A teenaged girl raised in Florida longs to escape what she perceives as the corruption plaguing the state.
Price Of Paradise
By: E.D. Detetcheverrie
Belle Bloomingdale closed her coffee colored eyes in anticipation of the drop. At her age, the process of sitting involved backing up
until her tired and visibly veined legs had touched the edge of her target, then willing creaking knees to bend and hoping for the best
when they finally gave way and she landed. The new apple-print cushion she’d bought for herself at WalMart was a bit firmer than
she generally liked, but she had to admit it felt better beneath a time-wasted, bony rump than the wooden slats of the old glider from
Sears. As she relaxed, her left hand caressed the crudely etched heart on the armrest with her initials and those of her late husband’s.
Valentine’s Day 1971, she recalled bittersweetly. A week before his third stroke had taken him.
JR and Marybelle had settled on this small parcel of acreage right after their wedding in 1959, adding two children to their household soon thereafter and later on Marybelle’s nephew, Chick, after his mother drowned. Twenty two years later, the first grandchildren, Peter and William, had been born. Peter left for school at Washington State on a football scholarship and was now engaged to a nursing student from Florida he planned to wed and bring back to the South with him.
Florida had always been Belle’s home, though she’d lived in three different cities and two different counties of it during her many years there. She’d seen her father’s hard life as a commercial fisherman take its toll of tremendous physical demands, salt air, and relentless sunshine on him until he’d finally fallen overboard when she was merely sixteen. They’d said it was an accident, but rumor said he’d done it to himself. Her mother had held out to the age of sixty-three, but her mind had started slipping twenty years
before then, leaving Belle to wonder if she’d be doomed to serve as a nursemaid for the rest of her own, uncertain young life.
JR’s half brother, Martin, had been the neighborhood boy who’d cut the grass for free since there was no man in
Marybelle’s life to do it, and she would have said yes if he’d ever asked her to marry him before he’d been taken by that lightning-started housefire back in ‘58. JR was returned home from the military that he might care for his own ailing mother who’d never been quite the same after losing Mart. That’s when he’d noticed what a sweetly shy violet poor Marybelle had blossomed into and asked for her hand himself.
The yard had turned wild after Belle’s arthritis had finally won out over many necessary household chores. A cloud of red Florida honeysuckle hid the ancient milk-paint trellis JR had built for her long ago to train it on. Fire ants dotted the once lush St. Augustine grass in low, wide mounds like clumsy waiters had traipsed through spilling bowls of dry GrapeNuts. Kudzu connected each gnarled pin and turkey oak with a dense green drapery and the few remaining palms bore thick skirts of old, brown, withered growth. She had her Sears push mower, and whenever she had a little energy she’d walk with it, but seldom trimmed more than a small runway for visiting dragonflies. If Old Mr. O’Brien who lived alone one block over didn’t stop by to sharpen the blade to a razor’s hone once a month in exchange for fresh sun tea, small talk, and whatever he could carry home from her overgrown grapefruit, tangerine, and banana trees, she’d never be able to move the obsolete lawn tool at all.
So Marybelle was quite old and very lonely with one child in an early grave, her sister’s child in prison for the botched armed robbery attempt of a Krispy Kreme, and the remaining boy wasting away on a houseboat down in the Keys with wild women, alcohol, marijuana, and fresh bait. Her last close relative and only friend in the world was Chick’s young daughter Elizabeth.
She wasn’t like the other children nor any other child Belle could rightly recall. Elizabeth was fair as porcelain, her skin so pale it seemed nearly translucent. Unlike most other Florida children, little Beth had disdained outdoor play at a very early age, seeming happiest in an air-conditioned environment where her entertainment came in the form of TV, books, a home computer, and video games. She was allergic to the mosquitoes which ruled the warmer months and despised the brief chills which came sporadically during the short Florida winter. Beth hated bugs and beaches. She wasn’t attracted to theme parks nor history. Neither
parrots nor dolphins could capture her attention. Sunsets she found blasé. She disdained seafood and Cuban food and Latin cuisine. To be honest, she was hardly a bother at all, very quiet and self-sufficient, highly intelligent, seldom requiring anything for her
personal amusement or comfort.
