Amber's Tree

Amber’s backyard was a place of magic and imagination. Looking back now, I realize how much I grew up in that place, how much the shimmering emerald grass meant to me; so wide and untouched, bespeckled with golden drops of dandelion buds.

There are certain things in life—ordinary things that most adults have long-forgotten—that are the foundations of daily existence for children. After a while, people get so caught up in the here-and-there buzz of life that there’s no room for remembering. Balanced checkbooks, the clickity-click of high heels on linoleum, and the evening news replace hopscotch and the short-of-breath excitement of a game of Tag. But the years with Amber, those days of innocence that seemed as if they would last forever, were a time wholly separate from the real world. She and I were so different, she with straight blonde hair and a freckled face, me with chubby cheeks and thick black pigtails held in check with bright-colored hair bobs. It seems as if there was never a time when she didn’t live across the street from me in her white house with the droopy shrubs and the empty flowerbeds beneath the windows. I still don’t remember how we met.

I do, however, remember that first day in her backyard. So expansive and open, lined with rose bushes and spattered with children’s toys, it seemed like a fairyland to me.

“This is my tree,” she said, proudly, pointing a skinny arm at a medium-sized oak in the center of the yard. I was a tomboy and the thick, supple branches appealed to me immediately.

Sunlight filtered down through the leaves and I had to squint my eyes against the pale-green sparkle. “Do you want to climb it,” she asked. “I’ll show you the easy way to get up. Jeffery always goes the hard way. He says I’m a baby because I can’t get in that way.”

Jeffery was Amber’s older brother. Tall, with blonde-red hair, cerulean eyes and a big goofy smile. I liked Jeffery; I thought he was cute but I’d never tell Amber. She’d tease me for sure. I watched Amber swing up into the tree and did my best to do the same. Two branches came out in a “V” near the bottom, close enough for us to lever ourselves up and hook our legs over until we could sit up and climb higher. It took me three or four times, but with stinging palms and achy calves I finally made it.

We climbed up about ten feet and I felt dizzy with excitement. I could feel myself swaying gently, slowly with the breeze. When Amber pressed her cheek against the tree’s smooth bark and whispered, “I wish I could live here,” I understood exactly what she meant.

“We can,” I said with enthusiasm. “This branch will be my apartment and that one will be yours.”

“Okay…” she bit her lip in thought. “But where will Petey live?” We both giggled mischievously. Petey was a boy in our second-grade class. We both liked him and wanted to marry him when we grew up. Sometimes, I liked him even better than Jeffery.

“He can live over there,” I said, pointing at a branch just a little bit above ours, “and we can take turns being married to him.”

The next hour was spent with us visiting each other in our apartments and make-believing that Petey was there and that he didn’t scream out, “Yuck! Cooties!” at us, like he did in real life.

By the time Amber’s mom told me my mom was calling me for dinner, I was shivering from cold and from the desire to never, ever leave. I can’t even begin to guess how many hours, days, weekends were spent in that tree with Amber. Sometimes, Jeffery came and played with us. We made him pretend to be Petey, but usually he didn’t want to play our baby games. Amber fell out of that tree and hurt her wrist; I scraped my knee when I climbed too high; Jeffery kissed me but told me not to tell. All three of us passed a birthday in it.

It was only a bunch of branches, nothing special, nothing remarkable, but it meant something to all three of us. It was a part of our childhood. Our confidante and our friend.

I will never forget the day that I crossed the street to Amber’s—careful to look both ways like my mom warned—and knocked on the front door. “The kids are in the back, you can go around the side, Krystal,” her mom said.

I found Amber sitting on the stone patio crying, her face red and blotchy from the tears. At first, I thought her stepfather, Brian, had yelled at her. I thought her dog was sick or something equally predictable had happened.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong,” I asked. I sat next to her and held her hand but my stomach began to twist with dread when she wouldn’t say anything.

Finally, Jeffrey, whom I hadn’t noticed, got up off of a black lawn chair. I looked at him and registered with surprise and fear that his eyes were red-rimmed as if he, too, had been crying. Big, strong Jeffery, who was almost eleven, had been crying. “Brian cut the tree,” was all he said.

The words didn’t make any sense at first. The tree was still there, I would’ve noticed if it were gone. But I looked at the tree, really looked and I saw the horror that had been put upon our playhouse. The two branches, the ones just in reach, that formed a “V” perfect for small hands to pull themselves up with, had been cut.

“He…he said that he couldn’t get under them on the lawn mower and he just cut them off,” Jeffery said. His voice was hoarse; I knew he was crying again. I didn’t look at him.

I started to cry then. I cried before I even knew I wanted to cry, the tears just came, hot and painful in my throat, clamoring to get out. I took in the smooth, fleshy-whiteness of the place where the branches had been, I looked to where the two branches lay forgotten—one on top of the other—in the shade by the fence. I turned my face away from the carnage.

Something inside me broke away then. I didn’t know what, I just knew that I would never be the same. Everything looked the same, the grass, the bushes, the dandelions, but I was suddenly aware of the world and the ephemeral nature of everything around me. The end of my youth.

At eight years old I saw the encroaching hand of time, I recognized the fact that I would one day grow up and be just like Amber’s stepfather, Brian. A destroyer of trees, of hope. The knowledge loomed before me like a specter.

I went home a quarter of an hour later. I couldn’t stand being in the yard with the tree, lamed now and so out of reach. I cried when I told my older sister’s what had happened. Sobbed so hard that I was choking on big gulps of air that didn’t seem to want to do down the right way.

My oldest sister, Shavonne, tried to calm me, saying over and over, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Kelly, my second-eldest sister by seven years, rubbed my back soothingly and said, “It’s okay. It’s just a stupid tree. In a year or two you won’t even care anymore.”

They were too old to understand. Too old. I cried silently after that, curled tightly into myself. Part of me still aching, always aching, for that lost tree, but another part dreading the day that it wouldn’t matter anymore.