The Distance between Me and the Cherry Tree

by Paola Peretti

  “Nothing, it’s just that after someone tells someone else they love them, a baby comes.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “No one.” I don’t want Estella to get the blame, because I think I’ve got this baby thing mixed up. In fact, Ravina explains that it’s much more difficult to have a baby, that just saying “I love you” is not enough. On the contrary, if you love someone and don’t say I love you, not only will you not have babies, but you’ll also lose the other person, the way Andrea has lost her.

  Mom makes coffee for her and Ravina, and I get washed and dressed for school. Dad helps me put on my backpack and opens the front door. Ravina comes to hug me. She smells of church again, but also of water and the beach. It’s the smell of someone who’s been crying. If you ask me, everyone has a special smell when they’ve been crying, and she smells of water and the beach. She squeezes me tight, then takes my face between her hands and brings her eyes almost inside mine, so I can see them nearly perfectly. They’re not black. They are deep, deep brown. “Never ever give up, Mafalda. Don’t forget that.”

  “Okay. Never ever give up.”

  “You’re a brave frog.”

  She goes out onto the landing. My glasses mist up as I say goodbye. It’s the last time I’ll see Ravina before she goes to India. She might never come back, and even if she does, I’ll be in the dark in the cherry tree by then.

  19

  This Is Interesting

  Look how many flowers there are on the cherry tree, Mafalda.”

  I’m walking to school with my hand squeezed tight in Dad’s. I look at the cherry tree and pretend for a moment that I’m meditating upon the beauty of the flowers, like Ravina told me once. She’s really good at meditating, which means thinking really hard. In truth, we’re still too far away. Dad still says things like “Did you see?” and “look there” and “see that,” and I feel bad because he’s always so happy to show me things, so I say nothing, but then after a bit he realizes what he’s just said and gets sad, and I think he’d like to say sorry. So I say, “Wait till we get a bit closer,” and when I see, both of us are happy again.

  This worked until not so long ago, but now I can hardly see any of what Dad points to, not even when we get closer. The early spring blossoms must be out on the cherry tree today. I try to do as Ravina suggested, so I shut my eyes and breathe deeply. Right away my nostrils feel cold inside, but when the air hits me, I can smell it: the scent of spring. For me, it smells of Grandma’s rhubarb sweets and of bunches of flowers—not the ones at the florist’s shop that smell like a graveyard when they’re all squished together, but real flowers, wild ones growing in fields and in the gardens of kind old ladies.

  It’s time to count because I’m pretty sure I can see something that looks like a tree with flowers. One of my gray clouds is blurring the school, but I’m sure my tree is waiting for me right next to it, flowers lining its branches. I remember what cherry blossoms look like in spring—lots of little balls, or thousands of white butterflies curled up on the giant’s head after the winter vacation.

  So, even though I’m not sure I can see clearly, I start counting—one step, two steps, three . . . The closer I get to school, the more I inhale the fresh scent of spring that smells like sweets. The air on my face, in my hair, feels like the brush of the blue silk scarf of a smiling lady. A wisp of hair tickles my nose, but I don’t flick it away. I count the steps and get to fifty-two. I’m twenty-six meters from the tree. Twenty-six, bending the rules slightly. It still counts, doesn’t it, if the balled-up flowers and the tree that I saw are not strictly real, just the way I remember them?

  I have to think about this. Ravina said we have to be honest with ourselves. I don’t know what this means, but I think it has something to do with the truth. Don’t tell lies, not even in your head. I look down at the ground while I think about the lies-in-your-head thing, until a faint, almost inaudible whistle draws my attention to the school stairs. It sounds like Estella’s secret call, only much shorter than usual.

  I let go of Dad’s hand and run up the stairs, passing close to the cherry tree. I smell the fresh scent of the bark even if I don’t touch it.

  “Estella! You’re back!”

  “Yes . . .”

