From the patio of my home you can see a palm tree. When we first moved in, the palm tree stood right in middle the skyline framing the view like a postcard picture. The days passed and there the palm tree stood. Days I didn’t look out of my window, head bent down in my phone, my thumb pushing up up up. The palm tree still stood. This Sunday I went to the window and there was no palm tree. The 30 ft giant that stood smack dab in the middle of the picture perfect skyline had disappeared. “Did you notice that the tree was gone?” I asked my husband. “No. I haven’t looked over there yet.” My husband put down the bowl he was drying in the kitchen to and came over to where I was standing. “Oh wow. It really is gone,” his voice coming out like a whisper. He said gone as if the tree was an old friend. As if this tree was a guardian of the hill and now we sat in our home defenseless. His tone of voice rang true. The Earth kept taking.
I’ve been oscillating between grief and rage.
This summer, the government declared that the island was in a drought. The ground dried up. The sky, ever so blue, withheld it’s rain. We sparingly used the water hose. Our flowers withered away. The banana trees fell. The coconut trees toppled over, their roots not able to find any water to sustain them. I imagined the water below us retreating away and going back into the ocean. The locals still went to the beach. They spent hours playing in the water saying how they felt so refreshed and renewed. I haven’t been in the ocean since February. What does that say about my soul?
We dug into the dirt this summer. Not to dig a well but to dig a grave for my grandmother. No one bought flowers to the funeral. They would’ve just died in the heat and a dead body was enough. Red ants fell from the trees as the grave diggers plied open the dry ground. I watched the ants crawl around the shoulders of the bereaved. I thought about how my mom is allergic to ants. In that moment I wished I was allergic so one could bite me. I wished to pass out right there on the gravel. I wished for the ants to consume me and make a home out of my living body. I cried vengeful tears behind my sunglasses. I knew half of the people sniffling into their tissues wouldn’t think about our family after this day. I was right. Our collective tears wet the ground. I pictured the roots of the tree reaching for our tears. The men dug and dug. I had spent an obscene amount of time doing my hair that morning because she had always liked my hair. I combed and retwisted and fluffed but what did it matter. She would never see it again. At the gravesite I put my hand on her tomb. Everyday I have an image of her holding my hand. The last time I saw her she said “Look! The storm is coming over the water. It’s going to be a good pour.” That was the last time it rained on this island before the air and ground dried up. Last night for the first time in months, the sky cracked open like a firework. Rain had come. She squeezed my hand in my dream.
No one has declared that the drought has ended but the grass has turned back green. I keep thinking things are crawling on me. I keep imagining that I’m being taken over. I think it’s my anger. Then I think it’s grief fighting to get outside of me. I turned on the shower one night and let rage fall through the faucet. I allowed myself to be consumed for seven days. I felt like I could fly. I felt blind. I put my hands out in front of me to feel around how to get out of the room I made for myself. Could someone please say this drought is over? I have no more energy to conserve. The shower is on and I’ve turned to faucet to full strength. I’m watching my love go down the drain.
If you can’t give us life, give us peace.
This summer is split into two parts. I had a honeymoon in Hawaii, that’s the first part. The second part is when the phone rang during that honeymoon while the sun was still rising over the mountains. The day our lives changed. Now, I am working on the third part. Turning my silent rage into the words that free me. Now it’s all starting.
With love,
T.
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