The Tree

The Tree

When I was a child, there was a tree with pink flowers right outside my window. Each year, it bloomed at the same time - in the autumn months, and a gentle breeze blew pink flowers into my bedroom.

The tree was planted by my mother. She died two years ago, after a brief struggle with cancer. She planted the tree as a newly wed, just a few months after she moved to her husband's house, from the seeds of a similar tree that grew in her parents' backyard. The year I was born, the sapling she brought blossomed into a tree.

This tree served as the setting for much of my childhood. It was under this tree that my brother and I chased each other as children. When I wanted to cry, and wanted no one else to witness my tears, I would clamber up the branches, and hide myself among the green leaves and pink buds. But somehow, once I was up in the branches - so close, I felt, to the sky, that I could reach out and touch passing clouds - I would forget the reason for my tears, and sit still in the tree, enraptured by the beauty around me. I would stay up in the tree, till the clouds had passed, and the sky had begun to darken, the dying sun bleeding pink and gold across the heavens. The world then seemed a place of infinite wonder, of beauty, and my sadness seemed to have no place in it. And then, just as the stars began to peep out of the velvety night sky, my mother would call, her voice low and gentle, calling me for dinner. I would scamper quickly down the branches, grazing my knees and tearing my frock in the process, and run inside. My mother would never scold me, even though she noticed my awry hair, the rents in my frock, my torn socks. She would smile at me - a beautiful, dazzling, warm smile - as she plucked the leaves and feathers from my hair.

My mother had the most beautiful smile in the world. I am quite certain of this - I have never seen a smile that matches hers. It was the sort of smile that warms your bones, that makes you think anything is possible. It's a shy smile, a special smile - the kind you feel that used only on rare occasions, with intimate friends.

For many years I believed that it was my smile, the smile that she kept only for me, until one day, the first day, on my eighth year, that the tree was in bloom. I had climbed up the branches and was watching a sparrow build a nest, when I heard a low murmur of voices below me. Puzzled, I looked down, brushing a bough of pink blossoms aside. I saw my mother, garbed in a simple green sari, conversing with my Maths Tutor. From the snatches of conversation that rose through the air and reached me, I surmised they were looking for me. My tutor murmured something, something I couldn't quite catch, and my mother burst into laughter - a low, beautiful sound. She smiled then, and her smile transformed her. She wasn't a beautiful woman - she had a unremarkable, plain face - but when she smiled, she was transformed into a dazzling, bewitching beauty. I watched my tutor stutter, under the influence of her smile, watch his mouth gape open, his knees weaken, a sweat break out on his forehead. I watched him reach towards her, pull her into an embrace, and press his lips against her.

My mother didn't resist. She slid easily into his arms, she seemed to accept the hot, fevered kisses he pressed across her lips, her face, down her throat, towards her bosom. I heard her moan, softly, and saw her wrap her arms around him. He slid an arm down, pulling up the folds of her sari, her petticoat settling around her hips.

I saw many things that day, the day the pink flowers bloomed.

When I look back now, I am surprised that I didn't feel angry or betrayed. Those are the things we are supposed to feel, when we watch a scene of this kind. I think I felt a vague tinge of disappointment, but the over-riding emotion was one of surprise. What I had seen that day, from the high branches of the tree - of bodies crushed together, moans and sighs - an experience, that simultaneously, seemed to combine pain and pleasure for those involved - was a thing of wonder, an incident that had provoked my curiosity. I suppose, even then, I must have understood what it meant, because it was only an hour later that I dared venture back into the house, after making sure that I bore no trace of my escapades amongst the branches. I had lurked, guiltily, at the back of the house, until my mother finally saw me. She had rushed towards me then, admonishing me - for my maths tutor had left in the interval, since I wasn't to be found. She had caught my wrists and bent towards me, tenderly. The tenderness had vanished, in an instant, when her finger gently probed through my tussled hair, and emerged, with the crushed remains of a pink petal. She had stared at the petal. When she finally looked at me, her face was stricken. There was fear and guilt in her eyes. I had kissed her then, and she had, in reflex, without thought, had clasped me tightly, her eyes still troubled. I wished I could have told her then that I would have never betrayed her, that I would never tell of what I had seen. But she must have known that - there was no way I could have ever spoken of this to anyone.

No way at all.

Now that I am older, now that I am a woman in my own right, I understand a little more. I can't remember much of my father - he remains only a vague memory of a bald head, black-framed glasses, a white shirt and a pair of shiny, polished shoes. He was never at home much, and never paid any attention to me. I suppose I must have been a disappointment - an embarrassment - I can understand that a man like him, a self-made man who prided himself (so I have heard) on his intelligence, could not have borne, easily, the existence of a daughter like me. Whatever love and attention he had for his offspring was lavished, exclusively, on my brother.