  Going up the school steps comes naturally to me, like at home, but all of a sudden I realize I’m alone—no Dad’s hand, or Estella’s, not yet anyway—and I miscount the number of stairs. There are seventeen in total. I usually take them two at a time, except for the first one, so I don’t leave a single stair at the end and mess up my rhythm. Never mind, I’m usually okay about going up the school steps, even that time I left my glasses in Mom’s car and Grandma brought them to school for me during second period—I wasn’t afraid then. I am today. I know how big a step I have to take to get up to the next stair, but it’s like my foot seems to have forgotten everything, and instead of the stairs under me, there’s only lava with crocodiles in it, and if I fall in, they’ll eat me, and I’ll die, boiled alive.

  “Ah!”

  I lose my balance, tilt backward, fall. The anticipation of falling into the mist is awful. But I don’t fall. Estella’s strong hands grab me by the arms and pull; they pull me up the last stair, the top one where she’s standing, and I stumble straight into her, glasses on the end of my nose, face squashing into her perfumed overalls.

  It’s the first time we’ve hugged like this. Mom hugs me all the time. Grandma would pick me up even if she had sore arms and legs. But there’s something different about Estella. Mom’s hugs are soft at the front, like a pillow. Grandma’s were too. It was like she had cake mix spread over her heart.

  Estella is only like that on one side—on the other, where her heart is, you can hear it go boom, boom, boom, but there’s nothing else. I lift my face to hers to ask what happened, but from the bottom of the stairs, Dad’s voice is asking if I’m all right. Estella breaks away and turns me round to show him I’m all in one piece.

  We go into school. She doesn’t resume the hug, and I struggle to speak to her. My third eye gives me some good advice—leave it until lunch. In the doorway to my classroom, I ask Estella if I can come see her later.

  She pats my head with her strong hand, and she’s like the smiling lady in the air from before, the one with the blue silk scarf, not Estella, Queen of the Amazons.

  * * *

  “What happened on the stairs this morning?” Estella asks me later.

  “What are you doing?”

  The room is a mess. The light pouring through the small window is full of dust, and my fingers feel objects on every surface I touch. Even my shoes bump against something on the ground near my feet, books perhaps.

  Estella brushes the dust from my nose with a cloth sprayed full of glass cleaner, the same one Mom uses. “You really are a little princess, aren’t you? When you want to know something, you don’t stop to listen to other people’s questions.”

  “Sorry. What are you doing?”

  Estella folds up the cloth, exhales, and pushes the swivel chair over to me.

  I sit down and spin.

  “I’m cleaning, my dear. It needs doing occasionally.”

  “I know. My bedroom also needs cleaning. But I’ve got ablutophobia.”

  Estella smiles—I can hear it in her voice. “And what’s ablutophobia?”

  I clasp the desk to bring the chair to a stop. “I don’t know. I read it in a book once. I think it’s when you can’t do something you don’t want to do anyway.”

  “Ah, I get it. That can happen.”

  It occurs to me that as we speak, a sweaty man might be in the bedroom that I never clean, removing the wardrobe, the desk, the bed, and I’ve left Grandma’s blanket under the bed, with all the things I need inside it. If I were grown up, I’d tell Mom and Dad that moving to a new house is not that bad, which for me means utterly, horribly bad.

  “Estella?”

  My Amazon queen sits on a stool and sighs again. “What?”

/>   “Are you ever afraid?”

  I hear her put her hands on her hips. She and Filippo do it in almost exactly the same way.

  “Of course. I get afraid sometimes. It’s normal.”

  “So, what do you do?”

  “I think. I look for a solution. And if I can’t find one, I think of something nice, something fun that makes me happy, and I stop being scared.”

  “And when you’re really, really scared?”

  “Mafalda, fear isn’t always a bad thing, you know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sometimes things happen that scare you a lot. . . .”

  “Like moving to a new house, for example? Or being in the dark?”

  “Yes, exactly, like moving to a new house or being in the dark. The fear you feel about them makes you stop and think, and it’s only by thinking them through that people grow bigger, stronger.”

  “More muscular, you mean?”

  Estella smiles, but she’s tired. She smells of pillow (pillows always have a special smell) and of winter cherry. “No, Mafalda, not muscular, but brave. Strong in your head. With the passing of time, fear helps you to see things more clearly.”

