The Roots That Swim

The gnarling roots grasping the dirt held the tree in place for decades. Weeping leaves, rustling with each summer wind, whipped in green waves to the surrounding wheat fields. Since the structure of the white farmhouse had been built sometime in the revolutionary period of Pennsylvania, the weeping willow tree sat as the second oldest part of the property, surrounded by the fields of swirling brown and green.

Standing through almost a hundred years, long and thin leaves rattled each summer and faded with the harsh northern winters. After years of watching Mother Willow direct Pocahontas, I found myself discussing life with the soft bark. The leaves responded with meaningless whispers, as they rubbed past one another in the slight puffs of wind that rolled across Northeastern Pennsylvania.

My feet planted firmly on the living room floor, I arched my back in pain, watching the storm outside throw the tree around like a victim in a dark alleyway. Blue and red tiles lay cold and separate, covering the floor beneath my pruned, bare feet. The tiles were prying up, after years of water seeping in and underneath, the corners cutting through my thin skin. We couldn’t get them to stay down anymore, and settled for the rigid edges.

A slash of white cut through the blacktop sky, snatching my eyes from the blue kiddy pool Mom had ripped me out of. As the water puddled over the edges, I worried the side might crack under all the pressure. Mom could care less, as she dragged my relaxed seven year old body from the kettle warm water.

Her veiny hands had encircled me and tugged up the two reddened shoulders.

One of the warmest summer days, I floated on my back watching the rolling clouds pillow the sky in shades of white and gray. In the small blue pool, with a four foot diameter and a little less than three feet deep, the world sat stagnantly calm. The clouds circled the earth, birds flew around one another, and animals nested where ever they could find an empty branch, framing the picture of blue sky overhead. Long, thin leaves wove around one another as the old willow tree lent shade to the passing acre of land. .

“Dana,” Mom said from inside the house. Her dark face came across the dirty tan screen of the back porch door. “It’s going to rain. Get out as soon as you see anything.”

Disappearing into the house, behind the curtained veranda windows and peeling, white walls, Mom left me to the world. Next door, at the animal groomer, a small yippy dog huffed in the summer heat. Letting out childish barks while circling the leash around an elderly woman with large, tinted glasses, the puppy panted quickly.

A jet went overhead, tearing through one of the clouds in a sharp line of bare blue.

Finally the woman shoved the dark terrier into her van and drove away, leaving me to silence. The edge clouds sat perched, dark blue and black. That could only mean rain, and as the other clouds swam in the sky above me. I knew the storm was headed towards my little pool in the shade.

“Dana, the radar says lightning. Get out soon,” Mom said, her glasses falling down the arch of her nose, the near-sighted wicked witch of the west.

“Soon,” I shouted back. The pink swimsuit cut into my chubby legs.

During the hot summers that hit the farmlands, I’d run through the tall grass of our backyard between the house and the sparse forests. Partway, the willow stood over the expanse shading the toughest leg of the path. When the sun beat down too directly and the sweat of my tired appendages weighed me down into the scratchy grass, I’d drag my limp body underneath the whispering leaves of the tree. The shade was the only relief of the desolate yard, besides a Rowan tree, dropping, hard red berries across the yard.

Sitting about eighty feet away, the back of our white farmhouse sat plainly, with a few bikes and chairs waiting on the porch. The large windows and black shutters looked out over the barren yard. The aged house and tree stood over the property like the faces at Easter Island, mammoths watching the world pass around silently.

Sitting between their peaceful existences, I closed my eyes and listened to the world.

The birds gradually quieted down as the sky darkened. Mom plopped with two sandals on the cement back porch. I knew sooner or later she’d force me out of the heating water, but there still lingered the chance the storm wouldn’t hit us. It had happened before.

A crack stung the distant sky, crashing through the atmosphere.

“Dana, now,” mom said, walking over to the small pool. Her hands covered in wormy veins grabbed my sopping body out of the water and pulled me into the house.

“It’s just thunder, Mom.”

“Lightning kills people,” she said, my dripping pink swimsuit falling off each raw shoulder.

Standing on the cool tiled floor, the free corners cutting at the calloused skin of my feet, I watched the sky fade away.

The world fell to black—a stage just before the play begins. Rain dropped all at once, in clumps diving in and out of the small pool. The storm picked up and started moving the world around, as the bird’s chirps were lost to the creaking house and howling winds. The tree swayed back and forth as the wind picked up the ringlets of leaves.

Rain snapped in metallic clomps on the blackened grill Dad had left pulled out from its covering. Across the glass surface, puddles collected in the crevices, pushing the frame further in upon itself. The glass was cracking.

