by Jaco Jacobs
‘Why were you just sitting there, letting me answer all the questions?’
She simply shrugged. There were dark circles under her eyes. She’d slept much less than I had the past two nights.
Suddenly I thought of something.
‘Leila, are you tired of this tree thing?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if you want to go home, just say. Those students are here now and it’s been in the paper and everything…’
Without a word, Leila picked up the kitchen dishcloth that she had used the previous day to wipe her tears and held it out to me.
‘You can go if you want,’ she said softly. ‘Nothing’s keeping you here.’
‘That’s not what I meant!’ I quickly defended myself. ‘I was just checking in case I was sitting in this tree thinking you wanted me to stay here, and you were just sitting here because you thought I wanted to stay here. I mean, that would be bloody stupid.’
Leila gave me a piercing look. She was good at that.
Maybe, I thought, she’ll become a lawyer like my mum. My mum always said a stern look in court was sometimes worth much more than a whole speech.
I looked away. I didn’t feel like listening to the long speech in Leila’s eyes.
12
The Fight
By late afternoon, Killer and the group of students seemed tired of shouting slogans and waving posters around. The municipal pickups and lorry had left about an hour before that with the chopped-up tree.
The students made themselves comfortable a little way off under a blue gum tree. Thanks to Leila, I was becoming something of a tree expert.
We sat in the tree and watched the students light a fire and laugh and chat around it. The guy with the red dreadlocks and one of the girls, a blonde with long hair, were obviously terribly in love. They sat on the grass and were kissing each other as if they’d forgotten about the people around them. I wondered if that was the way Donovan kissed the girls in the lapa. He had threatened to kill me deader than dead if I dared come close while he was giving kissing lessons.
I stole a quick glance at Leila. She was sitting there with a strange little smile as she watched the two lovers kissing non-stop.
Donovan was barely two years older than me but he was an expert kisser. I, on the other hand, had never kissed a girl properly. OK, there was that one time at Rohan’s birthday party when his cousin kissed me while we were both hiding in the wardrobe, but that was only a quick peck – and afterwards I found out that she had kissed almost all the guys at the party. I was thinking of a real kiss – the kind that smudged a girl’s lipstick and messed up her hair and made her cheeks glow.
When dusk fell, a brightly painted kombi parked under the blue gum tree. More students poured out of it. They greeted Killer’s little group noisily and started to unload cooler boxes from the kombi.
‘You know I don’t eat meat,’ grumbled the girl who had recited the poem. ‘I can’t believe you’re such barbarians. How can you eat something that had a face?’ She looked very upset. I really hoped she wouldn’t rattle off a new poem about people who ate meat.
Someone said something and everyone laughed.
Thanks to Mrs Merriman, we had had roast beef, baked potatoes, beans and pumpkin for lunch. She had passed by earlier that afternoon with dishes filled to the brim in her pink picnic bag. ‘Young children need healthy, traditional country cooking,’ she said and gave the containers of Woolworths food that my dad had delivered a disapproving look.
Mrs Merriman hadn’t said much about the group of students. While we ate, she just watched them in silence. I wondered if she was thinking of her son.
My dad also didn’t have much to say when he was here; he just stared at Leila and me up in the tree and shook his head as if he was watching a rugby game in which the ref kept making bad decisions.
However, Mrs Merriman did tell us that the big dog and her puppies were doing well. She thought Milly was a very pretty name and promised to tell the SPCA people to call her that. Mrs Merriman and the SPCA would try very hard to find them all a good home.
When dusk turned into night, Leila’s mum switched on a small battery-powered lantern. I wondered if she had gone off specially to buy it, as the wind had blown the candles out the previous nights.
The students laughed and chatted louder and louder. They sat in a small circle in the yellow light of the fire, almost all of them with a bottle in their hand. It looked strange in the dark – our white lantern circle and their orangey-yellow fire circle.
‘Are the three of you OK here?’ asked a voice. The rings in Killer’s nose glimmered in the light of the lantern.
‘All good, thank you,’ said Leila’s mum. Her voice sounded a little strange – slightly anxious.
Killer looked up to where Leila and I were sitting on the branch in the dark. ‘Sorry about the noise,’ she said. ‘That lot will use any excuse to party.’
Leila and her mum said nothing. I knew it was because they didn’t want to say anything. It was something they often did.
The only reason I wasn’t saying anything was because I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘I really think you’re very brave,’ said Killer.
I felt sorry for her because no one was saying anything.
‘Erm…I think it was very brave to have those rings put in your nose,’ I said. ‘It must’ve hurt.’ That was probably a stupid thing to say but at least it was something.
She laughed. ‘It hurt my mum and dad more than it hurt me.’
I didn’t really understand what she meant, so I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Killer stayed with us for a moment then walked back to the fire.
Leila climbed down and went to sit with her mum. They didn’t talk.
I was bored, so I grabbed the PlayStation and played for a while with the volume louder than necessary. I wasn’t sure what was getting on my nerves most – the noisy students or the silence under the tree.
