The Mulberry Tree

by Allison Rushby

As the bus pulled up at their stop and they stood waiting to get off, Immy saw her father. He was striding purposefully toward the village green.

  “Look!” She grabbed Riley’s arm. “He’s headed for the village green. He’s already been to your house. I can tell.”

  Riley spotted her dad and nodded. Then he glanced back at Immy. “Don’t panic,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Riley dragged Immy across the crosswalk and beckoned her inside the village shop, which was open until six.

  “What are we doing in here?” Immy hissed at him.

  “Quit asking questions and just get us two ice creams. Different ones.”

  Immy looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Just do it already!”

  Immy went over to the large ice-cream freezer bins with their sliding clear plastic doors and picked out two different ice creams. She took them back to Riley.

  “Now pay for them, genius!” he told her.

  Immy took them over to the man behind the counter and paid.

  “Now what?” she said, making her way over to Riley, who was standing at the door. He took the ice creams from her and ripped the wrappings off both and handed her one.

  “Now we stand outside your place.”

  It took about five minutes before her dad arrived back at Lavender Cottage. Immy felt so sick to her stomach that she’d barely taken a bite of her ice cream, which was melting all over her hand.

  Her dad had just begun to open his mouth to let her have it when Riley stepped forward and cut in. “Sorry, Dr. Watts,” he said. “I think I took too long choosing my ice cream, and I made Immy late.”

  Immy stared at Riley, her mouth open, her ice cream dripping on her toes. A decent excuse and remembering her father’s proper title? Seriously, he was so good it was almost scary.

  Immy’s dad bought Riley’s excuse, and the following week dragged on in much the same way as the weekend had started. Immy and her dad skirted around each other, talking about not much more than what cereal she wanted and whether she needed her PE uniform today. At first, Immy couldn’t believe her luck. Not only had she gotten away with her trip to the library, but her parents hadn’t punished her for being rude to her dad and slamming her bedroom door on them. She’d been sure she’d be grounded (not that there was anywhere much to go), or she’d be on dishwasher duty for a solid month. But as the days wore on, she began to feel less lucky. Instead, she started to feel awful about both the library trip and how her parents were ignoring the fight they’d had. She regretted what she’d said and didn’t know what to do or say to make it right. So she did and said nothing at all.

  Something else came back to her as well.

  The rhyme.

  The tree was angry with her, she just knew it. It had given her a warning — first the rhyme, then that strange shock. Immy had backed off, and it had calmed down. But the hedgehog incident had flamed the fire of its anger again. Maybe even her visit to the library, too. Maybe it knew about that as well?

  It saw things. It knew things. Immy was sure of that much.

  She started to hear the rhyme all the time. In the classroom, on the walk to school, in the library. At first she thought it was Caitlyn, hiding around corners, trying to get to her. But she soon realized it wasn’t. Because she heard it other places as well. In the shower. At the supermarket. In bed.

  Always in bed, with the tree’s fingers screeching down the window’s glass.

  Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree,

  or she’ll take your daughters . . .

  one,

  two,

  three.

  In the dead of night, spirited away,

  never to see an eleventh birthday.

  She tried to close her mind to the rhyme and to the tree’s endless scraping — to think of other things. As each hour passed, it became more and more difficult to push everything away. Just like it was becoming more and more difficult to pretend it was business as usual within their family.

  Immy was at Jean’s one evening after dinner. She’d just finished feeding the hoglets, and Jean was toileting them (something Immy didn’t like doing). To do this, Jean stretched out each hoglet in turn in one hand and then rubbed it with a cotton swab dipped in sweet almond oil to make it go to the toilet. When each hoglet was done, she passed it to Immy.

  “The vet’s coming by this evening,” Jean told her, after they’d worked in silence for a little while. “I think we might not need to do this for much longer. The hoglets are putting on weight beautifully. They should be ready to feed and toilet themselves within the next few days, I think.”

  “Really?”

  Jean nodded. “They’ve all done very well. You’ve done very well. You’ve taken such good care of them. You’ve listened carefully and learned a lot.”

  There was another stretch of silence.

  “So.” Jean finally glanced up from the last hoglet she was holding. “Everything all right at home?”

  She asked the question in the casual way adults use when they think kids won’t guess what they’re doing.

  Seeing Immy’s look, she sighed. “Sorry, I’m not prying.”

  “It’s okay,” Immy replied, stroking the two hoglets in her hand. She wasn’t sure what to say. But after what Jean had told her about her husband and the special dog, somehow she knew she’d understand. So Immy told her about Bob. She told her everything.

  “Oh, Immy,” Jean said when she was done. “That’s terrible. A terrible thing to have happened.”

  Immy nodded, a lump in her throat.

  “Your dad must be a very good GP if it’s affected him this much. His patients must miss him.” Jean passed her the final hoglet.

  Immy shrugged.

  “You must miss him.”

