The Forgetting Tree

by Tatjana Soli

  “Of course not,” Claire said, then wondered if it was. “What were you doing, anyway?”

  “We have the spirits of the house on our side, now we must go after the spirits of the farm. You’ve heard of zombies? The spirit of a place can also be zombi; it needs to be courted with flowers, fruit, worship.”

  “It scared them.”

  “They’re evil old goats. Ignorant.”

  “A misunderstanding. They are superstitious.”

  “There was a pregnant woman who worked on our coffee plantation. She went into labor in the fields and crawled into a curing shed for the beans, and then she goes ahead and dies in breech. So much blood … blood so that the floor stayed red no matter how many times we washed it. The shed was cursed. Workers refused to stay. My grandfather ordered that the green coffee beans inside be burnt along with the shed, and only that satisfied everyone. We lost money that year. He took it out of their wages the following season. See, he understood the old ways.” Minna laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?” Claire said, sickened.

  “The air was scented with coffee for days and days. No one slept for a week. We inhaled caffeine with each breath.”

  “So I should burn down the tree? Or fire you? To pacify them?”

  Minna turned her lip down, moody. “When I was a girl, our workers would get restless every year or so. Father said you could set the calendar by it. They would get lazy, threaten him with their demands. Then he watched a few days and picked out the one others listened to. He used a whip on him and made the rest watch. That broke their fever, and they would be peaceful and docile again for a whole year.”

  Claire couldn’t bear to hear any more. “We don’t do uncivilized things like that. Go inside now.”

  But Minna lingered at the porch railing, looking out at the fast-fading light. “Perhaps they will hurt me. Or you. Or worse.”

  “No one will hurt us. Octavio will get to the bottom of it.”

  “I’m scared,” Minna said, but she did not look scared.

  “Get inside.” It was Claire who was now terrified.

  “Octavio hates me after what happened with Paz. He says obscene things to me when you aren’t around. You don’t know him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” Claire said, accusing.

  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “I’m tired. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Men are men. It seemed harmless. Letting out his anger. I decided not to do anything to keep the peace.”

  “Really?” Claire said. “Is that the way it really happened, or are you maybe just exaggerating?”

  “He told lies to the other men. To turn them against me. Against you. Lies about us.”

  “None of this is your fault?”

  As they argued, Octavio’s pickup pulled up to the house, and her answer was lost.

  He stopped and peered out the windshield at the porch, took in the sight of Claire, distraught, in the rocking chair, and Minna balanced on the railing, one leg over the banister, a foot curled around the rung. He set his mouth, got out of the car, slamming the loose door, and took heavy, defeated steps toward them. Not until this last encounter had he understood that Claire, too, was afraid of this girl. But once again, he was helpless to intervene.

  He glanced warily at Minna, and she smiled back at him as if to a lost friend.

  Claire worried what Minna might do. “Get inside.”

  “But I should offer—”

  “Get inside!”

  Octavio nodded at her exit and sat down on the lowest step of the porch, facing toward the orchards. This was only a show of control on Claire’s part. The girl would get what she wanted.

  “Sit up here,” Claire said, but he waved her off. She knew that moment that she had lost him.

  “I do fine here.”

  “What happened out there?” she asked. Surprised when he shrugged and then chuckled.

  “The men, one of them, Bernie, his car is stolen. Salvador, his wife run away. Easier to blame a tree for bad luck. They are just simple men from a country full of these superstitions.”

  “They attacked us.”

  “Her. You were in the way. They say she is from island where witches are. They say her black skin is maleficio. That she is a slave to the devil.”

  Claire could hardly sit, head and heart and stomach filled as if she would break apart. “That’s disgusting.”

  “They are cruel, but that is their feeling.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  When Claire first ran the place alone, Forster told her that the workers might not take orders from a woman. They would smile and joke but not obey. She had been proud of her bond with Octavio, thought it was beyond simple worker and boss. Over the years, they had formed, if not an equal at least a candid friendship. His attitude now made her feel betrayed.

  “I don’t care how they feel. They work for me. When they are on my property, I will not have any person attacked, do you understand?”

  “Entiendo, but it makes no difference,” he said, looking down at his thick hands, strong as small shovels. “Why didn’t you stop her?” He pressed his palms together as if in supplication, certainly not to her, but to whatever power was making him sit there and suffer unjustly on those porch steps. Maybe this was the excuse he finally needed to return to Mexico?

  “Why do they hate her so?”

  “She cursed the ranch. They say she has dropped blood from between her legs onto the dirt.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I cannot stay. They no longer trust me. If I don’t stand up for them, I lose their respect. Then I am useless to you.”

  Claire’s head was spinning, changes occurring so drastically she couldn’t imagine. Octavio predated Claire, Forster, all of them. “I want you to fire every man on the ranch. Because you’ve allowed this poison to fester, and all of them are contaminated. I can’t trust them. Do you understand?”

  “Claro.”

  “Everyone will be paid a month’s salary. Because it’s unfair, the circumstances. I also want you gone.”

  He wiped his face and looked calmer now, relieved. There was no turning back for either of them.

