The Memory Trees

by Kali Wallace

  But she hadn’t, and a day later she was left looking around the park, half hopeful and half anxious, eyes following every blond woman glimpsed from a distance.

  “So what’s the deal?” Kavita asked.

  “The deal,” Ethan said, “is that in 1763, after the end of the French and Indian War, there were some people around here who wanted to get rid of some unwanted neighbors, so they came up with this plan to stage a raid on an English farm and blame it on people they claimed were French sympathizers.”

  “When he says ‘some people’ he means his ancestors,” Sorrow said, “and the unwanted neighbor was my ancestor Rejoice Lovegood—who was married to a French man, but he wasn’t even around when all this went down. He was off in the mountains somewhere.”

  “You know that normal people don’t know the names of their ancestors back like ten generations, right?” Kavita said.

  “Twelve,” Sorrow said.

  When Kavita looked at her, she only shrugged. She had known it wasn’t normal ever since the day her third grade teacher in Florida had sat the class down with safety scissors and stacks of construction paper and asked them to make family trees. The teacher had been prepared for grandparents and stepparents, adoptions and mixed families, but she hadn’t known what to do with the quiet little girl who kept writing name after oddball name on branches of an ever-growing tree long after the rest of the class had lost interest.

  “Sure, twelve, whatever,” Kavita said. “So his family wanted your family’s land, and they decided to start a fight and blame it on the French, which was somehow going to drive your ancestor away, even though the war was technically over?”

  “That’s about it,” Ethan said.

  “I’m not remotely surprised this whole thing comes down to white people fighting over land that wasn’t even theirs in the first place,” Kavita said. “I’m guessing it didn’t work.”

  “Still here,” Sorrow said, giving a little wave.

  “So what happened?” Mahesh asked.

  “You have to watch to find out,” Ethan said. “Stop trying to spoil it.”

  “It’s history, dude, not Game of Thrones. You can tell me the ending.”

  “Those kids have worked really hard.”

  “It is insane that you make children act it out every year,” Kavita said.

  “It’s not always children,” Ethan said. “Last year it was the over-fifty community theater group.”

  Kavita looked at him.

  “And the year before that it was the kennel club. My ancestor was Mr. Timmons’s corgi and Sorrow’s was the Greens’s goldendoodle. That one.” He pointed across the park toward a large dog sniffing aggressively at an alarmed woman in a sun hat. “And a few years ago it was members of the organic farm co-op. But,” Ethan added thoughtfully, “the dogs were better actors. Looks like they’re about to start.”

  On the plywood stage at the center of the park, the kindergarten teacher bounced on her toes and waved her arms to get the attention of her actors and their audience.

  “You like this,” Sorrow said to Ethan. “All this celebration stuff.”

  He shrugged unselfconsciously. “Yeah, I guess. It’s pretty ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous in a different way every year. People do it on purpose—try to top last year’s chaos. You never came when you were a kid?”

  “No. Not that I remember.”

  But she did remember, with perfect clarity, Patience asking their mother if they could go into town for the festival, just to see, and Verity refusing. They would not help celebrate the day the town turned against their family, Verity had said. They did not owe anybody that. Patience hadn’t argued, and at the time Sorrow had been relieved, but she wondered now what would have happened if Patience had pushed back. If she had convinced Verity to let them venture beyond the boundaries of their orchard without suspicion, without fear, if only for a single summer afternoon. If one small concession would have led to more, and Patience wouldn’t have had to be so secretive with her dreams of school, college, travel. If she would have ever been able to admit out loud how much she wanted a bigger life than the one their mother and grandmother had chosen.

  A shout called the crowd’s attention to the stage. The teachers had divided the children into groups, all looking equally confused about what they were supposed to be doing. After a couple of squealing, unsuccessful attempts to use a microphone, one woman gave up and started speaking without it.

  “Who are we supposed to be rooting for?” Mahesh asked.

  “The kid in the black hat”—Ethan pointed to the little boy wearing an oversized Pilgrim hat made of cardboard and construction paper—“he’s Clement Abrams.”

