The Book of Trees

by Leanne Lieberman

  “We were discussing what happened to the Palestinians after ’48. They all moved away, right?” He winked at me.

  Sonia gripped her bony hands together. “Some people left, but others had to flee, and others were killed.”

  I leaned forward. “Why didn’t they go to Arab countries?”

  “They weren’t wanted there and they still aren’t. This is their homeland.”

  “So that’s why there are terrorists?”

  Sonia shook her head. “If you lost your homeland, wouldn’t you fight for it? Jews created Israel through acts of terrorism against the British. Freedom fighter, terrorist—it all depends on your point of view.”

  Andrew said, “Most Palestinians just want clean water and good schools—basic human rights.”

  I nodded, trying to absorb everything. Jews had been terrorists too? Sonia and Andrew talked about the Palestinian leaders and whether they really wanted peace, and if negotiations with the Israeli government would ever proceed. Sonia said something about the UN being imperialistic, and I tried to remember what Aviva said about the UN’s two-state solution. The guitarists played Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

  Sonia stood up. “I’m sorry but I have to get going. It was nice meeting you, Mia. Keep asking questions. I can recommend some books if you like.”

  I nodded. “Sure, thanks.” I slouched back in my chair. “I don’t understand politics at all.”

  Andrew smiled. “I don’t get most of it either, but I do know one thing: there’s a power imbalance. And it’s not fair.”

  I sighed. “Power imbalance?” This was far more complicated than trees planted over a village.

  “Israel is a first-world country with huge American financial backing. The Palestinians are a poor native people who have been uprooted.” I must have given him a quizzical look. He sighed. “Have you ever walked the ramparts, the wall around the Old City?”

  “Um, no. I’ve been wanting to go, but I didn’t want to go alone.”

  “Your seminary buddies too busy?”

  “Um, I guess so.”

  “Meet me at Jaffa Gate tomorrow after your classes. I’ll take you on a tour.”

  I felt my cheeks f lush. “That would be great,” I whispered.

  Andrew nodded. “Just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wanna hear you play that song of your dad’s, the one you were telling me about. The one about the trees.”

  “Oh, well, sure.” I stood up. “Okay, bye then.” I started backing away.

  “So what time are you done?”

  I stumbled over a crate and bent to rub my calf. “Um, two. If that’s okay.”

  “See you at two.” Andrew gave me another one of his sexy grins, and I felt heat flood my face again, like the Jerusalem sun blazing through me.

  I could hear the chords to Don’s tree song in my head as I waited at the bus stop. Don had played the song for me the previous summer at his cottage, just before we went home. We were up on the saggy porch watching the squirrels run along the railing to take the nuts Sheila had put out.

  You said you could always come home,

  But it’ d never be the same.

  Oh, Momma, I’m getting old as you,

  But I fear I’ ll never be as wise.

  I lay stretched out in a hammock on the rickety screened-in porch. Don’s other songs revealed glimpses of the mystery of his life: songs of driving, of working on a beet farm, of hiding out in a barn in Peterborough, of a field of wild flowers. But this song, I knew it exactly. I’d been in love with Grandma Quinn’s willow too.

  Call off the bulldozers,

  Call off our western ways.

  This progress, I’ ll have none of it,

  ’Cause I lost my weeping willow where I used to sit.

  The summer I was twelve, Don took me on a car trip to West Virginia to visit his mother, my Grandma Quinn. I had never been away with just Don, and I was thrilled to spend time with him. The rare times Don stayed at our house, he barely hung out with us. He would lie on the couch, his legs hanging off the edge of the armrest, listening to old blues singers who sounded like they carried heavy burdens. He said he needed stillness to chase away the rumble of the car after being on tour so long. Sometimes he’d take me with him on his walks along the Beaches’ boardwalk. I’d dance around him doing cartwheels, talking nonstop, not expecting answers. Anything Don said was like a little nugget of gold to keep, no matter how banal. I kept his comments in my head the way other girls kept trinkets in a jewelry box: study hard at school, try to see all points of view, take a deep breath every now and then.