Beth had been a fastidious child, panicking if she saw even a shadow of smudge on her skin, changing her clothes immediately if she broke the slightest sweat or noticed any imperfection on the fabric. She kept her hair in place always, brushed her
teeth promptly after every meal, trimmed her nails and shaped them regularly, kept vigil of the most minor skin blemish. It wasn’t so much that she was a vain girl as she held a borderline unhealthy fear of germs, bacteria, illnesses, uncleanness. Her preferred style of dress was simple and conservative or tastefully casual, never flirty or grungy. She so feared contracting anything from anybody that she didn’t even own a swimsuit, for she refused to soak where the public swam or sealife lived. Fortunately for her family, she’d always kept this quirk to herself, never attempting to convert anyone else to her extraordinarily neat and tidy ways.
With dismay, Belle realized she’d neglected to bring iced tea spoons with her in order to stir the fresh lemonade she’d prepared. Her glass was beside her on the slightly warped and decaying wooden table which matched the old glider. She stared absently at a tiny fruit fly on the edge of her glass, near the tiny chip she had to keep reminding herself to avoid, then returned from her reverie, dismissed the intruding insect with a sharp wave of one cold, pale, branch-like hand, and slipped her left index finger into the sunlight-colored liquid. Stirring sullenly, she wished JR was still around to tighten the bolts and repaint the old lawn and porch furniture. Maybe he’d never been all that attentive to her, but he’d been a good provider and caretaker for his home.
Beth picked her way cautiously around the fire-ant mounds, overdressed for the sultry afternoon in black denim jeans, black high-topped sneakers, and a long-sleeved but lightweight cream-colored silk blouse. The clothes were protection from insects and excessive sunlight, dust and pollen that might be in the air. Belle smiled slightly at the look of consternation on the teen’s
otherwise pleasant pale features. “You live in a jungle,” she complained in her almost too soft, almost too deep feminine voice.
“I live in Florida. It’s been battling back against the developers for years.”
Eyes the color of black coffee found the older woman and remained on her impassively. “Nanabelle, you really ought to have your hair done soon.” Beth seized a folded newspaper with the partially done crossword featured on top to brush imaginary debris from atop a nearby wooden chair with a slat seat. She was preparing to sit when she noticed a few old, abandoned webs
attached to the chair’s legs. As though placing a ring-shaped tissue atop a public toilet seat, Elizabeth unfolded the newspaper and sat atop it, perched near the edge in case of the need for a hasty retreat.
Belle chuckled. “And how clean do you suppose that old paper is?”
“Newspaper is surprisingly clean. In emergency preparedness class we learned you can wrap an infant in it safely if a woman on the street happens to give birth before she can make it to a hospital in time.”
“Now that's just foolhardy, Littlebeth. Anyone in their right mind would offer their shirt to wrap a child, or perhaps a jacket if they had one.”
The teen said nothing, merely staring down at her grandaunt’s feet and looking dour.
“Lemonade?” offered Belle, gesturing to the pitcher and clean, empty glass near her own still full one.
“I don’t imbibe chemicals, Granma.”
“It’s fresh made. I boiled the lemons and ice cubes in alcohol to sterilize them.”
Smiling at last, Beth pried the plastic lid from the pitcher and poured into the glass after making certain it wasn’t the one with the chip in it. “You should have boiled the sugar, too. It’s mostly settled at the bottom.”
“It’s not bad.” The elderly woman gave her own beverage another guided lap or two around the glass with her withered finger.
Beth poured the liquid between pitcher and glass a few times to help mix it better. When it was sufficiently cloudy with disturbed sediment sweetness, she settled back atop her newspaper and took a tentative sip. “I came to tell ya...I’ve been accepted by Lippencott.”
Belle managed to get the creaky glider to slide back and forth a few times while she thought. Then it stuck in place. She sighed. “That ain’t no Florida school.”
