The Girl and the Grove
Eric Smith
I
Lightning split the willow in two, and the voices in Leila’s head shattered.
The smell of burnt bark and charred leaves lingered in the air as Leila stepped into her new family’s backyard, closing the large, plate-glass patio door behind her. She walked briskly towards the willow tree, gritting her teeth, as the voices screamed with the roaring wind. She stepped over some of the branches and tiny fires on the ground, still smoldering like little candles scattered about the earth. With the ruined tree in front of her, she reached out and brushed her fingers where the lightning had made its cut.
The heat from the crack scorched her fingertips, and she pulled back quickly as the voices, which usually whispered in her head, let out another roaring, anguished cry.
With closed eyes, she shook her head, pressing them to go away. Taking deep breaths, Leila focused on what felt real around her, a routine she’d been running through all her life, one she and Sarika had developed together at the group home when the voices came. Say the words. Get present. Be here.
“Grass,” she whispered, pacing her breath as the voices faded. “Rain. Wind. Cold.”
As the voices pulled back into the depths of her mind, as they always did, she looked back up at the ruined tree.
Gone was the cool-to-the-touch bark, a dark brown spotted with slightly darker specks. It had a pattern that she saw a little of herself in; her brown skin freckled in the warmer weather just the same way. Patches of the bark were discolored in places where a piece peeled away, revealing the lighter colors underneath. Her freckles came in little bursts on her face, her shoulder, her forearm, and the larger splash of cream on the right side of her face: a birthmark.
What bark wasn’t burnt off by the crackling electricity that had ripped through the tree was seared crisp, and bits of black soot came off on her fingers when she ran her hands along the surface. Instead of the welcoming, thick, V-shaped branches that grew close enough to grasp simultaneously, like two fingers waving a peace sign, there was only one branch now. She had spent so many afternoons this summer reading and reflecting on those branches, and now one sprawled out on the ground amidst burned grass and shrubbery. The once-beautiful limb looked as though it had roasted in a campfire pit, the bark like burnt, discarded charcoal, and the end where it once connected with the willow replaced with blackened, splintered wood. She looked up from the split to the rest of the tree, which still bloomed bright green, as though the other half of the old willow was unaware of what had happened.
It broke Leila’s heart.
Her willow was dead, but the rest of the tree didn’t know it yet.
But maybe there was a way to save it. If she couldn’t do it, maybe an arborist, one of those tree doctors she’d seen posting on the Urban Ecovists board she frequented with Sarika, or in articles on various local environmental news sites. She’d read that one had recently gone into Clark Park in West Philadelphia to help save a rare American Chestnut tree, which was definitely news to Leila. Who knew any kind of chestnuts were endangered?
She walked over to the half of the tree that was sprawled out on the earth and searched for any remaining bits of green, twigs that were unscathed from the lightning, but quickly turned her attention back to the still-standing section of the willow. She reached up and touched a low-hanging branch, bracing herself for the voices to come. They stayed silent, the bark still cool and wet.
“Okay,” Leila said, exhaling. “Let’s do this.”
She took a few steps back and took a running jump to grip the slick branch, grabbing it hard, her hands slipping a bit but holding firm. She kicked herself up off the broken trunk and wrapped herself around a thick limb.
She climbed up, inching her way quickly despite how wet the surface was. She could feel the rain that the hurricane had brought soaking into her jeans and t-shirt, and the fabric clung to her skin as she shimmied on up. The cold, eye-of-the-storm winds chilled her as she pushed forward, yet she smiled, a girl on a mission.
She was thinking of Sarika and Major Oak.
Back in the group home, she’d worked her way through a heaping majority of the limited library. It consisted mostly of classics donated by well-meaning liberal arts graduates of one of the nearby universities, probably Temple or St. Joseph’s, who apparently never spoke to one another about their donations. The result was several stacks of the same exact book again and again, likely from finished English literature courses, which irritated some of the other children and teens who came through the place.
But Leila didn’t mind the collections. It gave her an excuse to try and form book clubs with the other kids in the house. Including Sarika. Four years back, when Sarika had arrived at the home on the same day as a massive stack of Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (likely donated from some first-year college English class), they quietly read copies together on the home’s way-too-soft couch. Sarika only stopped to cry a little every few chapters.
“So,” Sarika had said, closing the book as it grew dark outside. “What else you got here?”
They’d been inseparable ever since.
Leila drew closer to the top of the large willow, where branches burst this way and that, pushing out and then plummeting down under the weight of the long, green leaves. She thought fondly of the first book club she’d put together with Sarika back in the home.
Some students had dropped off a stack of Alexandre Dumas’s Prince of Thieves, and another failed foster family had left Leila back at the home the same day. Leila found solace in the pages, holed up with Sarika and their books. But when stories of made-up families and their adventures failed, she sought out words about her own family in the only place she could.
The Internet.
With every near miss and failed family came the searching: on Google, adoption message boards, and anywhere else she could think of.
“Why do you do this? What are you hoping to find?” Sarika would ask, flicking back her thick, black hair before crossing her arms, her heavy eyebrows furrowed. “Ambiguously brown couple dies in tragic train derailment, but not before bequeathing millions of dollars to the daughter they put up for adoption so many years ago. Leila Hetter, please come to City Hall to collect your inheritance and the deeds to your four mansions.”
“Well,” Leila had started with a laugh.
“Here, I’ll show you something better to strive for,” Sarika had said that day, nudging Leila away from the computer and taking over the search.
“Major Oak,” she’d typed.
It turned out Robin Hood’s hideout, Major Oak, was in fact a real tree, one still growing in the actual Sherwood Forest. That had begun a tradition of entering the annual lottery to claim a sapling from Major Oak. Each year Sarika and Leila waited in front of the computer at their group home or in the Philadelphia Public Library, watching the clock count down, signing up to win a baby tree during the limited time frame.
They never won, which Leila thought was probably for the best, considering the cost of the saplings and the fact that a tree wasn’t going to thrive in their group home. Hell, the kids hardly did. But it did bring the girls closer together.