down. I thought it made her look older. Maybe she thought she had to look that way with us. She was tall and lean with long arms and legs. Yesterday, we asked her why she wasn't married, but she wouldn't tell us. She claimed she was the doctor here. She'd do all the asking. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, "You're just hiding behind that like you say we hide behind stuff, too," but I promised Granny I would try not to let my mouth and tongue have a mind of their own.

Jade and Misty glanced at Cat and then at me with self-satisfied smiles on their faces because I had been wrong about her not showing up. After Misty had told her story, I predicted Cat would quit group therapy, but if anything, she looked a little better than she had yesterday. Her hair was neatly brushed. She wore some lipstick and she wore a light-blue cotton dress with loafers. Doctor Marlowe looked pleased about it too. Maybe we were all a good influence on Cat, I thought. At least someone might get something valuable out of this. It was just that I would have guessed Cathy would be the one least likely.