1988 | The Farmhouse, North Carolina

Dolores groaned as she rolled over in bed, her pregnant belly increasing in gravity as she tried to move its mass. She reached for the bucket beside her bed and tried like hell not to vomit again. She was so tired of throwing up.

Jesse peeked into the room to check on her mother. At eleven years old, Jesse was running the house, looking after her three little brothers, taking care of the dogs and cats, and even milking the goats every morning and evening. And, of course, taking care of Momma. Dolores couldn't make it out of bed without vomiting and Jesse was there to run her errands and clean up the mess.

"How're you doing, Momma?" Jesse asked tentatively, unsure if her mother would scream at her, cry, throw up or just need help. "I'm fine," Dolores responded. "But there's still a smell up here."

For weeks they had been deep cleaning the house, trying to find "the smell." Dolores was extra sensitive to smells since she was pregnant and nauseated. Even the wrong food smell could send her into uncontrolled vomiting. First they thought a rat had died in the walls. Then Jesse deep cleaned the refrigerators trying to find the scent that was making her mother cry. She had cleaned Momma's room a dozen times, removing anything that could stink including the old, rotting Christmas cactus that Dolores had gotten as a wedding present twelve years prior.

Jesse was devastated that the plant was dead. It felt like the end of her parents marriage, and it saddened her greatly. She took the dilapidated cactus up the hill to the garbage cans to throw it away. Then she noticed the tiniest green sprout on one side, sticking up from a dead root. It was green, bright green.

Jesse squirreled the little plant away, deciding that it would be the perfect Christmas gift in a few months, if she could just get it to grow. But how? How do you even take care of a cactus?

Ever so subtly Jesse asked her mother. So casual she was fit to burst, she wove it into conversation trying not to be noticed. "Well," Dolores said, "you treat a cactus exactly opposite of a regular plant." Dolores had never kept a plant alive in her life and had, in fact, killed the aforementioned cactus. "If you talk kindly to a clover, you scream at a cactus. You keep it in the bright light and never water it. Or you leave it in a closet for a month. Just be mean to it."

Jesse pondered. What wouldn't she do to a plant? And then she acted.

Jesse planted that little cactus start in a tiny pot that she found in the shed. She filled it with dirt and rocks and hid it away in her bedroom - which was directly next to Dolores' bedroom in the drafty upstairs of the Farmhouse. She watered it too much and then didn't water it for days. She ignored it, the screamed at it when no one was home. She poured sour milk on it and even squatted in her little blue room and tinkled on the poor plant.

The cactus came to life. Multiple little green sprouts came out and started growing. Jesse was so excited she could hardly stand it. By mid-October it was too pretty to wait until Christmas to show her mother.

Carefully, she scooped the little plant up and tottered into her mothers bedroom to show her. The lace curtains were drawn and the room was dim, but Momma's bedside light was on.

"Momma?" Jesse asked, fit to burst with pride. "I have a surprise for you...remember your Christmas cactus from your wedding?" The little girl thrust the pot full of rotting milk, little girl pee and god only knows what else under her mother's nose.

"OH. MY. GOD." Dolores gagged. Gagged again. Reached for her throw-up bucket and let loose a stream. "GET IT OUT OF THE HOUSE!" she screamed.

While the original smell was never found, part of the problem had been hidden in Jesse's front window for months. The little cactus was unceremoniously tossed and the story of the Christmas cactus with pee on it went down in family history.