The Gospel of Trees

by Apricot Irving

  I had never felt so close to finding my tribe. For the first time in as long as I could remember, something buried in me began to unfurl, like a seed, long dormant, turned toward the light. For one night, at least, we were home to one another.

  Just after ten p.m., we scattered reluctantly. I lingered under the zanmann tree with Olynda, not wanting the night to end, until Barbara slammed open the screen door, her voice tight with warning: Where were you? Your father was looking all over for you!

  I could just imagine him stalking through the shadows, his shoulders hunched and angry. I would have to keep to myself what I had discovered in the dark. I slipped through the moon-white trees, my sandals slapping the sidewalk. The night insects whined a shrill chorus and I wanted to burst into song with them: I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.

  When our allotted three weeks of house-sitting came to an end, even my father was disgruntled about moving back to Haut-Limbé. (I wouldn’t mind getting to play ranger for a while, he confessed in a postcard to Grandma Lois, I’m getting burnt out here.)

  One of the teachers at Jericho School had quit abruptly, leaving the elementary school in the lurch, and my mother agreed to take the job if no one else would. Joanna offered us a two-bedroom volunteer cottage on the compound. I’d have to share a room with my sisters, but it was worth it. Only my father lobbied half-heartedly for returning to the Baptist seminary. This time we overruled him.

  When we drove back to pack up our things, we felt a momentary flicker of guilt when we realized that Rose’s friend Laura Rose, along with our youth group leader, Kathy Brawley, and the middle school teacher, Mary Hays, who all lived on the seminary campus, had decorated our walls with balloons and hand-lettered posters: Welcome back!

  We explained with chagrin that it just made sense for us to move to the compound—there was a fuel shortage, after all, and it was anyone’s guess when things would improve. But the truth, as my mother let slip in a letter to a friend, was rather less noble: Jon is a rather austere type, but not us girls.

  My father bought a mountain bike, cheap, from the open-air market and pedaled the six miles back to Rey to check on the gardens, but his idealistic experiment had been effectively vetoed. He had wanted us to live among Haitian neighbors, thinking that perhaps, eventually, we could muddle through and find our place in the seminary community. I would like to believe that I was capable, at fourteen, of trading condescension for curiosity. When Laura Rose became a teenager, she joined a local Haitian karate team, which I would have loved, and I’d give anything now to be effortlessly fluent in Kreyòl (though perhaps the adverb betrays me—a still-adolescent longing for a world where no sacrifice is required).

  The question I can’t escape (the question that underlies every missionary experiment) is: Should we have kept trying, even if we were doomed to fail?

  A Leaky Roof Can Fool the Sun

  Kay koule twompe soley, men li pa twompe lapli

  Limbé, 1990

  THE FIZZY EUPHORIA of the compound did not take long to wear thin. Under the watchful gaze of the missionaries I was not permitted, at fourteen, to watch PG-13 comedies unsupervised, much less The Color Purple.

  Meadow borrowed library books and disappeared inside herself. Rose schemed and squabbled with the other ten-year-olds who tore down the twisting sidewalks on bikes and roller skates. I escaped onto the flat, unfinished roof of the school. Olynda hated it when I disappeared to be alone, but no one had bothered to remove the rickety wooden ladder after pouring the cement for the roof, making it the perfect hiding spot; all I wanted was time by myself to think.

  Peter had left for college, taking with him whatever unspoken kindness it was that leapt between us. I had been tempted, at odd moments, to climb onto the luggage rack of our station wagon and shout to the world that I loved no one else but him, but I worried that it would embarrass him. I was too loud, too impulsive. He was so very unreadable.

  I could never quite convince myself that he regarded me with more than avuncular fondness, though I clung to any offhand comments that might be teased into a double entendre (the most romantic thing he’d ever said was to offer to take me avocado picking in the moonlight). In one letter, written soon after he left Limbé, he confessed that he felt like a fish out of water in the dorms of his small midwestern Christian college, and told me that I should have started working on him much earlier to become more sociable. He didn’t, however, go so far as to admit that he missed me.

