/ Flash /
1.
The weeping willow tree in our front yard was a neighborhood landmark and jungle gym, although I thought of it as only mine—a sculpture of my thoughts. I could look up at it, lying on my back underneath, the grass scratching below my ears (where secret kisses were planted and wouldn’t wash away.) The tree had twenty-three limbs. I was a lonely kid turned lonelier from shame, what couldn’t wash away, so I named the four lowest limbs, each pointing toward a different direction: Away, Not Here, Beyond, and Far. I was also a dreamy kid turned dreamier from reading, and I swung from those four branches; I closed my eyes, each time hoping that if I couldn’t land in a kingdom or an empire or the middle of a Crusade, then at least I would become a sprite, a goddess or, my favorite, a nymph, although the only beauty I wanted was the willow’s. I kept its gray bark in the creases of my hands; my hair—I made sure—grew arched from my scalp, then dangled heavy from its own weight. You little nymph, he, the older boy next door said, the last time he planted the kisses, as if the tree had told him all about me.
What the willow didn’t tell, my body did, though it spoke one thing to me, another thing to my mother. I had to be punished. Go choose your switch, my mother said when she saw the grass stains on my sweatshirt. How many times do I have to tell you not to ruin your clothes? I did not choose one of the willow’s soft tendrils that hung nearly to the ground, one that I knew would feel like a giggle against my bare thighs. Instead, I climbed to the top of the tree, my sisters (sometimes there is nothing lonelier than having pretty, older sisters) watching from the porch. I chose my branch, almost too thick to snap between my fingers, and brought it to my mother. Here and here and here and here, I wanted to tell her, pointing to the ruined parts of myself, when she draped me across her lap, and then later I waited (years and years) for the weeping, for the tree to earn its name.
2.
The house, small and white, was in a neighborhood called Arden Park—life would be a playground again!—which is why I refused to look at it (where would I put the shame?) until the real estate agent said, You should see the tree. An hour later, we stood beneath it. She talked of bedrooms and a bathroom and a kitchen I could make my own, although all I wanted was the water oak, ninety years old, so big that I could live in a kingdom of leaves. At thirty, my name had never changed, so I was good at signing papers. My name had never changed, so I wrote it (my story in Sharpie) on boxes and carried each one into the house, my (and mine alone) starter home. Some nights, I’d go outside and arch my back to stare up at the water oak, its dark limbs a stepladder to the sky. Some nights, I’d stay inside and arch my back to stare up at a man (to stare into my could-be future): Dan or Bill or John or Trey—I’d make the switch with practiced hands. The neighbors discussed, although not with me (sometimes there is nothing lonelier than having petty neighbors).
Then Victor—success at last, I told the tree—stayed. There were promises and plans and perhaps a (future) public display of confection (wedding cake for even the petty neighbors!) There were leaves in the fall and shade in the summer and Victor all year round—until, unlike that boy next door (giver of permanent, pernicious kisses) Victor was gone. Loser, loser, loser, I said about him, although, of course, I was pointing to myself.
Sometimes there is nothing lonelier than choosing the pain, and not a tree.
3.
So, I got a passport—so much white space to be stamped, curiosity to be approved—and climbed that pain to the sky (meaning, I boarded planes) and wandered far but wandered lonely, until the shame began to tame: Spain and Turkey and Morocco and New Zealand and Brazil and Mexico (Mexico again and again until I knew it like a neighbor.) In Oaxaca, a Zapotec woman selling trinkets on the square read my palm. Vaya al árbol del Tule, she instructed, or predicted—with truth, it’s hard to know which. I counted coins and took an ancient bus to the widest tree in the world, in a town where schoolgirls in starched, white blouses (there is nothing better than a white blouse that stays white) led tourists around and around its gnarled trunk pointing to—aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui—the faces some playful god carved in the bark. Fourteen hundred years ago, my guide, Juanita, told me. There were goblins and hungry animals and monsters, or maybe men—with scary things, it’s hard to know the difference. Or it’s hard to face the past. Or it’s easy (easy like a playground is easy) to just be, like a tree, and to want. And want and want.
How many trees grew together? I asked Juanita. Beneath her bangs, her dark eyes flashed wild. No, just one. One tree, she said. Only one. I thought far and wider than the pain. I will hug it, I said, ignoring the fence, the signs (rules to be unwritten). Vaya, Juanita said, and I ran toward the tree, alone and smitten.