“I’ve never liked Florida, Nanabelle. You know that. Everything down here,” she said, pausing to gaze with trepidation at the dilapidated house beyond the overgrown and weedy backyard, “is so corrupt.”
“Corrupt? What’s corrupt?”
“Like that swing you’re sitting on.” Beth flinched suddenly as a small fence lizard scurried over the table where the lemonade sat.
“It’s called a glider, hon.”
“You never get it fixed. It just keeps sticking and there’s splinters sticking off of it.”
“I could always go get me a new one,” Belle admitted doubtfully, the crude carving by her late husband beneath her palm. She had to rub it hard to feel it anymore. With age, she seemed to’ve lost a lot of the sensitivity of her youth as well as her once
sunshine-smile looks.
“No, no! I mean...like that glass with the crack in it-”
“Just a little chip is all.”
“Your garden here all overgrown and ugly-”
“I could get Mr. O’Brien to tend it for me every now and again.”
“-with all the bugs in it!”
“Littlebeth!” Marybelle was aware things had decayed over time, and she was all too aware of her grandniece’s high ideals, but to be attacked like this was outrageous! The surprised old woman laughed. “Bugs is everwhere in Florida!”
“Not at Lippencott! It’s beautiful there...they have seasons and snowfall and the leaves all change color-”
“They have that up in the panhandle, too.”
“No. No alligators eating stray children. No snakes that get into the garage. No huge swarms of mosquitoes year round. They don’t have cockroaches up there the size of your big toe and can fly. Most homes never get invasions of rats or chimney birds or bats or-”
“Why, I think I’ve only seen maybe nine or ten rats in the house in the last thirty years!”
Beth shuddered and raised her heels so that only her toe tips remained on the mossy, algae-stained concrete beneath them. “The cycles are normal up thataway. Everything gets a chance to rest and die so it can try and come back again in the next season. Down here it’s a constant struggle for space and survival.”
Marybelle couldn’t tell if the intelligent young woman before her was talking about bugs and trees or something else entirely. Her own mind had lost its focus long ago with her vision, everything a little less distinct and blurry over time, but she still tried gamely to keep up the illusion that she was right as rain. “Have you mentioned to your father-”
“And that’s another thing. You know all my memories of my father are such good ones. He always impressed on me right from wrong and told me how important it was to seek always the path of least harm to others...and then he holds up a doughnut shop?”
“Well, circumstances-”
“He didn’t need the money. His friends weren’t bad people either! Now they’re all in jail for something so stupid....”
Marybelle went to take a sip of her lemonade but noticed something small, like a bit of tree bark perhaps had fallen into it.
“Mom hated the idea of, of loose women! She didn’t even wear makeup! She never dressed like...like Britney Spears, never swore, never drank, went to church twice a week....”
Chick’s ex wife, Dale, had run off with an altar boy and former straight-A high school student who’d been gunning for Eagle Scout. She was fifteen years his elder. Marybelle sighed, then abruptly recognized the item floating in her glass.
“My best friends flipped their car speeding on I-4. Chilli was terrified to drive on I-4! Why was she doing a hundred and thirty on I-4?”
The elderly woman didn’t know what to say, but hated it when people became upset around her. Sometimes it made things go too fast for her to follow. “There, there Elizabeth.”
“And Ace Westfield, president of the DARE program at school...making methamphetamines in his family’s garage?” Beth had once told Belle in secret that she would one day be Ace’s wife. Such a clean-cut, intelligent young man who loved Jesus, volunteered at the local animal shelter, played guitar in a small, local Christian band....