  “Fear helps me to see better?” Interesting.

  I hear Estella stand up and move to the middle of the room. “Come here,” she says.

  I kick forward on the swivel chair to reach her.

  “Stand up.”

  I stand up. This is one of those times that I feel afraid, when the smile disappears from Estella’s voice. I’m in front of her, standing up. What now?

  She puts her hands, all hard again, on my shoulders and pulls me toward her. She hugs me tight, and I hug her back. It comes as naturally as climbing the stairs at home. My temple and cheek sink into her overalls, and I feel the same boom, boom, boom coming from where the soft cushion should be, the one that makes the heart more muffled.

  I inspect Estella from her feet up. Her face is almost completely covered by my gray cloud, but I can see a bit of her lips—she forgot her lipstick this morning—and her hair, as dark and black as usual.

  “Do you want to know why I’m like this?”

  I’m not sure what to say. I’m scared I might upset her somehow, or make her angry. “Like what?” I splutter.

  She snorts, takes one of my hands, and presses it against her overalls, over the chest pocket.

  I try to pull my hand away, but Estella holds it firmly in place under her own. “What can you feel?”

  “Nothing!”

  “That’s not true. What can you feel?”

  I feel that I’ve gone bright red and nervous; I feel my heart beating like a bongo drum . . . and hers, too. I calm down and listen better with my hand. Estella’s heart is beating like a bongo drum. Just like mine.

  “What can you feel?”

  I look at her again. And smile. “Your heart.”

  “See? You were afraid, but you stopped to let your head grasp it, and then the truth wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “No.” Estella lets my hand go. “Where did it go?”

  She doesn’t answer; maybe she doesn’t understand.

  “The soft stuff that should be there.” I point to her heart.

  “Ah, right, the other half. Well, my friend took it away.”

  “The one you saw in the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s not nice.”

  “You’re right; she’s not nice doing this to me. But I’ve thought and thought about it, and I know what to do if she comes back to see me.”

  “Have you made a plan?”

  Her smile returns. “You could say that. What about you? Do you have a plan?”

  I go up close to her again and gesture for her to kneel down, so I can put my hands up to her ear and whisper my secret plan. “My plan is to go and live in the cherry tree in front of the school.”

  Estella thinks about it for a second, then shrugs her shoulders. “I think that’s an excellent plan. Let me know when you go. I’ll help with the move.”

  Then she shoos me out of her room as she has to ring the bell for the end of break. When the door closes, I’m in the thick of the chaos, people running, shouting, blowing bubbles into their fruit juice, and I’m reminded of the story of the Amazons, their courage, how they cut off a boob to hold their spears better. That’s what Estella said. I turn toward the little window of the janitors’ room, the one that looks inside the school, and I think I see her scary eyes, peeping out and smiling at me from between the slats of the lowered blinds, only they’re not scary; they’re just black and beautiful. Then my mist comes and covers them up, or maybe Estella lowered the blinds so no one will find out she’s a real Amazon.

  20

  I Breathe

  I open my eyes.

  All children are scared of the dark. I am too, because for me, the dark is a blindfold you put over your eyes to play a game but can’t take off when the game’s over.

  I blink again and again. Over there, where the window should be, with the moon and the North Star inside it, or the sun during the day, I can’t see anything. My room is gray. If I wave my hand in front of me, it’s gray too. The dark is gray. It’s so much worse than black, I think.

  Ottimo Turcaret is brown and gray. Maybe I’ll still be able to see the things that were gray before the dark came. But I can’t feel his warmth on my feet. I touch my slippers at the bottom of the bed with one hand. He’s not there, either.

  “Mom!”

  Breathe, Mafalda. Remember to breathe. A nice smell of coffee and sponge cake is coming from the kitchen. Dad must’ve bought one at the market, given that there’s practically nothing left in our house because of the move.

  “What’s up, Mafalda? It’s a bit early to get up. You can stay in bed and I’ll call you in a bit.”

  “Where’s Ottimo Turcaret?”

  Mom moves around my room. I can hear her bare feet, the air moving as she passes close to me, the creaking noise of a plastic bag and the soft swish of clothes picked up and put into it.

