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She couldn't remember what she had seen that had upset her that day, so many years ago.
Maybe it had been the limp hand of a young woman lying in the gutter beside a Wash 'N' Run, her just-cleaned clothing strewn about the street now soaking up Night City's grime. Maybe it had been the mangy, half-hairless cat tearing the wings off of a pigeon—back when they were still around—on the awning of a food stall, feathers raining down onto the hot concrete below. Or maybe, just maybe, it had been the sight of a city worker ruthlessly pulling dandelions from the cracks in the pavement that reduced her to tears that afternoon.
These were the kind of tears only a child could produce. Fat, hot droplets cascading down round, freckled cheeks. Snot flowing freely. A wail trapped behind hiccuping breaths.
She remembered her mother's shadow eclipsing the sun as she knelt to cup those wet cheeks in rough palms. She remembered keeping her attention on the pavement beneath her feet when her mother asked, "Vaye, baby, what's wrong?"
She didn't have the words then to answer her. She wouldn't for a long time. Instead, with all the eloquence a six year old could muster, she hiccuped and blubbered and pointed one tiny, shaking hand at those displaced dandelions left to wither in the heat.
Her mother had clicked her cheek solemnly, wiped the tears from her daughter's face with a little too much pressure, and then taken those tiny, shaking hands in her own.
In retrospect, Vaye saw the way her mother had steeled herself. The way she had sighed almost imperceptibly before drawing a slow breath through her nose. The way calloused thumbs had swept across her knuckles, back and forth—attempting to sooth them both against the harsh reality surrounding them.
But in the moment, as her mother had urged her to look up from the concrete, she could remember nothing but the weight of an indescribable dread settling in her bones. The same dread that dogged her still. Twenty-some years later.
"Wh-why'd they do that?" she had asked, voice waterlogged and wavering. "Why're they killing the flowers?"
"Oh, baby," her mother had said, "it's just the way of things. To city folks, they're weeds—not flowers."
"But why?" A sniffle. "Why do they gotta die?"
Eyes like flat jade had searched her face as her mother's expression hardened around the shadow of something deeply sad. Something she couldn't comprehend with all of six years under her little belt.
"Because, Vaye," her mother had said steadily, "we all came from dirt, and one day we have to swallow it."
The hold on her hands had tightened with importance. She didn't understand. She couldn't. Not yet.
"There will ways be someone or something that thinks you should be uprooted and left to die, just like those plants," her mother had continued, releasing her hands to gently pick up and cradle one of the limp dandelions. "The powers that be… they will try. They might even succeed for a minute. But if you don't swallow that dirt and get back up—if you let it choke you—then they will win."
Vaye remember as her mother had stood, sad little plant in hand, and strode purposefully toward another crack in the sidewalk, this one hidden away from the view of the street. She had followed, rubbing the rest of the tears from her eyes with her fists, and watched her tuck the dandelion, roots-first, into the sandy vein between the slabs. It had laid there, limp and shriveled, folded over itself—dead. A splash of water from the bottle on her mother's hip followed.
It had felt pointless then.
"But mama—"
"The least we can do is help, baby," her mother told her. "All of us will have to swallow that dirt one day. But that doesn't mean we can't offer someone a drink to wash it down."
Two weeks later, they had taken that same route home from the hardware store. And there, hidden safely from the eyes of the average passerby, Vaye had spied a blot of gold and green bursting from between concrete slabs.