Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

She was too shy to talk to them of the torture of the chemo treatments, how her stomach was in knots the morning of the first treatment before they got in the car, how as she walked down the hallway to oncology, her body broke out in a sweat, and Minna, sensing her panic, held her hand and began to talk of their plans to plant a vegetable garden in the backyard.

The first few treatments she had not felt sick; the nurses had been hopeful she would be one of the lucky ones with few side effects, but after the third treatment they came with a crushing ferocity. She refused to burden the girls with how she would be so nauseated and disoriented on the way home, she vomited into a plastic shopping bag. Most of all, Claire felt she needed to protect them, as if they were still too young to be exposed to this kind of suffering. But Minna, younger than Lucy, insisted on sharing this burden. So on Monday: How’re you? Here, let me put Minna on . On Tuesday: How’re you? Tired. Wednesday: Talk to Minna.

* * *

Blossoms dropped off, replaced with small, green, marble-size lemons, just as Claire’s hair began to fall out. Paz did the spring cleaning, finding strands of hair everywhere. Crying, she stayed outside, ostensibly to air the pillows for the outdoor furniture, even though Claire wasn’t allowed to be in the sun. Feeling helpless, Paz was almost glad that Minna had the job of caring for Claire.

As the first speckle-skinned Blenheim apricots ripened, ulcers broke out inside Claire’s mouth, and unable to eat, she sat on the linoleum kitchen floor, defeated, while Minna spooned honey in her mouth to sooth the burning.

“I can’t do it,” Claire said.

Minna held her forehead, her hand, held her body up when Claire was too dizzy to walk. She put her in a chair and rubbed her back while Paz hurriedly changed the bedding, then they both helped her lie down. “You will get through this. I’m going to make you a special drink, an elixir my maman taught me. It heals everything.”

True to her word, Minna spent hours in the kitchen boiling all sorts of herbs, flowers, and plants. Strange smells issued from the kitchen, but when Claire tried to go in, she was shooed away. The elixir was addictive; it always tasted different, but always made Claire feel the same. Calmer, healthier. Unaware, Claire began her first steps into magical thinking, the idea that Minna’s cures could indeed heal.

On the one day a week Paz was there, she and Minna found everything to fight about. Minna disliked how her things were moved around when her room was cleaned. She complained that too much detergent was used in the laundry, claiming it gave her a rash. Said dust was accumulating everywhere, bad for Claire’s breathing, and what was the girl doing all day long anyway?

Paz told Claire that Minna left dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, that the bathroom was a nightmare to clean, that when she cooked in the kitchen, it was a disaster afterward — the sink clogged and a sticky tar burned on the bottom of the pots.

One day Paz snuck into Claire’s room and woke her as she napped. “I don’t think Minna is right in the head. She gets so angry, she’s messy, she always is lying around, not working. This is not the right person to care for you.”

“She’ll get better.”

“Let me come and care for you.”

Claire took Paz’s hands. “Law school is your father’s dream. I want to live long enough to be at your graduation. Give me that.”

Paz hugged her as they both heard the creak of the floorboard. Minna shifted her weight; obviously she had been standing there listening.

* * *

In May the fog lifted by noon, and then the sun, magnified by being denied all morning, scorched the edges of the rose petals, turned the skin on the figs a dark purple even though the flesh inside remained unripe.

In the evening, the fog returned, a salve on the bruised vegetation. The women waited for the cooler temperatures to work in the garden. Since Claire hadn’t had the energy to plant seeds earlier, she cheated. Although she knew Forster didn’t want to come to the farm or watch the ravages of her illness, she traded on his guilt and asked him to fill the back of his pickup with seedlings from the local nursery. When he unloaded and realized the women were facing the task of planting alone, he relented and picked up a shovel. All day the three of them transplanted tomatoes and squash and basil into Octavio’s neat, ready-made rows.

Claire sat on her knees, winded, stabbing at the ground with her dull spade while Forster and Minna did the real work. In all the years she had grown vegetables, she had been too lazy to do the necessary labor of digging up the rocky, clayey soil, replacing it with rich topsoil. This omission cost her much each year in extra tilling and fertilizer and salt-burned plants. She waged a constant battle trying to supplement with compost — grass clippings, coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores.

Now, a couple of inches down, the tip of her spade hit a rock, sending shock waves up her arm into her shoulder. The lymph nodes had been removed under that arm, and the doctor had warned her that bruises or cuts on the arm increased the risk of lymphedema, permanent swelling. Scared, she held it away from her trunk now, as if it were a dead thing.

“Are you okay?” Forster asked.

He tried not to look at her too closely. She felt even more sick, more ugly, around him. Why was a woman’s love different in kind than a man’s love? She loved Forster beyond husband, loved him in spite of his graying hair and the wrinkled corners of his eyes. She loved him in his weakness, in the clear knowledge that he would not be there through the worst. Her mortality, her illness, caused him to flee her now, in spite of loving her.

“Need some help?” asked Forster.

“I’m fine.”

Claire tried to concentrate on the job at hand. Minna, natural and easy in the garden, effortlessly planted six seedlings for Claire’s every one. What puzzled her was that one could not simply dig a hole the size of the root ball. She was used to pushing seeds into the muddy, late-winter soil with her thumb, not even bothering to use tools. Now, the recalcitrant earth broke up in stiff, clumped spadefuls, had to be dug twice as wide as it was deep, to reach far enough down without the sides collapsing, or a rock inhibiting the spreading roots. By the time Claire had a hole of sufficient depth, it resembled a small gravesite, large enough for a bird or a mouse. She thought of all the countless small pets that had been interred by the children over the years: mice, rats, hamsters, goldfish, snakes, birds, crickets. Hadn’t there been a ferret once? Never a serious pet such as a dog or a cat that deserved a proper memorial.

“In fact, Claire does need help. The farm is too much in her condition,” Minna said.

Forster flushed red but kept digging. “I suppose that’s a conversation between the two of us.”

Minna shrugged and turned her back on them. Exhausted, Claire stared into the steep sides of her hole, mesmerized by an earthworm trying to tunnel his way back into darkness, when Minna gave a yelp of surprise. In her hand was an Indian arrowhead made of shining black obsidian, the small crescents visible where the edges had been pounded sharp.

“We find a batch every spring,” Forster said, dismissive.

Minna dug another hole and found a tan shard of pottery. “Can I keep it?”

“You’ll be sick of them in no time.”

“This farm belonged to someone else before it was yours?”

“Well, I don’t know who Forster’s great-grandparents bought it from.” The accusatory tone of Minna’s voice irritated Claire. She considered the farm created out of whole cloth from the hard, barren alkali soil, created out of nothing, worthless really but for the hard work of Forster’s family and her own. “I don’t know how long ago Indians were actually here.”