Telephone of the Tree, page 7
I stand on the sidewalk and peer down at the end of the block
at
that
little
baby
tree
That day will always be there
but there’s more, Ayla
so much more
Behind me, in our house, Pops sits at the kitchen table drinking his coffee.
Mrs. S is in her house, in her kitchen—I can see her through the front window, moving around—probably making coffee too, the way every grown-up I know does.
Every grown-up except Kiri’s mom, anyway. Kiri’s mom makes tea in the morning: cinnamon tea with sugar and milk that she stirs and stirs and stirs while she sits dreaming at the kitchen table.
Today is the day.
Kiri’s birthday.
Oh, Kiri.
I don’t let myself think. Instead, I walk down our steps and down the block to the stop sign—
I look both ways and cross the street
for the first time
since that day
I turn my eyes away from the baby birch.
I focus on Kiri’s steps. Kiri’s door. The two welcome mats turned in opposite directions because Kiri’s mom says that way when you leave the house the world welcomes you, and when you come home, the house welcomes you.
So no matter what, you’re always welcomed.
I look at the mats, I look at the door.
I look at the everything of Kiri’s house.
It’s early.
If Kiri were here, they’d still be asleep, even though it’s their birthday.
If Kiri were here, I’d push open the door without knocking, walk on in because I’m welcome, I’m always always welcome, and sit down by Kiri’s mom at the kitchen table.
Watch her stir and stir and stir her tea while she dreams herself awake.
Should I?
Could I?
Ayla. It’s time.
I reach up to push the door open but—
I don’t have to—
because while I’m reaching, the door is opening and
there she is
Kiri’s mom
and a big blur of fur
wiggling and pushing and making that
high
whine
that Kiri and I
always call
the love song of Junie For Short
It’s almost too hard to look at them.
Their faces are too familiar.
Too loved.
Too missed.
How long has it been?
Too long.
Junie For Short pushes her cold nose into my hand. She wiggles and shakes against me. She sings and sings and sings her love song.
I wait while Kiri’s mom looks at me, and then . . .
small streams begin to move inside me
first a trickle
then a steady flow
of sadness
sorrow
grief
longing
and also
hope?
there’s more, Ayla
so much more
Kiri’s mom pulls me inside and hugs me all the way into the kitchen, where she bends down so she’s my height, and she wraps me up in her arms, and we’re like my birch tree with its separate but connected trunks.
Junie For Short pushes her way between us, and all three of us just stay there
there in the kitchen
there where Kiri and I grew up
there where Kiri isn’t anymore
but
still, somehow
is
because this is where Kiri lived
and breathed
and sang and laughed and danced
The negative space is as important as the positive space, Mr. Nesbitt told us. Always remember that.
I breathe in the scent of Kiri’s mom and Kiri’s house and Junie For Short’s fur and somehow, layered underneath it all, Kiri. All of it, all of it.
fresh baked bread
rosemary and basil and mint
sunshine and dust
old wooden table
soapsuds
all the smells of Kiri’s house
all the smells of Kiri
We sit at the table, the old wooden table, there in Kiri’s kitchen on Kiri’s birthday with the flowered curtains waving in the breeze through the window screens, and the electric teakettle humming as the water inside comes to a boil
just like always.
There are the orange mugs and the cinnamon-spice teabags, and Junie For Short’s muzzle resting on my leg, her eyes gazing up at me, her tail a metronome
back and forth
back and forth
back and forth
After a while of being in Kiri’s kitchen it’s still hard
and
it’s also
a little easier
Kiri’s mom pours boiling water into the orange mugs and dips the teabags in and out of the hot water.
She brings milk and sugar to the table and spoons sugar into her mug and a little milk.
The last time Kiri’s mom and Kiri and I all sat together at their table was the morning of the day it happened.
Last times come for everyone.
That’s something I know now that I didn’t know then, in the spring, the last morning all of us were together at Kiri’s house.
Kiri’s mom passes me the sugar and milk and I add some to my mug of tea, just the way I’ve watched her do a thousand times.
“I’ve never seen you drink tea,” Kiri’s mom says, “but somehow I thought you might want some today.”
The first words either of us have said since I walked into the house.
“It’s my first time,” I say.
First times come for everyone too.
My first time drinking tea, my first time being in the house since Kiri passed on, my first time being without Kiri on their birthday, my first time saying anything to their mom since that day.
“Some days I wake up and everything feels normal,” Kiri’s mom says. “And then . . . I remember.”
“Me too,” I say.
“Do you remember what today is?” their mom says, and I nod. I think of the trick candles and the half-melted one. Talismans now, all of them.
