Fruit of the Tree

It had seemed for a long time to Delilah Brown that the pear tree hanging over her grandma’s porch was waiting for emancipation. “Emancipation” was a five syllable word she learned in school, one of her favorite things to do was count the syllables in words, it made her feel accomplished.

Now the pear tree had grown up around the house over a hundred and fifty years (in her grandma's words); the roots ended somewhere in the cold cellar; which unlike others in the area had never been laid with poured concrete. Sometimes in the hot summer she would go down to the cellar for a cool breeze under her cotton dress and watch the walls weep moisture. The single light bulb dangling like the eye of God in the darkness watched her from the center of the room.

She would press herself against the black earthen walls; the cool dirt smudging on her white dress. Putting her ear right up to the dense earth she would listen. If she listened long enough and slowed her breathing she could hear the bugs diggin their tunnels on the other side. The ants moving in and out each one with a job to do trailing the other in front of them not looking to the left or right. She felt these ants were much like the people in her town; so tiny in their minds they could not see beyond what was in front of them.

One day as she was down in the cellar, hiding away from her grandmother, she crawled herself to the corner, put her ear to the wall and closed her eyes. She breathed deep from her belly in the way that her mama’s tv exercise instructor told her to; mama was always looking to move her body. So much so she moved it away; she moved herself right out the door and down the dirt road, the last thing Delilah saw of her mother was her red hair swinging in the wind.

It wasn’t so bad at grandma’s house, she had clean cotton sheets on her bed every week, AND she got fed everyday. When she lived with her mama, sometimes her mama would forget to fill the old yellow fridge with food so she would have to take some loose change out of the cookie jar and go down to the grocery for bread and milk. It wasn’t that her mama was a bad mother, she was just a halfway one; she wasn’t ‘fully committed’ as her grandmother said. Grandma was big on holding your commitments that's why she and mama didn’t get along; mama was like the leaves on the tree blowing away in the fall, grandma was the roots.

As Delilah leaned her head against the wall and began to listen her thoughts fell away, her breathing in and out led her down to this tunnel inside of herself. If she burrowed deep enough she could hear the bugs diggin their own tunnels, and if she went further she could hear the roots of the pear tree. Now Delilah wasn’t one for made-up stories; she could never sit still long enough to pay attention to children’s books, but she could swear that the pear tree was growing its roots towards her in that cold cellar.

The longer she listened the more it had to say: sometimes it would tell her it needed water in a drought, or the black beetles were eating its fruit, or how warm the sun felt in the morning. Mostly it just told her it was tired of being attached to the house. You see the house itself was also a tree, shellacked under the white milk paint and hammered in place by a thousand nails. The pear tree and the house tree had conversations and supported each other; both had been on the land for about the same time. Growing around each other like sisters. Delilah liked to listen in to these conversations from time to time, the house creaking and groaning above her and the pear tree rustling in the wind.

However, this year the pear tree had taken a hard frost during the winter months and was creaking and groaning a whole lot more than the house. She had barely dropped any fruit whereas the year before had been bushels and bushels of fresh green pears. The beetles too were eating away at her heart area following the root lines deep into the cellar. Lately they had started gnawing on her sister in the hard to see places in the corner.

Delilah tried to tell her grandma the tree sisters were being eaten but her grandma just looked at her and told her to eat her dinner. So here she sat in the corner listening to its dying sounds, digging at the dirt with her fingernails to expose the roots. They were so fragile and thin she would wrap her hands into them trying to give the tree some comfort.

Towards the end of the summer Delilah noticed the tree started tilting away from the house, it no longer had any pears she could see and it had turned a funny grey shade. One day sitting on the porch having an iced tea Delilah noticed a storm blowing in; her grandmother told her to get herself inside as the wind picked up around her. Delilah, knowing something deep in her rooted bones ran to the tree to hug it, her grandma had to drag her away through the swinging screen door. As the storm came raining sideways Delilah ran into the basement nestling herself to the corner with the roots. The tree loved sitting with her so much it had extended its roots around her hiding spot long enough she could crawl right under them.

She started whispering last rites to the tree roots, like when grandma had the priest come say rites for her grandpa, “Though you walk through the valley….” She couldn’t remember them all so she had to make up what she didn't know; but she believed it was the thought that counted. As she was finishing she heard a loud CRACK from above her head and knew the great tree had fallen. Streaming tears down her face Delilah ran up the wooden stairs and out into the storm to see it laid out bare hollow from the middle of its heart. She had taken a part of her sister with her tearing up the entire side of the front porch.

It seemed they both wanted freedom, Delilah laid her hands in the mud next to the tree completely bereft of hope. She could not keep the sobs from coming so she laid herself down fully covered in mud as the rain poured from the sky.

Turning her head to look at the tree Delilah noticed something green between its gray branches. Sticking her hand into an open pocket she reached as far as her arm would go grasping at air. Her fingers brushing grabbed purchase on a ripe green fruit a she pulled it out into the open. Her grandmother finally realizing she was out in the storm came to the porch and started yelling at her to get her butt inside.

Delilah could hear her from the far away place in the deep down space inside of her as she stared at the pear. She wiped her tears with her muddy hands as she realized all fruit had seeds.