The Rocket Tree

Your house smelled funny.

I always thought it was because of the smell that we were supposed to play outside. Looking back, it was more likely we were told to play outside for the same reason we were told to play QUIETLY. Your mother and grandmother were always slumped in their chairs, smoking, dozing, drinking. They were quiet. Unless we annoyed them, then they were anything but quiet.

I took you as my best friend when I moved to Great Bend. I always sought out nearest misfit - safety in numbers. We both liked to climb trees and play jacks and pretend the tree outside your house was a rocket ship that could take us anywhere. We knew it was a boy's game because girls didn't become astronauts. They could become fashion models/airline stewardesses as long as they were tall, shapely, with great bone structure. We both knew we would never be the kind of girl that would grow up beautiful. We were both taunted and teased. Me for my outbursts, you for your lack of a father or siblings - both for our homemade clothes. We never expected to be pretty here on earth, but in space we would be exotic and idolized.

When we were allowed inside your home, it was to play with your dolls. Old dolls. Your mother's dolls. Your grandmother's dolls. Musty smelling dolls in torn clothing. All your toys in your room were second hand. Other people's left overs. I got new toys at least two times a year. And I had an allowance that I saved up to buy more. That's where we got the jacks. I'd bought them so we could both play with them on the patch of concrete just past the kitchen screen door. Your mom would hover in the shadows of her kitchen. Her dark cotton house dresses made her head and arms seem to float. Sometimes she'd put down her drink and bring us watered down lemonade and stale cookies. The screen would open just wide enough for the glasses or the plate to be set on the step, then it would bang back shut and she would resume her place in the room with her mother.

You were not allowed to leave your yard. 

You were not allowed to walk to the park, or the store.

You were told it was dangerous.

You were told it was your own good.

I bought over a doll my grandmother had brought me. The curly haired doll was 4 feet tall and supposedly looked a bit like me. I brought her twin doll that had been given to my sister.  I hated those dolls. I had specifically asked NOT to be given any more dolls. You lived on the busiest street in town and it seems to me to be the perfect place for a yard sale. I set up a box - put out the dolls and pitched the option of buying them to passing cars. Soon a woman stopped and bought them both and I was left with $10 in my pocket. Your mother was angry at me. I had brought strangers onto her property. What I'd done was disrespectful to my grandmother. I was a bad girl. I was not to come back.

I lived in Great Bend for 2 more years after that. 

I passed your house every time I walked to school, every time I walked to church, every time I walked to the store. And every time I hoped to see you playing in our tree but I never saw you outside again. There were rumors you'd fallen from the tree and broken your arm. There were rumors about your mother and your grandmother and what they must have done to drive your father away.  So many rumors, but no you. 

We came back for a visit a few months after we moved to Lamar. I was in the classroom I would have been in if we'd stayed and I got to make a costume for Halloween. I was a robot space man. All I needed was a box and some dryer vents. The latest rumor around the school was that your mother was dead. She had walked outside of town and hung herself from a tree.  The kids said she probably killed herself because you drove her crazy.  Easy for them to imagine, you were nowhere.

Your house was dark and the space around the house seemed grey and empty. It was as if the house had taken the order to be QUIET to heart and it was quietly falling apart. I stood under our rocket tree and wondered why your mother did not hang herself here? Why walk far far away to a grove of trees you might never be found in? 

Maybe she realized you'd never had a family, a childhood, a chance to make mistakes and learn from them. Maybe she realized what finding your mom dead hanging from your play tree would not do. Or maybe - there was no realization. Your mother hated her life and wanted to die. She died. She was as thoughtless to you in that act has she'd been all your life.

My fantasy is that when you heard your mother was dead, you ignored the screams of your grandmother and went outside. You would climb the rocket tree and close your eyes and imagine a fantasy world were you were precious, exotic, loved. And the magic of make believe would make it so and you would vanish from the tree and find yourself in a tree in a parallel world. 

Your mother would have set out icy sweet lemonade and warm cookies.

And when you jumped from the tree to meet her, she would reach out to hug you and pull you into your home. A yellow glow would seem to surround  everything, and your home would smell like heaven.