Telephone of the Tree, page 6
pop
The tiniest pop in the world happens then, and Mom and Dad and I all hear it.
My right hand is suddenly wet. Something hurts.
oh no
oh no
oh no
oh no
I broke the puppy glass. Kiri’s favorite glass. The glass I gave them on their fifth birthday because Kiri wanted a dog and their mom said no it was too much responsibility and no matter how much Kiri promised and promised and promised and promised that they’d take responsibility and they’d take such good care of the dog and never have to be reminded, Kiri’s mom still said No.
Which was why I, who knew how much Kiri wanted a dog, got them that puppy glass.
The puppy glass was a reminder.
A reminder not to give up.
Not to lose hope.
Not to let the no-you-can’t-have-a-dog get to you. Not to let the no no no’s embed themselves in your heart. Not to let yourself get smaller and smaller and smaller. Not to let yourself stop dreaming, stop hoping, stop thinking that what you most want in the world will happen.
To think big, dream big, want big.
Be big, Kiri and I used to say to each other.
“STILL say to each other!” I hear myself say out loud. “Not used to say!”
My parents stare at me, confused.
I turn my head away.
Beneath the blanket my hand hurts. The hurt is getting worse. The lamplight is soft, it’s late, everyone should be asleep but we aren’t and now look at us, me and my mom and dad and Kiri’s broken puppy glass and a hand that hurts
worse
worse
worse
here on our block of trees and dreams and wishes and hopes and
lalala
and
don’t can’t won’t
Kiri, do you understand that I’m keeping your things safe and I’m waiting for you to get home and I count the birthday candles to make sure there are enough and
Kiri Kiri Kiri
I’m still hoping
still dreaming big
and I will never
ever
ever
give up
Dad pulls the blanket down and there in the late-night lamplight of my late-night room are
broken shards of puppy glass
trickles of blood falling from my hand
“Ah, baby girl,” Mom says, and Dad joins in, “Ayla, Ayla.”
Their voices are the softest sounds in the world, soft like the breeze when it sighs through the leaves of my birch, my birch, my birch, my birch.
Mom holds my bleeding hand in hers and turns it this way and that, her eyes searching.
“It’ll be okay,” she says finally. “It’s a single straight cut. Not deep. We were lucky.”
We.
Not “you.”
We’re lucky.
Are we lucky?
Dad gets a towel from the bathroom and wraps it around my cut hand.
“Stay right here,” he says, as if I would be going anywhere.
He brings back a wet washcloth and some ointment and gauze. Mom cleans and bandages and wraps my hand. By the time she’s done it doesn’t hurt as much.
They sit back down on the edge of my bed and Dad smooths my hair back from my forehead. It feels good. It feels Dad-like, the way Mom braiding my hair feels Mom-like. It’s been so long since Mom braided my hair.
“So. You want to tell us about this nightmare?”
If I tell them about my nightmare, I’ll have to go back to that day, the day Kiri went away.
That awful day.
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
But when, then?
When?
Everything in me, lungs and heart and stomach, clenches up when I think about that day, that day I don’t ever want to think about.
But not thinking about it means that it’s all I am thinking about.
Trying to push it away means I can’t ever get away.
Not letting myself live through it means that I just keep living through it.
Is that why the nightmare keeps coming? Because I keep pushing it away?
That day.
That day.
Kiri and me had made our plans. We were going to take Junie For Short to the creek so we could all wade along the edge and look for minnows and peepers.
It was spring.
The creek was running fast. The air was full of possibility. This would be our first visit of the year to the creek with Junie For Short.
The air was also weird, though.
The kind of weird it sometimes gets in warm weather, which that day was. Oddly warm, for spring.
Kiri and I looked up at the sky. It was the kind of blue-gray it looks in spring sometimes. But the air, the air was changing.
“You think it’s going to storm?” Kiri said.
“Yeah.”
But so what? We could go to the creek, right? We could just take cover under a tree, along the bank, if a storm came.
Not if it was a lightning storm, of course. But if it was a rainstorm, that’d be okay. We would just get wet.
All these thoughts raced around my mind and Kiri’s. We didn’t have to talk out loud because we knew what the other was thinking.
“Be big!” Kiri said, and “Dream big!” I said, and Kiri jumped up and ran down the block to get Junie For Short.