But my mother loved me, and her love had made up for the lack of interest on my father's part. Her love had made me into her ally, made me understand her and her weakness. After that day, the day of the incident under the tree, she had banished my maths tutor from the house. A new tutor was appointed, a balding, pot-bellied old man, who had a tendency to fall asleep in the middle of lessons. I missed my old tutor, but I saw him often enough, lurking outside the entrance of our house, a lovelorn look in his eyes, awaiting a glimpse of my mother.

To my mother's credit, she put my old tutor out of her mind. But there was a hunger in her eyes, that appeared for the first time, a hunger that grew as time passed. My father became more distant, as I grew out of girlhood. I became an adolescent, gawky and tall, uncomfortable with my body. I could not longer be ignored, or forgotten, I was too tall, too awkward. My presence, a reminder of my embarassing, disappointing existence - constantly irritated my father. He spent less and less time at home.

My mother too, smiled less and less often, until one day, when I was hidden amongst the top-most branches, on level with the top-story of the house, I spied her through the window of the guest bedroom, her arms entwined around my uncle, my father's cousin who had come to visit for a few days. I was astonished, intrigued. I was old enough to understand this now. I watched him kiss her, stroke her hair, and slowly, gently, unwind her sari.

A breeze blew through the tree, and a shower of pink blossoms rained down. The spell was broken. Surprised, embarrassed, I looked away.

But from that day onwards, my mother began to smile again, frequently. My uncle stayed and left, but he was replaced by a schoolteacher, an accountant, and later, a widowed neighbor. There weren't too many men - just a select few, and never more than one at a time - but the hunger was now absent from her eyes, and she laughed more. I was happy.

Then, one day, a few weeks after I turned sixteen, my father died, while on a business trip out of town. My brother came down, from college, to help settle my father's affairs. I hadn't seem him for a long time and, although we were playmates in childhood, a distance had begun to emerge between us.

The pink flowers bloomed, a few days later, and I climbed up the tree to escape the strange silences and tense atmosphere that had begun to reign in my household. I missed the way things had been - for years it had been just my mother and me, my brother and father present only for brief periods. My brother and father hadn't understood me, couldn't communicate with me. My mother and I needed no words to do so - we saw each other for what we were, there was no pretence or hiding possible. My brother's presence in the household had upset the gentle harmony that had existed, and I felt like a stranger in my own home.

I sat on the top-most branch and surveyed the world below. I saw my mother exit the house, and come to rest under the shade of the tree. Tears dripped down her cheeks, I knew that despite their difficulties and her repeated infidelities, she mourned my father's passing. A few moments later the lawyer followed my mother out of the house, and stopped at the sight of my mother's wet cheeks. He had stopped down, and sat beside her. They spoke to each other in soft voices, and a moment later, my mother had smiled, amidst her tears.

Even I, high up in the branches, gasped. Her smile was like a rainbow breaking across a land battered by rain.

It was her most beautiful smile, the most beautiful smile I had ever seen, shining amidst the trails of tears that ran past her cheeks.

The lawyer was stunned, gutted by the heart-wrenching beauty of my mother's smile. He had leaned closer, and then, with a cruel, violent force, had pressed her against the tree, had smothered her lips with kisses. Even as his hands wandered across her blouse, my brother had stepped out, from the tiny back door that led to the kitchen. He had stopped, shocked, by the sight of our mother and the lawyer entangled together. He exclaimed, loudly, and at the sound - my mother and the lawyer seperated. My mother had rushed after my brother, as he strode, angrily into the house, and the lawyer had remained, standing, under the tree, as the wind shook the branches, and loose petals drifted down, falling onto his bare head.

My brother walked out of the house that day, and didn't come back.

From then on, my mother didn't smile so often.

How I wished I could have spoken to my brother on that day, tried to make him understand. Perhaps then everything would have been different.

But, perhaps it would have still been the same.

We went on, like this for a while. My mother pined for her son, the son who would not return, who refused to answer her phone calls or letters. Whatever news we had of him was secondhand. We learnt, a year later, that he married a college classmate and had settled in another city. Later, we heard that they had a child.

My mother sickened. Perhaps it was the hatred of her son, or the knowledge that she would never see her grandchildren, but she had lost her interest in living. Cancer grabbed hold of her, and she made little effort to free herself from it's clutches.