  I had spent the first part of that summer at a socialist camp singing “We Shall Overcome” and learning about Mother Jones. Three weeks of bunk beds, communal showers, sweating around a campfire, chanting “white rabbit, white rabbit” whenever the smoke blew my way. Three weeks of splashing dock noise, rec-hall rumble, dinner-hall chanting and late-night giggles.

  All the way to West Virginia, Don sat silent on the sticky bench seat of his Buick. Every few hours he’d squint his green eyes and reach for the small spiral notebook he kept tucked in the sun visor. He’d scribble a few lines in his bird-claw scrawl, the notebook balanced delicately on the steering wheel.

  “So”—I rested my feet on the dash—“this is what you do.”

  Don stroked his beard. I could see the dimple in his chin through the gray. “Yes. I drive and I think. Then I stop and I play songs.”

  “What do you think about?”

  Don paused so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “I think about my street, and the tree in Grandma Quinn’s yard—it’s an old weeping willow. I think about the poems she read to us before we went to sleep. We were very poor. I don’t remember wanting a lot, other than a bicycle.”

  “And?”

  Another long pause. “Sometimes I think about important questions.”

  “Like?”

  “I think, where have I been and where am I going? Who am I? If you’ve got those figured out, life’s easy.”

  I scrunched up my face, peering at him. Those were the important questions? A cinch! I was Mia Quinn, daughter of Don Quinn and Sheila Katz. Where had I been? I’d been to Bowmore Senior Public School. Next I was off to Monarch Park Collegiate. Easy.

  On the second day, Don sat me in the backseat and gave me his guitar. “We’ll pretend we’re on tour and you’re in the band. When we get to Arlington, you’ll play for your gran.”

  I practiced “Country Roads” and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” Over and over I strummed the chorus of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine.”

  When we arrived, Grandma Quinn was in her back garden sitting in a lawn chair among hollyhocks and sunflowers. She wore a mauve floral-print house-dress and stout beige leather shoes. Her long white hair was spread out over the back of her chair. I stared at the blue tinge radiating down the strands like tie-dye. “I thought I’d best give it a wash before you came,” Grandma Quinn said, coiling her hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. She turned to me. “I like blue. It’s my favorite color.”

  Grandma Quinn’s narrow clapboard house seemed to sway when anyone climbed the stairs. Crocheted doilies covered each chair and end table in the tidy living room. A photograph from the early sixties of Don and his brothers and sisters—Ted, Bill, Therese and Iris—rested on top of the television. The carpet was worn and the crockery old, but the house was spotless. “I have a girl who comes and cleans once a week,” Grandma Quinn explained. “I can’t see the dirt anymore. What a blessing.” I slept upstairs in a narrow bed with a faded patchwork quilt. A large wooden crucifix hung on the wall above my head.

  In the morning Don busied himself fixing the back gate, nailing down loose boards in the porch, and tidying the basement. I sat on the stone patio and played the guitar for Grandma Quinn while she weeded her garden.

  “Very nice,” she said. “You must have a good teacher.”

  “
My dad teaches me, when he’s around.”

  “Oh.” Grandma Quinn smiled.

  I nodded. “So, who helps you with the garden?”

  “Ah, that I can see. I grow tall plants now. I like to sit and have them tower over me.”

  Grandma Quinn went back to weeding. Beyond the porch and the flower beds, a giant weeping willow dominated the lawn. The branches cascaded like waterfalls, trailing almost to the grass. What made a tree’s branches reach toward the ground instead of the sky? I wanted to sit underneath it and see what it would be like to be surrounded by all that green, but it seemed a babyish thing to do.

  In the afternoon Don’s sister Therese came by with butter tarts. She had the same narrow face, widow’s peak, auburn hair and pale green-gray eyes as Don and me. I couldn’t stop staring at her. I thought, That’s how I’ll look when I’m older.