If we walked fast, jog-walked, we could get to the creek before it rained.
But the block itself seemed still.
So still.
Too still.
Thunder clouds hung heavy and low. The wind whooshed to life, bringing fury and wildness with it. Lightning shivered across the dark clouds. Thunder boomed.
Dang it.
No way could we go to the creek in this kind of weather. Plus, Junie For Short is terrified of thunder. When Kiri and Junie For Short got to my house we could just stay on the porch and watch the storm.
Storm watching is something Kiri and I like to do.
I sat on the front step and waited. Where were they? It was taking a long time.
Thunder boomed behind flickering clouds.
The air was heavy.
The trees of the block were hushed and watchful, waiting for the storm to crash down.
Gentleman was nowhere to be seen. My parents and Pops were inside.
The violinist in the blue duplex was practicing her violin, a wild up and down song that felt like an echo to the wind and thunder. Her huskies sang along to the music in their unearthly way.
Someone zipped down the street on an electric scooter, but I didn’t even look up.
Mrs. S was in her front yard across the street, darting looks at me. Then she was on the sidewalk, arms crossed, frowning.
“Go inside, child,” she called. “This is dangerous weather!”
I didn’t move. I ignored the wild wind.
“I’m just waiting for Kiri and Junie For Short!” I yelled across the street at Mrs. S. “Then we’ll go inside!”
But the wind and thunder were too loud for her to understand what I was saying.
Down the block at Kiri’s house, all the branches of Kiri’s pine bowed and waved in the wind. Mrs. S made shooing motions with her arms now, trying to shoo me back into my house.
“I’m just going to run down there and see what the hold-up is,” I called to Mrs. S, who still couldn’t hear me.
I should have been careful.
But I wasn’t careful.
And neither was Kiri.
I ignored the thunder, which rumbled and cracked and boomed and took up all the space for sound in the air. I ignored the lightning. I ignored the air now turning green and ominous, and I ran down the steps to the sidewalk.
No one called to me when I ran down the steps. Or if they did, I didn’t hear them.
Other things were happening. Tornado sirens, wailing across the city.
The huskies in the violinist’s window, muzzles pointed to the sky, wailing along with the sirens instead of the music.
Mrs. S still out front on her sidewalk, staring up at the sky and then at someone—
KIRI
at the end of the block sprinting down their front steps—down the sidewalk—
toward me—
calling Junie For Short—
Junie For Short! Come back! Come back!
Because Junie For Short, who was terrified of thunder, had somehow escaped her leash and was racing down the middle of the street—
Mrs. S yelled and yelled.
Get back in your house this minute, Kiri! RIGHT NOW RIGHT THIS MINUTE THAT’S A TORNADO SIREN—
but her words blurred together.
Kiri ran after Junie For Short, who ran toward me while sirens wailed and huskies howled and Mrs. S yelled and somewhere a door banged and a car engine revved and the sky above began to pour down water and a roar started up and the ROAR grew louder but Kiri and I just wanted to get Junie For Short safe to my house just get her safe get her safe—
Junie For Short tore across the street to me and leaped onto me wild-eyed and terrified and behind her was Kiri—
Kiri, who didn’t look both ways
Kiri, who didn’t look even one way
What Kiri did was jump
one foot off the curb
into the street
splashing in the rain now pouring down
while Kiri’s mom came leaping down the steps of their house, shouting
Kiri!
Kiri!
Kiri!
. . . and the sirens wailed and the huskies howled and Mrs. S screamed and Junie For Short struggled wild in my arms and the car horn blared and the ROAR got louder and that was when I realized that the blaring car and the ROAR were the same thing—
not a tornado siren, not a tornado,
but a car
a car racing the wrong way down our street toward
Kiri
Kiri
Kiri
and that was when
Kiri
Kiri
Kiri
went away
It happened so fast. It happened so fast. It happened so fast
so
so
fast
that my mind had to
catch up
to what was
happening
to what had
to what had
to what
had
already
happened
When something huge happens, time slows.
Or maybe it stops, just for a little while.
Just for a minute, maybe.
Like the day I slipped on the ice and fell flat on my back by the garage. I didn’t know what had happened because it happened so fast.
One second, I was running to the truck because Dad and I were going to a movie, and the next I was looking up at something white and huge—the huge white sky—and the back of my body was suddenly cold.
