Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“I want to explain some things — just because I hired you doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t intend to lie around being sick. I expect you to be productive as well. Live your own life, too.”

“Something bothers you?”

“No. Yes,” Claire said. “I’m not a pushover.”

“Are you feeling uncomfortable with me?”

“I’ve had to be strong to keep this place. You should know this.”

“That’s hard to do always.”

“Yes. But it’s who I am.”

Minna sipped her coffee and said nothing. Finally, she sighed. “Sometimes you have to give up power. For a time.”

Claire worried that she had offended the girl. If she left, Claire would be back to square one with her daughters. She had become crafty in her grief, sly in her fanatical attachment to staying on the farm. Minna had slippery edges, which meant she might do better than most. A hunger was there that Claire could work with.

“It must have been amazing to grow up on the islands,” Claire said, lightening the mood.

Minna blew on her coffee, which must have gone cold quite a while ago, an unnecessary, theatrical gesture. “It was a magic place. We owned things there like you do here.”

“Did you appreciate it at the time, how special it was?”

“It was simply our life.” Minna shrugged. “My maman preferred oil lamps at night. I would sit on her bed as she rubbed a cream made from coconut and flowers on my arms and legs and neck. She told me it would give me soft skin for my future husband someday.”

Claire smiled. “An idyllic childhood.”

“A way of life. People came for dinner and stayed a week. My parents had so many friends the house was never empty. I was never lonely there. Always a picnic or a party or an outing to go on. Like here, no?”

“We were happy here. Once.” Claire knew there was no such nostalgia for the girls. To them the ranch was simply earth and fencing and buildings. They were oblivious that it had spawned them as much as Forster and herself. “I’ll be out tonight.”

Minna nodded.

Claire thought of her own first lonely nights on the farm. “Would you like to go with me?”

“Should you bring your help?”

“You’re my assistant.”

Minna looked up and grinned. “It will be a raucous party, I hope? I’ll be your chaperone. Keep the men off you.”

“More like I’ll be the mother hen guarding her chick from the wolves.”

“But I’m a wolf. Just like you, I can take care of myself.” Minna stood and gathered the breakfast dishes. “Can I use the phone for a long-distance call to home? Just to let them know where I am. You can deduct from my wages.”

Claire waved off Minna’s suggestion, embarrassed by the mention of money and pay, dismayed how it ruined her effort at camaraderie, still so tenuous. She felt ridiculous, like having a schoolgirl crush, trying to make a good impression on this girl.

“I insist,” Minna said. “We must keep business and friendship separate.”

Claire was pleased by Minna’s mention of friendship, implying that she looked at this job as something more than a way station. Despite Claire’s protests to the contrary, she wanted a companion to go through her ordeal with.

* * *

Claire spent the morning in the barn with Octavio, going over the coming week’s work. The basket price for avocados was down, but strawberry prices had skyrocketed because heavy rains in Oxnard had spoiled its crop. Both sobering and an act of grace to realize that the world went on despite one’s private turmoil. Late afternoon, Claire came back from shopping to the eccentric sight of Minna sleeping out on the lawn. She lay flat on her back, her arms flung out sideways. Claire touched her on the shoulder.

Minna yawned awake. “What did you buy?” She jumped up like a teenager, eager to look through the bags.

“Go ahead,” Claire said, laughing.

Minna pulled out three velour sweat suits. Tube socks. Orthopedic clogs.

“What’s wrong?” Claire asked at Minna’s obvious disappointment.

“What about something fun?”

“I’m preparing.”

“Prepare for after . Buy a pair of stilettos.”

“I was never a stiletto kind of woman, if you haven’t guessed.”

Minna laughed. “It’s long past lunch. You need to keep up your strength. Let’s eat the leftover salmon.” In the kitchen, Claire sat on a barstool while Minna prepared food, and then they ate.

“I never eat this often.”

“Now you will. Protein is important.”

“So you’ll come tonight? At least get to know the neighbors,” Claire said.

“Sure.”

“Do you go to the movies?”

“Now and then.”

“Donald Richards will be there. He owns a place a mile down the road. He has a menagerie — cows, horses, llamas, goats, dogs, and cats.”

“A Noah’s ark.”

“He’s not a Noah. He tends to get falling-down drunk and flirt with all the women.”

“Occupational hazard, I guess.” The harshness in Minna’s voice surprised Claire. “My sister was a model. I know a bit about that kind of life.”

“What do you mean?”

Minna rose then, pushing the barstool back with her knees. “I should finish unpacking. I’ve been running around like a chicken, exhausted.”

“I don’t mean to be nosy.”

“We’re sisters. You can ask me anything.” Minna sighed. “It hurts me to speak of her. My oldest sister and I haven’t talked in years.” She stood still, lost in thought. “She’s married to a terrible man. An evil little Frenchman. Can’t leave because she has two children with him. He drinks, and when he’s had too much, he beats her.”

The story burst out of her. The ugly, flayed thing lay on the table between them. Claire didn’t know how to respond.

“Why does she stay with him?”

“Why?” Minna asked in a mocking tone. “I suppose because she isn’t thin and young as she once was.”

“A terrible reason.”

“Not everyone was born owning a prosperous farm.” Minna slapped the back of one hand in the palm of the other, a gesture of dismissal. “She puts up with it. Considers it her ‘lot.’ Allows him to call her his nigger.”

Claire looked down, hiding her shock, not wanting to seem prudish, although despite all she had gone through, she did feel cloistered, naïve about the realities of the world Minna spoke of, unable to think of a reply.

“Wouldn’t make a very good book, nuh?” Minna set her cup in the sink, staring out the window, oblivious to Claire’s discomfort. “You’re lucky to live in the middle of this grove. A little blind paradise.”

“Not always a paradise,” Claire defended, but Minna did not hear her.

Minna stretched her arms overhead. “That’s why I’ll never marry, not in this life. Voluntary slavery if it goes bad.”

* * *

Claire took a long bath, and as the claw-foot tub filled, she confronted her naked self in the mirror. Not a vain woman, she had no explanation for the unaccountable vertigo she felt, as bad as if she were viewing her broken, bleeding self in a car accident. She had been avoiding this confrontation, but Minna’s story had haunted her into meeting it head-on. She didn’t want to be either trapped in an untenable situation or self-deluded. Would she ever get used to this? Or perhaps the bigger question, would she survive long enough to get used to it?

Perhaps a person who preferred fictions wasn’t such a bad thing. She conceded the possibility that her daughters were more sensible and more loving than she allowed them to be, that their charity in taking care of her would possibly not have been entirely a burden, might even have rekindled their relationship. But Claire needed to stay on the farm, and they wanted to be done with it, and so she sowed the attitude that she was self-sufficient.