Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“Let me meet him.”

“He’s busy now.”

Claire stopped and glared at her. “I don’t believe anyone is here.”

“You’re going crazy.”

“I need to call Forster. Why isn’t the irrigation on? Why is everything dying? I told you to have the armoire put back in the house.”

“You’ll see,” Minna said, walking away. “You be patient for once.”

* * *

Again the elixir, and again she swooned into a deep, pleasurable torpor. Claire heard a man’s voice when she woke from an afternoon nap. A man’s voice like cascading water and then Minna’s voice arguing. Claire stared at the stained mattress ticking, trying to gather enough energy to rise and go to her bedroom window. When she did, she could see nothing through the thick veil of overgrown trees. When had the coral tree got so large? So monstrous? Large enough to obstruct, large enough to crush the house? Was it a fairy tale? Paranoia? Then the voices stopped. Instead of going to investigate, and possibly angering Minna, Claire lay back down, promising herself she would get to the bottom of this. Soon she was back asleep, dreaming, and the waking time melded into the dreamtime so that she could not distinguish if the yelling had been real or not.

* * *

She found herself on the living-room couch — the last remaining piece of furniture in the room. Minna insisted Claire drink another large cup of the elixir.

“I don’t want it.”

“You must.”

“It makes me sick.”

“It’s part of the cure.”

“I’m healthy now.”

“You are ungrateful.” Without explanation, Minna carried in the small television from the barn, plugged it in, and left on soap operas to occupy her. The volume turned so high it gave Claire a headache.

Minna was in the laundry room when Claire poured the drink down the back of the sofa cushions and made her break for the front door. She wobbled on unsteady, rubbery legs but cleared the porch steps, shuffled down the road to the barn. As much as she knew anything in this life, she knew what she would find there. Which ended up being both true and not. When she flung the large slider door open, a black man spun around and shielded his eyes from the shock of sunlight, like a lizard startled from under a rock.

“What the fuck?”

“Who are you?” Claire said, her voice loud and false as if in a play. She felt as if she would fall over any moment.

She blinked hard at him, thinking he was some kind of phantom from her addled, fogged brain. But she could never have dreamed anyone quite like him — he was outside her imagining. One can only make up what one has some passing familiarity with, and he was as foreign to her world as the man on the moon. Bone thin and loosely jointed, he was like a raggedy-man doll strung together. His skin had a jaundiced, yellowish-brown hue. A network of tattoos spread across his chest and arms, partly covered by a T-shirt. Great, dusty coils of hair sprang along his head, gathered and partly tucked inside a large knitted tam. What she saw in his eyes terrified her. Eyes like shattered glass. Crazy eyes. His look answered all the questions she’d been avoiding.

“You fou, woman?” he yelled.

“Who are you? You are trespassing.” Of course, she was crazy. But she was returning. She had simply been gone, lost somewhere in her coiled mind, the labyrinth of illness. She backed away.

“It’s cool, lady. You talk to Maleva, and she introduce us proper like.”

“Maleva.” Claire nodded, backed away, stumbled, then ran. He did not follow, but stood in the gaping passageway, his jaw working up and down like a puppet’s.

Maman, she tell her daughter the story of the olden days when the sun was like a sweet orange in the sky. All the days back then were buttery, she sang, the rivers ran like honey, and the people were as often happy as not. Maman, she tell that when the Troubles came, even God in his house could not help them, and he squeezed down on that orange sun, but the juice that should have been sweet, when it met this world, it turned to salt, it filled the oceans, it came out of the people’s eyes. Maman say, “Marie, all your life you must look for the sweet, it is there for the finding.”

* * *

Marie’s maman, Leta, was always singing, a throb of sadness in her voice that felt like softest suede brushing against bare skin. She sang because she did not wish to remember how her life had changed.

Ersulie nain nain oh! Ersulie nain nain oh!

Ersulie ya gaga gaaza, La roseé fait bro-

dè tou temps soleil par lévé La ro seé fait bro-

dè tou temps soleil par lévé Ersulie nain nain oh!

Leta’s fondest wish as a girl was to become a teacher at the convent — a place of peace and order. Her life till then was a small circle made up of her family’s house and her friends’ houses; the girls were chaperoned on special trips to the beach or the mountains. She was raised a stranger to her own country. She studied hard and the Sisters praised her for her studiousness, in time allowing her to teach a class. The first colored teacher, necessary now that the danger in the country scared foreign missionaries away.

Each day Leta rose in the darkness to ready herself, preparing meticulous lesson plans and memorizing each student’s name on the first day. Leta always wore a crisp white blouse and a pressed, dark blue skirt because she felt so privileged to teach, wanting to prove herself worthy. Each day she picked her way through the dirty streets to the school, avoiding the piles of trash, avoiding the stray animals and the straying eyes of men, avoiding the open sewers by walking on the rickety boards fording them, trying also to avoid the sun darkening her creamy skin. An implied lesson that lightness was closer to God.

Her family’s house was not large but not small either, not in a rich neighborhood but not in a poor one. A house perfect for as much happiness as living in the capital would allow. One day, walking home, a car sped by and spattered mud over her skirt and shoes. Near tears, Leta stopped and looked down as a young man jumped out of the back to apologize. A famous politician who was running for election sat in the back and tapped impatiently on the window.

“We are sorry,” the young man said, although the driver in front and the politician in the back did not seem the least bit sorry. “What can I do? Can I pay you?”

“To wash the mud away?” Leta said, and looked up, laughing.

If her mother had had the ability of foresight, to look at her life as Marie was able to later, backward and forward, she would have known to turn and run, that mud was the smallest price by far she could pay out of this meeting, but of course she knew no such thing. Instead, she looked up into the handsome young man’s eyes as the car spun its wheels and took off, the politician tired of waiting on his love-struck assistant. Mud now spattered the young man’s pants, too. What she noticed was the way his suit fit him. Noticed also that rare thing — he treated her like a gentleman.

“Looks like we are in the same boat,” he said, looking into Leta’s moss-green eyes brimming with tears, then at the flashing white teeth of her laugh. How to explain that he fell in love with how easily her emotions transformed one to another. A useful gift in a troubled country.

* * *

Marcel had just been made judge when they married; they had had their first baby, a girl named Marie, when the next elections again tore the country apart. The politician whom he had supported lost, this time narrowly, and beat a fast exile to Miami. The military scoured the streets each night, disposing of his supporters to avoid a coup. They had a name for this from when Duvalier left, dechoukaj, uprooting, like what the peasants did when they pulled the manioc roots from their fields, except it was never clear who needed to be uprooted, or rather, it depended on who momentarily held power.