Junie For Short whimpers and pushes her nose into each of our legs in turn, and I feel her dog sadness, and her dog confusion, as if the same thing happens to her every morning too.
Then Kiri’s mom says something that surprises me.
“You know the telephone in your tree?” Kiri’s mom says. “Sometimes I call Kiri on it.”
I’ve never seen Kiri’s mom use the telephone of the tree. I haven’t once seen Kiri’s mom by my house since the day it happened.
“Only in the middle of the night,” she adds. “I didn’t want to upset you. You’ve been so, so sad. Junie For Short and I have felt it, all the way down here at the end of the block.”
I nod. I think of all the times I didn’t let myself look down the block. All the times I heard Junie For Short howling, and drowned out the sound with the lalala.
“How do you think it works, Ayla?” she says.
I don’t know. But then again, maybe I do know, because the thrum of the telephone is the thrum of my tree.
“Maybe it’s like trees,” I say. “Trees know when another tree is hurting. Trees try to help.”
Kiri’s mom smiles. “Well, you and Kiri always did want to be trees.”
I wonder what Kiri and their mom talk about on the telephone. But I don’t have to wonder, because Kiri’s mom tells me, as if she heard me thinking.
“We don’t talk about much,” she says. “What I’m doing. What I had for dinner. If the bakery had a special that day. Where I walked Junie For Short. How much I miss them. And how . . .”
Kiri’s mom hesitates. “How you’re doing,” she finally says. “But . . . I haven’t known what to say.”
“Not too good,” I say.
Which is the truth.
I look out the window at Kiri’s white pine, planted when Kiri was born. On the other side of the little lawn I can just make out the top of the tiny birch tree.
Kiri’s mom follows my eyes.
“Did you plant that in honor of Kiri?” I say, and she nods.
I think for a while. Mrs. S planted a ginkgo in honor of her husband, Horace, because he loved ginkgo leaves. Pops planted a butternut in honor of my grandmother Randa because she loved butternuts.
But Kiri loved pine trees.
“Why a birch tree, though?” I say.
“Because birches are your favorite tree,” their mom says. “And you were Kiri’s favorite person.”
I can’t look at Kiri’s mom just then, so it’s good that Junie For Short is pushing her cold nose into my arm. She keeps looking up at me, willing me to look at her.
I bend down so Junie For Short and I are on the same level, put both hands on the sides of her head, and look into her eyes.
She makes the sound she used to make when Kiri and I were in my tree.
Hmm-mm-mmm?
Hmm-mm-mmm?
This is Junie For Short’s way of talking human.
I know exactly what Hmm-mm-mmm? means too.
“Come on, Junie For Short,” I say.
I hook up her leash and we head out the door. I don’t look at Kiri’s mom and she doesn’t look at me, which is good.
Kiri’s mom understands. She understands that hearing the words you were Kiri’s favorite person makes me want to cry and wail and howl like Junie For Short.
And it also makes me feel . . . loved. Loved the way only Kiri loved me.
There’s so much more, Ayla.
This is the first time I’ve taken Junie For Short on a walk since Kiri . . .
since Kiri.
Maybe I’ll think of it that way: since Kiri.
There was a last time that Kiri and I walked Junie For Short together, even if we didn’t know it was the last time. And now there’s a first time: Ayla and Junie For Short on a walk without Kiri.
“What do you think, Juniper?” I say.
Junie For Short tips her head and looks at me inquiringly.
Wait, what have I just called her?
Juniper?
Kiri and I never called her Juniper!
I stop, there on the block, right in front of Mrs. S’s mulberry tree. The dog looks up at me. She’s patient. She just waits.
“It’s another of those things, isn’t it, Junie?” I say.
We never called her just Junie either. Junie-For-Short-Juniper-Junie looks up at me and wags her tail slowly, as if she isn’t sure she should be wagging it at all and she wants to do the right thing.
This is another one of the firsts.
Another first Kiri isn’t here to laugh at or frown at or give me one of their what the heck is THAT all about looks.
“I wish Kiri was here, Junie-June,” I say, and we plop down, then and there, by Mrs. S’s mulberry tree.
Junie For Short.
Juniper.
Junie.
And now . . . Junie-June.
I just keep calling her names that Kiri and I never once called her. Junie For Short lays her head on my lap and looks up at me.
It comes to me that school will start, and I’ll walk through those doors without my best friend. Into all those new classes without my best friend.
Wherever I go, the negative space of Kiri not being there will go too.
There’s more, Ayla. So much more.
Next to me, Juniper thumps her tail as if she can hear Kiri too, and she agrees.
