The Girl and the Grove

by Eric Smith

  “So—” Jon started.

  “Look, I know what happens,” Leila said flatly, as she peeled away some of the bark on the ends of the sticks, revealing the green, cutting an inch or so from the bottom of each small branch.

  “Happens?” Jon asked while she worked.

  “Yes, to the tree.” Leila nodded up towards the window without actually looking out it. She started to fill the mason jars up with just a bit with water, a few inches or so. She placed one down in the sink with a satisfying clink and looked back up at Jon.

  “It’s damaged,” Leila said, curtly. “And now you and Liz are going to get rid of it.”

  A confused look washed over Jon’s face, a mixture of puzzlement and worry, and he peered out the window, and then back at her.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Leila,” he said, his eyes back on the tree. “You know how much your . . . how much Lizzie and I care about, well, stuff like this.” He looked down at the jars, and then back at Leila, as she pretended not to notice the almost slip-up. “And we know you’re really into the environment. Up all night on those message boards. I hope you’re being careful with who you’re talking to—”

  Leila flashed him an exhausted look and yawned.

  “Ha, okay, okay,” Jon said, conceding. “Look, we’ll remove the dead limb over there on the lawn and prune away the other bits. Half the tree could still be fine! I don’t think we’d rip it out just because it’s damaged.”

  “Pronouns. Because she’s damaged,” Leila corrected, smirking.

  “She’s damaged,” Jon amended. Leila looked up at him, at his warm smile. Years of late-night corporate lawyering had clearly taken its toll on him, carving deep-set wrinkles around his eyes when he laughed or squinted just a little. His new career as an environmental journalist certainly suited him better, even if he wasn’t exactly great at taking care of anything green around him.

  The less-stressful gig had come too late, though, as his dark-brown hair now had bits of white and gray peppered through it. There were frequent “should I dye it or shouldn’t I?” conversations over dinner, and generally they all ended the same, with Lisabeth’s exasperated sighs and sideways glances at Leila.

  Leila raised an eyebrow at Jon and returned her attention to the jars.

  “Look how deep that lightning hit it. There’s no way it didn’t kill the roots.” She picked up the jars and placed them up on the countertop, checking to make sure enough water was above each trimmed stem.

  “Ah. I see what you’re up to,” he said. “I guess we’ll see if any of them stick.”

  Leila smirked.

  “Get it? Stick? Because they’re sticks and you’re putting them in the jars to—”

  “Oh my God, yes, Jon, I get it,” Leila said, shaking her head. He might make things awkward with his frequent dad and mom references, but his dad-like jokes were at least amusing in their badness.

  He stepped up towards the sink, looked out the window towards the tree, and let out a loud sigh.

  “I totally forgot to cover the garden,” he muttered, shaking his head. “As if I didn’t put those poor plants through enough hell this year, they get decimated by this.”

  “Aw, Jon,” Leila said. She tentatively offered up a consoling hand on his shoulder. It was the kind of gesture that should come naturally, but she forced it out of herself.

  “Poor things,” he said. “After we finish your project, care to help me out with all of that? Maybe search for survivors before the rest of the storm comes through?”

  Leila looked outside towards the garden. In addition to the vegetables Lisabeth brought home from the CSA, there was also Jon’s miniature farm to deal with. Cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, peppers. All vegetables that didn’t really need a lot of time and care, and could mostly grow on their own with enough sun and rain. The little bit of work they did need, Leila happily provided. In her first week with the Kline family, she had quickly discovered Jon’s well-intentioned but disastrous gardening skills, when he poured piping-hot leftover coffee on a head of lettuce.

  “They say coffee is good for gardens and the soil, did you know that?” he’d explained, holding the mug in his hand while Leila looked on, horrified.

  “Coffee grounds, Jon. Grounds,” Leila said, watching as the lettuce wilted in front of them.

  Despite everything Jon managed to throw at the garden, it had been pretty resilient. But not even those tough plants could hold up in this weather, meeting doom in their battle against the tropical storm and the adult caretaker that forgot to cover them.

