Sixteen February–March 1998 #2
Susan reached over to fill our empty teacups, the scent of lavender and camomile filling the air.
I had discovered five teacups and saucers on a high shelf, untouched by time.
I’d cleaned them and begun using them, drinking tea out of a cup that my mother and grandfather had also drunk from.
I had never cared much about these things before, but now, being here in the house, watching time pass without the people I loved, I held on to their memories through the things they used, the things they loved.
“So, have you heard from William?”
“Yup, he sent five hundred dollars in a card with a nice note from his children.”
“You really lucked out, you know.”
“I do know.”
When they left, both with containers of leftovers, I cleaned up the kitchen.
I like washing dishes, it has always felt like therapy to me.
The hot water felt good on my hands. There was something about taking something dirty and making it clean again, the softness of the bubbles, the warmth of the water, that calmed my mind.
Brushing my teeth before bed, I turned my head to better see the scar in its entirety, and I felt nothing.
No hate, no sadness, no embarrassment. It no longer felt like part of me, it no longer had anything to do with me.
It was just a mark, a way to identify time.
Before the scar and after the scar, before I returned home and after, and finally, now, settling down in the place I knew I belonged.
The next month, I received a letter from the town letting me know that they would designate the tree a “Special Place,” whatever that meant.
They were also kind enough to let me know that they would provide no funding and that any caretaking would be my responsibility since the tree bordered the land owned by the town and my own land.
I called Susan right away, unsure if I was glad for the minor victory or annoyed at its smallness.
The next morning, I woke up late to the sound of someone knocking on my door. I wrapped my housecoat around me as far as it would go—my growing belly made it increasingly hard to tie it—and wiped the sleep from my eyes. Susan and Miriam stood outside.
“Let us in, sleepyhead. We got some work to do.” Miriam handed me a coffee. “Decaf for you, mama.”
I wasn’t fully awake and was confused. Susan set her coffee on the table and headed back out the door. She came back in with some tall, thin pieces of wood, one end sharpened to a point, a sledgehammer, a shovel and a roll of chicken wire.
“This should be enough to get us started until we can get a proper fence around the tree.”
I sat down in my chair with a thump and looked at the supplies and then at their faces, so happy so early in the day.
“Oh no, you can’t cry. If you start to cry, I’ll start to cry.” Susan turned away.
We drank our coffee before heading up to the tree.
I brought an old set of gardening shears, dull and somewhat rusted, but I wanted to clean away some of the growth that covered the path, which used to be so well-worn.
It was slow going, and I had scrapes and cuts on my hands before we even got to the tree.
We used the shovel to dig holes in the ground.
There had been a warm snap in the weather, something the white folks called an Indian Summer for some reason, so the ground wasn’t frozen, and we were able to dig farther than we had anticipated.
We then pounded the pieces of wood as far into the ground as we could.
We took turns, and by the time we had all the wooden spikes set up, my arms were throbbing and weak.
The spikes didn’t go in far enough, so we gathered stones to anchor them in place, a temporary solution until spring arrived and we could construct something more permanent.
The fence was flimsy, and if anyone was determined, they would have no problem getting inside, but when we were done, we stood back and admired our work.
“It might not keep everyone out, but it might make them think twice before they try,” Susan said, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“Let’s hope,” I replied. “Someday we’ll build a better one, a stronger one, a higher one, with a gate that locks and a sign telling people of the significance of this place. But until that baby arrives, this is going to have to do. Thank you, guys, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
It didn’t take long for some morons from town to get wind that a makeshift fence had been put up around the tree, and while they didn’t break it down, they threw their beer cans and cigarettes butts into the protected circle.
Every morning, I would go up and clear away anything they had decided to leave.
Once, even a dead squirrel. And someone, in what I can only assume was an act of pure ignorance, taped a Bible verse to one of the wooden spikes.
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.
—Revelation 21:8
I took it down and placed it in the trash along with the other garbage.
I had no time for ignorant people. All this disrespectful behaviour only made me more committed to protecting the legacy of the tree.
A baby hadn’t been born here in nearly three decades, but that didn’t mean the tree had forgotten.
As I stood under it, looking up into the branches, skeletal in the winter cold, I could hear my Kiju’s voice.
“This tree holds our stories.” And as I looked down at the dirt at the base and the two strong roots protruding from the ground where women had placed their bodies for hundreds of years before these town people were even on this land, I swear the tree spoke to me in the voices of every woman who ever lay under it, whoever welcomed their next generation, one who had passed out of this world at the same time as she gave life to this world.
An unfair exchange. I finally understood all the loneliness, the grief, the anger that had led me to this moment, to this tree, to this thing I was meant to do.
I looked up into the branches, grey against a grey sky, leafless and resilient against weather and the ignorance of humans, and I smiled.
“I hear you,” I said.
The tree knew I was there.