The Tree

The gate was barred and padlocked, but that had never stopped Aimee before.  I shouldn’t have followed her, but my better judgement had never stopped me before, either.  We climbed, nimble little girls, over the metal bars and were down the other side before I could really form a reason in my mind for doing it.  Like Everest, it was there.

It was there, the fields and the woods beyond, to be walked through.  To explore.  Nevermind “No Trespassing” signs and common sense.  Good judgement: we had never truly suffered from the lack of it, before, so why start worrying about it then?

Why, indeed.

We were young, incredibly young, and everything around us was new.  Our parents had moved into the country without consulting us, but we were not displeased or angry, as other children might have been.  We each had our best friend by our side, still — I had Aimee and she had me.  We’d never been much for other children, and had no real friends to bemoan the loss of.  And though we may have liked our former surroundings just fine, new places to explore were so much the better.

When we came to the tree that stood alone in the middle of the field we knew that we had to climb it.  It was massive, tall, old.  There were many branches to climb up and crawl out on, to look down over the field like queens in a leafy tower.

I don’t know when it was that Aimee disappeared.

We were both in the tree, laughing and climbing, when she was lost to my view amongst the leaves and branches.  I went up as far as I dared, before settling into a reasonably secure nook and just gazing out at the wood beyond the edge of the field.  Aimee continued higher.  I heard her talking to me, exclaiming over an old birds’ nest here, a skittering spider there.  Eventually she was a silent, or perhaps I began to tune her out.

I don’t know how long I sat, content, before restlessness and boredom made me wonder how long Aimee would want to explore the tree before we could go home.  I was beginning to feel hungry and was sure that it must be past lunchtime.  I called to her but got no answer.

“Aimee?”  I called again.  “Can you hear me?  What are you doing?”

I stood carefully and peered at the branches above, wondering where she was.  I kept on calling to her, asking if she wanted to go get lunch, scolding her for being silent.  “It’s not funny!” I protested, feeling foolish.

I went on like this for several minutes, getting more and more upset.  But I didn’t climb up to see what was going on.  I would not go any higher.  That was probably exactly what she wanted, I thought.

“Well I’m going home now,” I snapped finally, and began to make my way down.  I half expected to hear her triumphant laughter from above, but the same mocking silence remained.

I jumped the ground once I’d reached the lowest branch, and considered one last parting remark.  I decided against it.  Even if she was not ready to give up on her little game, I was done playing along.  I stomped across the the field till it met up with the path that ran along the woods.  The path led down behind a hill and around a curve before it came to the gate again.

I wonder, often, if I could have done anything different.  If it would have mattered.  Because I never saw Aimee again after that day.  When she did not come home all day and all night, I confessed to our parents that we had trespassed — but at that moment it hardly mattered.  They went out searching for her, and did not find her.

No one could find her.  She was not in the tree, or the field, or the woods.  She was not in the river that ran through the forbidden property half a mile to the north of the tree.  Her body was never found.

Everyone thought that she disappeared when she came down from the tree, eventually.  Everyone, except for me.  I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew — even before my parents went to look for her that night — that Aimee never came down from the tree.

Could I have done anything differently?  My parents certainly thought so.  I know that they always blamed me — blamed me for not stopping Aimee from trespassing, blamed me for leaving her all alone, blamed me for going crazy and telling a ridiculous story about a girl eating tree just to avoid admitting my responsibility.

Perhaps if I’d climbed higher, gone up the tree to see why Aimee wasn’t answering me, something would be different.  Perhaps I’d have been able to save her?  Or perhaps I’d be missing too.

I don’t know, and I don’t have any answers.  I stopped telling people that Aimee never climbed down from the tree, eventually.  It was driving my parents crazy.  I never climbed the tree again.  I thought about it, many times, but I was always too afraid.  Even though other people had gone up and come down, searching for Aimee, I was afraid.  I felt like I’d escaped, the first time.  I didn’t have the courage to tempt fate.

I went back to the field long after that day, long after my parents had moved away, when I was all grown up.  I’d been told that all my problems stemmed from being unable to accept my sister’s disappearance.  That I had to forgive her, forgive myself, forgive God or the Universe or whatever I believed in.  Forgive the tree, if that’s what I needed to do, to move on.  Forgive, face my fear, move on, but most of all, forgive.

So I went.  The gate was still there, the “No Trespassing” sign still there.  The gate was harder to climb, now that I wasn’t so nimble and young, but I managed it.  I walked up the path and when I got to the top of the hill, I saw that the tree was not there.

It hadn’t disappeared.  There was a still a stump, with weeds and field grass all grown up around it.  Someone had cut it down, and I thought, Good.

I wonder, sometimes, what happened to the tree.  Was it chopped up into firewood and burnt over a long cold winter?  Was it made into paper?  Furniture?  Pencils?  Did Aimee burn, or was she bound into a book?  Was she even now being wittled down around a stick of graphite, to make a sharp point?  Or did she sit next to a sofa with a lace doily and a lamp on top of her?

Did she know what was happening to her?  Or was she gone — completely, utterly, gone — the minute the tree took her?

I don’t know.  I’ll never know.  And I’ll never forgive.