by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North
The echinacea were still alive when the first bell of the school year rang. They’re also called coneflowers, and this is how my mother ensured we shared a name—that I carried her with me safely. Her name is Echina, mine is Connie. I didn’t understand, at first, why we didn’t have the same name. I both knew and didn’t in 2018, when the Toronto District School Board trustees voted to remove police officers stationed in their schools. But I see now, in September 2026, as I begin my senior year of high school. I was born in this country. My mother wasn’t.
The last time we drove back from Mexico, during the summer of 2025, we’d talked about our fears surrounding the upcoming American and Canadian elections. Mid-topic, we passed a strip of coneflowers and mom, as always, adored an opportunity to talk about the flowers she so admired. She loved them so much that she gifted some to my high school, now rimmed in magenta, white, and yellow.
“You know, echinacea are native to North America. They’re tough and sturdy and colourful. Resilient—surviving full sun, bad soil, and drought. They help the bees and butterflies, feed the birds, and boost our immunity. They even self-seed non-invasively. Do you know what I’m saying—”
“I know what you’re trying to say.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you make them sound like a perfect flower. Maybe they are. But we’re not perfect. And flowers can be ripped from the soil by their roots, no matter how hearty they are. That’s what Trump’s going to do. And it can surely happen in Canada, too.”
Mom’s bony, ringed fingers slid down the steering wheel to eight and four. She took a loud breath that slumped her shoulders. “You don’t know what I’m saying because you didn’t let me finish.”
I regret it now, but at that moment, I shook my head and put my headphones in. She was right—I didn’t know what she wanted to say.
And here I am, waiting in a long line of students entering the school. Doorways doubled by scanners, tripled by police officers, and quadrupled by cameras. I remember my mother’s words, but I don’t yet know how to enact them. I’m terrified.
When I was nine, police roamed my elementary school grounds. But more than the coldness of the cops, I remember Mandy. Mandy with freckles, dimples, warm brown skin slightly darker than mine, and polished copper eyes. One of the first English words I could spell was penny, because I’d met Mandy in kindergarten and been in love with him since. I fight to remember him this way: Mandy, who smelled of his grandfather’s tobacco pipe when he kissed my cheek inside a dead tree trunk during recess.
But he was a troublemaker, always making things when we were supposed to be quiet and listening. A delinquent. A thief. His every move was watched, surveilled, and reprimanded in the halls. Detention for backtalk became suspension, and soon, arrests. So many frightening phone calls with the Canada Border Services Agency. A model of the school-to-prison pipeline. And it all started, from what I can remember, when he borrowed Jenny Barton’s glue stick and scissors without asking her. “What are you going to do with those?” they’d asked, fearfully. I know it started before that. Start isn’t the right word. What was cut up and flimsy as construction paper, to begin with, was his trust in adults. And I wasn’t enough to glue something so hurt back together—at least not faster than it shredded.
Mandy’s in prison now, so I hear. Just shy of nineteen. I haven’t spoken to him since he was fourteen and I was thirteen. He disappeared from my life. And out of manufactured fear, I let him.
I know peers, parents, and teachers who protested police in schools. I have friends who stopped coming to school because their parents and guardians are afraid of being reported to immigration officials, even though mom said the Education Act guarantees them an education regardless of status. But Mandy needed support. Not the police.
About midway through the lineup to enter the school, this old heartbreak snapped into panic. As nonchalantly as I could manage, I slipped out of line behind a portable and again behind the echinacea bushes. How else could I protect my mom? I put my headphones in and played two poems by Celia Martínez with my arms hugging my knees. I couldn’t stop my tears and heaved the still-humid air silently.
I slowly calmed, listening to Celia’s words. As I fought to figure out what to do next, vehicle headlights lit up my hiding spot magenta. There was a catwalk to a subdivision next to me, but these lights were too bright and close to be coming from the road. I sank further into the bushes, so afraid that it was some form of authority figure looking for me. But nobody would’ve known I was missing yet. It was only 7:53 and classes didn’t start until 8:15.
A loud engine growl startled me, but it was turning off. A kickstand scraped the fence, thick-heeled boots hit the pavement, and headlights clicked off.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust, finding focus on a yellow floral dress hugged by a red leather jacket. My mom was crouching in front of me. She smelled like fruit.
I smeared my glittery white eyeshadow across my face trying to wipe tears away. “How did you know I was here?” I murmured, nearly incoherently.
Echina smiled and almost laughed as she sat down cross-legged beside me, out of view. “Your brothers and sisters hid here too.”
“But how did you know I’d be here today?”
