Tillie's Last Hammock

How is it that two oaks, the only pair of trees in Tillie’s backyard, grew exactly ten feet apart? There’s one maple, one walnut, one cottonwood, and one willow, not including the old elm stump. There’s a grove of pines, all at staggered heights, and three fruit trees – an apple, a cherry, and a peach. But there were two oaks, as if God had denied the spot to the oaks but someone else said, “There have to be two there – there have to be two oaks.” God didn’t plant two oaks in Tillie’s backyard. But there they stood.

Tillie’s bony hand trembled as she wrapped the rope around the trunk of the oak and tied a perfect square knot. She groaned a little while she paced toward the other oak and bent down to pick up the rope. The canvas of the hammock flapped in the wind while she tied the loose end to the twin. The first knot had been easy. This one, however, needed to be tight. She wasn’t securing a ship to a dock or a wild stallion to a hitching post, but the knot had to hold the weight of a hundred and twenty pound woman – maybe a hundred and ten. As she gripped the rope and felt it burn in her hand, she looked down at them, amazed. Were these her hands? Hers had been pink and pudgy, her little fingers belonging to cookies and cakes, her tiny nails once adorned with mauve or shell. Now the skin on her hand clung to the bone, her nails chipped and dirty, and what used to be pink now looked more yellow, maybe even green. The rope may have burned, but it could do no more damage to these hands.

“It’s too cold.”

Tillie ignored the words. She laid the blanket across the hammock canvas and dropped a pillow at the east end. She looked at it for a couple seconds or moments, but not minutes. There wasn’t time for minutes. Every minute had to count. Thinking about every step, every move, every twist, Tillie turned her body and eased it into the hammock. The rope slid maybe a half an inch down the east tree, but that was all. There wasn’t enough weight to strain the ropes beyond that – maybe a hundred and ten pounds, maybe less. Once she laid her head on the pillow she pulled the blankets across from each side and tucked them under her chin. “Ahh,” she exhaled, her little body still swinging a bit from the movement into the hammock.

“Where are all your friends?”

Tillie closed her eyes and squinted. Her lips moved ever so slightly but only the faint whisper of air could be heard in lieu of anything being said. Her sunken cheeks, once rose petal pink and smooth like a plastic doll’s, looked brown, almost bruised, the lines under her eyes having turned into sinkholes, brown near the eye and yellow on the rim of the skull. For over fifty years her nose had been almost non-descript, a tiny triangle dropped into the center of her face, the envy of her childhood peers. As she lay in the hammock her nose jutted above the rest of her face, blotches of red and scales of skin joined with the dampness of sickness and loneliness. Her lips kissed many a boy in her day – Michael, Rudy, Saul, and Joshua to name a few. Those soft, moist, sweet lips disappeared with the likes of those boys and turned to thin, cracked, scab-filled portals to her long-forgotten mouth.

“You wanted this, Tillie? To die beneath these two oaks?”

She had never been for want as a girl. Her father treated her like a princess. Her mother told her she should enjoy life and not tie herself to one man. Her father gave her a car and a stereo. Her mother bought her books about self-awareness. Her father gave Michael a hundred dollars when he picked Tillie up for the prom. Her mother took her to the doctor a month before the prom. Her father said, “Marry a good Jew.” Her mother said maybe he should have taken his own advice. Her father left home a month after Tillie’s graduation. Her mother died in Tillie’s house ten years ago to the day.

Tillie opened her eyes and stared at the empty space in the yard. “Well?” she said. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

The wind rushed across the yard and blew the leaves from the west to the east. But there never was a point where west was empty and east was full. They blew and they blew and they blew. There were always enough leaves in the west and never too many in the east. An iron chair, one of its legs buried in a couple inches of dirt, sat next to a defunct fountain. Tillie couldn’t imagine right away why it was there, but finally remembered that she used to watch the goldfish in the fountain pool. The last time must have been months ago – maybe years. She had to have been heavy enough to embed the leg into the ground, perhaps when she weighed a hundred and twenty or thirty. Now, her hundred pound frame would scarcely affect the chair – if she even weighed that.

“Nothing to say, now?” she said again.

The screen door on the back porch opened with the wind and slammed again, slapping the door frame twice before closing. A rake that rested against the steps slid forward and fell to the sidewalk. She started to weep for a moment when she thought how her mother would bring a couple glasses of lemonade through that very door, and the two of them would watch the sunset, her mother sitting in the iron chair and Tillie lounging in the hammock. More than once her mother knocked over a rake or a hoe or a broom that sat beside the back steps. And the screen door always double-slammed shut.

“Why do you provoke yourself? Your memories bring nothing but pain.”

Tillie shut her eyes. “My memories are all I have.”

“You relish your past?”

“It’s all I have.”

“You find peace in your own singular life?”

“It’s all I ever wanted.”

“It’s all you ever got. You wanted more.”

Tillie pulled her head up and felt the breeze on her face. It was cool and she was glad to be covered, but the breeze felt nice. As nice as it felt, she felt a pain in her chest forcing her to breathe a bit heavier. A swirl of leaves surrounded her for a moment and passed, so close were they that she could smell the scent that’s usually not sensed until they are burned. The leaves stopped swirling but the rustling never ended. “I wanted more.”

“Of course, you wanted more. You wanted more than a kiss from Michael.”

“I wanted a life.”

“You wanted a life with him.”

“But I got a kiss.”

“And that’s all you got.”

“My mother got more than a kiss. And it was all taken away.” Tillie rested her head on the pillow again. “I got a kiss.”

“But that’s all you got.”

“And you can’t take that away from me.”

“You’re pathetic – happy to lie in your hammock. You watched the world go by from that hammock. Now you’re going to see your last from that hammock.”

“Go away. You never did me any good before. It’s too late now.”

“I did my best. But you wouldn’t listen.”

Tillie’s breathing grew more pronounced, as breathing through her nose could no longer provide enough air. She lay still, the only movement now being caused by her breathing – although her ninety-eight pound frame moved very little.

A mass of gray clouds parted in the west and let a few rays of light pop through as if painted by Michelangelo onto a canvas in the sky. The sun never did reveal itself, but more and more rays wandered into view, one time casting a light on the hill down the road. A silver star atop a monument from the cemetery reflected the light of the sun for an instant, but faded quickly.

“You wanted more.”

Tillie could no longer speak easily, so she shook her head.

“You wanted more – and now it’s over.”

Tillie took a couple deep gulps of air and opened her eyes to stare at the underside of the oak trees between which she rested. They towered high above, swaying in the wind, still holding onto more green leaves than the other trees, save the pines. Their trunks may have stood fast, but the great branches born of those trunks rocked to the pace of the wind. Tillie thought she could hear the sound of wood creaking in those oak branches.

“Who says it’s over?”

When Tillie stopped breathing her eyes remained affixed to the tops of the oaks, her mouth agape from the last breath. An acorn dislodged from the top of the east oak and fell through the branches – knocking loose leaves, dead twigs and other acorns – and dropped directly into Tillie’s mouth.