The People in the Trees: A Novel

by Hanya Yanagihara

  One Sunday found me at home particularly early. Victor had been given an assignment for history class in which he had to re-create a seed cake that the early American settlers ate and that involved large quantities of millet and cornmeal and rye. The assignment was due the next day and he had to make enough for everyone in the class to try a slice, and naturally, he did not think to share this information with me until lunchtime.

  I suppose he was expecting me to do the assignment myself (and why would I have? I wanted to ask him, for I did not think I had a reputation among the children as someone who would take responsibility for their failings), but I commanded him to the kitchen and ordered him to start mixing the ingredients, none of which we had, of course, which necessitated a hurried trip to the store before it closed for the day.

  We worked in silence, mostly. He was restless, quite literally jumpy, hopping from foot to foot in a manner that I found very distracting but that I would later realize was a sort of warmup, a prelude to a fight to which I had not known I was invited. “Now you have to roll out the dough,” I told him, and when he didn’t respond—he was staring, mouth slightly open, at apparently nothing more interesting than a fat squirrel crouched on an apple tree branch outside—I snapped at him. “Victor! The dough! Victor!” And he turned back to me, scraped the dough out of its bowl, and slammed it onto the counter with a wet thwack.

  “You’re getting it everywhere, Victor,” I said to him, and then, when he once again didn’t respond, “Victor! I am talking to you!”

  Again silence. And then, “Why was I named Victor?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I named you for the pilot who took us away from U’ivu when I was adopting you.”

  “But why him?”

  They always wanted to know, my children, why they had been given this name or that. They were fond of self-mythologizing, and I think they all hoped that there might be some heroic story behind their naming, that they alone might be imbued with a special significance, that I might have secreted some message to them in my choice that they would one day understand and appreciate. The truth, however, was that I had usually simply named them after people I had encountered on my journeys to and from retrieving them: they were named after check-in counter clerks at airports and managers at hotels, customs agents and bellhops, pilots and stewardesses, seatmates and waitresses, unknown State Department functionaries who had cleared their entries and familiar immigration officials who had waved at me as I advanced toward them, holding the hand of a new charge. What could I do? I had long ago exhausted the names of friends and colleagues, and by the late 1970s the children were arriving so quickly that contriving imaginative names for them hardly seemed an essential concern.

  “Why not?” I asked him. “It’s a good name.”

  “Victor is a stupid name,” said Victor.

  “Don’t act like a child,” I told him. “Victor is a fine name. And anyway, it’s the name you have, so you must learn to live with it.”

  “I am a child,” said Victor. “And I hate the name Victor.”

  “You weren’t listening to me,” I replied. “I told you not to act like a child. Being a child in and of itself doesn’t obligate you to behave like one. And I never said you had to like the name Victor—go ahead and hate it all you wish. I only said you had to learn to live with it.”

  He had no response to this but a sulky silence, and I found myself weary of him.

  And then I asked the question no parent should. “What would you like to be called instead?”

  Of course he had an answer prepared.

  “Vi,” he said triumphantly.

  Sometimes I really don’t understand what came over me. Why had I provided him such an opportunity? But occasionally, after years upon years of these conversations, one forgets oneself and makes regrettable errors.

  “Vie?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. It reminded me of the time Sonia80 came home with her beautiful woolly hair chopped off at the ears and dyed with white streaks. As a parent, I was always ready to let my children “express themselves,” or whatever the excuse for bad behavior is nowadays, but I do have limits. What child psychiatrists and liberal-minded teachers refuse to acknowledge is that most children have no taste and indeed tend toward the tacky. Just as it is a parent’s responsibility to instruct his children in the matter of manners, ethics, and morality, so it is to give them some sort of aesthetic and cultural education, so they don’t grow into vulgar adults, the sort who contrive new and needlessly complicated ways to spell their names and consider the plotlines of recently viewed television comedies appropriate dinnertime conversation. “As in to vie for a new position? Or to vie among your siblings for a new way to irritate me?”