  “Definitely don’t cheer for him,” Sorrow said. “He was a creepy, misogynistic, fire-and-brimstone preacher. Like a hundred years late to be a proper Puritan, but totally a Puritan at heart.”

  “True,” Ethan said. “Don’t root for him. And the kids over there, that’s Ebenezer and Eliza Smith. They’re the ones who are going to be attacked.”

  A red-haired girl with a paper bonnet over her braids and a too-big apron had a baby doll dangling from one hand and a glower on her face. The boy playing her husband, Ebenezer, was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the stage, plucking dandelions from the grass and eating them.

  “Mama Smith looks like she’s not taking any shit. I’ll cheer for her,” Kavita decided. “Unless she murders anybody’s ancestors. Does she?”

  “No, she’s good,” Sorrow said.

  “Where’s your ancestor? Isn’t she in this too?”

  “I’m guessing she’s the one in the corner there with the black dress and the pointy witch hat.” Both of which, Sorrow noted, were trimmed with distinctly anachronistic glitter that sparkled in the sunlight.

  “Oh, I see her. This isn’t going to go all Salem witch trials in the twist ending, is it?”

  “Not unless they’re taking a lot of creative license,” Ethan said.

  “What’s with the kid with the historically accurate Super Soaker?” Mahesh asked.

  “That’s the weather,” Ethan said.

  What happened on that night in June of 1763 was that it started raining as Clement Abrams and his eager but not particularly skilled militiamen were disguising themselves as French soldiers and Abenaki warriors, taking up their long muskets and farm tools, and sneaking through the downpour to surround the Smith homestead.

  What happened in the play was that at the first squirt from the Super Soaker, little Clement Abrams in his paper hat promptly burst into tears.

  “Please tell me that’s also historically accurate,” Kavita said.

  The crowd tittered with laughter, which only made the boy cry harder. The teacher waved frantically, trying to stop the rainstorm, but the girl armed with the Super Soaker ignored her. The rest of the raiding party—now leaderless—belatedly remembered to encircle the Smiths and shake their plastic Halloween tridents in an enthusiastic, if confused, display of menace.

  Eliza Smith, exactly on cue, kicked her dandelion-munching husband to his feet and pointed imperiously across the stage. Rejoice Lovegood, grinning beneath her sparkling witch hat, waved happily back at her.

  The real Eliza Smith, upon waking to discover her house under siege by unseen assailants shouting in bad French, had sent her husband to the nearest neighbor for help. That neighbor was Rejoice Lovegood, who was clever enough to realize that Ebenezer Smith’s tale of being attacked by wild natives and mad Frenchmen was perhaps not the most accurate representation of the events currently unfolding at his farm. She sent him back to his wife and took it upon herself to visit the other farms in the valley to find out what was going on.

  “She went from house to house all night,” Sorrow explained. “None of the men in the raiding party had bothered to tell their wives what they were doing, but it didn’t take long for them to figure it out. They marched up to the Smith house to confront their husbands.”

  The girl playing Rejoice Lovegood
raced gleefully around the stage with her arms spread wide. She knocked into her classmates as she ran, and one by one little girls in paper bonnets joined her.

  “I’m guessing this doesn’t end with everybody going home and having a laugh over the big misunderstanding,” Kavita said.

  “Not quite,” Ethan said. “When the raiding party heard somebody else coming through the forest, they thought that a real raiding party had found them, so they ran out of hiding and—well. That.”

  Onstage, Eliza Smith hurled her baby doll at the raiding party, striking the still-teary Clement Abrams in the face.

  “She threw her baby at him?” Kavita said.

  “No, she shot him,” Ethan said. “The teachers probably thought toy guns were too violent.”

  Clement Abrams screwed up his face to howl even louder.

  “She killed him?” Mahesh asked.

  “If only,” Sorrow replied.

  “Hey,” Ethan said mildly. “I wouldn’t be here if she had.”

  “He survived,” Sorrow said. “He claimed it was God’s will, which, whatever, it would have been fine, but he also said—”

  There it was: Clement Abrams pointing a wobbly finger at Rejoice Lovegood and her grinning posse of little girls.

