<\/p>\n
The moment I credit with becoming a cynic happened on the day the city came to take down our treehouse without warning. Perhaps 13, I was alone in the house fretting over the tissue paper I had farcically stuffed in my bra and struggling with my unruly, red hair in the mirror beside the mullioned door. From that vantage point, I witnessed a decrepit city worker, cigarette butt hanging out of his mouth, mount the ladder to 108 \u00bd. I felt the creep of hot, red blotches work their way up my neck. Might he accidentally burn the whole thing down?<\/em> I was still much too innocent to think that he might be there to purposefully destroy the treehouse before my very own eyes. I hadn\u2019t played in it in years, but I had spent a substantial part of my fanciful childhood up in those branches and I did still escape there when my altogether too busy-bodied family became too much for me. My younger brother, who did, to that day, aim his toy guns fashioned from branches at the occasional passing car from that treetop perch, was already at the bus stop down the street waiting for his ride to primary school with my mom on that fateful day.<\/p>\n I rarely confided in my family anymore at that age. I sat stoically through supper, all pre-adolescent pretense, until I could go upstairs to my room, but I was still a child at heart. And when the city worker went back up the ladder with an ax and started chopping down the railing, my little-girl heart broke into as many splinters as that support my dad had scrupulously built eight years prior without driving a single nail into the tree. I ran out of the house crying all the way down the street to the bus stop, leaving the front door agape.<\/p>\n What my mother did next became legend in the family. She was notoriously apolitical and conflict-averse, but she conjured some fervor and confronted that man.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d she bellowed from a distance.<\/p>\n \u201cVotre construction est dans un arbre de la ville, Madame<\/em>,\u201d he retorked as she approached with long strides.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDe construction. It\u2019s in de city tree.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI beg to differ. We <\/em>built that treehouse and the tree is on our<\/em> property!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCet arbre sert comme poteau t\u00e9moins. <\/em>C\u2019est \u00e0 la ville<\/em>,\u201d each was using their mother tongue like a shield.<\/p>\n \u201cBullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRetournez chez vous, s\u2019il vous plait, Madame<\/em>.\u201d When he told her to go \u201cback home\u201d she took an overexaggerated step from the street to the driveway in pantomime. Once safely \u201cchez nous<\/em>\u201d she put her hands on her hips sticking one out saucily as if staring down her high school nemesis and spit out, \u201cI\u2019d kindly ask you<\/em> to get off my<\/em> property.\u201d<\/p>\n Taking a step toward the street he bluffed, \u201cJe vais appeler la police<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGo right ahead. There are witnesses,\u201d my mom retorted, dragging an unassuming mother pushing a stroller along the street into the affair. That had a cooling effect on the situation. But there was nothing my mother could do about the fact that we had unknowingly built in a tree that belonged to the municipality.<\/p>\n The treehouse was in an age-old maple on the North-West corner of my parent\u2019s lot. The tree itself had always \u201cspoken\u201d to me, even before the tree house was built in it. I had endowed it with a supernatural dimension that was key to my childhood imagination. It was a gateway. The lower hanging branches formed an arch and when I walked out of them, I became a normal girl who went to school and did other normal-girl things, but when I came home and passed under the arch in the other direction I was transformed, enchanted. When I would drive by the house after boarding the bus to school, I would turn and wave. I imagined that the other kids and the cranky, old, toothless bus driver thought I was waving at my parents or a dog staring a lonely day down his snout. But I was waving at the towering maple. At least they hadn\u2019t cut down the tree. That would have outright killed me.<\/p>\n Later in life, I learned that some corner Maples are called Witness Trees. Witness Trees were either planted or left to survive the zeal of scythe and lawnmower at the corners of lots. They served to demarcate ownership, but ironically, belonged to no one until the municipalities took over guardianship, at which point they belonged to everyone. What the Witness Trees themselves own are our memories, our life history, and more importantly, the landscapes\u2019 transitions and transgressions. The coming of electric and phone lines, paved roads and motor cars, war survivors, bb guns, miniskirts, car alarms and endless urban sprawl.<\/p>\n I hadn\u2019t seen my Witness Tree since the beginning of the pandemic. My parents had come to Montr\u00e9al to visit me when the relaxing of sanitary measures allowed, but I hadn\u2019t made the trip out to my iconic, childhood house on the outskirts of Sherbrooke since Christmas 2019. Things had been looking up since summer and my family was inanely optimistic about finally holding a holiday gathering, for this, the second Covid Christmas. Don\u2019t ask me why.