“We’ll just keep going, won’t we, June-June?” I say.
We’ll just keep going together, through all the firsts to come.
“Hi Ayla,” a voice says.
“Hi, Junie For Short,” another voice says.
Geneva and Rowan, there on the sidewalk next to Mrs. S’s mulberry tree, smiling at me and Juniper. Both of them a little uncertain. Junie softly thumps her tail, as if she too is a little uncertain.
“Hi Geneva,” I say. “Hi Rowan.”
“So . . .” Geneva says, then stops, as if she doesn’t know what to say next.
Maybe as if she’s a little scared of what to say next. Maybe even a little scared of . . . me?
I guess I can’t blame her.
“If it’s okay,” I say, “can I walk to school with you both next week?”
Late one fall night Pops and I are sitting outside on the front steps, just the two of us, late at night, looking up at the harvest moon.
Round and yellow, it floats in the sky behind the branches of Pops’s huge oak tree.
Baby Siena’s dad came by earlier to make his weekly call. This time Siena was in a stroller, and he held the phone to her ear the way he always does.
When he left he called to me—“Bye Ayla!”—and Siena waved.
“Where do you think the telephone came from, Pops?” I say. “For real, I mean?”
Pops is quiet for a while.
“That telephone belonged to your grandmother and me,” he says, finally. “When we were young.”
“Pops! So it was you who put it there?”
He nods.
“And after Randa passed on, when I missed her especially bad,” he says, “I got the idea to call her on it.”
We sit there in silence for a while.
“Now I just talk to her whenever I want,” he says. “I don’t need the telephone anymore.”
But you said it was magic, I almost say, and then I remember.
It was me who said it was magic, and Pops who agreed. And now I know the telephone really is magic. Just ask all the people who’ve used it.
Including me.
The telephone is part of the tree now, as if it grew there from the start.
Gentleman still talks to Sweetheart on it every day. He swaggers down the block and picks up the receiver, tells Sweetheart what he had for breakfast, what he ate for school lunch, what he wants for dinner.
Most of Gentleman’s conversations are food-related, now that I think about it.
But also: Gentleman talks to Sweetheart about his parents. Whether they’re yelling more, fighting more, or whether things are more peaceful.
Lately they seem more peaceful.
I keep an eye on Gentleman. He can be annoying, but also? I love him.
Kiri loved him too.
My tree and I watch over everyone: our neighbors, passersby, anyone who comes to our block to use the telephone:
Gentleman.
Kiri’s mom.
Galaxy Pizza Bike Guy.
Baby Siena and her dad.
Mrs. S, who finally called Mr. S, and now checks in with him once a week or so.
Even Geneva, with Rowan by her side, once picked up the telephone. She wanted to talk to her grandfather, who died a couple of years ago.
She wanted to tell him something she didn’t have time to tell him before he died.
That’s what most people want.
Because none of us know when we’ll run out of time.
Me? I don’t need the telephone anymore. When I want to talk to Kiri, I just . . . talk. We were always good at knowing what each other was thinking.
We’re still good at it. Maybe because long, long ago, we taught ourselves how to turn part-tree. And trees know how to talk to each other whenever they need to.
Down the block, Kiri’s baby tree is growing.
It’s growing taller fast, and its leaves aren’t crinkled anymore.
That’s because someone’s watering it.
Someone’s taking care of it.
Someone whose best friend’s name was Kiri.
Trees have to take care of each other, you know?
Someday, a long time from now, all the trees on our block will be gone.
But for a while, the history in their rings will remain.
Kiri and I used to go search out stumps so we could count up all the years of the trees’ lives. So we could study them and what they had lived through.
We saw which years were hard years: years of drought, years of fire, years of people carving their initials into their trunks.
We saw good years too. Easy years. Years when days and months flowed into each other, years of rain and sun and breeze and enough of everything.
Kiri and I watered the trees on our block when it didn’t rain because that’s what trees do for each other and we wanted to be trees.
Be big, Ayla.
I hear Kiri’s voice sometimes, reminding me there’s more. Reminding me to dream big, to be big.
Maybe someday I’ll tell the story of me and Kiri to a little kid. Maybe a little kid on the block. Maybe a little kid who’s my little kid.
In my mind that little kid looks kind of like Gentleman. They’re full of questions like Gentleman too.
“So how did you meet Kiri?” the little kid will say.
“We met when we were babies,” I’ll say, and then I’ll show them photos of baby Kiri and baby me by our baby trees. “Our parents planted trees when we were born.”
And then I’ll point to Kiri’s pine and my birch. They’ll probably be huge by then.
