Page 8 of I Accidentally Hired a Shadow Walker
My home meant so much more to me than just a place to lay my head. It was security, something I hadn’t had for so long in my life. I grew up in this system, moving from foster home to foster home for most of my youth. I could have ended up like so many other statistics of that system. I could have fallen into drugs. I could have become a young mother.
Trust me when I say there were plenty of people giving me that exact prediction for my life, but I refused to accept that as my truth. And so as soon as I could, I got a job; I worked my ass off and saved every penny I got my hands on. Fortune turned in my favor just after my fourteenth birthday, when my case worker placed me in the foster home of a woman who treated me like I was her heart and soul.
Lavon was a light in a world that felt suffocatingly dark. The first night I met her, she pulled me into her arms and said, “Welcome home!” With other foster parents, I was always reserved. I never let my guard down. But within a week, I cuddled up to her. I lay in her bed watching movies and joined her in the garden. Lavon truly felt like home.
In my years living with her, Lavon taught me all the things about life I had struggled to learn on my own. She taught me about saving, about finances. Shetook the time to show me the ways of being a woman. She taught me how to take care of myself, and the importance of that. When I failed at something, she didn't ridicule me like others had. Lavon showed patience and explained why these things had to be done a certain way.
If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be in the position I was in. When I went to college, it was her who helped me. She’d always wanted a daughter of her own but was never able to have one, and in all the years of having her foster care home, she only had boys. I was the first girl, so the money she saved for her future daughter, she gave to me.
That, combined with the money I had saved over the years—she never made me pay for a thing—was what I used to pay my way through college. The year before I first opened my doors, she died. When I went to her funeral, I didn't expect much. I knew her family; they knew me. I expected everything to be cordial. What I did not expect was to be pulled into a room by an attorney, who gave me an envelope.
In that envelope was a letter.To my daughter. She hadn’t writtenfosterdaughter. To Lavon, Iwasher daughter. That was how she saw me. In over a decade of knowing her, she had become the mother I needed, and I realized as I read her words that she was my mother. She was my heart. I’d cried so hard, the letters on the page smudged so badly, I couldn’t finish reading it.
The attorney then handed me a second envelope. Inside was a letter that began:Now that you’ve cried through the first letter… It went on to say how she wanted me to be okay, that everything that was hers was now mine. She’d known she was sick and her time was coming to an end, so she was leaving me her estate, a house she wanted me to sell and a bank account.
Then, the attorney handed me another envelope that contained an account ledger. It didn’t have millions of dollars in it, but it had enough for a nice downpayment on a new house, and some seed money for my business. That was more than I had ever hoped for.
Around my home were touches of her. I noticed it every time I thought about her. I decorated in the same way. I grew the same plants, and used the same scents in my diffusers. She loved patchouli. I even had incense in the house, though I never burned them because I hated the smokiness. Instead, I loved to pick them up and sniff them because they reminded me of her.
There was a time in my life when I’d envied others. I envied the relationship they had with their mothers, the connection,the bond, because I felt like I would never know what that was. But she had given that to me. I was grateful for it every day, because it taught me what it meant to be loved by a woman; allowed me to experience girlhood.
I stuck to my usual nightly routine: visiting my garden. As soon as I stepped through the gates, I kicked off my shoes. I loved the feeling of the soil on my feet. I danced through the grass, throwing my hands in the air, praising the space I had. I visited the flowers, sniffing their fragrance and smiling when they perked up at me, even though there was no sun to encourage them. As my final task, I sprawled out in the middle of the ground, grass against my skin, hair splayed out around me. This was my happiness. This was what I worked so hard for; to come home and lie in the grass and feel at peace.
This was my welcome home and my rejuvenation.
After laying in my garden, I entered the house, dropping my clothes at the door so as not to track dirt inside. I stripped and went to the bathroom. Another glorious part about living alone was the freedom to walk around butt ass naked. If I had been born in another life, I would have been a nudist. I would have had a beach somewhere secluded by myself, where I could just run around in the buffunderneath the sun.
I hated clothes. They felt suffocating, which was why, most often than not, you would catch me in a short pencil skirt and a loose blouse. If it wasn't that, it was something like booty shorts or a tank top. If I could have my skin as free as possible, that was all I needed. Unfortunately, sometimes, I had to cover up, especially in my line of work. I had to make sure my body was covered for protection, of course. Safety was first, fashion second.
As my bath ran, I took care of my hair. I shouldn’t have laid in the damn grass before covering my hair. I usually pulled my bonnet out of my purse, but the day had been stressful, and I was out of my mind. So much for letting my hair last a few more days. I sprayed it down and detangled the coils with a wide-tooth comb. The second I thought of skipping the wash, a blade of grass fell onto the sink in front of me.
“Fine, I’ll wash it!” I fussed and applied the hair mask I always used before washing my hair.
While the water filled the tub, I moved through the house, tending to all the potted plants inside. These were my babies. Other people had pets or actual children. I had my plants. I talked to them, nourished them, cared for them, loved them when they flourished.
But my plants had secrets I could never share. They were more powerful than they looked, and there was one that held more power than all the others. No, I wasn’t just a crazy plant lady—kay, maybe a little bit—but there was something special about it.
I walked to the large potted plant by the window, a second smaller pot sitting inside it. I had to cut out the bottom of the pot and plant it inside the bigger one because this plant got pissy when I tried to swap it entirely.
“You can stop pretending now.” I tapped the potter with my fingernail then stepped back to watch.
In the same dramatic fashion, what looked like a simple vine plant with pink flowers moved. The long vine pulled back, coiling into a tight ball. Then, those petals shifted, moving to form tight scales across a long, slender body. Moments later, her head popped out of the dirt, and she shimmied to knock the soil away from her.
“There you are.” I smiled, reaching out so Kaa could nuzzle my hand. “How was your sleep?”
She looked up at me, and the petals around her face spread out, creating a pink mane.
“I assume it was a good day.” I lowered her small body to the floor and, as always, she went off to survey the area. For the next hour, she would slither through my home, a mythical guardian. Her presence made me feel safer. As she slid across the floor, pink and silver and giving off her magical aura, I headed back to the bathroom.
Kaa had been with me for over twenty years. I called her a gift from the universe, because I found the seed that formed her soon after my own powers first emerged.
It was shortly after I turned fourteen, though I didn’t realize it. It was nothing significant, and mostly just made me paranoid. The first few times it happened, I noticed how nature shifted and responded to me. I told myself at first I just had a wild imagination, that I needed to focus more on education and planning for my future. The only thing that mattered was getting ahead in life.
But then, I met my foster mother.
It was during my time working in her garden that I understood it wasn't just something happening in my mind. A year and a half after moving in with her, I had a dream of standing in a weird cave. As I walked deeper inside, I saw a womanstanding by a pool of water. I gripped the scarf I wore around my neck—my favorite, green with pretty gold spirals along the edges.
I remember her taking me into the water, telling me to relax, to understand a message was waiting for me. And then, I woke up, and at first, I couldn't remember much other than that, but as time passed, I remembered the words I’d heard in that pool. I understood something was awakening within me.