  But he wasn’t provoked even by that. “V-I,” he explained, as if to a slow child. I had heard him use the same tone with Giselle, one of the toddlers.

  “Vi,” I repeated. It still didn’t make any sense, and I told him so. “Really, Victor,” I said, “if you feel that strongly about changing your name, I suppose we can discuss it, but couldn’t you pick something less ridiculous? Why not go by your middle name?” Victor’s middle name is Owen.81

  “No,” said Victor briskly. “That’s a stupid name too. I won’t have some white man’s name.”

  And at this I was surprised, and turned around just in time to see him smile. He was triumphant that he had gotten me to react, and I cursed myself silently. “What are you talking about?”

  “Have you ever noticed,” asked Victor, “that all of us have white men’s names? All of us. It’s so false. You’re trying to whitewash us, make us forget who we are and where we come from.”

  And once again I found myself turning and looking at him. I gave you a name because you were nameless when I found you, I thought. A dog. Less than a dog. It took some effort not to say this, and had I been more perturbed, I might not have been able to stop myself.

  Where did they learn these things? Victor was very wrong if he thought he was the first child of mine to experience this false revelation and then accuse me, haughty with outrage. “Came from,” I corrected him. “And really, Victor, this is too boring a conversation. You sound like some reactionary, and reactionaries are never noted for their originality.” He had by this time sewn his mouth into a long, thin seam and was looking at me with something like hate in his eyes. “And if we’re to speak of contrivances,” I told him, “then the name Vi is one of the most preposterous I’ve heard. Vi is no more a U’ivuan name than Victor is!”

  (Still, the minute I heard that absurd name, I knew how he had conjured it: the vuh sound, its short, clipped monosyllabism, gave it a faint whiff of the South Pacific, albeit in only the most reductive and affected way. Over the years my children have created all sorts of names they believe allude to their native country and culture: Va, Vo, Vi, Ve, Vu; though Micronesian in intent, they usually wind up sounding rather Vietnamese.)

  Victor opened his mouth and then closed it; he was, after all, still a child, and he knew I was correct. And then, in a gesture that reminded me so much of the boy’s I felt chilled, he raised his chin unnaturally high and lowered his lashes, so it appeared that he was looking down at me, though I was much taller than he. “I don’t care,” he said (a child’s last defense). “Vi at least sounds more U’ivuan than Victor.” And with that, he turned and left the room.

  “Victor!” I called after him, more irritated than angry. He had left half the dishes in the sink undone, and there were still mountains of dough to shape and mold. “Victor! Come back here!” But he didn’t, and I had to finish rolling the dough myself, straining my shoulders against it as if I were kneading flesh.

  Still, I was not unduly worried. Say what you will about me as a parent, but you must admit that I have never demanded gratitude from my children, have never demanded that they thank me or behave well simply because I saved them. Indeed, I sometimes thought they would probably have been just as happy, if not happier, back in U’ivu,
albeit with stomachs ballooned with malnutrition. And at any rate, most of them recognized at one point or another (usually in their twenties, or when they had children of their own) the opportunities I had provided them, after which they came to me tearfully, sweetly apologizing for their behavior and for the terrible things they had shouted at me over the years, and then confessed (sheepishly, but a little proudly as well) that they had long considered me a colonialist, a eugenicist, and an enemy of native cultures (the terms Hitlerian, white man’s privilege, and racial holocaust usually made an appearance). And then it was my turn to pat them on the back and kiss them on the cheek and thank them sincerely for their maturity, and to let them know that their gratitude was more than I had ever expected but I was of course happy to receive it.

  I always knew when this exchange must be had. After years of truculent behavior (glaring at me across the dinner table—I had one of them ask me what right I had to sit at the head; ostentatiously opening books whose covers bore the image of Che Guevara or Malcolm X; challenging my supposed political leanings), they would one day appear unexpectedly at the house, usually at a mealtime—they all seemed to think I enjoyed surprise visits as much as they did—and over lunch or dinner they would evince a sudden interest in my work, ask about my health, and bark at the other children for their poor manners. After, they would insist on doing the dishes, joyfully stacking the plates in the cupboard and heaving great nostalgic sighs. Then they would enter my study with a cup of my favorite tea and tremulously ask if I had a minute to speak to them, as there was something on their mind they needed to discuss.

