“Well yes, they sainted her eventually, after a bunch of people tortured and executed her for refusing to marry that man. She was a convert to Christianity, and she said she’d refused him because he wasn’t a Christian. But Gilla, some people think that she wasn’t a Christian anymore either, at least not by the end.”
“Huh?” Gilla wondered when Kashy would show up. It was almost time for the party to start.
“That thing about the wooden cross turning back into a living tree? That’s not a very Christian symbol, that sprouting tree. A dead tree made into the shape of a cross, yes. But not a living, magical tree. That’s a pagan symbol. Maybe Margaret of Antioch was the one who commanded the piece of wood around her neck to sprout again. Maybe the story is telling us that when Christianity failed her, she claimed her power as a wood witch. Darling, I think that Margaret of Antioch was a hamadryad.”
“Jeez, Mum; a cobra?” That much they had learned in school. Gilla knew the word hamadryad.
Her mother laughed. “Yeah, a king cobra is a type of hamadryad, but I’m talking about the original meaning. A hamadryad was a female spirit whose soul resided in a tree. A druid is a man, a tree wizard. A hamadryad is a woman; a tree witch, I guess you could say. But where druids lived outside of trees and learned everything they could about them, a hamadryad doesn’t need a class to learn about it. She just is a tree.”
Creepy. Gilla glanced out the window to where black branches beckoned, clothed obscenely in tiny spring leaves. She didn’t want to talk about trees.
The doorbell rang. “Oh,” said Gilla. “That must be Kashy!” She sprang up to get the door, throwing her textbook aside again.
There was a young lady of Niger…
“It kind of creaks sometimes, y’know?” Gilla enquired of Kashy’s reflection in the mirror.
In response, Kashy just tugged harder at Gilla’s hair. “Hold still, girl. Lemme see what I can do with this. And shut up with that weirdness. You’re always going on about that tree. Creeps me out.”
Gilla sighed, resigned, and leaned back in the chair. “Okay. Only don’t pull it too tight, okay? Gives me a headache.” When Kashy had a makeover jones on her, there was nothing to do but submit and hope you could wash the goop off your face and unstick your hair from the mousse before you had to go outdoors and risk scaring the pigeons. That last experiment of Kashy’s with the “natural” lipstick had been such a disaster. Gilla had been left looking as though she’d been eating fried chicken and had forgotten to wash the grease off her mouth. It had been months ago, but Foster was still giggling over it.
Gilla crossed her arms. Then she checked out the mirror and saw how that looked, how it made her breasts puff out. She remembered Roger in the schoolyard, pointing at her the first day back at school in September and bellowing, “Boobies!” She put her arms on the rests of the chair instead. She sucked her stomach in and took a quick glance in the mirror to see if that made her look slimmer. Fat chance. Really fat. It did make her breasts jut again, though; oh, goody. She couldn’t win. She sighed once more and slumped a little in the chair, smushing both bust and belly into a lumpy mass.
“And straighten up, okay?” Kashy said. “I can’t reach the front of your head with you sitting hunched over like that.” Kashy’s hands were busy, sectioning Gilla’s thick black hair into four and twisting each section into plaits.
“That tree,” Gilla replied. “The one in the front yard.”
Kashy just rolled her perfectly made-up eyes. “Okay, so tell me again about that wormy old cherry tree.”
“I don’t like it. I’m trying to sleep at night, and all I can hear is it creaking and groaning and…talking to itself all night!”
“Talking!” Kashy giggled. “So now it’s talking to you?”
“Yes. Swaying. Its branches rubbing against each other. Muttering and whispering at me, night after night. I hate that tree. I’ve always hated it. I wish Mum or Dad would cut it down.” Gilla sighed. Since she’d started ninth grade two years ago, Gilla sighed a lot. That’s when her body, already sprouting with puberty, had laid down fat pads on her chest, belly and thighs. When her high, round butt had gotten rounder. When her budding breasts had swelled even bigger than her mother’s. And when she’d started hearing the tree at night.
“What’s it say?” Kashy asked. Her angular brown face stared curiously at Gilla in the mirror.
Gilla looked at Kashy, how she had every hair in place, how her shoulders were slim and how the contours of the tight sweater showed off her friend’s tiny, pointy breasts. Gilla and Kashy used to be able to wear each other’s clothes, until two years ago.
“Don’t make fun of me, Kashy.”
“I’m not.” Kashy’s voice was serious; the look on her face, too. “I know it’s been bothering you. What do you hear the tree saying?”
“It…it talks about the itchy places it can’t reach, where its bark has gone knotty. It talks about the taste of soil, all gritty and brown. It says it likes the feeling of worms sliding in and amongst its roots in the wet, dark earth.”
“Gah! You’re making this up, Gilla!”
“I’m not!” Gilla stormed out of her chair, pulling her hair out of Kashy’s hands. “If you’re not going to believe me, then don’t ask, okay?”
“Okay, okay, I believe you!” Kashy shrugged her shoulders, threw her palms skyward in a gesture of defeat. “Slimy old worms feel good, just”—she reached out and slid her hands briskly up and down Gilla’s bare arms—“rubbing up against you!” And she laughed, that perfect Kashy laugh, like tiny, friendly bells.
Gilla found herself laughing too. “Well, that’s what it says!”
“All right, girl. What else does it say?”
At first Gilla didn’t answer. She was too busy shaking her hair free of the plaits, puffing it up with her hands into a kinky black cloud. “I’m just going to wear it like this to the party, okay? I’ll tie it back with my bandanna and let it poof out behind me. That’s the easiest thing.” I’m never going to look like you, Kashy. Not anymore. In the upper grades at school, everybody who hung out together looked alike. The skinny glam girls hung with the skinny glam girls. The goth guys and girls hung out in back of the school and shared clove cigarettes and black lipstick. The fat girls clumped together. How long would Kashy stay tight with her? Turning so she couldn’t see her own plump, gravid body in the mirror, she dared to look at her friend. Kashy was biting her bottom lip, looking contrite.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have laughed at you.”
“It’s okay.” Gilla took a cotton ball from off the dresser, doused it in cold cream, started scraping the makeup off her face. She figured she’d keep the eyeliner on. At least she had pretty eyes, big and brown and sparkly. She muttered at Kashy, “It says it likes stretching and growing, reaching for the light.”
Who went for a ride…
“Bye, Mum!” Gilla and Kashy surged out the front door. Gilla closed it behind her, then, standing on her doorstep with her friend, took a deep breath and turned to face the cherry tree. Half its branches were dead. The remaining twisted ones made a mockery of the tree’s spring finery of new green leaves. It crouched on the front lawn, gnarling at them. It stood between them and the curb, and the walkway was super long. They’d have to walk under the tree’s grasping branches the whole way.
The sun was slowly diving down the sky, casting a soft orange light on everything. Daylean, Dad called it; that time between the two worlds of day and night when anything could happen. Usually Gilla liked this time of day best. Today she scowled at the cherry tree and told Kashy, “Mum says women used to live in the trees.”