A little Gray Building
In Search of Wild Roses
Teadora Gildenger | 8th Grade, Room 202
I knew I was in trouble when my fingers started smoking. As I walked through the revelry of the night, I tried my best to hide my fingers in my long saffron sleeves. No luck. A small girl, not even four years old tugged on my sleeve. Her shriek was quickly followed by a giggle as she tapped me on the hand and ran into the crowd. She vanished quickly in the sea of bright dresses and robes, all worn to celebrate the last glorious day of summer before the traders arrived with their goods, and the rains with their stormy days.
I quickly tugged the map out of one of my many pockets and waved my smoking fingers over it. The purple smoke, which smelled faintly of honey and cinnamon sunk into the fabric of the map like a storm over the sea.
As soon as the smoke had set in, the writing of the map vanished, only to be replaced with more directions. According to the map, I was supposed to wander all over the festival, picking up a porcelain mask here, and a flask of dream-cider there until I arrived at a storefront with an overturned cart of exotic fruit.
“Here, Abuela. I brought you some soup for your cold.” Of course that wasn’t the only reason I was there. When I found the handkerchief in one of my grandmother’s boxes, there had been a note pinned to it in my grandmother’s handwriting. If only I had more time. With that one sentence, my grandmother became the most interesting person in this small village.
“Achh! This cold might be the death of me, and you bring me soup?” But even as she said it, she had a twinkle in her eye. My grandmother was the kind of person that had enough stories to put a screaming toddler to bed, enough smiles to, and a sharp enough tongue to burst an inflated ego. Today she still had the sharp tongue and smile, but I was hoping that my grandmother still remembered some of the stories of her youth. “Come here, niña. I want to see someone inspiring before the clouds come.”
“But you heard what Tía said.”
My aunt’s harsh words spiraled through my head. ‘You’ll never be anything less than some pretty wife locked away,’ she had said.
‘You’ll have your children with some old man, grow old before your time, and die. I’ll make sure of it! You failed every test we ever gave you, just to waste your time dreaming of elsewhere.’ She said elsewhere like a dirty word, which I suppose it was, to her. She had never left this village, and wouldn’t until the day she died.
‘This is the only path left for you, my niece.’
The words echoed through my head, racing me through every emotion. Anger. Fear. Shame. Hope. Defiance. She might not leave, but I would. I was determined to be more.
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