  “Sure,” Leila said, smiling. “I’m sure there’s some stuff worth saving.”

  “Maybe,” Jon said, disappointed. “We’ll probably just have to uproot all of them and toss them out. Might be less wasteful to turn them into mulch, though, or put them in Lizzie’s composter by the shed.” Something about what he said struck a rough chord with Leila, and she winced, her chest heavy. For a moment, she felt as though she heard another whisper, and shook it off, the ghost of a sound vanishing as quickly as it appeared.

  “Yeah, yeah sure,” Leila said, wrestling with the feeling. Jon turned back to her, and evidently noticed.

  “Something wrong?” he asked. He nodded at the jars. “Besides all this, that is.”

  “No, no,” Leila said, shaking her head and grabbing a jar, studying the end of one of the sticks inside. “It’s fine, I’m fine. This one looks like it needs a little more trimming though.”

  “Hey, fun fact—” Jon started.

  “Oh God, not right now, Jon, seriously,” Leila groaned. Jon wrote both locally, in the Philadelphia region, and abroad for news outlets such as Slate, Farm & Agriculture, The New York Times, and Grid. Back when she was in the group home, Leila regularly read those kinds of websites on her beat-up, donated tablet or on trips to the library. She dreamed of one day making a difference, quite literally, in the outside world. She was pretty sure she’d read an article or two of Jon’s in the past few years, but she wasn’t about to let him know that. He also taught part-time at St. Joseph’s University, in their small environmental studies department.

  The result of all his constant research and once-a-week lectures though, was this.

  The “fun fact” tidbits.

  And while Leila certainly appreciated Jon’s wealth of knowledge about nature and all, he always brought them up at the worst time, his poor attempt to neutralize tense and awkward situations.

  “Fun fact,” Jon said again, stressing the fun in the sentence, which should have told him no part of this was actually fun. He picked up one of the mason jars, clinking it with the ring on his finger. “They call this cloning. Technically, these sticks, if they bloom into new trees, are really just the same exact tree.”

  Leila gave him a look.

  “Yeah I should have figured you knew that one,” Jon said, shaking his head and placing the jar back down with a light plink. “Still, cloning. It’s like we’re mad scientists in here.”

  “Sure, Jon,” Leila said, shaking her head with a smile. “Sure. Think Liz will be okay with me putting these up along the windowsill? I’d like to make sure they get some sun and have a chance to grow a few roots. They need to take root before—”

  “Yes, yes,” Jon said. “Before it gets too cold and the trees go to sleep.”

  “It’s called dorman—” Leila started.

  “Dormancy,” Jon said. “Yes, I know. It’s like hibernation, only for trees. Everything slows down. Abscisic acid in deciduous trees signals the leaves to fall, suspends the tree’s growth, stops cells from dividing . . .” He grinned as he faded off. Leila stared at him. “You do remember me being a journalist and professor of all this, yes?”

  “I do,” Leila said with a smirk.

  “Let’s wrap these up before Lizzie gets down here with her questions,” Jon said with a wink. Leil
a shook her head and focused on the jars, moving them from the sink to the window.

  But with each small movement the voices came back, and they whispered.

  She squinted as they spoke up, trying to focus on them while at the same time wishing they would just go away. The speech was soft and delicate, dancing around her ears like ghosts.

  When it came to the voices, every now and again she could make out a word or two, sometimes the broken part of a sentence. The voices had been louder back at the group home, and sometimes they came back stronger when she took the local train into Philadelphia to visit Sarika at the cafe; but out here in the suburbs of the city, they were weak and muttering, pieces that made little sense. Even when they had roared as the tree was struck by lightning, the phrases still came out in hard-to-figure-out bits.

  Thi . . . saf . . . whe . . . than . . .

  Leila shut her eyes and shook her head, trying to push the voices away, push back the growing darkness brewing in her chest, the swirling mass of anxiety and panic. Not here. Not now, with Jon hovering over her like this, trying to do his way-too-perfect parent thing. Helicoptering, she’d heard Lisabeth call it. She didn’t need him to ask what was wrong so she’d have to make up lie after lie to cover it up. She didn’t need him figuring this out.

