I had always hated pine trees. Since I was young I wondered why the town I lived in was covered in them. The church I went to, the church my grandfather fought for, had them dotting the playground behind the sanctuary like they were waiting for the congregation to come out. The pine trees stood as sentinels against the open sky, guarding. They stood watch in my grandparents front yard too, reaching tall above the magnolias. There were two, one on either side of the walkway leading up to the front porch, christened Adam and Eve. There were pines in the alley, separated from the backyard by a fence. I would watch squirrels leap from branch to branch as sunlight drifted through the needles and onto the pool we played in. I would look at the tops of them as I ran through the trail behind the school, because I got bored with running. In fact, pine trees were so common, I often found myself thinking that Abrahams descendants in the Bible were as numerous as pine trees instead of stars.
I hated them. I wanted to set them all on fire, to hear the cones popping like corn as they burst into flames. I preferred oaks, or pecan trees. My other grandfather grew pecan trees. I remember him nailing sheet metal to their trunks so that squirrels couldn't reach the nuts. That felt pointless to me, since we always harvested the pecans by picking them up from the ground. Oftentimes my grandmother would say "lets take a walk" and I would rush to put on my shoes. Snakes were an ever present fear at their house, so my grandmother would bring a stick with us wherever we walked. she would bend low to the ground under the scraggly pecan trees and poke at the broken nut shells, her lip withered in distaste.
'Squirrels got 'em." she'd mutter.
There was a time I heard of where she had been sweeping the hair from a cut out the door of her salon that was built into the side of the house. There was a large pregnant rattler rooted at the foot of the steps, so she'd taken a shovel and chopped its head off. Its venom had sprayed from its jaw in a stream and fallen into her mouth. she said she'd been "sick as a dog" because of that damn rattler. My grandpa said that wasn't the only pregnant snake he'd seen on their land. He would go out and hunt for them, conducting war on satan's spawn, claiming the babies would wriggle from out of their mothers belly like maggots. It was only later that I found out the eggs didn't already have a fully formed snake inside of them.
When they moved to a small house in the suburbs, he would sit out on the concrete patch that begged to be a porch with a scowl on his face. He seemed like fresh milk willing itself to go sour. He was angry at his wife for moving them closer to their daughter, the eldest, angry at the daughter for asking. My other grandpa sold his land when he retired from preaching. there was something about the loss of land walking hand in hand with old age in a man. It seemed like they worked hard all their lives only to sell the thing they worked for. There was a bitterness, a longing with the loss of land. I heard it in their reminiscing, in their passing words to a long time friend.
Who knows. Maybe we are all old men in our time.
once, we had been at their new house for thanksgiving. Id spent the week feeling sick to my stomach, nursing this pit that could not go away. It had gotten bigger and bigger, being ripped inside of me like something had rotted and was now becoming septic. I wanted to leave, to escape. That night, after battling the feeling for four days, I had enough. My sister was deep asleep in the bed beside me and so I got up and snuck to the back door. I was crying, and I needed to scream. I unlocked it, apprehension building as it beeped once, and then opened the door. A screeching alarm rung throughout the whole house, and I quickly realized that I had set off the security system. I thought of running back into my room but decided that would only create more panic, so I closed the door and locked it back, waiting for my perturbed family to come into the living room.
They asked why I set the alarm off and I told them I had wanted to see the stars. My father had scoffed, and gone back to bed. I let them think I was just weird. odd. that I was being stupid again. I held my breath in the suffocating room that night, laying next to my sister in our aunts childhood bed.
do you know the crazy thing about all of this? I love you, deeply and darkly. I want to know the kinds of things about you that you only remember faintly. we don't talk anymore and I think that's why I'm so lonely all the time now. of course its not fair for me to blame you. but I'm not known for being fair. I'm known for being selfish in my family. I am the eldest daughter, the eldest grandchild. I am prideful and stubborn. Mom told me I came into this world angry, red and screaming on the delivery table like I was infuriated about being alive. But aren't all babies red and screaming when they are born? Isn't childbirth just as painful for them as it is for women? Being so aggressively separated from the place that has nourished, warmed and quarantined you from the rest of the world would make anyone angry. being born by blood and pain must reflect how we live through our lives, bleeding and aching as we go about our days, trying to get back to when there was an umbilical cord attached to us and we only had to stretch to be embraced.
I am no different than the people in this world, who want above all, to be known.
I am so tired, did you know that? I have a lump in my throat shaped like you, a pit moving in me just like your shadow. It could be that I swallowed a seed and it has now sprouted and will grow until I am nothing but bones and plant. Could you love me then? Perhaps then I could give up on you. I could leave you alone if I was sick with cancer, tumors eating me up. I could tell you to leave me alone. But I am healthy and you still want to go.
Did you know that I am pulling out my hair, each individual strand picked based on the texture or elasticity of it. My grandma tells me I will have bald spots if I don't stop, and then I think about you and how you're going bald. your hair kept falling off in my fingers the last time I ran my hands through it. you're still a kid, too.
what really rips me apart about all of this, is the idea that at some point we had our last kiss. and I didn't know it. I should have catalogued every single kiss, every single touch. I wish I had savored you. held you closer. held on longer. I don't think I can give up on you.
after all, I am the eldest daughter, and I am stubborn and prideful. but most of all, I am selfish and I love you the only way I know how. selfishly.