<\/p>\n I, on the other hand, was cynically looking at Amazon.ca pages in a last-minute frenzy to get Christmas presents for my family. I was so at a loss for ideas that I had actually typed in \u201cChristmas present brother.\u201d (Don\u2019t pretend you haven\u2019t tried something like that). All the \u2018Thank you for being my brother\u2019 tokens were out from the get-go. I was narrowing the choice down to the \u201cBook of unusual knowledge,\u201d so he could continue to bore us with his cornucopia of useless factoids for the next 28 years, or the whisky stones, hoping I could finally get him drunk and maybe have some fun with him.<\/p>\n Then, my cynicism overflowed its familial boundaries, and I began to experience shopper rage. I conjured up images of myself mutilating Jeff Bezos with dull objects and distributing his wealth to factory workers. I pictured my methodical self, holding him down by the lapel while my possie of radical, anarchist friends breached his vault, kicking him with their Doc Martens in passing, and throwing wads of cash at delivery truck drivers. I pictured Saint-Denis Street, circa 2010, when there were still independent shops, and they were open, and the caf\u00e9s played soft Christmas music, and you could actually sit down with your coffee. So quaint. You could think about your loved ones and their idiosyncrasies while you walked and chose a store that might have something they liked. Now, I was plowing through ideas, throwing them out with snide remarks about my brother, at five a second. Impatient. For what? Searching for a gift for my mom? Please. That would be worse. It was screen-itch. Restless finger syndrome.<\/p>\n The Christmas event was a moving target and only a few days away. At first, we were to have a big family reunion. The government, in their endless flipflops, had said that we could have twenty people at private gatherings. But a new announcement put it at ten. Our celebration had been whittled down to all my favorites (not) \u2013 mom; dad; me; my new fling, Carmen; Josh, my brother; his wife, Cynthia; their 2-year-old, Abigail; Uncle Bob; his son, Tyler; Uncle Steve and Grandma = 11. Then Grandma, the only one I was actually looking forward to seeing, bailed because of my unvaccinated cousin, Katherine, who wasn\u2019t even going to be there but who lives with my uncle, of all people. At least I could show Carmen the Witness Tree, if it was still standing. With my luck, lightning had struck it in the past two years, splintering it straight through the middle. Surely my parents wouldn\u2019t have bothered to tell me.<\/p>\n In a rare stroke of genius, I had had my Christmas gifts delivered directly to my parents\u2019 place. It was genius mostly in that I could delay worrying if they would arrive on time, which they probably wouldn\u2019t. Then, I just had to pack. Which of course I hadn\u2019t done in\u2026you know exactly how long, the same length of time since anyone had packed. Since before March 13th<\/sup> 2020, whenever your last trip before that was. My last trip before that was to Mali, but that was a lifetime ago. Needless to say, I was off to my parents\u2019 in my usual state of disarray. <\/p>\n As we stepped off the bus, I took in the empty expanse of parking lot. You would think I brought the damn city with me. Carmen, on the other hand, pointed out the trees along the borders of the carpark with a shiver of excitement. We had quite a walk from the station without a car. About mid-way, Carmen stopped and gawked at a blue jay. Her delight was endearing, believe me, really it was. I, on the other hand, thought, the blue jays are the only thing to add colour to this dismal place. This far North there isn\u2019t even any holly to add pep to the inner and outer landscape on the shortest days of the year. Perhaps with some holly, I\u2019d be getting some<\/em>. But despite the let up of Covid restrictions over summer and fall, I hadn\u2019t even made it to first base with my new girlfriend. Theories abounded, but explanations were not forthcoming. The blue jay swooped out in front of us and, appropriately, into a blue spruce, which of course isn\u2019t blue at all. It is a comment on grey. The bird disappeared into the branches for a moment and then emerged flying directly at us with a beige pinecone in its beak. I flinched, but when instinct subsided, I giddily thought it was going to put me out of my misery and I wouldn\u2019t have to go the homecoming I was sloshing toward in the wet snow, boots soaked through. Alas, at the last minute it changed course, leaving me, despondently, to mine. <\/p>\n And that path included the uncles. The uncles were the worst really. My parents had finally, reluctantly accepted my orientation. Had probably begrudgingly known before I myself did, considering that I spent all of my time in the woods in overalls playing make-pretend games – with myself and no one but myself. But my uncles, the born-again Christian and the millionaire businessman, didn\u2019t approve. And they were anything but discreet about it.