  Don, Therese and Grandma Quinn talked about people I didn’t know. I strummed the guitar a few minutes and walked the little path among the flowers. I stood, face upturned, looking at the willow. It was a giant shaggy monster. No, it was a million dancers’ hands. I parted the leaves and entered the green and gold cave. The leaves shimmered and cast dappled shade over the grass. I sat with my back against the trunk and listened. Don’s voice melded with the sound of the breeze blowing the rustling leaves. I watched an ant crawl through the grass, the strands an obstacle course. I let my eyes close. I was strangely relaxed, almost sleepy.

  For dinner we ate cold cuts and coleslaw and drank icy lemonade. As the light faded, Don played “Old Gray Mare” and “Hesitation Blues” on a banjo Therese had brought over. He and Therese sang “Not A-Gonna Lay My Religion Down,” stomping out the beat with their feet.

  I’d heard this music before on my dad’s records, but I’d never heard it played live. I came out from under the tree to listen.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to play those songs.”

  Don shrugged.

  “We used to sing those as kids,” Therese explained. “Our dad taught us. We would stand at the foot of the willow tree as if it were a stage, tie back the branches like curtains and put on a show for Ma and my dad before he died. We’d be the Warbling Quinn Sisters and Banjo Ted, or the Billy-Hilly Brothers with Chanteuse Therese. The boys would play garbage cans, plastic buckets and Mama Quinn’s pots. Ba-bah-bahm! Ba-bah-bahm! Until our oldest brother, Bill, brought home a banjo, that is. I never saw your dad want anything so bad.”

  “Can you teach me to play that?” I asked Don.

  “Banjo?”

  “Yes.”

  Therese laughed. “Look at her. She’s hooked.”

  Don handed me the banjo, and I took it back to the base of the tree and started plucking the strings.

  Before we left the next day to drive back to Toronto, Don stopped at a pawn shop and bought me a five-string bluegrass banjo. I sat in the backseat all the way home, and Don taught me to play “Amazing Grace.”

  I saw my bus coming slowly down the street, starting and stopping in the traffic. I edged forward into the crowd, hoping to get a seat. My hands pressed the chords to Don’s tree song against my legs.

  Trees, the Earth’s angels, without you we will fade.

  You are our mothers and our fathers;

  We have sold you for an easy buck, Hoping to endure by luck.

  I understood this song because I had fallen in love with Grandma Quinn’s willow. And now it was gone, along with her house and garden. It wasn’t the same to sit under a birch or poplar or even a maple.

  I boarded the bus back to B’nos Sarah. I could easily remember the chords to Don’s song, if I had a guitar. Shit, women weren’t supposed to play for men. Well, stupid, if you’re not supposed to play music for guys, you’re not supposed to go running around historic sites with them either. Oh please, he was just like a tour guide or a friend. Crap. I wasn’t supposed to have male friends or even be alone with guys. Well, we wouldn’t be alone, we were meeting in a public place, so it would be fine. Right? Right. I clenched my boring skirt in my fists.

  Andrew was waiting for me at Jaffa Gate the next afternoon. He was wearing shorts, another shabby T-shirt, this one with the name of a band I didn’t know, and sandals. I averted my eyes from his tanned legs.

  “So, ready to explore?”

  “Yes, let’s.” I clasped my hands behind me and followed Andrew up a steep flight of stairs. “Have you walked here before?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Do you really think it’s not safe to go alone?”

  “Maybe for a girl. Pickpockets might be the worst problem.”

  The path between the two walls was too narrow to walk side by side. I tried to ignore Andrew’s sweaty back by looking out over the rooftop solar tanks.

  We stopped at Damascus Gate to peer down at the vendors below. People swarmed in and out of the gate. Beyond the Old City, traffic seethed in the heat. I watched baby chicks scramble over each other in a box. Andrew waited patiently, lounging in the shade. Behind us, the Dome gleamed close by. I pointed to it. “I never knew a building could be so amazing. Have you been?”

  “Yes.” Andrew leaned against the rampart wall. His eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses; it made him seem distant, a stranger.

  “How was it?”

  “Interesting. You should go.”

  I scrunched up my face. “I wanted to, but then I found out it’s on top of the holiest place in Judaism. Jews aren’t supposed to walk there.” I thought he’d roll his eyes or snicker, but he just nodded.