By the time the PlayStation’s battery became flat, one of the students had got hold of a guitar. They sat in a circle in the dark and sang songs I didn’t know.
A girl brought Leila and her mum and me a paper plate each with a sausage and a vegetable kebab. Leila gave me hers.
I took a bite or two. The kebab tasted of smoke and the sausage was still raw. If Milly had been here, I wouldn’t have minded giving her mine.
I suddenly wondered what kind of tree had been chopped down for the firewood that the students used. Did any of them ever think of that? It was quite a depressing thought.
Leila climbed up and sat next to me again. ‘You can go and sleep if you want,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘I’m not really sleepy yet.’
I looked down. Leila’s mum was lying on a duvet, with her back to us. I wasn’t sure whether she was sleeping.
‘Why did you decide to call the dog Milly?’ I asked.
‘Milly was my first dog,’ she said. ‘My… erm…I got her when I was very small. She was run over by a car when I was ten. I never wanted another dog again.’
‘We have a dog,’ I said. ‘Mr Bones. He’s a real mutt. He sort of belongs to all of us. My brothers and I fight about who has to pick up the turds on the lawn.’
Leila laughed.
It was weird: every time she laughed, I couldn’t help smiling. I thought she laughed far too seldom.
Slowly but surely, the voices of the students grew silent. The guitar was put away and all that remained was the faint glow of the fire.
Then two of them started fighting.
I could only hear bits of the fight but I recognized the voices. It was the guy with the red dreadlocks and his girlfriend. They had obviously forgotten about their passionate kissing earlier.
‘…said you’d go on holiday with me…’
‘…promised my parents…’
‘…don’t really feel anything for me…’
‘…know that isn’t true…sometimes be so childish…’
; Their voices got louder and louder in the dark.
‘You’re just like my dad!’ the girl shouted and started crying.
Unexpectedly, I felt Leila’s hand creeping over mine, like a frightened, warm little animal. There was a buzzing noise in my ears.
The guy screamed something at the girl.
Suddenly a bright light went on.
‘Enough of this,’ said a voice. The caretaker didn’t raise his voice but immediately there was a hushed silence. ‘Have you no shame? How can you carry on like that in front of two children! Is one of you still sober enough to drive this kombi? I hope so, because if you’re still here by tomorrow morning there’ll be trouble.’
‘Hey, Grandpa, who made you head boy?’ asked the guy with the dreadlocks.
‘Shut up.’ Killer’s no-nonsense voice cut through the dark.
The guy kept quiet.
‘Put out that fire,’ the caretaker continued. ‘Didn’t you see the notice that prohibits the lighting of fires in the park? What’s the use of protesting to save the trees while you’re trying your best to burn the place down?’
There was a guilty silence, like straight after a teacher had told off a noisy class.
The torchlight shone up into the tree.
Embarrassed, I wriggled my hand out from under Leila’s. I blinked in the blinding light.
‘Are you OK?’ asked the caretaker.
‘Yes. Thanks a lot,’ said Leila. She sounded really relieved.
Leila’s mum folded her arms around her body as if she was cold. ‘I wish we could just go home,’ she said. It sounded like she was talking to herself.
The caretaker lowered the torch and came closer, until he was standing under the tree. His voice sounded tired when he spoke. ‘I know it’s not for me to say but you can’t cling to one tree for ever. Not even a good tree like this one.’
I wasn’t sure what he actually meant, but I did know that he wasn’t speaking to me. I was almost certain he was trying to tell Leila something.
He leaned with his back against the tree trunk and the torch threw a yellow circle of light on the ground by his feet.
‘I told you about my brother, the one who lay down in front of the bulldozers when they started to demolish District Six,’ he spoke into the darkness. ‘My little brother was brave. I was proud of him. But after that he got angrier and angrier. He was angry at the government. Angry at white people. Angry at my mother and the people who didn’t try to fight back. Angry because he had to go and live in a different house and go to a different school.
‘I tried to talk to him but his anger made him deaf. He dropped out of school and started to fight against the apartheid government.’ Uncle John sighed. ‘And he lost. He died in the police cells. Back then, that’s how things went down. It’s good to fight for something but you also have to know when to stop – otherwise the fight can become bigger than the thing you’re fighting against.’
It was silent as the grave. I wondered if the students had also listened to the caretaker’s story.
Without another word, he straightened up and walked off into the dark, the circle of light bobbing about in front of him.
The story he had just told us was still ringing in my ears, the way the chainsaws did when the municipal workers had finally switched them off.
I knew there was a reason why he’d told us that story but my brain felt too tired to figure it out.
In the dark I could hear the students whisper as if they were also trying to work out what had just happened.
I wished Leila would say something.
13
The Heart of a Tree
In the middle of the night, a rustling sound woke me. I opened my eyes and pricked up my ears, but I didn’t move or get up from the ground. The park was dead quiet.
In the faint moonlight I saw Leila get down from the tree. Maybe she wanted to go to the loo. I probably should have offered to walk with her in the dark but I decided to wait for a moment. When she was on the ground, she cautiously looked in my direction. I didn’t move.
