13. NO SABO TREES
NO SABO TREES
The oak tree doesn’t know its original tongue.
Its trunk with splotches of pistachio green lichen creaks in a rhythmic click click click click as its branches claw at the cloudless sky.
The oak tree transmits messages in greens, reds, oranges, yellows, and browns.
A language of sorts, but not the first. Like a bundle of the human nervous system, the oak tree’s roots spread out and tunnel through the earth underneath, threading into the mud, feeling its way to nutrients.
A dialect of mystics. An undeniable connectedness.
Oaks are prone to optimism even as they reach for mycelial ghosts.
Their roots reach for any echoes of their ancestral past. In the world above, water vapor bursts from the bark of the oak tree on cold mornings, like an exhalation of relief.
The water vapor articulates a story about birth and death and the cycles which link them together forever.
The oak is thankful for the water. Gratitude is soft reciprocation.
What was your first language?
Olivia asks with her hands on her hips, squinting as she looks up at the canopy which sprinkles her with tiny bits of sun. The tree isn’t sure. The tree explains that 124 years on this planet means nothing.
A flash of lightning. One heartbeat. A word left unsaid.
Was Spanish your first language?
No. Not Spanish.
Nahuatl?
Olivia knew Nonantzin and Onkan. My Mother and Where?
No. That’s not right.
The tree tries to explain that the way it speaks to relatives is not through direct sentence structure, but more like a song, an ethereal wave of sound that shifts the air.
Colors mutate. Sound becomes gentle. A quiet eruption of pheromones and fragrance, but it becomes more complicated as the lineage becomes more interconnected.
The tree assumes a tiny human can only understand so much.
Olivia pats the tree on the trunk, sticking her fingers between the gaps of protruding bark. How old are your siblings? The trees that guard the house.
They are children! Anywhere between fifty to seventy-two. They were small before. Just like you. We were here before the house existed, before the house learned its first word.
Olivia steps away from the tree. She stays quiet for a minute.
Do you hear the house speak? I hear it at night.
I hear it in my dreams. I can feel it under my feet.
The bed shakes. The lights flicker. I close my eyes because I don’t know what to say.
I don’t understand what the house is trying to tell me.
The tree thinks for a moment, shaking out its leaves, and then explains that the trembling may happen for a multitude of reasons.
It could be fear. It could be anger. It could be sadness.
It could be love. The earth may flitter with glee if there’s salacious gossip.
Olivia giggles at the thought of the earth yearning for chisme.
What is the house trying to say to us? Olivia runs up to the house and holds her ear to the wall by the front door.
What are you trying to tell me?
The house is giving birth to something new.
What do you mean? A baby?
You’ll see soon enough.