As she lay, sick, in bed, autumn came and the pink flowers bloomed. Every day, that fall, I placed a bouquet in a vase by her bedside, as she could no longer go out to see the tree she had planted, so many years ago. She would watch my movements, her eyes sharp and bright. One day, as I moved away, she had grabbed my hands and pulled me towards her.

She smiled then, for the last time.

After she died, my brother came home, with his dry, thin stick of a wife, and their brawling, red-faced son. They wandered through the house, making lists of all the items in the house, the properties that had to be sold.

One afternoon, my sister-in-law followed me into my bedroom. She had sat next to me on the bed, and had placed her hand over mine. "Your brother and I think that it's the best thing to sell the house," she spoke, her voice shrill. "Of course, we'll make arrangements for you." She spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child. She hesitated, before she went on. "There's a good home you know, for people like you. It's a bit far from here, but it's a lovely place." She named a place I knew off, a home for the mentally challenged. I stared at her, stunned. My sister-in-law stuttered, and then repeated the news again, even as my mind reeled. This is what my brother and his wife thought of me?

"It's the right sort of place for you. You'll get the kind of help you need there." She smiled - an ugly, dry smile, and left the room.

That evening my brother spoke to me. He spoke as if to a slow child, or a retarded individual, spacing his words, and using expansive gestures. He told me that I had been wronged, that I should have received proper attention and care in my childhood. When I shook my head, to contradict him, he had spoken of my father.

"It was our father's belief," he told me, "that you should have been sent to the right sort of institution in the first place. You could have been treated if you had gone there early enough. Unfortunately," he continued, "our mother was far too fond of you. She told him that you didn't need it. That you were fine. I thought so too...at one time...But she was wrong. She was wrong," he repeated, brutally.

I wanted to hit him then. I wanted to scream, yell, shriek. I wanted it to drown his words with my voice.

"What a woman," he exclaimed. "She couldn't even wait for a week to pass after our father's death, before she embarked on yet another of her infidelities. How many of them where there?" He eyed me, warily. "You must know. You were always here. But of course you can't - you won't - say."

For the millionth time I wished I could speak. That my tongue would not lie silent, that my mouth would utter words and sentences, that made sense. That I could have told my brother the truth, made him understand. Made him see. He hadn't understood me, my mother or my father. Her infidelity wasn't what he made it out to be - it wasn't a sin, it was something human. It wasn't just her fault - it was hers and mine - and his too. It was the fault of the distance between my parents, a distance I was responsible for.

My brother didn't, couldn't, understand.

Or he would blame her smile, a smile that he would think had been designed to attract. That wasn't it. Her smile was gift, something divine and wondrous - that transfigured her, and the world.

"I know you worshipped her," he continued, cruelly. "She was a bad woman, a bad wife. She wasn't a good mother, to you or me."

I opened my mouth then, I couldn't take it any longer. I tried to protest, to say something - but nothing came out - just the same twisted, ugly moans that issued from my mouth every time I tried to speak. I saw my brother's lips twist into a smirk, heard his thin, ugly wife laugh.

I ran away then, their laughter chasing me. I ran into my room and shut the door.

I packed my clothes, and at night, when my brother's family had gone to sleep, I exited the house. I stopped in front of the tree for the last time, in the moonlight. It was to early for the flowers to blossom, but I pulled a few leaves and buds loose, and stuffed them into my pocket.

I left then.

The house was sold, a month later. The new owner razed the house to the ground, in order to erect an apartment building. I returned, a week later, to watch them cut down the tree that my mother had planted. It was autumn, and the pink flowers were blooming. As the tree fell, the flowers shook free and covered the street in a carpet of pink.

I cried that day.

Since then, I've made a new life for myself. I had a little money - from the sale of the house and my mother's will. I have a little house now, as well, and run the photo studio out of the garage. It's a small place - but it suits me well.

There's a blackboard along one side of my shop. That's how I communicate, answer my customers. And wherever I go, I carry a small slate with a piece of chalk. Somehow, I seem to manage.

I have a daughter now, as well. Her father wasn't in my life for very long, a foreign researcher who came to me to have a set of old photographs restored. We had a few pleasant months, before he returned to his country, and he left me with this beautiful keepsake. She is just a baby now, but she has my mother's eyes and her smile.

Just before she was born, I found, while clearing out my old things, the dried buds and seeds that I took with me, the night I left our house. I've planted a seedling in our garden, and a sapling has emerged. I hope, by the time my daughter is old enough to climb trees, the sapling will have grown into a tree, and that the wind will scatter pink flowers into her bedroom every morning.