These trees had lost most of their leaves, just like the trees back home. Trees without leaves always looked sad to me. “Leaves fall like crisp tears until the trees are cried naked,” Mama once said. “That’s why they call autumn the fall. They’re not friendly.”
We were talking about nature. It was part of my homeschooling.
I didn’t understand how trees without eyes could cry and not be friendly, but I knew that the younger trees had sharp branches that could catch on your clothes. I had been scratched a few times running through woods full of leafless trees in our backyard. Leaves were softer, especially when they were green, and made the branches behave. It didn’t surprise my mother when I asked her if trees were unfriendly because they were angry that they had lost their leaves.
“You’re so poetic for someone your age,” she said. “Actually, children are more poetic than adults. Their imaginations aren’t cluttered with reality.”
After thinking a moment more, she added, “Yes, yes, I believe trees can be angry, and rightly so.”
“People are unhappy when they lose their hair,” I said. I thought she might think that clever and tell me how brilliant I was. She used to when I said something she thought was characteristic of someone years older than I was, sometimes adding a kiss on my cheek. Her kisses were my gold stars for excellence.
But to me, what I thought and said was simple. I had seen bald men in television commercials looking grouchy until something was shown to them that would help them grow back their hair. That made me think of the trees and the leaves. Maybe whatever it was could be sprayed on the branches and speed up the return of leaves.
My father was losing his hair. He never stopped complaining about it, because he said it was premature and came from stress. I had no idea what all that meant, but I told him, “It’ll grow back in the spring. With the leaves.”
Mama laughed, but back then, I didn’t mean it to be funny. I thought it might happen.
He didn’t think it was funny, either. He looked at me without smiling and then turned to my mother and said, “She’s your daughter. You had most to do with making her this way. You handle it.”
I looked at my mother. What was there to handle? And what did he mean by “making her this way”? What way was I?
Memories like that flowed through my mind as I sat there waiting and coloring. Occasionally, I would look up in anticipation of him coming back around the corner, and although I was still quite tempted to go look for him, I didn’t. Later, the Umbrella Lady would tell me that not rushing off to find my father was very good logic for an eight-year-old girl.
“Your mother was a good teacher,” she would say. “Good teachers don’t simply fill their students with facts; they teach them how to think correctly.”
My mother insisted on homeschooling me even though my father had thought I belonged with other children my age. He said he was even willing to spend the money on a private school. But Mama, who had her teaching certificate and until the time I was born had worked as a substitute grade-school teacher often, believed she could prepare me better for what was to come. She also claimed that teaching me gave her something important to do.
“I’m not saying you can’t do it, Lindsey,” he told her. “I’m saying she needs to be with other children her age, although sometimes you act as if you are one of them.”
She ignored him, which made him angrier.
His face reddened. “You’re keeping her here to amuse you because you won’t return phone calls from our friends and do something with other wives. You think you’re punishing me, but you’re punishing us all.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but after a while, he stopped arguing with her about it. But because of what I had seen on television and what I heard other children my age say to each other, I knew they had made friends in school and went to birthday parties and went to friends’ houses to play or had friends come to theirs. I had no friends. I never had anyone to my birthday party. I wished Mama had agreed with Daddy about it.
Only a week or so before the fire, Mama had stopped to look at me while I was sitting on the floor watching a television show that had children my age doing things together. I could feel her gazing at me and turned to her, my eyes surely full of question marks. It wasn’t unusual to see her stop and stare at me and then move on when I looked back at her, wondering if I had made a mistake, like putting on two different socks, something I had often done because I was in a rush to get dressed. What was it now? What had I done wrong?
“You’ll have friends, too, when you go to school. It won’t be that much longer now. Don’t be sad.”
Was I sad? Why didn’t I realize I was sad? Didn’t sad people cry? I wondered. I couldn’t remember when I had cried last. Even Daddy had thought about that. He had looked at me at dinner one night and said, “This kid never whines.” He had said it as if that was a terrible thing. I had looked at my mother, who did seem to think hard about it for a moment and then nodded and said, “She’s precocious. She already realizes the futility.”
I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I could see it wasn’t an answer Daddy liked. He had put his head down and eaten faster, after which he abruptly rose and left us.
I had turned back to the television show. I didn’t agree or deny I was sad. I really wasn’t sure. She had left the room. I had listened to her going up the stairs with those very slow, ponderous footsteps, sounding as if she was climbing up forever. She might go into her bedroom, sit on the bed, and just stare at the wall as if it was a television screen. Soon after, her eyes, like melting icicles, would drip tears down her cheeks.
Daddy had been right. She had no friends, either. No one invited her to a birthday party. Maybe she should return to teaching in a public school, I had thought. The memory of all that floated through my mind like a passing bruised cloud dragging in a storm. Just like leafless trees, the sky could look angry, too. Maybe the clouds were mad at the wind for pushing them roughly about. Sometimes I thought we were surrounded by unhappiness, and if we left the door or window open, it would spill in.
A chill brought me back to today and this train station.
I had no idea how much time had passed while I was sitting on the bench and coloring. I didn’t have a watch, and there was no clock on the platform. The station looked small and old, more like one in some cowboy movie I had seen watching television with Daddy. The wood of its walls was a fading gray, and there weren’t any windows on the side where I sat, just some old posters, practically unreadable, some lopsided, and a rusty-looking wheelbarrow overturned. I could see spiderwebs in it.
Now that I was paying more attention to where I was, I realized that darkness had crept in everywhere and challenged the rim of illumination the station platform lights had created. It looked like shadows were constantly trying to invade the lit space but were bouncing off. I put my nearly finished coloring book inside my closed coat, pulled up and embraced my legs, and rocked because it seemed to keep me warmer. It was so quiet that I could hear the hum of the lights above the platform.
I was a little tired again, so I shut my eyes and tried to think of nice things and nice times, like when Daddy and I flew a kite in our backyard and when Mama could still pluck laughter out of the air like someone picking the blueberries that grew on bushes in the woods behind our house. I could feel my face soften into a smile from the memories and lowered my head to my knees.