“Moms know a lot of things. I had a feeling.”
“So you know why I didn’t go in.”
“I do. And I understand.” She took my hands in hers.
I swallowed, clearing my throat. “I know what you meant last summer. About coneflowers. About us.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not about perfection. It’s about believing in ourselves. In our love and hope and joy.”
“Yes, it is. And so much more.”
I nodded, but she could tell I was waiting for her to expand on the ‘much more.’”
“There’s a story that I used to tell your father before he died. I haven’t told it since, but you need it now.” She shifted to face me. “There was once an echinacea flower who—”
“Mom, do you have any stories not about echinacea?” My face cracked a wet smile.
Echina smirked. “Yes, but they’re not as good. Don’t interrupt.” She paused to paint a fresh layer of red lipstick, put the tube in her bra, and clapped her hands together softly. “So, there was once an echinacea flower who thought she couldn’t support the roots of the flowers around her unless she was completely filled—brimming with nourishment (this tale is inspired by the wonderful work of Christabel Mintah-Galloway, RN, BSN). She thought that she couldn’t give unless she was full. Gradually, the flowers around her began to die. And then, so did she. What mistake do you think she made?”
“We’re never fully or perfectly nourished. So she never helped.”
“Precisely.” Mom squeezed my hands and kissed them.
“But I don’t understand. I do help.”
“You do. You always help me. But I tell you this little tale to say: almost always, even when we feel most alone and hopeless, there’s something we can do—especially something we can give. And we must keep giving and gifting so that others can do the same for us. We can’t sever that connection. All relationships are tended most lovingly this way; it’s how we keep making in every sense of the word—change, progress, love, art, each other, and the list continues.”
“But I’m so afraid to walk into that school now, mom. With all the police and surveillance. Why is it always us who have to give. So many people only extract. Even my school friends.”
“I know. I know, my love.” Mom hugged me. As she stroked my hair, she asked, “Is there someone who gave to you, who you once shared roots with—made with, maybe—who you could give back to today?”
“Aside from you?”
“Mhm.” She smiled appreciatively.
It only took a moment to figure out who she was trying to get me to remember. And it was with his memory that I eventually walked into the school for my last first day.
***
That afternoon, I sat inside what felt like a particle board booth for standardized test-taking. There was a grey landline phone on the wall beside me, its coil nearly reaching the floor. This room of the county jail smelled of sweat, cheap coffee, and old paper. I looked down, picking at my purple nail polish. I don’t know what prompted me to look up, but when I did, I didn’t startle. I didn’t know how long he’d been sitting across from me, watching from the other side of the glass, with those same eyes.
I stared back, my brow creasing involuntarily to mirror his. It’d been long enough for both of us to notice change, but not long enough to not recognize each other. He was thin, but stronger, and with black facial hair that suited him.
Mandy picked up the phone on his side but my hand went to the glass, as if my palm could push through it to reach his cheek. Keeping the phone to his ear, his head sunk, as if in shame. Afraid he’d leave I quickly picked up the phone.
“Mandy. Don’t go.”
He looked up. His eyes were kind, but it almost looked uncomfortable for them to soften. As if softness was the only muscle he hadn’t trained since I last saw him, chiselled now in more ways than one. He started to speak but stopped and pressed chapped lips together.
“It’s me. C—”
“Connie.”
I nodded, unsure why I thought he wouldn’t remember.
“Thought I’d never see you again.” His voice was like gravel.
I smiled and nodded.
“Why did you come?” There was a sternness now.
I took a deep breath and looked down for a moment to gather myself. He thought I was patronizing him.
“If it takes that long to say I—”
“No, wait.” I snapped my head up. “My mom told me a story. And I wanted to tell you about it.”
“You want to tell me a story?”
“It’s about us. About what we can make.”
“Us?” There was a slight momentum in Mandy’s voice that gripped my heart. The wit that once made much of what he said sound like a wink. I’d missed it so much.
“Don’t you want to hear it?”
“Well, what are we going to make?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then how are we going to make it?”
“Together.”
He grinned, and I couldn’t help but beam back.
We truly hadn’t said much of substance. I didn’t yet know why he was here, nor how we could make anything, let alone make anything happen or change in our corner of the world. He didn’t yet know what I’d been doing for five years. But a shared fight within the two of us found its reflection.
Mandy kept smiling. It was a disarming, determined smile, with an undercurrent that I recognized. My cheeks warmed, realizing my hand was still on the glass. I was about to move it when he reached up and pressed his palm to mine. The sweat from our palms ran down the pane like tears.
