Wishtree(6)

“One more round of hopeful people wishing for better things,” I corrected.

Wishing Day was always a bit hard on me, and on my residents. Usually the animals and birds stayed away that day to avoid curious hands and endless photographs.

But it was just one day. I understood its history and my role in it. I knew people were full of longings.

A mother tugging a toddler along the sidewalk froze in place when she saw my trunk.

“Mommy, what does that say?” asked her little girl, who was clutching a stuffed toy dog by its bedraggled tail.

The mother didn’t answer.

“Mommy?”

They crossed the lawn. The mother stepped close to me. “It says ‘LEAVE,’” she finally said.

“Like trees have leaves?”



Gently, the mother traced my cuts with her index finger. “Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe like that.”

She looked over at the two houses near me. Shaking her head, she tightened her grip on the little girl’s hand. “Let’s hope that’s all it means.”





14


Those houses. My houses.

One painted blue. One painted green.

One with a black door. One with a brown door.

One with a yellow mailbox. One with a red mailbox.

For well over a century, I’d stared at them. Prim and proper. Same small size, same boxy shape, same pitched roofs and squat brick chimneys. Architectural siblings.

Long before they were a glimmer in some builder’s eye, I was here, right in the middle of things. If my roots stretched past the property line that separated them, well, that’s never been my concern. Roots can be unruly. Mine explored the earth below both houses, pirouetted around their plumbing, anchored their foundations.

I spread my shade fairly. I dropped my leaves evenly. I bombed their roofs with acorns in equal number.

I did not play favorites.

Over the years, many families had called those houses home. Babies and teenagers, grandparents and great-grandparents. They spoke Chinese and Spanish, Yoruba and English and French Creole. They ate tamales and pani puri, dim sum and fufu and grilled cheese sandwiches.

Different languages, different food, different customs. That’s our neighborhood: wild and tangled and colorful. Like the best kind of garden.

A few months ago, a new family, Samar’s family, rented the blue house. They were from a distant country. Their ways were unfamiliar. Their words held new music.

Just another transplant in our messy garden, it seemed.

Except that this time, something changed. The air was uneasy. The parents in the green house refused to welcome the new family. There were polite nods between the adults at first, but then, even those vanished.

Other things happened. Someone threw raw eggs at the blue house. One afternoon, a car passed by, filled with angry men yelling angry things, things like “Muslims, get out!” Sometimes Samar would walk home trailed by children taunting her.

I love people dearly.

And yet.

Two hundred and sixteen rings, and I still haven’t figured them out.

Our neighborhood had welcomed many families from faraway. What was different this time? The headscarf Samar’s mother wore? Or was it something else?

As all this unfolded, busybody that I am, I kept tabs, eavesdropped, observed. I never interfered, though. Trees are impartial observers. We are the strong and silent type.

Besides, what could I possibly do? I had limbs, but they could merely sway. I had a trunk, but it was rooted to the earth. I had a voice, but it could not be used.

My resources were limited.

So, too, as it turned out, was my patience.





15


When you’re the neighborhood wishtree, people talk. It didn’t take long for folks to learn about the ugly word carved into my trunk. People stopped to stare. They gathered in little groups. They grimaced and shook their heads and murmured. By lunchtime, the police had arrived.

I am not, as it happens, a stranger to law enforcement. A pair of calico kittens reside across the street. They love climbing up my trunk to my uppermost branches. Unfortunately, they don’t love climbing back down. In the last two months, Lewis and Clark have been rescued twice by the fire department and three times by the police.

Sandy and Max, the same police officers who’d rescued the kittens just last week, climbed out of their patrol car to check me out. They frowned. They searched the lawn for clues. They talked to passersby and took photos.

“Bongo,” I whispered, “I’m an official crime scene.”

She was not amused.

The owner of the houses—and, therefore, technically, of me—was the one who’d called the police. Francesca, tall and thin, with short, dove-gray hair, lived across the street. The blue and green houses had belonged to her family for generations.

Francesca was also the owner of Lewis and Clark, my intrepid visitors.

With a grim look on her face, Francesca strode across the street to talk to the police. Lewis and Clark squirmed in her arms.

“That tree,” Francesca said to Sandy, who was taking notes on a little pad. “It’s been nothing but trouble for as long as I can remember.”

Francesca has never been the sentimental sort. She likes cats more than trees.

To each her own. I happen to like trees more than cats.