  Sending her back.

  Not after she’d gotten this far.

  The voices called, whispering. It was the sound of a number of people talking all at once, quietly, like a crowd muttering in a movie theater before the previews.

  She whispered softly to herself, so Jon wouldn’t hear.

  “Kitchen. Jar. Floor. Sink—”

  And then the voices spoke loudly, in one clear sentence, like the roar of the wind in the storm.

  Thank you.

  Leila’s eyes opened wide and she fumbled with one of the jars, catching it before it slipped and crashed onto the hard kitchen floor.

  “Whoa there!” Jon laughed, reaching down to pluck the jar from her hands. “Careful now.”

  “Thanks,” Leila said, willing her heart to stop racing, taking deep, long breaths. The voices seldom got a real word or phrase in, and when they occasionally did, it felt like the volume had been turned up to ten. She picked up the last jar to move it to the windowsill, noticing a stick that still needed to be trimmed a bit.

  “Tsk.” She sucked at her teeth and pulled out the Leatherman again. The knife made gentle schickt schickt schickt sounds against the wood. “Can you get some twine or something, to secure the little branches in place, in the jars? With this one I just need to fix the edges so—”

  “Jon!” Lisabeth gasped, storming into the kitchen. Leila stopped cutting and looked up at Liz. She was wearing a bathrobe, her dark-black braids curled up around her head, one rebellious red braid tucked behind her ear and peeking out around the rest. Her soft, dark skin glowed as if she hadn’t just rolled out of bed, and her effortlessness at being pretty cast a strong contrast with Jon’s rugged, practically leather, weathered-skin look. Even though she and Jon were in their early fifties, Liz could easily pass for thirty.

  “Oh! Leila, you’re awake!” she exclaimed, smiling brightly, her light-brown eyes sparkling and happy at the sight of her.

  Lisabeth rushed over to the two of them, kissing Leila on the forehead and Jon on the cheek, and then pulled them close. Leila tried to squirm away, but failed. Jon’s hand accidentally brushed against Leila's hair. Lisabeth let go, adjusted her braids, and observed the windowsill before looking back over at Jon and Leila.

  “What’s going on here? You’re all wet, and what is all this?” she asked, taking a step back and pointing at the sink before resting her hands on her hips. Leila shrugged and went back to cutting the small branch, almost done.

  “The branches are from the—” Leila started, staring down at the sink.

  “Oh hell! Jon, the willow tree!” Lisabeth exclaimed, dashing over to the large window.

  “Yeah, about that,” Leila continued. “I took some twigs off the remaining branch just in case she doesn’t make it—”

  “Ugh. Damaged beyond repair,” Lisabeth said, sounding crushed. “That other half could fall at any time. You know we’re going to have to cut that thing down immediately.”

  Leila’s heart wrenched itself in her chest, as the voices came crashing through.

  NO.

  Leila’s knife slipped.

  And sliced right into her hand.

  “Fuck!” Leila screamed, pulling her hand back, whipping it through the air. She balled it into a fist, and when she unclenched it, saw the clean, straight line cutting into her palm, the meaty part right below her thumb.

  “Leila, watch your lang—” Jon started, before gasping. “Oh God, Lizzie, get the car, before the storm comes back.”

  Leila slowly stretched out her hand and watched as the clean line opened and turned red. Blood poured down her hand and onto her forearm, and she shrieked, stepping back from the sink, covering her hand with the other.

  Lisabeth rushed over to Leila, her eyes wide.

  “It’ll be okay, don’t worry,” she said quickly, and then muttered an array of swears as she darted towards the front of the house. Leila could hear the jingle of keys before the front door opened and shut.

  “Water, here, let’s get that under the tap,” Jon said, bringing Leila closer to the sink. “Here, clean it under there and let me grab some paper towels. Put pressure on it.”

  Leila pressed down hard on her hand after the warm water coursed over it, and glanced out the window towards the willow tree in the yard. The sound of Lisabeth’s car starting in front of the house and the angry beeping of the horn cut its way through the storm’s momentary calm. It likely awoke the entire neighborhood.

