The Distance between Me and the Cherry Tree

by Paola Peretti

  A teacher comes in. She heard us shouting downstairs and has come to tell us to go straight to sleep. Enough talking for one night.

  We get back into our beds. To make sure we stay there, the teacher decides to go to bed as well and heads into the bathroom with her things to get changed. The lights go off. Before I remove my glasses, I push the curtain aside to look outside. The sky is beautiful here, all black and blue and speckled with white dots. I haven’t seen the stars for such a long time. Maybe I can see them here because we’re higher up. If I can, that means I’ll also be able to see them from the cherry tree. I hope so.

  Otherwise, this could be the last time I see the stars.

  I check my watch. It was Grandma’s, but my parents gave it to me when she went to live in the tree. I bring it up close and press the light button to see what time it is—it’s a quarter to midnight. The other teachers also came back and are asleep in our dormitory. One is lying on a blow-up bed near the door, snoring through her nose. It’s funny. The girls in my class and the older girls are as still as can be in their beds. Everything is steeped in dark blue, and even though I’m in a room with loads of other people, I feel like the only girl in the world.

  I push the curtain aside. It was snowing when we arrived. It’s not now. The fields around the chalets and the surrounding hills are light blue (that’s what snow looks like at night), and the moon is like a great big streetlight, illuminating everything, although there’s not much to illuminate here. Only the other small lodge where the boys are sleeping. And a light in the window. A light that comes and goes. Like a signal. Like the good-night signals I used to send to Grandma before I went to bed.

  I spring to attention and whack my glasses up my nose. The light goes on and off for a bit, and then I don’t see it anymore. I have to reply. When someone says good night, you have to say it back; it would be bad manners not to. But I need something to reply with, a flashlight, something that lights up. Oh, but I do have something—Grandma’s watch! I take it off my wrist, put it up to the window, and press the button repeatedly. I hope he can see it from the boys’ dormitory. The light from before comes back on again, flashing like mad. He saw it!

  We keep signaling each other until the snoring teacher scares me when she groans in her sleep and rolls over on the mattress. I do one last signal, a long, long one, which means we have to sleep now, then wait for a reply. It comes right away, just as long. I lie back down on the bed with lots of stars in my eyes. All things considered, I feel happy. I’m not sure I know why, but I no longer feel alone in the world.

  * * *

  Filippo waved at me from his table this morning at breakfast, then went straight back to splashing milk at his friends.

  “I told you he likes you,” Emilia said as she passed behind me.

  “We only said hello, and he hardly looked at me.”

  “That’s what boys do. It’s a sign. You need to get used to the signs.”

  The visit to the organic farm was so boring that not even Filippo could come up with a joke to distract us, or a reason to interrupt. The only nice thing was that they let us taste fresh butter and we ate so many rolls and jam, we were fit to burst. Just as well, they’re taking us to the slopes next! A big group goes away with Fernando the teacher, including Emilia in her red ski suit, and Chiara, who shows everyone her ski goggles, even me, before she gets on the lift.

  I go up to the top of the sledding hill, sit on the ground, and write in the snow. I can’t whiz down with the others because I’m scared I’d bang into a tree. We’ve been given sleds that look like little cars and no one wants to share theirs with me, although I’m not sure I’d want to anyway. To go on a sled and not see anything would be weird.

  A teacher comes over and asks me to go down with her. I reply that I’d rather stay where I am. She goes back to chat with the other teachers while my classmates go up and down the hill, screaming their heads off. I’m wondering when would be the right time to pretend I don’t feel well and go back to the lodge to get the things I need. A snowball hits my back, and I look round to see who threw it. Some person, screaming louder than everyone else, is running toward me, dragging a bright red sled behind him. I shouldn’t be surprised when I realize it’s Filippo. His thin glasses are spattered with snowflakes, and his smile is so big, it’s almost too big for his face.

  He throws himself down beside me and, right away, wants to know why I’m not joining in.

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “That’s not true. It’s because you can’t see, and you’re scared.”