  “I can’t believe the history you can see from here. Everything from the Mameluks to the Ottomans and”— I turned and swept my arm across modern Jerusalem— “all of the present.”

  “Everything?” Andrew crossed his arms against his chest.

  “Huh?”

  “I said ‘everything?’”

  “Well, no, of course not, but you know what I mean—there’s a huge range of history here.”

  “I suppose.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Excavation and building are always political.”

  “Sure, but there’s a quarter for everyone here. Christians here, Muslims over there.”

  “Yeah, but this area is like layers of a cake. You want British remains, dig this deep.” He held his thumb and forefinger a few inches apart. “You want Muslim ruins, then dig this deep.” Fingers farther apart. “It’s a Jewish country and so the government lets archaeologists dig through all those layers to find what they want.”

  “Oh, right.” I knew that. Didn’t I? Maybe I just hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “Have you walked in the Muslim section of the city?” he asked.

  “Just a little.” I’d darted through the Arab market once.

  “It’s not as fancy as the Jewish section, huh?”

  I nodded my head. “I guess not.”

  We continued walking around the Old City. The ramparts were less interesting than I imagined. Mostly I saw hot-water tanks. The view was better from Andrew’s hostel.

  When we got back to Jaffa Gate, I followed Andrew down the narrow, dim staircase to the street. Halfway down, a group of kids came rushing and yelling up the stairs, and Andrew stopped abruptly. I crashed into his hot back, burying my nose in the skin of his neck. I found myself closing my eyes and inhaling deeply, unconsciously. He smelled musky, not cologne-scented, but with a hint of soap and the tanginess of sweat. I could feel the heat of him. For a moment I was suspended, bodiless, just taking in his scent. I wanted to stay there forever, but then the kids were gone and their teacher was apologizing in English and Hebrew as she came up the stairs, her tiny frame dwarfed by an enormous backpack.

  Down on the street the sun dazzled my eyes. I wanted to lean in and breathe Andrew’s sweet smell again. A dribble of sweat arced down my cheek. My pulse pounded. I wanted to say, I smelled you and you’re not who I thought you were.

  “I have to get going.” I backed away from him.

  “Com
e back to the hostel for a drink first.”

  “Not today.” I resisted the urge to flee.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yes, fine, just a little too hot. Maybe sunstroke. Have to go now.”

  “Wait, I’m playing at an open-mic night at a bar in Tel Aviv. You should come.” He pulled a flyer out of his pocket.

  “Oh, well. Maybe.” I took the paper from him and continued to back away.

  “I still want to hear that song you were telling me about.”

  “Right. Some other time.” I walked away as quickly as I could without breaking into a run.

  When I got home I stripped off my clothes and got in the shower, letting the cold water pound over me until my teeth chattered and my head filled with a blinding blue light. I poured myself a large glass of juice, dished up a bowl of olives and a stinky piece of cheese and lay on my bed. I took a big slug of juice and ate three olives.

  He smelled like…like something I thought maybe I’d been looking for, like…I ground my fists into my eyes until I saw stars.

  Think, think about something else. I grabbed my prayer book off the desk and opened it randomly. I stood in my room, my face buried in the gluey-smelling pages and recited the ancient words until they obliterated any memory of Andrew’s sweet smell.

  SEVEN

  “Mia, you’re doing it again.”

  “What?”

  “The finger tapping.” Aviva and I were lying in bed trying to sleep. I could see her scowling at me in the dim light.

  “Oh, sorry.” I crossed my arms over my chest and tucked my hands into my armpits. I’d gone Israeli dancing with Chani and her friends, but I couldn’t concentrate on the steps. My head had filled with thoughts of Andrew. I’d close my eyes and try to remember the feeling of my nose brushing against his neck. It was like falling or flying. It was better than being high, or sensing God, or singing with a group of people. It was intoxicating.

  I sighed and Aviva rolled over noisily. I was supposed to come to yeshiva, deepen my understanding of Judaism and then meet some nice Jewish boy, get married and have kids. We’d celebrate the holidays and live a nice secure life. And here I was, mooning over a non-Jewish guy, a guitar player.