  “He also said that Rejoice—my ancestor—had bewitched Eliza Smith, and the only reason his men were in the woods that night was because they had gone to save her. And that Rejoice had tried to stop them by flying house to house—”

  “Hence the witch hat.”

  “Right. He said she had bewitched all of their wives and made them abandon their children to attack their husbands.”

  “And people believed that?” Kavita said.

  “It didn’t matter if they believed it or not,” Sorrow said. “Nobody was going to believe his stupid story about the French anymore, so blaming a witch was the next best thing. I guess people liked that better than they liked thinking their neighbors would attack a family while they slept and risk restarting a war they were all only just getting used to being over.”

  The scene onstage had devolved into chaos. The teacher was still trying to get the kids to remember the final act of their play, but the actors were drifting away toward their parents, and confused applause from the audience drowned out the rest of what she was saying.

  Sorrow watched the kids scatter, and as she was following little Rejoice Lovegood’s sparkly hat through the crowd, a glimmer of long blond hair caught her eyes. Her heart skipped, but the woman disappeared behind a group of senior citizens in sun hats, and she couldn’t tell if it was Julie.

  “The kids did better than the co-op,” Ethan said, “but it still wasn’t as entertaining as the dogs. The dogs actually made it all the way through to the end.”

  “That’s not the end?” Kavita asked. “What’s missing?”

  Sorrow said, “Well, after they accused Rejoice of witchcraft, they had to arrest her, but . . .”

  A dark room, a barred door, and winter air so cold her skin burned. She looked down at her hands, pale and dirty from scrabbling in dark corners—

  Sorrow blinked. Again, and looked up, and the park quivered around her.

  It had been summer when Rejoice Lovegood was arrested. Not winter, not cold.

  “But what?” Kavita said.

  She was confusing the story with the memory of hearing it told. She had listened to her mother’s stories on so many winter nights, the whistle of wind in the chimney a constant accompaniment to Verity’s voice. That was the reason for the blending in her mind, the overlap of history and memory.

  “Uh,” Kavita said. She nudged Sorrow’s shoulder. “Earth to Sorrow?”

  “And, um, she escaped,” Sorrow said. The sensation of cold vanished, replaced by the weight of the afternoon sun. She rubbed a hand over her face, pushed back her Phillies hat, and cringed when she felt the sweat beneath it. “She broke out of the room they stuck her in, and when she figured out the Abramses were already trying to move onto her land, she drove them away.”

  “Why don’t you tell them how she did that?”

  Sorrow turned. Cassie Abrams was standing behind her.

  “What?” Sorrow said.

  Cassie’s smile was full of teeth and gone in an instant. “You left out the best part. Don’t you know how she drove them away? It wasn’t like she just showed up and said boo and they ran screaming.”

  The sun was on Sorrow’s back but she felt it all around her, pressing in from every side, and it shouldn’t have been that hot. It hadn’t been that hot only moments before. Her throat was parched, her mouth sticky and dry.

  “She set them on fire,” Cassie said. Her words shimmered through the air between them. She could have been crowing, she could have been shouting, but she was speaking so quietly that people all around were turning their ears to listen. “Sound familiar?”

  “It wasn’t—” Sorrow’s voice cracked; she cleared her throat. The heat of the sun softened, the space between them settled, as the word fire sank into the grass. She knew this story. This was her family’s story, and she wasn’t going to let Cassie distort it just to embarrass her. “Don’t be stupid. She set a woodpile on fire because they were collecting logs to build a cabin. Not exactly the same thing.”

  Cassie dismissed this with a roll of her eyes. “Whatever. She was the one with the granddaughter who went so fucking psycho she murdered six little kids, so I guess that level of crazy is genetic.”

  “Jesus, Cass,” Ethan said. “What are you—”

  “I’m not talking to you,” Cassie said. She didn’t even look at him. She stared only at Sorrow, her blue eyes narrow and angry. “It’s never really gone away, has it?”

  Sorrow knew her face was bright red, and she put on what she hoped was an unimpressed expression. “You’re talking about ancient history like anybody still cares.”

  Cassie said, “What the fuck were you doing yesterday?”