  What he says is true, but I stick a handful of snow down his back anyway. He screams and laughs and rolls around. I can’t help but laugh too. He stops suddenly and tweaks the pink-and-gray pom-pom on my hat. Three of our classmates arrive at the top of the hill and arrange themselves along a pretend starting line to have a race. The teacher shouts “Go!” from the side of the hill and off they slide, crunching over the icy snow.

  “Do you want to come down with me? You can sit behind me.”

  I’m not sure. Better not risk it. “No. I’ve seen you; you go too fast.”

  Filippo stands up and positions the sledge at the top of the hill. He turns to me with his hands on his hips. I think that’s what he was doing the first time I saw him. “I had to promise to do something difficult.”

  The piano. Modern songs.

  “Yes, you’re right. And?”

  “It’s your turn now. You have to do something difficult.”

  I wanted to pretend I wasn’t feeling well, but now I really do have an upset stomach. I try to put him off. “Who said?”

  “Me!” Filippo grabs my hat by the pom-pom and whips it off my head, then climbs onto the front of the sled. Resigned, I go over to him. Another two people from our class have arrived with their sleds. “Want to race?” Filippo asks them. They accept right away and get into position on our left. “Get on! Jeez, what are you waiting for?”

  I get in behind Filippo and only just manage to get my hat back before it flies away as we take off down the hill at breakneck speed. I grip on to his back and scream in his ear that he’s going too fast.

  He turns his head slightly in my direction. “You want me to go slow in a race?”

  “I know, but I can’t see anything!”

  “Neither can I!” He turns all the way round to show me his goggles covered in snow. Panic-stricken, I yelp.

  “We’re going to crash!”

  “Maybe!” He guffaws, laughing like someone whose parents are not divorced and who is simply having a ball in the snow. “Shut your eyes! It’s awesome! I’ll brake if we go offtrack!”

  The hill’s not that long. On either side of us there are only sprinklings of snow and the green and brown of the woods along the edge of the ski run. We’re winning the race. I can’t hear the other sleds, so I do what Filippo says—I shut my eyes. I feel the cold wind of the descent on my face, my hair flying in the wind and my heart pounding. Or is it Filippo’s? I can feel it in his back. What does it matter? Hurtling down like this, the screams of the others so far away in the distance, only the noise of the sled under me, is truly wonderful. And weird. Like walking with a scarf over your eyes, only more dizzying. I’m absolutely petrified. Yet I want this descent to last an hour, a day, forever.

  The screams of the others cheering at the finish line are growing louder, and the hill stops being a hill. Applause rings loud in our ears as we blast into a mound of fresh snow. Snowflakes swirl gently around us, and we laugh and laugh; we laugh so hard we can hardly breathe, then we get up and dance around in a circle, shrieking, “We won!”

  When our opponents finish, I feel a strange fluttering in my tummy, and I think I’m going to be sick. “What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well?” Filippo asks. I don’t answer. I go over to a bush and do what Roly did yesterday.

  Fernando takes me to the lodge we slept in.

  The lady from the hotel makes me a cup of tea. It will calm my stomach,
she says, and then we go upstairs. Fernando lets me go in by myself to go to the bathroom. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby,” he tells me, pulling one of his Chinese language books out of his jacket. This is it. I go into the dormitory. All the beds have been made, and the backpacks of their occupants stand beside them. I see a fuzzy red-and-blue ball in the corner—it’s Chiara’s mattress. Hands trembling slightly, I pick it up and stuff it into my duffel bag, hiding it as best I can. There’s nothing else I need from here. For a second, I think a tablet might be useful for my life in the tree, but then I remember I’ll be in the dark. What’s more, it’s too expensive to steal. I couldn’t do that.

  I go downstairs, duffel over my shoulder. We’re leaving soon, so it makes sense. Fernando is sitting in a red armchair, absorbed in his book. I have to find a way of getting into the boys’ lodge now. The lady who made me tea earlier speaks to me as I walk past the desk. “How are you feeling?”

  “So-so,” I reply, which is not a lie.

  “I’ve got a present for you, since you’ve not been feeling well.”

  She leans over the counter and places an odd-looking gray flower in my hand.

  “What is it?”

  “Edelweiss.”

