Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“Disculpe por molestarla—” he said.

“No, no. Come in. We haven’t had a chance to visit.”

“Esta ella aquí?”

“No.” Claire knew that as observant as he was, he would have noticed the car was gone, had probably watched Minna drive away over half an hour before.

“There is something you must see. Lo se estas enferma .”

“Let me dress.”

“ Apurate, por favor . Before she returns.”

Claire threw clothes on without thinking, dread in her heart, an echo of the first trouble, the one after which nothing was ever the same. After each large trauma, one was never as devastated, or as strong, again. Octavio, she feared, was determined to reveal something that there would be no recovering from.

She dressed and returned to the kitchen, steeled, ready to blame the messenger.

They talked of the recent rain as they headed, inevitably, toward the portion of the farm that was unofficially off-limits. The explanation given to newcomers was not vetted by Claire; she didn’t want to know how he chose to handle it. Sometimes she could tell the workers knew from their eyes, but now that pity could be for multiple causes. Many of the men came from rural areas of Mexico, religious and superstitious in equal parts. The death of a child was seen as a tragic omen. Octavio was too practical to make unnecessary difficulties for himself. Perhaps reticence was chosen as the most productive course.

As they continued walking, Claire noticed workers in ones and twos dropping the work they were at and mobbing behind them. Sweat began to form under her arms, at the back of her neck. Crowds now frightened her. By the time the asphalt road gave way to gravel, twenty or more workers were ganged behind them. At the last bend she saw the vévé , a symbolic drawing, on the ground, made from cornmeal that stood out yellow against the brown earth.

Since Paz’s firing, Octavio had spoken carefully of Minna, but now he spewed a bitter list of grievances: “She treats the workers badly. Bossing, cursing, threatening to have them fired.” Appalled at Minna’s cruelty to Paz before she quit, her disregard for Octavio, her arrogance to those whose names she didn’t bother to learn, still Claire had stood by and done nothing since her last chastisement to make sure the bad behavior ended. She turned a blind eye, and Octavio was no longer allowing that to continue. She felt both anger and gratefulness to him for forcing her to deal with that delinquency. Was it possible that Minna was really bad? Especially when she was capable of such tenderness to Claire?

She leaned on the further excuse that this was a cultural difference, that owning a plantation in the Caribbean implied very different things. Weren’t there stories from the old days in California — ranchers who got it into their head they could play God? Who beat their workers? Took the laborers’ daughters as common-law wives? It was only a recent phenomenon that employees were prized and well treated. In a perverse light, couldn’t the ranch be seen as a modern incarnation of a plantation? The Baumsarg farm had always had the reputation of paying high wages and treating people well. Claire had lectured Minna on this but suspected she only paid her lip service.

* * *

Now Claire stopped and stared down at the vévé, as intricate and temporary as a Tibetan sand painting that monks destroy at completion.

She recognized the figure’s purpose from Minna’s room — a drawing to call down the iwa, the spirits — but she dreaded to find out what more lay ahead.

“The men are not happy,” Octavio said, but Claire no longer listened, driven by the sight in front of her.

The lemon tree had been transformed. The lower limbs sawed off, exposing the trunk, the cut spaces like wounds, the base saturated in red, yellow, and green. Figures were painted — a man with three horns coming out of his head, a mother clutching a child. Snakes and crosses. A rope hung from the fattest upper limb, and on it were strung empty liquor bottles. The rope and bottles couldn’t be denied as resembling a noose, and the stubbed candles in the ground suggested miniature headstones. Nothing terribly upsetting after seeing Minna’s room, yet here, in the open, the tableau had a menacing feel.

“The workers, they say this is malo . That she has cast un espiritu maligno on the ranch.”

Claire laughed in his face, loud and scornful, so that the workers behind her were sure to hear. “I told Minna to do this. This is her artwork. An art installation. I can’t help that some don’t understand—”

“A few men have been in car crashes. Some of their wives have had miscarriages.”

“Surely you’re not going to blame those things on this?”

But Octavio would not back down. “She came and offered me money if I say nothing.”

“Really?” Claire said, trying to hide surprise. “That’s hard to understand because I already knew about it. Maybe she just wanted to surprise me when it was completed.”

“She hit me when I refused to take her money.” She saw his face turn a brick color, sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I think you misunderstood her.”

“ A lo mejor, maybe,” Octavio said. “But some of the men see these things and think they make maldición . They don’t want to work here any longer.”

“Well. Well.”

“Why do you let this happen?” he pressed. “This is something very dangerous here, entiendes ?”

A car was speeding down the road; Claire had been straining to hear it all along. Absurdly, she wanted to bolt and run away. It came into view with Minna’s tight face behind the windshield. She skidded to a stop in the gravel, jumped out of the car as if it were on fire.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I insisted Octavio give me the grand tour,” she said, needing to lie to Minna more than to keep up pretenses in front of Octavio.

“Get in,” Minna ordered.

“Why did you do this?” Claire said, not moving, and her tone, shrill and pleading and intimate at the same time, canceled the witness of the men around them.

A shadow passed the corner of her eye. Ready for the supernatural, Claire was surprised that it was simply a piece of rotten fruit that hit Minna in the neck. It burst wet against her skin, ran down her blue blouse; flecks of reddish gore even splattered as far as Claire’s white T-shirt. A tomato.

“Who did that?” Minna yelled, but the crowd of men just stood, impassive and quiet as stones.

Claire turned to Octavio. “Help us.”

As she spoke, a whole volley of oranges and dirt clods hit Minna in the back, on her arms, her legs. Hit Claire, as she tried to protect Minna with her own body. The words bruja and puta, and other words, until Claire’s own curses joined the roar. Octavio yelled for the men to stop, then, when that proved ineffective, ran into the crowd and cuffed the nearest ones. Claire ran for safety, pushing Minna ahead of her, to the car.

By the time they reached the house, Claire was shaking.

“Why the tree? You know how I feel!”

“The spell needs to be in place.”

“You tried to bribe Octavio.”

“Never. He lies.”

“You are crazy. You’re making me crazy.” The evidence of the tree had been a break in the trance — a moment when the frog realized it was boiling.

* * *

Claire sat in the chair on the front porch and waited, ready for more trouble. Another attack by men. Her mental state snapped so naturally right back to fifteen years before, it was as if the intervening years had never been. When Minna brought her a glass of water, she hissed at her, “Get in. What are you doing out here?” Turning Minna’s words back on her. Minna’s eyes filled with hurt, and Claire relented, all the while scanning the driveway.