The tree’s leaves flung friskily around one another in a game of red-rover, covered by the afternoon blackness. Each hand held and broke as the wind tackled through their weak unions, tearing the slender green arms from the bending limbs. The rippling of the water in the pool flooded over the edge. Fields of wheat and grass followed the wind back and forth, flattening beneath the plummeting rain.

The backyard flooded, as an ocean swept past Jersey and up through Pennsylvania, or as if a bathtub in the heavens sat overflowing into the ceiling above, causing electrical fires and sparks as the lightning lashed across the dark blue sky. The streaks shone fiery white through each raindrop.

“Get away from the window,” Mom said, sitting back on the couch, “Lightning can hit anything.” A pounding crack beat through the darkness around the skittering ticks of the raindrops. Like a cookie sheet dropped as the sink water rinsed it clean, the crash consumed the air.

“One Mississipi, two…” I counted the distance from the house.

The lightning hit a neighbor’s field, running wherever it could make its way without stopping. With no red sparks in sight, I assumed the best. Branches flew off of the neighbors cherry tree, the bright pink leaves maroon in the darkness lay flattened to the ground like an old, worn down rug.

Behind me, the cat fled from room to room. Skittering paws and claws fought for friction against the linoleum and tile floors. She slid, a black and white glare, into cabinets and chairs, legs, and finally a closet.

“I said get away from the window, Dana.”

Mom’s short brown hair matted flatly to her forehead, between the slickness of rain water and sweat that had stained her brow. The wrinkles below her hairline showed angrily in branching lines, curving around her flat, black eyebrows.

“It’s fine Mom. The lightening is two miles away.”

“That’s too close.”

The swimsuit began hugging tightly to my pale skin, the raisin skin of my fingertips finally flattening again. Considering going upstairs and changing into something warm, I watched the tree and pool recklessly swing. If the pool lifted and blew away, Mom wouldn’t buy a new one. The summer would scorch through, long and uncomfortable, full of sticky skin on hot cement as half-powered sprinklers splashed hose-heated water at my sun-burned skin. I couldn’t lose that pool.

“Is the upstairs roof leaking?” Mom asked, still not moving from the dull, gray couch.

“It’s always leaking.”

The wind snapped against the darkness, like a croaking frog hidden in a muggy pond. The sound of fingers quickly tapping on a snare drum, as the pelts of raindrops smacked the weak roof of the elderly farmhouse, and the kick of the bass pedal with another thundering bellow. Standing from the couch, Mom creaked across the peeling tiles.

She stood behind me, her twig-hands on my stinging shoulders.

I forgot the cat, and measured the sky’s limit.

“One Mississip—”

Another slice of light slapped the horizon behind the living room window. The branches and leaves dove towards the ground—a catcher sliding to grasp a pop-fly foul ball in the seventh inning.

The weeping willow toppled towards the house. The giant, with knees locked and arms stuck to its sides, hurdled over itself in a blackened mass. The sheets of rain flung down with the shooting arms of the tree. Smashing into the ground, the house shook beneath my rooted feet.

The last branches swayed up and down beneath the bouncing droplets. Only right outside the window, the topmost sticks landed less than a foot from the back door where I stood frozen.

Taking a puff of epinephrine from her inhaler, Mom led my wet, crying body away from the door.

“The tree Mom! Can we replant it?”

“No, it snapped off I think, but the wood will be nice in the winter. Think of all the nice fires.”

“We can’t burn it.”

“Go change into something dry before you get pneumonia again.”

After the age of three, when half of my preschool year had gone to hospital visits and in house quarantine, I ran up the carpeted greens steps and threw on pajamas.

The next morning the world had calmed again. Stepping over the dead branches, thrown chairs, and bikes surrounding the fallen tree we surveyed the damage.

The cat calmly crawled over the wood and leaf clumps, her black and white fur poking out of the heavy, green strands every so often. A freshly washed sky shone down on the tree bowed in prayer.

The blue pool lay smothered by the snaking leaves, crushed by the giant’s lifeless arms. Our old grill had been smashed into the ground, the glass lying around in glowing shards as the sun collected in the ridges. The Rowan tree sat a foot from destruction, the thin willow branches just reaching to the Rowan for one last touch.

As the graying bark dried in the afternoon sun, Dad marked it for cutting. A small measuring tape, an orange chainsaw, and a few days saw the tree sliced into shreds. Dad came in each night, his forehead speckled with sawdust and earth and his hands littered with slices. The same scent of gasoline and burning wood stained the air.

With the buzzing chainsaw, different limbs would vanish by the end of each summer night, until all we had left were stacks of wood filling the back porch and a decaying stump. The roots latched to the ground tightly, their fingers mangling the soft earth in a final grasp.