  A bead of sweat runs down my forehead and stops by my ear. I have to pretend nothing’s wrong because if Mom finds out I’m in the dark, she’ll never let me go anywhere today, maybe never, and she’ll force me to go to the new house, and I don’t know where things are there.

  “Where’s Ottimo Turcaret?” I insist.

  “In a boarding house for animals. Dad took him last night, while he was sleeping. You know nothing wakes him up.”

  Guesthouse for animals? What does that mean? Cats go to guesthouses too? Maybe it’s one of those places grandparents go to when they have no one left. But Ottimo Turcaret has me, so why have they sent him to a guesthouse?

  “Why didn’t you take him to Aunt and Uncle’s?”

  “Oh, they weren’t that keen on looking after the cat. But don’t worry, it’s only temporary, until we’ve finished the move.”

  I don’t want to speak to Mom anymore. I can’t see her, so I can pretend she’s not here and not talk to her. I pull the covers back up and try to cry quietly, with my body, not my voice, the way Filippo does, while Mom keeps moving around, and I feel the bed vibrate ever so gently with each of her steps.

  Filippo. I need to speak to Filippo. I’m going to the cherry tree today. I can’t wait any longer. The dark has come, and I have to try to climb up before the monsters grab my feet and take me away. But I also want to tell Filippo that we’re still friends, we can still be a band, I can sing from the tree, and if I’m brave enough, maybe I’ll even say “I love you” so he’ll never go away.

  Good, I’m going, then. As soon as the house goes completely quiet, I sit very still on the edge of my bed, feet resting on my slippers. It feels like I’m on a roller coaster, at the very top, just before it launches into the first drop, when you throw your arms up and shut your eyes. But I don’t go down. Ever. I think I’m about to be sick. I’ll have to get used to it. I breathe. I start to reach for my glasses, but what’s the point? I don’t
need them anymore. But I have to convince Mom and Dad that everything is okay. Better put them on. I reach out to the shelf where I lay my glasses at night, but I’ve been too hesitant. I knock them over and they fall. I stop to listen. No reaction to the noise from the kitchen. I hear teaspoons tinkling against the sides of coffee cups and Dad yawning like a hippo. All good. I feel about on the ground, find my glasses, and put them on without stopping to think where my face is. Okay, this is important—in the dark you just have to get on with things; don’t stop to think too much. But I’m afraid, and Estella said that when you’re scared, you should stop and think.

  I don’t think this technique is going to work for me. What was the other one? Oh yeah, think about something nice. The cherry tree.

  I reach under the bed and pull out Grandma’s blanket with all my things in it: Roly’s pink lunch box, Chiara’s blow-up mattress, the iPod, some clean underwear and socks because Mom always says, “Think how embarrassing it would be if something were to happen to you and you’re taken to the hospital with dirty socks and dirty underwear.” Kevin never gave me back my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass, so I’ll have to do without it. The same goes for the waterproof jacket. I’ll take the little umbrella Mom keeps in her bicycle basket down in the garden.

  I quickly feel all my things with my fingers to check that I’ve not forgotten anything. I tie the corners of the blanket together and shove the bundle into the bottom of my backpack. My pencil case and the books I need for school today are on a chair near the bed. I got them all ready last night because my desk has already been taken to the new house. I put them on top of the bundle to hide it. I shut my backpack and hope that it looks the same as every other day and not like I’m about to run away from home.

  Before I go, I feel for my notebook. I’d really like to see the list of things that I care a lot about but won’t be able to do anymore, but how can I read it? I should’ve written it in braille dots. I can only touch the page now, feel the dust on the surface, the folds, and my heart beating inside the tips of my fingers. At least I know there are still two things on the list, two things I haven’t crossed out with black pen: Climbing up the school cherry tree, and on the second page, Be strong like an Amazon. Maybe it’s too late, because I feel so tired. I don’t want to be strong like an Amazon anymore; it’s too hard. The dark is here, and all I want is to climb the cherry tree. I don’t care about the distance between me and the tree anymore.