  As he got up to leave, Claire hesitated to reach out her hand. End their relationship by shaking hands, after all these years? Unthinkable to hug him. Minna would be watching from a window. Claire felt a galling spike of pride that Minna would see herself defended. Would Claire be the first person to offer her such unconditional loyalty?

  “I will miss you, my friend.”

  He stood and remained silent for a moment, then walked to his truck. His heart was so full of things to say that of course he could say none of then. “Ten cuidado, be careful,” he said, then jumped into the truck’s cab and pulled away.

  * * *

  Claire moved as if underwater, grabbed a broom, and swiped at the wooden porch, stunned at the breaking of ties in a few minutes that had bound the farm together for decades. How quickly things could be destroyed. It all felt out of control. She had never intended to lose Octavio, and especially now when she could not afford to consider things outside and apart from her own body. His leaving felt like an amputation. Tears stung, but she had had no choice. The awful truth was she could less afford losing Minna. How treacherous one became in time of need.

  * * *

  The evening continued on its path, cruelly oblivious in its loveliness. Only Claire was estranged. The pepper trees on each side of the driveway bowed inward, the long trails of spiked leaves touching earth. Light daubed the mountaintops with pink, but she was in no mood to enjoy it. A heavy trail of orange and lemon mixed with the astringent of eucalyptus and the dull smell of dirt: the perfume of home. A squawking in the nearby grove revealed the wobbly, fluttering flight of a covey of wild parrots as they searched the unguarded fruit trees for their dinner. She loved this spot of earth more than anywhere else, yet for all her efforts she couldn’t keep it still, unchange
d, its inhabitants free of harm.

  Minna came out of the house, meek, testing Claire’s temper. She hummed a tune to herself and picked leaves off the wooden steps. “He’s gone?”

  “Satisfied?”

  She walked over and knelt at Claire’s feet, hugging her so tightly that the bones of her knees pressed against each other, causing pain. “No one ever loved me more than something else.”

  Claire’s heart gave in just the slightest, although her words still came out harshly. “Because I fired a man unjustly?”

  “You took my side. Like family. You didn’t listen to his lies.”

  “I tried to take the right side. Which was yours?” Why did Claire persist now the act was done? A sinking feeling that could only be remorse. Lies all around her, and she had grabbed the most convenient one and called it truth. She kept seeing Octavio driving away, sure that could not be the just solution. “What’ll I do now? We’re going into high season with tons of work and no foreman.”

  “I’ll fix it, my doudou.”

  “How? How could you possibly fix that? Like the pool? Like the house?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Never mind, I’ll call Forster.” Claire stood up, eager to escape. She had coveted Minna’s gratitude, but now that she had it, it made her uneasy. If Minna was the victim of lies, why was Claire the one to feel manipulated? Had she wronged a good man?

  Minna sat, arms wrapped around her knees as if a chill were in the air instead of a heat wave. Claire waited, suspended, for the slightest signs of guilt, of acquiescence. Minna only drew her knees closer.

  Chapter 15

  A common misperception is that life on a farm is a lonely, isolated one, but rather it is to the contrary. In all the years Claire had lived there, she didn’t ever remember longing for company but rather the opposite—dreaming of peace and privacy and a solitude that never came. Till now.

  Usually upward of a dozen people were working in the fields and outbuildings at any time of day, with an endless stream of salesmen for irrigation equipment and soil amendment, and commercial buyers for the harvests. Farmers from the neighboring properties came over to borrow equipment or discuss a particular problem due to weather or blight. When they were still married, Forster had been involved in local politics, and neighbors often dropped by and stayed on for supper. Then the children invited friends, so that a gaggle of kids were always somewhere, up to some kind of mischief on the property.

  With Octavio’s defection and the workers’ firing, Claire got to know the land in a new way, taking in its deep silences, its secret spaces. She learned the way light slanted throughout the day against the house, along the gravel drive, through the trees in the orchards. She had never before noticed how it hung in the branches at dusk, how it left pools of luminescence in the meadows. As well, she came to know the purpling shadows of night until they no longer had power to frighten her.

  * * *

  Minna disliked the constant strident voices of the television, so Claire agreed to unplug it. They carried it to the barn like a worn-out relic. Likewise, they disconnected the stereo and the radio, although Claire sometimes longed for music and regretted agreeing to that termination. The newspaper, too, was discontinued because most days it went unread, shunted away still in its plastic wrapper. The farm grew quieter and quieter, but, paradoxically, more alive.

  Claire had called Forster to tell him about losing Octavio and the prospects for hiring a new foreman, and they got into a terrible shouting match.

  “It’s still my farm, too.”

  “You left it to me to run. I made a decision.”

  “Octavio was family.”

  “It was his decision.” As she said it, she realized how much it had been a coerced one. “I’ll start looking tomorrow.”

  “Who is going to supervise the workers?”

  “I will.” The omission that there was nobody left to supervise came easier than she would have thought.

  * * *

  But she found herself putting the burden of interviews off. When Forster wanted to come and check on things, she pleaded off for a week. Then another.

