Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

The man, Jorge, handed her earplugs and a stained plastic apron. The job was to shovel out the cages, then hose down the floor and the dogs. Afterward, she filled the metal bowls with dry food. The dogs cowered in their cages, the muscles in their hind legs twitching with fear, but when she unlocked the doors, they bared their teeth and growled.

By noon Marie finished and was handed a twenty-dollar bill and a stale sandwich. As she stood eating in the shade of a coral tree because it reminded her of home, a pretty girl walked in. She hung on the arm of a short white man with tattoos down both arms. His teeth, brown and crooked, were ringed in gold. Marie saw the girl’s resemblance to Amélie, except this girl did not have the fine bones and clear skin of her sister.

“Coca?”

Her eyes narrowed, and Marie saw the polite island ways were not followed here.

“I am zanmi of Amélie.”

Now she smiled. It was only this place that made her wary. “How is Amie?”

“She told me to come here.”

Her boyfriend ignored them. He picked his teeth, then swatted Coca on the behind. “Come on. You have a paycheck to earn.”

When he had gone inside, Coca bent her head to Marie. “You in trouble?”

“What is this place?”

Coca lit a cigarette, and Marie admired her red-painted nails. “They steal dogs, pick them off the street. Even pretend to adopt them, but the shelters are starting to catch on. They sell them to the clinics. Cram lipstick in their eyes.” She laughed.

Marie looked back into the cages.

“It’s travay, work.” Coca shrugged.

“You find me somewhere to sleep?”

“Our family is close by. Go introduce yourself to Papa. Use Amélie’s bed.”

* * *

For the next two weeks, Marie worked the morning shift from five till noon. Coca worked in the front office, but Marie was buried in the back. After a while, she got to know the dogs individually: this one would calm down once she entered his cage and another could be coaxed with a bit of food. She took out her earplugs now because she recognized the different barks, they were distinct voices, and she knew their cause and no longer found the noise frightening.

A reddish-gold pit bull mix wagged her tail each time Marie came into her cage, and she stole an extra half cup of food for the dog every morning so that her ribs wouldn’t poke out so sharply against her skin. After the first week, the dog let Marie rub her ears, one ear shorter and frayed, probably from a dogfight. Under her breath she took to calling her Rolex, the most precious thing she could think of in this new country.

The workers were forbidden to interact with the dogs and were supposed to treat them as things. Jorge said they were no different from cattle in the stockyards, but Marie did not see the point of it. It seemed to her that especially the condemned were entitled to any little kindness so maybe their last memory of this earth and their jailers was not so damning. Why else did the executioner allow a last meal, or a cigarette? The man in the pink house, if he had stayed kind and loyal, he could have used Marie for life; she didn’t know better. Sweet with salt; the smallest bit of love with hate. That’s the way one made a true slave.

Marie tried to ignore how Jorge and the other men rough-handled the animals, holding the leashes tight till they were swinging by the neck, bodies dangling like the stripped bodies of pigs or cows from butcher’s hooks in La Saline. If the dogs were mean, the men kicked them with their heavy boots, and sometimes they kicked them even when they were not mean; it did not much matter to the men either way.

She rooted for the mean dogs. She wished them luck in their bites because either way they were doomed, and after a time she thought they, the humans working, were equally doomed, and the dawning knowledge that life could be as hard and ugly in America as it had been back home packed her chest so tight she could not breathe.

* * *

At the end of each week a van would pull up to the back of the building, and the dogs who had been there longest were pushed into the back in plastic crates and driven away, never to return. Then the process of refilling the cages would begin again. Marie was given overtime to stay and clean up after the dogs were hauled away. If Maman had been there, no doubt she would have felt the spirits, despair so painful Marie had to hit herself in the leg or arm so that she could bear it.

While she waited for her paycheck, she talked to Coca in the office, glancing at the lists, and saw it was Rolex’s turn to go the next week.

* * *

Marie slept in Amélie’s fragrant bed — a bed carved by Amie’s father from a special wood only from the islands — its narrow hold like a boat transporting her back. She was in Maman ’s kitchen, watching her make one of her special dishes, chicken with rice. They were hungry, so looking forward to eating, but no matter what spices Maman used, the dish grew saltier and saltier until it was finally inedible. Maman tasted it, tried to give Marie a spoonful, but it was impossible. Tears were in Maman ’s eyes as she watched their bodies grow thinner by the minute, and she begged her daughter to fix it. Marie woke at dawn, exhausted.

At work, they led Rolex to the shower room to clean the dirt off her; Marie heard snarling and the men’s threats. She walked in and spoke for the first time in two weeks. “Let me wash this one.”

“So the Dog Girl talks.”

The men were glad to take a break. Rolex, backed in the corner, crouched, teeth bared, eyes hating, and at first didn’t recognize her. Jorge threw Marie the dog’s chain in a challenge and went off to smoke a cigarette. “Don’t get your hand chewed off.”

She squatted down. “ Doudou, ” she whispered. “It’s okay now. I take care of you now.” She picked up the chain and led Rolex under the showerhead and shampooed the filth off her. No one could have guessed the luster of her clean coat. The men stood around watching, thoughtful and sullen as they smoked their cigarettes.

“I’m going to take her on a walk to dry off,” she said.

One of the new boys said it wasn’t allowed, but no one else seemed to care.

“Give it a break,” Marie said, scornful, because any show of softness would end them. She walked out of the shower with dripping Rolex, collected her purse while Coca watched under thick eyelashes. She walked down the street alone. After a few blocks she turned and saw no one behind her.

They ran.

She ran faster than she thought she was able, buildings and cars melting past. The faster she ran, the more Rolex stretched out, took longer strides, as if the new space allowed the dog to grow, heading straight ahead as if she knew this was her fate all along and had simply been waiting for Marie in her slow human way to figure it out. Marie ran faster, air a hot piston through her lungs, her bag banging hard against her side. They came to a park, and she veered off into the grass, the softness relieving the terrible pounding in her feet. She slowed, and Rolex slowed, as if they were a single body. They trotted, a slow jog, then walked, blowing out breaths like professional runners, shaking out legs, and when they came to a fountain, she let the dog drink deeply from the water.

They spent the whole day in the park, resting under a tree with large, spreading branches. The neighborhood they had invaded had bungalow houses set back on grassy lawns, palm trees that made pools of thick shade. Marie watched blond, blue-eyed mothers wheeling their babies through the park. Some of the babies were being pushed by dark women, some from Mexico or Central America, others from the islands. The sight of these women calmed her and made her feel safe. She was sick of the world of men. She fell asleep under the tree, holding Rolex’s leash, dreaming she was back home.