  In his absence, I took to watching The Mickey Mouse Club every afternoon at four p.m., wedged onto a couch in the back room of the Hodges house with Olynda and a passel of bug-eyed younger kids. The Mouseketeers wore silk shirts and swooped across the stage with a soulful bravado that I could not begin to muster. As missionary kids, we studied their dance routines with religious fervor. Occasionally, one of the Hodges grandsons, a fourteen-year-old named Ryan with a square jaw and piercing blue eyes, squeezed in next to us. My father, hearing rumors of lewd dancing, decided to monitor the scandal for himself.

  I was livid when he yanked open the screen door to the TV room and sat down uninvited. I jumped up and switched off the television, but he turned it back on to watch while Olynda and I beat our fists against the tetherball in the yard and Ryan rode his bike in aimless circles around the zanmann tree.

  That night I slammed the dinner plates onto the table. My sisters skedaddled to the bedroom. I seethed in silence while my father enumerated his concerns, then shouted at him: I don’t care what you think, I want to be worldly.

  I wanted to belong to this great, wide, reckless world, not just sit back in judgment of it, but having no words for this, I burst into tears.My father was sufficiently dumbfounded that he had no comeback.

  * * *

  My father was not at all pleased when he learned a few days later that Ryan and I had slipped out alone for a quiet walk along the Limbé River. Neighbor kids had followed us to hold my hand and ask for my watch and earrings, but even with an entourage, it felt like a breath of freedom.

  Ryan and I poked around a small shed on the Limbé River full of rusting gears from the defunct hydroelectric dam that his father, Paul Hodges, had helped to construct, and which I hadn’t even known existed. The dam, built in the late 1960s, had supplied electricity to the hospital for a few years, until the river jumped its bank in a storm and tore out a swath of gardens on either side, washing thirty thousand dollars of donated funds out to sea. There were people in Limbé who said the lwa of the river had given his daughter in marriage to the god of the sea, and that the spirits had not been pleased with the dam. For once, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seemed to agree.

  When we tired of poking around the ruins, Ryan taught me how to skip rocks across the Limbé River. Then we saw a hill on the opposite bank that looked like it needed climbing. We’d seen market women wade across with heavy baskets balanced on their heads, but the soft silt sucked at our feet. Within seconds, I had water up to my thighs and was laughing hysterically. Deciding it was best to dry off before we returned to the compound, we found a grassy bank and flopped down next to each other in the sun. A breeze fluttered a tangle of morning glories in the pengwen cactus. Ryan squinted up at the sky. His eyes were a deep blue-gray like the underbelly of storm clouds, with long lashes that curled to gold at their tips.

  —You know, I don’t really like most people, he admitted.

  —That’s nice of you! I said, tossing a piece of grass into his hair.

  —I only like interesting people, he explained, flicking his eyes over my face before looking away.

  I could feel the giddiness in me trill to a fevered music, like an orchestra winding up for an opening song: timpanis and snare drums and high, breathless flutes. I was hoping for a kiss, but grinning old men on the way down from their gardens shooed us off.

  * * *

  My unchaperoned walk with Ryan, a dangerous breach of propriety, was among the many instances of adolescent misconduct discussed at the next emer
gency meeting of the missionary parents, after which I was forbidden to leave the house without parental permission, much less the compound.

  I know my limits, I wrote furiously in my journal after my new curfew was announced: six p.m. My father remained impassive.

  Since we could no longer spend our evenings gossiping on the swing set, Olynda and I started planning a trip to the beach with the other teenagers for Dessalines Day, when schools across Haiti would be closed to honor the man who had declared independence from the French and solidified the revolt of the world’s first Free Black Republic. But when the day arrived and my mother left for a retreat with the other teachers, my father announced that it was to be a family trip; Olynda was not invited.

  —But we’ve been planning this for weeks! I argued. —You promised!