  Oh god, I always thought (they seemed always to want to have these discussions when I was at my busiest and most preoccupied), but of course I turned to them and said gently, “Yes, my dear. You can always talk to me about anything.”

  And then it was always the same. Tears, confessions, self-recriminations. The pattern never varied. You’d think the script had been passed down from child to child. Perhaps it had.

  It was almost a rite of passage for them. After joining the household, there is a brief, pure period in which they love me, as touching for its intensity as for its brevity. Then there are years (sometimes decades) of hatred and resentment. Finally they are able to realize what beasts they were and what their lives might have been had I not adopted them and are overcome by a simple, powerful gratitude, which they feel they must share. I had always been slightly amused by this, but nothing more. Happy that they had matured, of course, but not terribly surprised. Children enjoy these sorts of rituals, the palpable (though of course contrived) sensation that they are physically or emotionally leaving behind one imagined stage in their lives and traveling to another. And really, they were not as far from their native culture as they knew; in U’ivu their adulthood would have been celebrated with feasts and ceremonies, and I suppose their confessions and carefully prepared speeches were in their way a ceremony of their own.

  So Victor’s little prank was nothing I had not experienced before; after all, it was not the first time a child of mine had yelled at me, passionate with the fiery resolve of the young. But Victor proved to be more determined and stubborn than most. This was not exactly surprising—such qualities had always served him well, had indeed saved him when he was a toddler and starving and had only his inexplicable tenacity to hold him to life.

  At dinner that night (with an extra loaf of the bread I had had to finish making on the table), he ate hungrily, helping himself to an enormous second serving of spaghetti, over which he slopped an extreme quantity of sauce.

  “That’s enough,” I told him, but he pretended not to hear me, didn’t look up.

  To my left and right, Kerry and Ella (who had shown up unexpectedly for dinner; I knew I would soon be in my study, patting her on the back and murmuring words of comfort at her) were discussing Ella’s college’s lacrosse team. Next to them sat the twins, Jared and Drew, and then Isolde and William, Grace and Frances, Jane and Whitney, and finally, at the foot of the table, Victor.

  There are always many times during the day when you must wonder, do I step into the fray of the argument now? Or do I wait until later? Raising a large number of children is actually not unlike running a lab. Do you challenge your renowned colleague in front of the juniors? Or do you wait until the two of you are alone to ask him to justify his opinion or conclusions? It is not only or always a matter of exerting your power; as heady as that can be, you must never forget that cordial relationships must be maintained above all else. It is, if possible, always preferable to address the person at fault in private; public humiliation makes people angry, then vengeful, and if they are even a little intelligent, that can be a very dangerous thing. I had to be circumspect at work; I did not want to have to be so in my own home. So I did not rebuke Victor when he ignored me. But when I looked at him, mechanically stabbing his fork into his mess of noodles (bloodied with sauce and looking like a shredded mound of raw flesh), something in me broke and I seethed.

  But I remained calm. “Victor,” I called to him, “will you please pass me the salad?” All of the food—the pasta, the sauce, the bread, the fish, and the salad, which he had of course not touched—had somehow migrated to his end of the table.

  He did not look up, kept chewing. I could see the powerful veins at his temples throbbing grotesquely.

  Oh god, I thought, more weary than anything else. Still, I did not raise my voice. Around me the children continued talking: Kerry to Ella, Jared to Drew, Isolde to Grace, Frances to Jane, Whitney to William. Only Victor was silent, chewing, chewing. “Victor,” I said, a little more sharply but not angrily. “The salad, please.”

  Still nothing. But now Grace, who was seven and who had just weeks before graduated from eating with the babies, and who had been exceedingly careful, with all her best manners on display, gave me a quick worried look and reached her arms out for the bowl of salad.