  “What? Yesterday? I didn’t even see you—”

  “Oh my god, give me a break. Are you stupid? My sister. Why the hell have you been harassing my sister?”

  There was a drumbeat of dread beneath Sorrow’s ribs. “What? I was just talking to her.”

  “What do you want from her? Why the fuck are you bothering her?”

  “Okay, seriously, come on.” Ethan reached for Cassie’s arm. “What are you talking about?”

  Cassie jerked out of Ethan’s reach. “You stay the fuck away from me. You don’t get to say anything. You’ve made it clear which family you want to be part of. You’re a fucking traitor.”

  “Wow,” Kavita said. “Overreaction much?”

  Ethan stepped back, hands raised in surrender. “You’re not exactly making me want to change my mind.”

  “This isn’t about you!” Cassie shouted, and with a frustrated cry she threw her cup of cider at him. It hit him square in the chest, splashing all down the front of his shirt.

  There was a nervous ripple of laughter from the crowd around them.

  Ethan wiped apple cider from his face. “Go home, Cassie. Stop being an idiot.”

  Cassie had already whirled back to face Sorrow. “You made her cry.”

  “Who? Julie?” Sorrow said, incredulous. “She was fine when she—”

  “She’s not fine! Why can’t you just fucking leave her alone?” Cassie spun around and shouted at the crowd. “All of you! Just leave us the fuck alone!”

  She stormed away, shoving at tourists and kids who got in her way. A mother slapped down a child’s pointing hand. Nearby a boy laughed, a snorting derisive sound. Murmurs of conversation resumed, and the park unfroze as one by one people realized they were staring.

  “Right,” Kavita said. “So I’m guessing that’s not normally how the play ends?”

  Mahesh snickered, but he stopped abruptly when Ethan glared at him.

  19

  WHEN THE SUN began to set and the town was emptying for the night, Kavita and Mahesh gave Sorrow a ride home.

&n
bsp; “Don’t let Cassie get to you,” Kavita said, twisting around in the front seat. “She’s not worth the angst.”

  Sorrow looked through the window at the darkening mountains and fields. They were passing the old Roche farm, which had once been the Smith homestead. “Has she always been like this? I mean, since you’ve known her?”

  “You mean, starting random fights in public for no apparent reason?” Kavita said. “Not really. I’ve never seen her flip out like that before.”

  “Maybe because nobody has ever stalked her sister before,” Mahesh said.

  “I didn’t—”

  Kavita rolled her eyes. “He’s joking. Honestly, she should be happy anybody is even talking to Julie.”

  “What do you mean?” Sorrow asked.

  “Nothing. Just that Julie’s got that whole sad broken-girl thing going on, and it’s not like Cassie going around yelling at people is helping.”

  Sorrow wanted to be reassured by Kavita’s words, but she still felt the same hot crush of shame she had felt when all the town’s eyes were on her and Cassie, and with it a sting of guilt telling her: Cassie said she had made Julie cry.

  That didn’t feel like the kind of thing Cassie would make up for no reason. It hadn’t been calculated, not like the other things she had said, accusing and needling to get under Sorrow’s skin. It had felt honest, raw and angry and true, and that possibility made Sorrow sick to her stomach. She hadn’t wanted to upset Julie. She hadn’t meant to hurt her.

  The open fields of the Abrams land gave way to the Lovegood orchard. Mahesh nosed the car into the driveway.

  “You can drop me here,” Sorrow said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “See you Monday,” Kavita said. “It’ll probably be crazy busy with Fourth of July campers.”

  A wave from Mahesh, a good-night from Kavita, and Sorrow slammed the door shut. Mahesh turned the car around and they headed down the road a few hundred yards. The taillights glowed red in the twilight, chased them up to their house, blinked out.

  Sorrow walked up the driveway, reluctance dragging every step.

  Verity would ask her about the festival, and Sorrow would have to decide how to answer. She didn’t want to lie. She didn’t want to tell the truth. She hated the feeling that every possible thing she could say to her mother was a potential land mine, and she was navigating a path so narrow she could barely keep her balance.