Earlier in the year, our class had gone on a Zoo Snooze. There were special red lights in the cages of the nocturnal animals so we could watch them as they moved about. Leila moved as agilely and softly as a genet in the dark. She went silently over to her mum. Gently, she got hold of the corner of the blanket and pulled it over her mum, who stirred slightly in her sleep. Leila squatted next to her. It was difficult to see exactly what she was doing but it looked as if she was just sitting there, staring at her mum. She remained like that for quite a while before she raised her hand and stroked her mum’s hair. Then she got up.
‘Marnus,’ she whispered to me. ‘Come.’
I gasped. How did she know that I was awake?
Without a word, I followed her back up the tree.
My bum must have grown accustomed to sitting uncomfortably because I quickly eased into my usual position on the branch.
When both of us were seated, Leila switched on a torch. That afternoon her mum had remembered to bring a torch from home but I hadn’t seen Leila bring it into the tree with her.
I took a deep breath and before I could stop myself, I asked the question that had been bugging me for the past three days. It was probably the most obvious question to ask when you spend three nights in a tree with someone, but until that moment I hadn’t mustered the courage to do so.
‘Leila,’ I whispered, ‘why are you really doing this?’
‘What?’ she asked.
‘You know what I mean.’ I knew she was acting dumb on purpose. ‘The tree…Why this tree? Why not the sweet thorn or one of the blue gums or the white stinkwood?’
‘I’ve told you already,’ said Leila.
‘Because this was the first tree you learned to climb?’ I asked. ‘Because it’s…The Tree At The Centre Of The Universe?’
Leila leaned back against the tree trunk.
‘You’re stranded on an island and you have only three things with you,’ she said, ignoring my question. I had noticed that she was quite good at that. ‘A kitchen dishcloth, a torch and a packet of raisins. What would you do with them?’
I heard plastic tear and she held a packet of raisins out to me.
I took a handful. ‘You think cannibals will eat raisins?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘If you can convince them that they’re dried eyeballs or something like that.’
I laughed.
When she spoke again, her voice was a mere whisper. ‘My dad came up with the island game. It eats up boring kilometres when you’re on a long road trip. My island always had cannibals and I always used my three things to become a cannibal princess. When it was my mum’s turn, George Clooney always showed up miraculously to save her, and then she’d use her three things to make life on the island as much fun as possible for him. My dad always pretended that it made him terribly jealous. He always used his three things to make incredibly clever and weird plans to get home again.’
‘Your dad…?’ I asked cautiously.
‘He taught me how to climb a tree,’ she said. ‘He always said we have baboon blood in our veins. In the evenings before bedtime we sometimes came to play here in the park and then we’d climb to the top of the tree and he’d show me the stars and tell me stories of cannibal princesses and dragons and mermaids, and wild girls with baboon blood, and trees that can walk and talk.’
I didn’t ask any more questions, because she seemed to be speaking to herself.
‘Want to see something?’ she asked.
I nodded, slightly surprised that she knew I was still there.
She handed me the torch. Then she got to her feet on the branch.
‘Watch out,’ I said. If she fell, she would break her neck.
‘Shine over here,’ she said and pushed a branch aside.
I searched with the torch until I found the spot she was indicating. I was surprised to see that something had been carved into the bark – there were reddish-bro
wn cuts in the dark trunk. Carefully I straightened myself on the branch to see better.
It was a heart.
It looked like someone had carved it with a pocketknife. It seemed like the deep cuts in the trunk had healed a long time ago. Something was written inside the heart.
W + M
‘This only became my tree for climbing later on,’ said Leila. ‘Before I was born, this was my mum and dad’s tree. He carved these letters for her.’
‘Leila?’ asked a sleepy voice from below us.
I got such a fright that I nearly lost my balance.
‘Is everything OK?’
‘We’re OK, ma’am,’ I answered shakily.
A panicked thought crossed my mind: what if Leila’s mum thinks we’re busy with…well… kissing lessons?
I sank back on to the branch.
Leila switched off the torch. It took a while for my eyes to get used to the dark again. Above us stars were peeping through the leaves here and there.
‘My dad dumped my mum.’ Leila’s voice was just a whisper. ‘For another woman.’
14
Tree Children
By dawn the next morning, most of the students had left in their kombi. All that remained was the greyish-black spot where they had made their fire the evening before, and three khaki-green sleeping-bag caterpillars on the grass. The three students who remained behind had crawled so deep into their sleeping bags that I couldn’t see who they were. The posters they had been waving around the day before were leaning against the blue gum.
I stretched my legs and looked at Leila and her mum, who were lying under the tree, still fast asleep.
The conversation Leila and I had had the previous night felt like a dream but when I looked up through the thick leaves I could see the tip of the heart on the tree trunk.
I thought of my mum and dad. They were forever fighting. In my mind I tried to make a list of ten things they had been arguing about during the past week or so:
1 The new signage that Dad wanted to put up at the sports shop. (Mum: ‘That kind of thing costs a fortune. Your finances are looking dire enough already.’)