by Allison Cross
I was planted on the day you were born. Cerulean blue etched the clouds, contrails slashed it through. A breeze brushed against spring. My roots were a tangled, constricted ball, and it hurt when your father plunged me in the hole. When he piled the soil around me, dampened it with water, my roots began to stretch. Absorbing, uncurling through the damp. My trunk was narrow; your father placed planks on each side. Let me support you, he said. You’ll be strong soon. I was far from the other trees, but they bent their branches and told their roots to reach for mine.
Your first steps were toward me, barefoot in the grass, your mother’s arms open, her laughter gentle, rustling leaves. A few years later you would search for four-leaf clovers, lie on your back to speak to the clouds.
You measured the width of my trunk with your freckled arms, pressed your lips to the jags and pits of my bark. This tree is you, your father said. You are this tree. Its roots and trunk will strengthen, support you when it’s hard to stand. You’ll grow together, draw strength from each other. When you love a tree, you’re never alone.
When my leaves fell in the autumn, you’d collect the perfect ones, a bouquet of red fire in your hand. You told me that you kept them all, pressed between the pages of your encyclopedias—ideas, people, and nature woven together. Interdependence. You and me.
You’d spread a blanket on the ground beneath me, serve tea for Martha, your porcelain doll. I’d make a canopy of shade on hot summer days, swat the bees when they came too close. You’d hide crumbs in my cracks, and we’d laugh when the ants marched up my side. You hid from the world in my branches, sat with your back pressed to mine, lost in a book. You had a deep love for stories and storytelling, favorite passages shared aloud. Your voice would change with each character, rising with excitement, lowering to a hush. Your stories were of lost girls. The lonely, the misunderstood.
We grew together, my trunk widening, your chest budding, and when my branches were sturdy, you’d climb to the heavens above. One day you fell and broke your arm. As you lay unconscious I begged the sky to call for help, to split open, to cry. At the first crack of thunder, your mother came.
When Minnie the cat was found dead in the yard, you placed her in a cardboard box, wrapped with yellow felt. I dropped my branches to you; you used my leaves to wipe your eyes. Your father buried her at the base of my trunk, a red-painted stone, with her name in block letters, marking her resting place.
When from my bark grew rows of fungi, you compared them to the acne sprouting across your skin. You could laugh at yourself, then only thirteen.
Forbidden cigarettes smoked down to the filter in minutes, a bottle of vodka you shared with your friends. Clumps of vomit splattered, clinging to my patches, dripping to nourish the earth when one of you had too much. Your diary pushed into a hollow, out of your sister’s reach. These secrets I guarded for you as you ran, gleeful rebellion, back to the house.
You loved to touch my bark and leaves, feel the rough and smooth. You’d gaze at me, at the white-breasted nuthatch and yellow-bellied sapsuckers, the longhorn beetles, the ants and the spiders; you’d take in the colors, the scents, and the sounds. You stood beside me in respect and reverence, for you carried your father’s words: You are this tree. Its roots and trunk will strengthen, support you when it’s hard to stand. You’ll grow together, draw strength from each other. When you love a tree, you’re never alone.
I witnessed the kiss that pressed you against me, fingers splayed. I cried when he took a knife and carved through my skin, a heart with your names. You tried to stop him, giggling when you said I was your best friend. Then we’ll be together with your tree forever, the boy answered, and you accepted this but turned your face away when the knife cut. When the branding was finished, the wounds bone-white and wet, you opened your palms against me, pushed your body to mine. I didn’t mean to hurt you, tree, but I’ll love this boy forever, and this heart that you now carry will hold witness to that.
You came back with the boy often, skipping afternoon classes when your parents were at work. From kisses to long caresses, naked bodies beneath me, pressed into the earth. Your hands would grip protruding roots, fusing us, your eyes raised to my leaves above.
And then, one afternoon, you came alone. You cried for days, huddled against me, until your mother came. With her arm around your trembling body, she led you to her car. When you came back you were pale and trembling, and you climbed into my branches, something you hadn’t done for years. I held you against me as you wept for what had been taken from you, for what you were told you were too young to have.
After that you’d stay with me for hours, press your lips and your tears to the tattoo on my skin. It was during a moment like this that your parents found you. Although they stood beside each other, I could see between them a chasm of empty space. Cracks and breaks. After announcing your father was leaving, they walked away together, leaving you with me.
The bottle of vodka reappeared; this time you drank alone. Weed replaced cigarettes and a pocketknife replaced your books. I thought you wanted to whittle fallen branches or make carvings from pieces of wood. You cut your skin instead. For months you cut your upper arms but then moved to your thighs. You lost weight; you’d fall asleep at the foot of me, curled into a ball. One day you cut too deeply; helpless, I watched as you slit your wrist.
I screamed to the wind and begged the others to crash their branches against the windows of the house. I sent messages of SOS through my heartwood, my sapwood, my cambium, phloem, and bark. Down through my roots, shaking to attention our Mother Earth. Ants and beetles crawled from their hiding places, squirrels and raccoons scurried from trees. And fresh leaves were gathered, nudged together, and pressed against the wound.
For many weeks I didn’t see you, and when you came you held a piece of paper in your hand. Tree, I’m leaving, you said. And you told me you’d be in Europe for a year. You read from the strip of paper, I am you, and you are me, and folded it into a tiny square that you hid in my hollow that still held your diary from years before. You pulled your knife from your pocket, and I shook my lower branches, trying in vain to knock it from your hand. There’s something I need to fix, you whispered as you held my branch to your lips. Forgive me for doing this, it will only hurt a bit. The tip of your knife dug into my scar, and you held me, your cheek against my bark, and from the boy’s name you carved Tree.
One year became two. And then your mother died. When you arrived home you jumped from the car and ran through the yard toward me, tears streaked across your cheeks, and I heard your mother’s laughter, remembered your first steps.
You decided to move into the house, and you cleaned the garden and painted the green shutters white. One day the reason you stayed so long in Europe rang your doorbell and you let him in. When you introduced us he gave me a hug, ran his fingertips along my heart. What a beautiful tree, he said. He pruned my leaves and planted wildflowers along my base, sprinkling the seeds across the lawn, tiny crumbs to feed the earth. He placed a ring on your finger, high in my leaves, straddling my strongest branch. You’d started climbing me again.
A wedding in the backyard. The altar, standing proudly, was me. The birth of your boy. Christmas lights threaded through my branches. Halloween ghosts. Picnics and a swing hung from a branch. Leo the dog, barking at squirrels. The graveyard of Minnie the cat, and too many goldfish to name.
Your son had just kissed a girl he loved under my branches when you told me of your diagnosis. You didn’t cry, just recited the facts. Then you wrapped your arms around me, begged me for tree medicine, wisdom, and strength. Your husband put a sunbed next to my base, and when you were weak he’d carry you, wrapped in blankets, and lie you down. You could stay there for hours, your eyes studying every inch of me. You didn’t speak but I understood.
They filled my hollows with your ashes; you flowed over my weathered ribs, infused my grooves and cracks, as per your wish. My roots absorbed you from the surrounding soil; my vascular system carried you to my leaves. For as long as I am rooted here, you will circulate within me.
I am you, you are me, keened the winds, and your growing boy held me as he whispered:
This tree is my best friend.
Category: Featured, Short Story