  (In all likelihood, my father had been careful to promise nothing. “Wait and see” was his proud and stubborn mantra.)

  —It’s not happening, he said.

  I protested. He ignored me.

  I put my hands on my hips and insisted that I was not going.

  —I’m tired of waiting around. Your sisters are outside ready to go, he said, turning toward the door.

  —You expect us to obey you as if you’re some all-wise, all-knowing parent, when all you do is just change your mind at the last minute like some cruel dictator! Why should I have to respect you if you don’t even keep your promises? I’m not your slave!

  His left hand jerked toward me. I assumed he was going to grab my arm and drag me to the car.

  His palm landed square on my jawbone as my face hit the wall. He had never hit me before. He had spanked us as kids, and sometimes rattled the wooden spoon drawer for effect, but it had been years since he had laid a hand on me.

  I staggered, then stood up again, my head spinning.

  We stared at each other, hearts pounding. I could hear my sisters crying outside.

  —Now get in the car, he said.

  —I’m not going.

  He slammed the door behind him and yelled at Meadow and Rose to stop waiting around. I slipped down to the floor and leaned against the wall.

  It was important for each of us to pretend that we had won this standoff. I boasted to my journal that when he slapped me, I was numb like Novocain, like the Ice Maiden; he had not broken me. The deeper wound, that the man whose affection I once longed for could convince me—even for a moment—that I was to blame for his assault, was a grief I couldn’t bear to acknowledge.

  My father, equally unrepentant, was careful to tell my mother over dinner how much fun he’d had with my sisters. In his journal, he went so far as to adopt the passive voice, as if to sidestep responsibility: Apricot gets stubborn about going to Bas Limbé as family. Gets slapped hard on side of face. Still won’t go. We did have fun. Girls rode on top of car on way back. Lots of rain in the night.

  We did not speak of the incident again. A few days later, I was lunging after a volleyball with Olynda and Ryan when he announced that I needed to get home and change; he needed a family photo for the newsletter. I followed, sulky with disgust.

  Windows down, without air-conditioning, we drove in our Sunday best up a twisting mountain road while I tried to hold my hair-sprayed bangs into place. He wanted mountains in the background, so we drove past wooden tables piled with tomato paste and Chiclet gum, past farmers with rusty hoes balanced across their shoulders.

  When we finally pulled over and composed ourselves into a strained tableau—the cheerful, smiling ten-year-old; the beleaguered mother; the awkward middle-schooler; the brooding teenager with a hairbrush gripped in her fist as if she’d prefer to shove it down her father’s throat—the sun appeared from behind a bank of clouds and streamed across the panoply of green-shouldered mountains like a veritable sign from heaven.

  A perfect missionary family.

  * * *

  The newsletter for which the photo had been taken was not one of my father’s most hopeful missives. He had compiled bleak updates on the impact of the AIDS epidemic in the local villages—dying gardens ruined by drought; fuel shortages; parents unable to afford tap taps for their sick children; unpaid loans and nonexistent electricity—then concluded: Such are my reflections for the day: long, repetitive, depressing, not much Christian thankfulness. You can pray for Haitians and for us, that I won’t be overwhelmed or get calloused, that we can help in our time here.

  My mother ripped the newsletter in half. We were the sent ones, the ones paid to provide uplifting stories.

  But real life seemed to supply far more disappointments than triumphs. It was hard to find God in the pain.

  After my parents’ shouting match over the newsletter, the latest among many such arguments, I winced as the door to their room slammed shut, followed by my mother’s muffled sobs. I dragged a pillow into the tiny closet of the room I shared with my sisters and curled up in the fetal position, my knees tucked under my chin.

  Two doors down on a faded queen-size mattress, my mother was curled into the same clenched parenthesis.

  Love, if it is to survive, is a patched-together tent of whatever you have on hand to protect yourself from the wind and the sun. We were trying, but there was a Haitian proverb for our doomed dance: A leaky roof can fool the sun, but it can’t fool the rain.