  “No, darling,” I told her. “It is too heavy.” She was a worried, solicitous child, Grace, and was often just as likely to cause a horrible mess in her attempts to help. “Victor,” I said. “Please pass me the salad. Now.”

  By this time the other children had noted my tone and were looking between Victor and me, watching to see what might happen. Why, I wondered, must everything become a show? Why were they always so eager to become spectators? And still Victor said nothing, only stared at his plate and chewed and chewed.

  But I kept on. “Victor!” Nothing. “Victor!” Nothing. “Victor!” His name had begun to feel strange in my mouth, and for a second, hearing it aloud in its two parts, like a plastic egg cracked in half—Vic. Tor.—I thought, He’s right. It is a ridiculous name. But that soon passed, and I was flooded with anger once more.

  And then I heard Grace’s hoarse little voice, the sound of which always made me wince. “It’s Vi, Papa. Victor’s called Vi now.”

  Here I must admit that I was flabbergasted, momentarily struck speechless. “What’s this, darling?” I asked her.

  “Vi,” she repeated. “He told us last week.” I saw the twins nod in agreement. I avoided looking at Victor but knew he was smiling his stupid, smug smile, the one that made me want to smack him as hard as I could and keep smacking him until his eyes became shiny with tears and his face grew ugly with misery.

  But of course I did not. “Is that so?” I asked sternly, looking around at the table, watching the children lower their eyes.

  Only Whitney met my gaze. “Yeah,” he said. He was twelve and already busy hating me, but he had always been a fast learner. “If you were around more often, you might know that.” He looked over at Victor eagerly, as if expecting to be praised for his loyalty and complicity, but Victor (and here I had to look at him) stared straight at me, grinning significantly.

  Silence would perhaps have perplexed me, but children can never resist the sound of their own voices, and Victor was no exception. “From now on, I’m only answering to Vi,” he announced, still staring at me. “Not Victor. No
t Vic. Not Tor”—the twins giggled at this—“nothing but Vi. Everyone got it?”

  “Oh, Victor,” scoffed Ella, “you’re so immature. Stop acting like such a child.”

  But Ella’s scorn seemed only to glance off him. And besides, he didn’t care what the other children thought of him; Victor never did. The point with Victor—it was always the point—was to infuriate me, to make me engage in his games.

  “Victor,” I began, taking a breath, and he raised his chin, readying for his fight. The other children were watching me eagerly; even Ella could not resist slipping back into the outlines of her old teenage self: she pretended to be dismissive, but she too was awaiting a juicy brawl. And then suddenly it occurred to me: Victor is thirteen. I am sixty-five. I am too old and too accomplished to be arguing with this ridiculous boy. “Fine,” I told him. “That’s fine. You can have your sisters and brothers call you that moronic name if you choose. It is only your dignity. Do you hear that, children? No Victor.”

  The children looked from me to Victor, and I could see at once that he was disappointed. Who knew what scrap-iron ammunition he had stored in his arsenal, what books he had read to prepare for our duel, which arguments he was eager to make, which theatrics he had anticipated employing? There is no one more disappointed than the pugilist whose sparring partner forfeits the fight.

  I stood, and as I pushed my chair back, its legs made a sharp screeching noise against the floor. “I’m going to my study now,” I said. “Isolde, you wash. Whitney, you dry.”

  “I’ll do it, Papa,” said Ella sweetly, over Isolde’s and Whitney’s complaints.

  “Fine,” I said, and turned to leave the room. When I was at the door, though, I stopped and spoke to the empty hallway. “This is the last minute I’ll waste on this topic,” I said, loudly and clearly so the entire room of children would hear me. “But Victor, don’t expect me to call you by your new name. From now on I shall think of you as my No-Name Boy, like a stray dog, all right? But no more Victor, I promise you that. Goodnight, Ella, Kerry, Jared, Drew, Jane, Isolde, Whitney, William, Frances, Grace. Goodnight, Boy.”