  She did, she realized. Her father was still here, yet he’d left at the same time. She missed him not just listening but also hearing her answers to the questions he asked her automatically when he picked her up from school. She missed their bike rides. She missed him swimming with her. She even missed their terrible attempts at baking. Yes, he was still here, but she missed him being present, which was something else entirely.

  Immy concentrated very, very hard on the three hoglets she now held in in her hands, scared she was going to cry. She could feel Jean’s eyes on her. She wanted to tell her so much. She wanted to tell her how she felt about the change in her dad. And about the rhyme. And about Caitlyn and school.

  But she didn’t.

  Silence filled the room. It was some time before Jean spoke again, and when she did, her words were soft and quiet.

  “Immy, do you see how carefully you’re holding the hoglets? That’s how you’ve got to hold your father’s heart right now. And then, one day, I think you’ll be surprised. I think that one day — hopefully soon — he’ll be ready to forgive himself for the part he played in what happened, and the world will be there waiting for him. Does that make sense?”

  Immy looked up now. She nodded again, even though she wasn’t really sure if she believed Jean.

  “I suppose there is one benefit to looking after your father rather than the hoglets.” Jean’s eyes twinkled.

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t have to help him go to the toilet.”

  As soon as Immy walked through the French doors that evening, she knew something was up. Her parents were sitting at the table, and they looked like they’d been doing some serious talking.

  This couldn’t be a good thing.

  “Take a seat,” her mother said, her expression giving nothing away.

  Reluctantly, Immy sat down at the table.

  “I was just saying to your dad that maybe we should make plans for your birthday. I know we’d spoken about going to Paris, but work is being difficult about my taking time off so quickly. If you’re worried about staying here the night before your birthday, we could go away somewhere close by?”

  “No,” Immy said quickly. “I don’t want to go awa
y.” She wasn’t sure if she meant this. She really didn’t want to go away with her parents right now, but the alternative, staying here — did she really want to do that?

  The rhyme started up in Immy’s head again.

  Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree . . .

  She willed the words away as her mother kept talking.

  “Anyway,” her mother continued, “we can talk about it later, but I was thinking . . . maybe we could plan a little party. I know things didn’t get off to the best start!”— she glanced at Immy’s dad, and Immy realized he’d finally told her what had happened with the journalist and Caitlyn —“but maybe we could try to make amends. Your birthday’s on a Sunday. It will be good timing. We can do something in the garden. It’s a week and a half from today, so there’s still time to send out some invitations.”

  The rhyme stopped in Immy’s head as if it had hit a brick wall.

  “What, you mean in the back garden?” she said. She could feel the tree through the French doors, behind her. She was sure its branches were creeping closer to listen in.

  “Well, yes,” her mother said.

  Immy looked at her mother like she was insane. “Who would we invite?”

  “Your whole class. Their parents.”

  She had to be joking.

  “No one would come,” Immy said flatly.

  “It is a bit of a statement, Katie,” Immy’s dad said. “Apparently no one in the village will even walk in front of Lavender Cottage. And I told you how those women acted when we went to buy uniforms. I don’t think they’re going to forgive me so easily.”

  Immy was surprised to hear him say this. Finally, something they could agree on.

  “If they came, it would only be to see whether I’d been taken in the night,” Immy said, adding silently to herself or she’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three.

  Immy’s mum shrugged. “I thought it might be a good idea. A fresh start,” she said. She sounded tired.

  Well, Immy didn’t care if she was tired. She was tired, too. Of Caitlyn. Of her father. Of her mother’s work. “I thought this was our fresh start,” she said.

  Her parents’ heads both snapped up.

  And it was this one small comment that did it.

  Everything simmering away in the family pot came to a boil.

  “Sorry, but I did think that!” Immy said. “I mean, how many fresh starts can one family have?”

  “Immy!” her mother replied.

  “Well, it’s true!”

  “You wanted to live in this house, Immy,” her dad told her. “And I know things haven’t gone exactly to plan, but we’re trying to make the best of it. Your mother is trying to help you smooth things over with everyone by kindly offering to throw you a birthday party.”

  Immy was instantly sorry she’d stood up for her father the other night. She’d defended him to the tree. Now she forgot all about holding her father’s heart carefully and stood from her seat. “I wanted to live here? No. I wanted to live in Sydney. With my friends. Near my school. That’s where I wanted to live!”

  Her dad slapped the table hard, making Immy jump. “Well, I’m sorry, but things change. People change. Not everything in life is always one hundred percent perfect. Just . . .” He ran a hand through his hair. “Just don’t think that grown-ups have all the answers, Immy, because they don’t. Sometimes they don’t have any answers at all. Sometimes . . . sometimes they don’t even know the questions.”

  He visibly deflated with each word, and as she saw this, so did Immy’s anger. Suddenly she wasn’t angry anymore. Instead, she was scared. Very, very scared. What if her dad never worked again? What if things were like this forever?

  Her chin began to tremble. “You’re a doctor! You’re a doctor and you couldn’t help the hedgehog. You hurt it and you couldn’t help it.”

  “I know you don’t understand . . .” her father said.