  “Let me rest. I’m so tired from the treatments. Next week.” That part wasn’t a lie because the radiation drained her, and Minna had promised that she knew someone perfect for the job. This prospect was unlikely, but Claire agreed to wait.

  Twice a week, she and Minna turned on the irrigation for a deep soaking. As long as the trees were fed, a few weeks of neglected chores did no harm.

  * * *

  Lucy called on Tuesday, promising to come stay with them, but one thing after another came up. She had returned from Tampa, lost her new job, broke up and reunited with Javier. Claire sat in the kitchen with Minna, talking on the phone. “You know I only have radiation left. Hurry home.”

  Minna hummed and chopped mint. Handed Claire the fourth elixir of the day.

  “I worry about her,” Claire said, after hanging up.

  “Lucy? Lucy is the shining light. She glows.”

  “Think so?”

  “If I ever saw someone destined for happiness, it’s that girl.”

  “I hope so.”

  Gwen called on Wednesday. “Dad said you fired Octavio.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “How are you going to run the place?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Lucy called on Thursday. “Don’t you think it’s time to get out from under this thing?”

  “The cancer? Yes.”

  * * *

  August had been the hottest month on record, and September burned with no letup, as if even the gentle shift of California seasons were broken. At first Claire turned on the air conditioner, but Minna quickly put an end to that, saying that the chemicals were harmful, the artificial chill unnatural. The temperature topped a hundred by noon, the scorching sun matching the scorching of the radiation machine against Claire’s skin. She dreamed of ice and snow and the moon.

  * * *

  Each morning they drove to the clinic, and she put on their treacly pink cotton gown and sat with the metal beasts. A crescent moon was tattooed along the missing breast, and Claire sat in the machine’s sights while a technician hid behind a concrete wall and pulled a trigger. Claire pictured a sun burning her from the inside out.

  The skin of her chest grew into a tight, hard, red pustule. It ached, swollen. At home, Minna cut fingers off an aloe plant and dabbed the viscous fluid on with a cotton swab, the heat from her hand, her finger, too rough now. A tragedy to become too rarefied for human touch.

  After the treatments, Claire came home late in the morning, exhausted, and lay in bed in her underwear, half her chest a red-hot, smoldering ember. She begged for the air conditioner. Minna plied her instead with glass after glass of iced tea or water, setting up three electric fans around the bed so that the pillowcase fluttered in Claire’s face from the stiff breeze. Minna wiped her legs, arms, and stomach down with cold, wet washcloths. Fed her wedges of ice-cold watermelon and cantaloupe, then lay on the bed beside her. They gossiped over nothing because their only interaction with the outside world was at the hospital, which they pointedly wanted to forget.

  Minna would begin, “See that hawk?”

  “The one down by the corral?”

  “He’s returned.”

  “I wonder why he’s down here this time of year.”

  “Visiting.”

  “A handsome one.”

  “Smart. Eyeing those rabbits heading to the garden to eat our lettuce.”

  “I hate to think…”

  “He’s gotta eat, too.”

  * * *

  Sometimes Claire grew petulant. “I’m lonely. No one comes here anymore.”

  “People are overrated.”

  * * *

  One afternoon Claire heard Minna speaking sharply on the phone, hanging up when she came by. “Who was that?”

  “Wrong number.”

  * * *

&nb
sp; Another time the phone rang while Minna was outside, and Claire picked it up. A man’s singsong voice like cascading water asked for Maleva.

  “Sorry, you have the wrong number.”

  He laughed. “You tell the girl her Jean-Alexi is calling her.” The phone went dead.

  Claire’s heart beat faster. Here was a proof of her version of a handsome, moody island boy whom Minna had left behind. Or had she left him? When Claire later told her about the call, she jumped from the table and ran to her room, slamming the door.

  * * *

  Claire lost her appetite from the radiation, but it could also have been caused by the debilitating heat that kept them supine much of the day. Minna ate little more than she did, but as Claire lost weight, she gained it.

  “What’s wrong?” Claire asked at Minna’s lackluster attempt to push the mop across the floor.

  “Too much to do,” she said, snapping the conversation abruptly off.

  “No one’s here to see the floors,” Claire said, but in truth Minna already did little. The floors, and everything else, had remained untouched for a long while. The saving grace was the lack of witnesses to the disorder. They seemed to have discouraged visitors to the point that Claire had not talked with Mrs. Girbaldi since the girls left the last time. Once Claire thought she saw her friend’s car in the driveway, but by the time she dressed and made her way downstairs, the car was gone.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Someone lost.”

  “But it looked like Mrs. Girbaldi’s car.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Minna said.

  * * *

  That was another new theme of Minna’s—disavowal of anything having to do with responsibility. The lack of dinner on the table, Octavio’s quitting, the filthy kitchen, Claire’s losing weight—Minna denied fault for any part of it. She acted the role of disinterested guest at a hotel going to ruin.

  “The oranges need picking. We need a foreman,” Claire said.

  “I know that,” Minna said.

  “How long has it been?” Claire would spend a long, passive week somnolent, then wake up, driven and anxious by all she saw going wrong. The week deadline had passed into a month. Forster and she had shouting matches on the phone.