  That night, when my father insisted that we play a board game as a family, I locked the closet door and refused to come out. He found a screwdriver and removed the hinges.

  —This is a punishment for your disturbing behavior! he said as he lifted the door onto his shoulder and carried it from the room.

  —I still have a bruise on my face from where you slapped me! You beat your own children, and then you say that my behavior is disturbing? You’re completely blind to your own hypocrisy!

  My mother positioned herself between him and me. —Jon! I will not allow you to hurt my daughters! I want you out of this house until you can control yourself!

  My sisters cowered behind her.

  —Apricot is the one who is out of control! he yelled over his shoulder as he stormed off to work in the garden.

  I grabbed the closet door and hefted it back into place while my mother pulled Meadow and Rose into her arms and prayed aloud to Jesus. My hands were shaking, but no one stopped me. With each turn of the screwdriver, I tamped down my hatred, counting down the days until I never had to see him again.

  My father’s journal entry for the day, characteristically brief, read: Took door off Apricot’s closet. Everyone upset about that. Flip’s last comment before bed was she was thinking about suicide with a note saying it’s my fault.

  I tried writing a letter to him, the only way I could think of to reflect back the hurt he was causing, to force him to listen to us. A week later, having tipped over the dining room table and shattered the candlesticks that we’d bought Mom for Mother’s Day, he shoved a reply under my door.

  Dear Apricot,

  Since you tried writing last week I’ll try it tonight. Such a disappointing and destructive end to the day. Alas. Sorry it happened, and sorry if I blamed you for my actions. Seems that we both have situations that we are incapable of handling properly.

  I know for me that the more overtired and overstressed I am the less control I have. The way you were curling up on the chair while Mom and Meadow were reading I suspect you were tired too.

  When I threw the book and tipped the table I was in a rage. It was something happening through me but I wasn’t in charge. I was caught off guard and didn’t realize what was coming. Usually when that happens I feel very sorry and regretful afterwards. Last night it took some time to feel that way. Not that I was glad I had done it, but I guess I was feeling that it wasn’t my fault. A dangerous way to be.

  He reminded me that he had been disappointed by my behavior, then continued:

  I ask you to forgive me. If you find it is a spirit of rebellion that controls you and you are absolutely unable to participate I will forgive you also, and pray that you
will be freed, just as I hope myself someday to not have fits of destructive anger.

  Love, Dad

  I had to reread the letter several times before I could work up the courage to answer. By the time I had slipped a reply under his door, he had already fallen asleep. Exhausted by the emotions I had struggled to put onto the page, not yet able to imagine that these tense preliminary paragraphs marked the beginning of a slow reconciliation that would take us years—perhaps a lifetime—to complete, I eased open the screen door and settled myself onto the back step.

  Rain pinged against the tin roof, and the frogs were wailing. One voice would begin alone, low and insistent, only to be joined by others, summoned into song in the wet night.

  I wanted to climb onto the roof of the school, but I was not quite brave enough to risk my father waking to find me gone, and the roof would only be sopped with puddles.

  I felt weighed down by my parents’ expectations for me as a missionary’s daughter, always on display, but it was they who had first taught me to trust myself to wild spaces. I could only imagine that they felt equally trapped by the absurd expectations hanging over all of us. Where did they turn for solace?

  * * *

  The roof of the school was my cathedral. It was the only place on the compound—the only place in Haiti—where I felt utterly alone, free to sink into a deep well of silence, seen and heard by no one. Flat on my back under a blue-black sky, scalloped breadfruit leaves and royal palms swayed against the stars. The bamboo rustled and sang. I flung out my arms and drank in the glory, held by a mystery greater than myself.

  I was an acolyte at the temple of beauty, although I did not yet have words for this, and no doubt would have considered it heresy if I had. Beauty was a luxury that, as a missionary kid, I had been taught to mistrust. It was not useful. It could not save anyone. But when I was alone with beauty, something in me felt reckless with joy. I was in the presence of something that I could not name, but when it spoke to me, I wanted to answer: Here I am.