The teen gazed remorsefully at nothing and wrung her soft, pale hands. “It’s all corrupt down here. It’s not just the tourists who treat the place like their private cesspool or the migrant workers who only know the ways of an already corrupt country.... On the radio, every hour, they report five more road accidents in the county. Visitors get killed by new diseases and sharks and snakes. There are like twelve different poisonous plants here...six different venomous snakes...mosquitoes kill just a shade fewer people every year than humans do! Every night someone’s been killed or kidnapped or raped...babies turning up in the trash when they have safe havens designated to drop off the unwanted at...elderly people burning in their trailers...bodies turning up along roadsides and in the back of abandoned vehicles. Did you know every episode of COPS and America’s Most Wanted has at least one segment concerning this place? Have you seen the dead calves and sheep in the drainage ditches along the roadside in the rural areas? The crushed turtles and armadillos everywhere...do they aim for them, Granma? People shooting horses for food or killing llamas for fun! Stray pets everywhere and always crushed by cars...all the prisoners who walk the roads on clean-up duty...all the prisons and juvenile detention centers! What happened to the bodies of the buried Indian chiefs when they built that new casino? Funeral homes storing bodies in refuse containers so they can keep selling and reselling the same coffins over and over...little girls, barely ten years old with makeup and heels and pocketbooks alone in the malls!” Beth scanned the greying sky overhead imploringly. “It’s so ugly here, Granma! Everything’s ugly! Everything is decayed! It rots! It all rots! It decays!”
“Now, now.” Reaching toward her grandniece, Belle realized she was offering comfort with her left hand and quickly withdrew it again.
“I have to go...” her voice was squeaky with emotion. Her lower lids were rimmed with excess moisture. “...before it gets to
me, too....”
“Beth, you’re so young, and I know you’re a good child.” She was rambling, stalling, afraid. Belle returned her finger to her lemonade and rested her palm over the chipped rim of the glass.
Now her voice was almost a whisper. “I know...that’s why I have to go.”
“But, Littlebeth-”
“Granma,” she said suddenly, and her gaze was hard. The pretty young woman succumbed to guilt and let the expression fracture. “I...I think it’s already beginning....”
Aching to hold her pride and joy, the old woman remained where she was, afraid to leave her drink. What would Littlebeth think? She’d be horrified! It would prove her point exactly!
They each knew that a confession of some sort had been forthcoming, but Beth swallowed back her tears and stood, jaw set. “I’m sorry, Nanabelle. I-I...I just need to get out of here before I become a part of it, too. Everything here rots. Morals, standards,
etiquette, hospitality...life....”
Belle’s lower lip trembled. Should she risk standing and hug the child? It was clear there was no argument; Beth would leave because she’d made up her mind to do it, and whatever she chose to do with her time and herself she always ultimately did. “Well, I know you must be doing the right thing, then.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve always been such a good child.”
The girl uttered a choking sound and turned away.
“Beth, wait! Elizabeth...I know you’re not happy here...you never have been. I hope life up north agrees with you.”
“Thank you, Granma,” she sniffed, but was still unable to look the older woman in the eye. “Maybe sometime...sometime we can talk about things...I’ll call you. Mail you things.”
“You’ll be back,” Marybelle said softly as the upset teen stalked away and the crossword puzzle drifted to the ground. “It’s in you, child, and you won’t be able to resist it. You will be back someday.” The teen hadn’t heard her, or at least gave no indication that she had as she broke into a trot and was soon out of Belle’s bleary sight.
The elderly woman tried to nudge the glider beneath her into action, but it was stubborn and refused to budge. With a sigh, she lifted her glass in order to fish out the entire fingernail which had become detached and settled against a melting ice cube like a small canoe against a tiny iceberg. She thought she was crying, but it was just the beginning of a typical afternoon rainshower. It wouldn’t do to weep over the girl who would, undoubtedly, be drawn back to the beautiful promise of paradise so many persisted in believing, come what may to Florida. Transferring the glass to her right hand, Belle prepared to fish the discolored nail out but saw her entire left index finger up to the third knuckle was now also floating freely amidst the ice in her chipped glass.
This is an eerie story, but you put Testament in the background of it -- it makes it even darker. Very strong write. I like the dialog elements in this, brings out kind of a mystery horror hybrid here.
The fortunate inherit riches, prestige, positive notoriety. Those not so lucky bear legacies filled with poverty, infamy or, worse yet, the unhinged insanity and murderous urges of their ancestors.
Price Of Paradise
