When It Rains

My mother clenched two red metal pails with matching shovels as she led us into the wood beside a farm. As we walked, she mentioned Mrs. Nelson had called her, as a neighbor, and as a concerned parent, to tell her I had been seen going into the wood with a man, and that it may be worrisome to my reputation because, of course, a lone girl entering the wood with a man was reason for concern, and may be cause for alarm. Mrs. Nelson, wanted my mother to be apprised of the situation so she could make the best decision for my well-being and safety. My mother understood Mrs. Nelson was commenting on her lackadaisical parenting, her recent divorcee status, and that she worked instead of staying home. My mother was committed to stopping the unacceptable behavior, of course, as she strongly relayed to Mrs. Nelson, however, she also knew that, I, JoBeth, her daughter, was a handful, and, as was often commented, a free spirit.

The purpose of the walk was to find lady’s slippers. As we headed down the trail, my mother seemed unusually in tune with my breath, my gait, and my hesitation about being in the wood with her. She eased into conversation before she tried to get me to divulge what I was doing in the wood and with whom.

“I don’t like when you wear those low jeans. Don’t you like overalls anymore? I see lots of girls still wearing them,” she said, with a purposeful and practiced air.

“I hate overalls,” I said, looking past her, alert to her agenda.

I liked the wood. I liked my friend Skinhead who walked with me, and occasionally fired up a bowl of hash to make the walk “more interesting.” When the bowl was tapped, we’d roam to firehouse grove, lay under a fairy-green willow and watched the branches sway to a primordial rhythm. Skinhead often sauntered alongside me singing. Whenever he forgot the lyrics he hummed the rest of the tune, a raspy rendition of sounds vibrated from his skinny body. When I didn’t feel like going home yet, I followed him along a stone path to his place. He never invited me in, but when he tugged on my pony tail to say good bye it was implied that I would be welcomed, if ever I wanted. Sometimes I lingered at the trail turn and watched as he slipped into a beat up trailer on the last of the undeveloped land. I liked that he liked The Dead too. Earlier that year, before I met Skinhead, I had been fixated on Uncle John’s Band because of a mushroom-infused road trip to buy some skunk weed that had been delivered to friends, of my then boyfriend, who lived in Hudson. We blasted ‘Workingman’s Dead,’ as we hydroplaned down the Taconic in an old Pacer through hazy sheets of rain, thinking how cool it was to transcend time, to slide through the universe on a plane of water, and levitate over asphalt as white lines blurred into the gray distant horizon.

On the way back home we turned onto a dirt road and parked under a big brown elm whose limbs I thought were perfectly spaced for climbing. Instead, we popped the hatchback and engaged in a full, open, get down.

“You’re sweet,” he grunted, as I clung to him and peered through the passenger window at the elm leaves shifting ever so slightly as the rain dropped.

“You okay?” He asked, as he released his twenty somethingness.

“Yes,” I whispered, comforted by his attention, yet trying with all my knowledge of thirteen years to disguise my melancholy with an authentic fondness for road trips and skunk weed.

Afterward, I wrapped myself in his sweatshirt and rolled a joint. We drifted in and out of confused conversations until the rain stopped. I was wasted, a bit worried about the time, and I had to pee when I wandered off into the brush.

“Be right back.” I mumbled. “Don’t leave without me.”

As I squatted, I saw, just a few feet ahead, a lady’s slipper, mingling quite nicely with some ground ferns and a long ago fallen white birch. Finishing up, I looked for something to dig up the fleshy rootstock with its hairy stem and its golden yellow flowers lined with purple, like a fruit that was most beautiful before it ripened. I found a fairly strong stick to burrow down and around the roots, and quite easily, up came the lovely plant. I carried the slipper to the car, found a Styrofoam cup under the backseat, and planted it. This is what I gave to my mother upon my return home.

Bringing home the flower meant I wouldn’t need to explain where I was, or who I was with, or why I was wrecked, or why I was so late. When she asked where I had found the lady’s slipper, I told her, near the trail at the end of our road, on my way home from a friend’s house.

The morning of our walk my mother marched over to the bookcase and pulled down the L-M encyclopedia. She read aloud the entry for lady’s slipper.

“An orchid,” she declared, “as fragile as a string of pearls, as delicate as silk. How could I have not known this?”

She closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

“We need to find more,” she said, as she pulled on her garden gloves and gathered the pails.

She had skipped over the line that stated that Lady Slippers were endangered. I told her this, and that there could be a fine, maybe as much as one hundred dollars. I tried my hardest to avoid the walk by questioning her willingness to break the law. She hesitated, then insisted if we left immediately, certainly no one would see us this early in the morning, meaning before Mrs. Nelson was stationed at her front window. She could count on me to show her exactly where I had found the Lady Slipper. I remembered, right?

As we got further down the trail and we had not spotted a single lady’s slipper my mother started in again.

“Do you like anyone special?”

“Nope.”

“Do you feel sad that your father doesn’t call?”

“Not really.”

“JoBeth,” she said, as if I had stepped on her last nerve. “Are you okay?”

“Yup.”

“Fine then. Since we’re not going to find any orchids maybe we could-.”

She stopped, our footslog ended. “Who’s that? There.”

There, ahead of us, Skinhead strolled along singing.

“I don’t know. Some guy.”

“Some guy? What’s he doing in the wood at this time of day?”

“Maybe he’s out for a walk. People do walk in the woods you know.”

“No they don’t, Not here. Maybe out in the country.”

“Mom, it’s just Skinhead.”

“Skinhead? What kind of name is that?”

“He was a Dead Head. Then he shaved all his hair off. Now everyone calls him Skinhead.”

“What do you mean a dead head? A skinhead? How do you know this man? Keep walking, here he comes.”

Skinhead’s heavy footsteps were close behind. He sang a reggae version of ‘You Are My Sunshine.’

“Why’s he singing like that?” Mother’s pace quickened.

“Some people sing in the woods. Slow down, he’s not going to hurt us.”

“How do you know? Is he your friend?”

“We’re almost to firehouse grove, we have to turn here to get home.”

“Turn then, since you seem to know exactly where we’re going.”

We turned. My mother flinched, alarmed that Skinhead had vanished, “Where’d he go?” I tried my best to distract her. “Mom! I remember where I saw a slipper,”

“Really now! Who do you think you are fooling JoBeth?”

The moment my mother finally accepted there were no lady’s slippers to be found, Skinhead sprung onto the trail, bowed deeply, and greeted us with “Good morning, me fair ladies.” My mother dropped the pails as she lunged to protect me. Skinhead winked at me, then danced away singing Uncle John’s Band.

My mother picked up the pails, her eyes widened then squinted as she watched Skinhead turn onto the trail to firehouse grove. She asked, “JoBeth, are you lonely?” I didn’t answer. I took a pail from her and went ahead. A gray light descended upon the wood. Thick chalky clouds taunted us. The only sounds were our footfalls and the clink-clank of the red pails. A peal of thunder cracked open the clouds. My mother scrambled to cover her head with the pail. I did the same. We tore up the street until we reached the sycamore across from Mrs. Nelson’s house. We sat under the tree, pails planted on top of our heads, and waited for the rain to stop.