The Tree
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Fiction
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Moral rights
S.E. Saunders asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
Authors Note:
While the assertion above states the stories found in this book are fictional, I will include notes where the stories aren't fiction. As is the case with the following story. This piece is based on events from my life.
I'd like you to imagine a thirty-something mother with two children for a moment. Mom is slightly built. She's a beautiful woman with delicate features, an olive complexion and barely over five feet tall. My half-Jamaican brother is six. I am sixteen and have a half-native child of my own. I write these descriptions because we are an interracial family. We live on the third floor of an apartment block facing South. I'm still in high school because I see education as the only way out of my mistakes.
This time of the year is stressful for our mother. She desperately wants to give her children the best. The saddest part is that she couldn't do anything about it. She was already giving everything she had.
The apartment is sparsely furnished. My mother and brother sleep on a mattress on the floor in one bedroom. I have a cot and a crib for my son in my room. We all consider having food and shelter a blessing because, at one point, we lived in a motel. To be in an apartment was like moving from the streets to respectability. My mother was dynamic and incredibly loving, often working as many as three jobs at a time. But she had bipolar disorder and sometimes made poor decisions, impacting our family. Despite these things, she was a fantastic mother.
Mom decides to put up a tree on the day before Christmas. This isn't something we often do because trees cost money, and so do all the sparkly bangles and bits. Mom has a total of 25 dollars to her name. I watch a lot of dramas and Asian films, that's the equivalent of 25,000 won or 2500 yen if you're looking for conversions. She's decided to take our ugly station wagon down to Whyte Avenue, one of the main streets in our city of three million souls. We're on the hunt to try to find a Christmas tree. Even at sixteen, this doesn't seem like sound logic. We're down to our last dollars, with a couple of weeks till our next payday.
I worry she is having another one of her manic episodes. This is the same apartment where she thought she was God and could fly and tried to jump out a window. The same apartment where I held her back from jumping and my thoughtful little brother called 9-1-1. Sometimes people with mental illnesses aren't aware their actions aren't logical. I gently try to steer her toward keeping the money. As I continue to question her, she reasons because it's Christmas Eve Day, the vendors are more likely to get rid of a half-decent tree for way less money since they'll be throwing them away. Mom isn't manic. She wants the tree. I am relieved. So off we go.
Mom, my brother, my son, and I piled into a rusted red and wood grain panelled station wagon my mother's lover had graciously allowed us to use how I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns for cheating on his wife and, ultimately, us. The car was a reminder of their embarrassment and an abomination to be seen driving around in as a teen. I should have been more embarrassed about having a kid at sixteen. No, I was more worried about the car and the perceived sins of my mother.
Many tree sales lots have closed as we drive, but one is open late, as Mom hoped. It almost seems like a miracle. There are still many trees to choose from, but the lowest price is more than we have. My recollection of details is murky here, but we don't have enough money for any tree on that lot.
I barely remember the lot attendant, but when he looked at us, I'm sure he saw this pathetic woman and her children and felt like the Grinch when he said he didn't have much. I recollect him showing us a few trees, but by this time, he is losing patience with my mom. She wants a tree, but she's asking for charity and can't even pay the marked-down prices. After some searching, he finds a Douglas Fir that has seen better days but says it's good enough to last for a day or two.
I look back at this at forty-nine and think about how much my mother would have humbled herself to ask and keep asking for these things. In the end, the man gave it to us for ten dollars, then dragged this six-foot-tall tree to our station wagon and tied it onto the top of the rack.
We left, but now almost all of the shops are closed. We managed to rush into a store at the last minute and pick up a couple of packs of tinsel and a package of lights. We couldn't afford the ornaments or garland. With our one bag of meagre tree dressings in hand, we whipped back home and got this tree up three flights of stairs without knocking all the needles off or breaking it in half.
You might again imagine our surprise when we stand this tree upright, tall enough to touch the roof. I affixed a nail and a bit of string to the ceiling to hold it upright while Mom worked to jerry-rig something on the bottom to keep it standing. She finds a bucket and pops the tree trunk into the water, hoping to stave off the thing dropping its needles entirely overnight.
In my mind, I can still see us there decorating this tree even though it happened well over thirty years ago. I can hear the happy squeals of my son in the playpen, trying to grab the sparkly tinsel I'm making dance before his eyes.
The tree is sparse, and we're standing around it, adding what little we have to its frame. I remember stringing popcorn around my grandmother's tree at one point. We pop some popcorn up and thread it on several strands. This tree is starting to look better and better, but where it starts to shine is after the addition of the tinsel. We've worked into the late afternoon, and the sun has dipped below the horizon.
Night falls, and we turn on the lights on the tree. This tree seems to unfold or come to its fullness. It glows with soft light reflecting off all the tinsel, and I remember staring at it and wondering how the tree, in its half-dead state, decked out with our cheap decorations, could ever look so beautiful.