  “Here,” Jon said, pulling her hand out from under the water. Droplets of blood spattered the perfect, white-tiled kitchen floor. “Here, let’s wrap your hand up with these and . . . Leila? Leila!”

  Everything around her zeroed out and felt as though it had grown farther away.

  She breathed in, slowly, her heart hammering in her chest. Anxiety blossomed in her, hot and panicked.

  Something broke.

  She stared at that tree, the jagged cut that tore deep into the trunk, the bolt of lightning that had angrily torn half of it away for absolutely no reason. The other half, sprawled out on the earth, was probably food for the mulch machine stashed away in the garden shed, like Jon’s neglected patch of vegetables along the side of the house. The mason jars were tiny in comparison, with their small branches protruding from the inch or two of water.

  Maybe one would make it out of the ten.

  Maybe none.

  Lisabeth said they’d have to tear down the tree.

  Damaged beyond repair.

  Would Jon fight for the tree? Or would he just let her go, give in like so many others do when one person disagrees with the other?

  Leila crumpled to the floor clutching her hand, and tears poured out of her eyes, a torrent the hurricane would have been envious of. She felt dizzy, her chest heavy.

  “Leila?” Jon whispered. He squatted down and reached for her face, looking intently at her. “Sweetheart? Are you okay? Are you woozy? Is it . . . wait, the anxiety? Lizzie is better at that stuff than me, I’ll get her, I . . . did you lose too much blood, what is happen—”

  “You guys are j-just gonna cut her down,” Leila said, sniffling. “You’re just going to give up on her.”

  “What? No, no, only if we have to,” Jon said, settling down on the floor next to her. He wrapped her up in his strong arms and hugged her tightly. “We’ll do everything we can to make it work.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Leila said, choking back a sob, the emotions swelling in her chest. She resisted the urge to push Jon away.

  “You’ve heard . . .?” Jon said before growing quiet.
“Oh. Oh, Leila.” The car horn honked outside, faster and angrier this time. “Bad timing, Lizzie,” Jon muttered. Leila breathed in and out, still pressing one hand against the other, as Jon held her tightly.

  “I’m going to take a wild guess here,” Jon said, letting Leila go, his hands on her shoulders. He reached out and pushed her chin up, looking at her in the eyes. “And assume this is about more than just the tree?”

  Leila sputtered out a laugh. “Yeah, no shit, Jon.”

  “Come on, we’ve got to get that hand stitched up before the storm hits again and we can’t drive to the hospital.” He stood up and held out his hand, motioning for Leila to get up.

  “What? No. It’s fine. I’m fine,” Leila said as she scrambled to her feet and took a few steps back.

  “Fine?” Jon asked, hands on his hips. The car horn blared. “Leila, I either saw your bone in your hand, or I saw through your hand to the white kitchen tile on the floor. We’re going to the hospital.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Leila said resolutely. She’d spent years in the group home learning how to take care of herself, both physically when she got hurt, and emotionally when she felt discarded or in the way. “I don’t need you to do that. I can take care of myself.”

  “You listen here,” Jon said, his generally aloof tone gone serious. “Something breaks, we fix it. Together. You—God, I can’t believe this is about to come out of my mouth—you are not a tree, Leila. Not that tree, or any of these little guys you’ve got in the jars.”

  “Girls,” Leila corrected, while trying to hide a quick sniffle.

  “Yes, girls, lady trees!” Jon exclaimed. “Lizzie and I, we’re not going to give up on you, you hear me? Come on. We need to go.”

  “No, no, don’t,” Leila said, clutching her hand and walking along with Jon towards the front door, eying the staircase to the second floor. “I’ll head upstairs and wrap it up in an old t-shirt, it’ll be fine.”

  Jon opened the front door to reveal an exasperated-

  looking Lisabeth sitting in the driver’s seat of their Prius with the windows open. Leila saw the look of irritation on her face and winced, feeling the pain of previous drives like this one.