Everything felt the same, but different.
A second later I understood that I was lying on my back looking up at the sky, and my mind click-click-clicked backward:
sky
ice
fall
slip
The day Kiri went away was like that.
Time slowed down.
Or maybe it stopped, just for a moment, while it was happening, while Mrs. S was shouting and Kiri’s mom was running and Junie For Short was wild with fear and the sirens and the huskies and the screeching of the car’s brakes and the no the no the no the nooooooo
Because that second of time, the second when time stopped, was
long enough to remember—
long enough to live through memories—
long enough to go backward in time—
to all the sleepovers
all the dinners
all the everythings
Kiri’s puppy glass
friendship bracelets
tie-dye T-shirts
trick birthday candles
old half-melted candle to grow on
tree pictures
softness of Kiri’s breath when they were asleep in my room at night
softness of their braids
how they crinkled their nose when they drank something cold
the all of it
came rushing through me
on the day
Kiri
went
away
And
all my lalala
all my don’t think don’t think
all my don’t can’t won’t
since that day
haven’t really worked
I burrow into my parents’ arms and arrow my thoughts to Kiri, my you-and-me our-whole-lives-long Kiri—
babies reaching our hands to each other
babies laughing at each other
babies lighting up
at the sight
of each other
Kiri and me
and all our plans
for the future
until I finally
fall
asleep
When I wake up, it’s morning and my parents are gone. My bandaged hand hurts, but not too bad.
Kiri’s talismans are lined up on the windowsill, shining in the sunlight, my birch branches outside the window watching over them.
Creak of Pops’s feet on the kitchen floor.
Faint smell of maple syrup and melted butter and pancakes, stronger as I head downstairs.
Pops puts a big plate in front of me, along with the jug of maple syrup. He squeezes my shoulders and doesn’t say anything, just watches me eat.
When I walk out to my tree the telephone is waiting. Nestled in the crook of the limbs. Glimmering.
Despite myself I look down the block at that baby birch tree. The baby tree that never would’ve been planted if Kiri hadn’t gone away. The baby tree that will always remind me of the storm, with its
lightning
thunder
wildness
and the car that came racing the wrong way, the wrong way, the wrong way
There will always be the flashing red and blue lights of the police car
There will always be the ambulance siren
There will always be the huskies howling and howling and howling
It’s then that I finally pick up the receiver.
Because I can’t do this by myself anymore.
“It’s always going to be there, Kiri,” I whisper into the telephone. “That day and everything that happened is always going to be in me.”
I close my eyes and wait. The telephone thrums in my hand. My birch leaves flutter in the wind.
That day will always be there
but there’s more, Ayla
so much more
The sun streams down and the sky is purple-blue and all the trees on our block, our block of beautiful, beautiful trees, are lit up as if every one of them is telling me there’s more, there will always be
so, so much more
When I hang up, I wrap my arms around my birch tree. Lay my cheek against its rough papery bark.
I think about Kiri’s house. Kiri’s mom. Junie For Short.
It’s hard.
More than hard.
It’s been a long, long time.
A long time since Kiri’s mom sliced open a big loaf of still-warm bread from the bakery and we spread slices thick with butter and handed them around the table and tore off tiny pieces from our slices and gave them to Junie For Short.
A long time since we all sat there laughing and eating and laughing and eating.
A long time since Junie For Short pushed her cold nose into my leg because she wanted to go for a walk.
I’m not the girl I used to be.
I’m not the girl they used to know.
I’m not the girl I was even in that last minute, when Kiri ran down the block after Junie For Short in the wild wind and wild rain and wild thunder—
Breathe. Breathe.
Up and down the block, all the trees glow and shine. All the beautiful trees, talking to each other and to me.
Begin again, Ayla. Don’t get stuck now.
I close my eyes and go back to the day Kiri went away—
Say it, Ayla.
The day Kiri went—
went—
went—
the day Kiri—
died
Kiri’s voice is inside me, still talking to me.
That day will always be there
but there’s more, Ayla
so much more
Is there so much more?
Remember our tree pictures, Ayla.
That day in Mr. Nesbitt’s class. The rough paper. The crayons. Martina with her frown. Kiri and me with our white pine and our birch and all the negative space that I didn’t think about back then but I do now.
The beautiful negative space surrounding us.