  I touch the flower gently—it looks like it might turn to dust any minute.

  “It’s all hairy!”

  “Yes. Have you never seen one before?”

  “No, but it’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  Fernando comes over to see the Edelweiss as well. “Interesting,” he pronounces.

  I have an idea.

  “Fernando, would you help me with something?”

  He takes me to the door of the lodge. “Hmmm, what is it?”

  I pull him by the jacket and point to the boys’ chalet. “I’d really like to surprise a boy in the other class.”

  “A boy?”

  “Yes. A boy I like.”

  “Ah.”

  “Could you take me into their dorm so I can put the edelweiss on his pillow?”

  Fernando gives a little snort. “All right, but be quick about it.”

  The boys’ dorm smells disgusting.

  Fernando stands on guard outside in the corridor, so I have to be quick. I wander around until I find Roly’s pink lunch box and slip it straight into my bag. There’s no sign of Christian’s waterproof jacket anywhere. Maybe he took it out with him this morning.

  Fernando sticks his head round the door. “Finished?”

  He scared me. Just as well, I’d already hidden the lunchbox. I go over to a bed that’s right under the window, with a view straight across to the girls’ lodge. There’s a torch on it. I place the edelweiss on the pillow and leave.

  “Sorry, Fernando. I couldn’t find the right bed.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t want to get the wrong person with stuff like this. Let’s go and wait on the bus.”

  * * *

  Mom’s emptying my duffel from the trip. I can see a faint flicker of light coming from the bathroom.

  I’m in bed, but I’m not worried because I’ve already taken the pink lunch box and the mattress out of my bag and hidden them under my clothes in the wardrobe. I can keep the light on for another ten minutes, Mom and Dad said. But I don’t have much to do. I lift my personal organizer and black pen from the shelf and cross out Counting the stars in the sky at night.

  I know, Cosimo. I took my classmates’ things without telling them. I shouldn’t have done that. But you helped the brigands too, remember? You knew they weren’t bad; they just had to behave a bit badly to get enough food to eat. Please don’t tell Grandma.

  I promise that when I’m grown-up in the cherry tree and have learned to build things the way you did, I’ll give everything back. It’ll take time, but one day I will.

  15

  Loving Someone

  I’m going to have a baby.

  I’m almost certain now.

  Since we got back from the ski trip, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what Emilia said about how having a baby means you get a sore tummy and then you’re sick. I think about it all the time—while I’m rubbing Ottimo Turcaret behind the ears, before and after my homework, even now as I walk to school.

  You get a sore tummy then you’re sick. That’s what happened to me when we were sledding. I don’t know if you need a boy as well, but I did hug Filippo really tight when we were in the race. That must be it. What will I say to Mom? Will Ottimo Turcaret still love me? I’ll have to leave school, and how will I look after a baby in the darkness?

  I imagined having six children when I was little—five girls and a boy—then I got the mist in my eyes and I stopped thinking about it. I’d lose them in the mist, or I’d comb their hair silly, or they’d starve because I can’t drive to the supermarket to do the shopping. Maybe I could order pizza for dinner, but that’s not healthy. No, I can’t have children. Just Ottimo Turcaret. He sorts his food out himself, and he cleans his coat and keeps it tidy.

  I have to tell someone. Estella. She’s the only one who can help me. I’ll go to her room when the bell rings for break. To stop thinking about it, I count how many steps it takes me to get to the cherry tree, all brown and skinny, from when I can see it. One, two, three . . .

  Eighty steps, maybe seventy-eight.

  Forty meters, maybe thirty-nine.

  Another ten steps and I hear it—Estella’s whistle. If I lose my hearing as well, I really will be in trouble.

  I knock two or three times on the door of the janitors’ room. It’s lunch, and everyone is running up and down the corridors, clutching half-open snack bars in their hands. Three boys from Filippo’s class are playing basketball with the wastepaper basket, using scrunched-up tinfoil as a ball. I’d like to play too, but I’ve got more important things on my mind. Estella opens the door and I go inside, leaving some of the chaos, not all of it, behind me.

  Estella throws me a bag of chips.