  “Then explain it to me,” Immy said, sinking back down into her seat at the table.

  Her parents glanced at each other, and after a moment, her mother nodded. When her father looked back at her, it was with shiny eyes. “A mother and her child died, Immy. I know it’s been difficult for you to see that I played a part in that, but I did. And now a man just like me, with a wife and daughter just like me, has nothing. Nothing.”

  Immy’s hands clenched under the table as she listened to her father. Didn’t he think she knew this? Of course she did. They all understood this, and they all thought about that man every single day. What her dad didn’t understand was something that had become obvious to her over the last few weeks. And now she saw she was going to have to spell it out for him, because it didn’t look like he was going to work it out for himself. For someone with a bunch of degrees, he could be pretty clueless. Immy stared straight at him, unblinking. When she finally gathered her thoughts together and started speaking, her voice was measured. Controlled. “We know, Dad. We all know he’s had everything he loved taken away from him. What I don’t understand is how it will make things better for him if you lose everything, too.”

  If she’d thought her father had looked beaten down before, the expression on his face now . . . As soon as she’d said the words, she wished she could take them back again. Swallow them right up. His back stiffened, and he pulled away from the table. He honestly looked like Immy had slapped him.

  And then, in the silence, her mum’s phone rang.

  Everyone knew it was going to be work wanting her back in the hospital. It always was.

  Immy couldn’t bear to stay in the same room as them both another second longer. She stood from the table, her chair hitting the floor with a bang, narrowly missing the French doors. Then, just like the other night, she bolted from the room. She ran up the stairs into her room, slammed the door, and then pushed the desk in front of it. She didn’t want to talk to either of her parents. She wanted to be alone.

  Except she wasn’t alone, of course.

  Because she could hear it again. The rhyme.

  Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree . . .

  Immy crossed the room and flung back the curtains. Flipping open the lock, she pushed the window open wide.

  And there was the tree, its spindly fingers reaching out toward her in the night. “What? What is it? What’s your problem, anyway?” she said to its dark presence that saw the house cowering beneath it. “What have you got to be angry about? What’s so terrible in your world that you have to steal girls away on their birthdays? You’re just a tree! What problems could you possibly have?”

  The moon behind it, the tree drew itself to its full height, its branches absolutely quivering with rage.

  Before she could change her mind, Immy reached out as far as she could and did something she’d been too scared to do until now — she touched the tree. She grabbed at the closest branch. It was heavy and rough in her hand, and, immediately, a strong current of feeling coursed through her body. It was almost as if she were looking in a mirror, but it was her feelings that were being reflected back at her.

  The tree.

  It was just as angry as she was. She could feel it.

  Immy could sense something else as well. Another feeling. A feeling that dragged her insides downward — sadness. The tree was sad.

  With a gasp, Immy let go of the branch and staggered backward.

  It couldn’t be true. Trees didn’t have feelings. What could a tree even want other than soil, sunlight, and water?

  She stared at it, her mouth open, her eyes wide.

  Or she’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three.

  She took a step forward. “So? Are you going to tell me, then? What have you got to be angry about? Why are you sad?” But then she remembered what she’d just felt — that aching sadness. She tried her question again, in a completely different tone. “Can you . . . can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  In a split second, everything changed. There was a hush. All was quiet. The tree, the house, the vil
lage, time itself, held its breath.

  Wanting to know more, Immy dared to take yet another step forward.

  It was one step too far for the tree.

  Without warning, a gust of air forced the window to bang hard in her face, and Immy stumbled backward, tripped over the rug, and fell to the floor with a whump.

  She cried out, shocked, clambered to her feet in a moment, and pushed the window back open again. “I’m not scared of you,” she yelled at the tree (she was, of course, but the tree didn’t need to know that). “You’re horrible. Horrible and mean. But I’m not scared of you. I’M NOT! I’m going to have that party on my birthday, and I’m going to put fairy lights in your branches. You’ll see.” She pulled the window closed again and locked it tightly.

  It took another half hour or so before Immy’s parents finally knocked on her bedroom door.

  “I’m going to bed,” she told them. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Her parents attempted to argue with her, somewhat feebly.

  “I think we’re all tired,” her dad finally said to her mother. “We’ll talk in the morning.” After another minute or so, their footsteps retreated down the stairs once more.

  Immy flicked her lamp off, put her pillow over her head, and willed herself to go to sleep.

  At allotment club the following day, the group picked some beets, onions, and peas. Mrs. Garland had also brought them all some tiny white elderflowers to take home, from her mother’s garden. She gave them all a recipe, too, for elderflower pancakes.

  “That’s what your mum used in the cake she gave us, isn’t it?” Immy asked her. “Elderflower?”

  “Oh, she made you the cake with the syrup? It’s my favorite. Yes, you’re right. The sugar syrup has elderflower in it.”

  A couple of the kids must have looked confused, because Mrs. Garland went on to explain. “My mother lives behind Immy. They even have a tiny little gate that joins up their gardens. They’ve been helping each other look after a family of hedgehogs after one was injured.”