  “Are you not having any?” I say.

  She flops, or kind of collapses, onto the swivel chair. She props her head up on her hand, elbow on the table. She looks tired. Her face is the color of lemons when they go moldy, which is actually a beautiful color, only it doesn’t seem nice to tell someone that.

  Estella gestures that she doesn’t want any chips and pulls a stool closer to her chair. I like being here because everything is nearby and I can see things. I sit on the stool. It’s time to tell her I’m going to be a mom.

  I make a little noise with the chip bag I’m holding and, without looking anywhere in particular, launch into my speech. “Estella, do you have a child?”

  She raises her head and spins the chair round to face me. She really does look tired. “No. I’ve never had one.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I fill my mouth with chips to hide my embarrassment. “Well, because children interest me.”

  Estella’s eyes open so wide, even I can see every tiny detail, including the white bit around her pupils. “Children interest you? Listen to you. You’re not in love, are you, Mafalda?”

  I look at her from behind my glasses, not knowing what to say, and I feel like I’ve gone red from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. How did she work it out? Even I hadn’t known, until now.

  Estella laughs—not a mocking laugh, I understand that. My third eye tells me it’s a kind laugh, for something good, like good luck.

  “Oh, Mafalda, some good news at last! I’m delighted to hear that. Now I can die happy.”

  “Why is it good news? How can you say that?”

  She brings her chair up close so she’s sitting right in front of me and takes hold of my shoulders. Her nose is as thin and skinny as a branch on the cherry tree, and her bright pink lipstick is slightly faded. “I just know,” she says. “And it’s about time it happened to you. Love is always good news, Mafalda. Never forget that. Everyone falls in love. Children and old people and people who live far away and bad people . . . they a
ll fall in love.”

  “Bad people? You mean like Dracula?”

  “Yes. Even Dracula had a wife. It may sound strange, but it’s true. Do you know why it’s so wonderful? Because it means we’re all equal. In love, the poor are richer and the rich are happier.”

  “Is it because it’s essential?”

  “Yes, for many people it is.”

  “Is it for you?”

  She lets go of my shoulders and sighs. “It was. I had a husband in Romania. But after a while, we stopped saying ‘I love you.’ ”

  “Is that why you don’t have children?”

  “I think so. If you don’t tell the other person you love them enough, and they don’t tell you, it’s better not to have children.”

  I think I understand. The rule is if I don’t tell Filippo I love him, I won’t have a baby. Got it. All I have to do is say nothing. Talking to Estella is always really useful. She knows about things and she always tells me the truth. I go into the corridor and almost run to class. It’s not that love makes you see better; it just makes you less afraid of bumping into things.

  * * *

  I’m just home from school.

  I dump my backpack on the floor by the door and run into my room, or at least try to get there as quickly as possible without bumping into anything.

  I get my personal organizer and turn to the second page. If I’ve understood it correctly, to have a baby, I have to tell its dad I love him. But I can’t have children because you can’t give a bottle in the darkness or change diapers and all the other things babies need. So, all I have to do is never tell anyone I love them. I pick up my black pen and cross out Loving someone.

  Part Five

  * * *

  Thirty Meters

  16

  She’ll Find Me Anyway

  Happy birthday to youuu, happy birthday to youuu . . . Happy birthday, dear Mafaldaaaaaaa . . .”

  Mom comes into the darkened living room with a cake full of candles that light up her face and her smile. You’d think she was alone in the room with a choir hiding behind the couch singing “Happy Birthday.” I’m sitting at the coffee table with my legs crossed under it and my aunt, my uncle, Andrea, Ravina, Dad, and Filippo are all around me, sitting on the sofa and on the floor. Chiara couldn’t come, her mom said. It’s a lie, but I don’t care; I only invited her because Mom and Dad insisted. They’re sad we’re no longer friends. Don’t they know that friends come and go as you grow up? Ottimo Turcaret is hiding under the coffee table where he thinks he’s safe—he’s not used to the commotion. But Mom plants the cake right on top of his hiding place and he makes a run for it, and also to get away from the very loud “Happy birthday to youuuuuuu!” singing.