<\/p>\n I had warned Carmen. But Carmen, she was out to change the world, one uncle at a time. She was anything but daunted and as indiscreet as my uncles, which worried me, to say the least.<\/p>\n The first thing that came into view when we turned onto my street was the Witness Tree. It looked just the same. Frozen not only in this frigid landscape, but in time. Carmen inhaled deeply and breathed back out, \u201cOh, il est majestueux<\/em>!\u201d I had been wanting to share my history with the Witness Tree with Carmen, who was hopping by my side to stay warm. But the Witness Tree loomed like a minefield. It knew too much about me. Besides, my earliest memory with the Witness Tree is years after the Witness Tree\u2019s earliest memory of me. Where would you<\/em> start? So, I left her invitation at awe hanging there like a fallen branch caught in the canopy.<\/p>\n When I opened the door, my mom clasped my shoulders and said, \u201cOh, Bridget, you\u2019re home.\u201d This could have been read as love, but I knew it as an admonishment because my brother had managed to make the trip from Montr\u00e9al to Sherbrooke despite the pandemic, his job and family, while I, jobless and familyless, had not. I had had an embarrassingly long streak of false starts at university. The most preposterous of which was in Fine Arts when I fancied myself a poet. Imagine that. My longest stint yet was the Poli Sci degree where I met Carmen. I was in my second year. Maybe I\u2019d lasted that long because for most of it classes were online, and I didn\u2019t actually have to go. Or maybe it was Carmen.<\/p>\n My mom held out her hand to Carmen and faux friendly said, \u201cmi casa es su casa<\/em>\u201d in faltering Spanish. I was mortified. Carmen received the gesture without comment, despite being as thoroughly Francophone as they come.<\/p>\n Carmen\u2019s parents each came to Canada from Chile as refugees in the early 1980s. They settled in Montr\u00e9al and became active in the anti-Pinochet movement where they met. Artists both, they raised their children in the most fervent of environments, quite the contrast to my waspy, conventional upbringing. The three children all went to school in French, as per law 101. Though her parents remained active in the Chilean dictatorship resistance, they were also staunch Qu\u00e9bec sovereigntists. Carmen grew up in the 1990s in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve during the fever pitch of independence. When philosophizing with Carmen, a common occurrence, I often had to remind myself that she had South American roots.<\/p>\n But her lush, olive skin, full lips, jet black, wiry hair, and ample hips, all screamed Latina. She wore her hair cropped short. It was so thick that it stood on end in whichever direction she had last run her fingers through it, even without gel.<\/p>\n We had arrived a day before the others, on Christmas Eve. A little offering to make up for my absence over the past two years. My parents made the arrival as formal and cold as possible, as per Anglo-Saxon tradition, and when we finally headed up the stairs to my old room, I was even more apprehensive of the moment we would have to decide who would sleep where than I had been anticipating. It really seemed like the world upside-down: that my conservative parents would be expecting their lesbian daughter to be sleeping with her \u201clover\u201d in her childhood bed, but that the vivacious, fiery Carmen wouldn\u2019t let me touch her. For the millionth time I wondered if she was a closet Catholic after all. <\/p>\n \u201cEuh, tu peux prendre le lit<\/em>,\u201d I stuttered. \u201cI\u2019ll sleep on the floor.\u201d In lieu of response, Carmen threw her bag on the bed and beamed at me.<\/p>\n \u201cThis place is amazing,\u201d she breathed in French, \u201cI mean, the grounds, the view, that tree, the, the cachet<\/em>.\u201d I forgot how impressive our house was. Not ostentatious, but authentically Victorian and spacious. Very Eastern Townships anglo. It was the type of place that had nooks and crannies to discover and in which Carmen had probably never had reason to set foot. I wished I had the gumption of my 8-year-old self to show her all the secret hiding places. She would have liked that, but in an instant the nostalgic spell was broken. They would have all been antisepticised of anything whimsical by an overzealous cleaning crew anyway.<\/p>\n Instead, I walked over to the gabled window and rested my knee on the settee in the dormer where I used to spend hours daydreaming, looking out over the sprawling yard and scattered mature trees pretending that the rest of the street wasn\u2019t an ordinary suburb, but a kingdom. Where had that child phantasmagoria gone? In its stead was the most metallic, material, and mocking outlook on life. Perhaps it was that the fantasies offered to me in books and movies grew more and more uncomfortable with each passing year. Instead of throwing away the outdated tropes, I threw out the mode altogether. From here I could see the canopy of the Witness Tree, its outermost branches reaching up like feelers, gauging the changes in the day. If it had any sentience, would it have noticed the change in me? The distant sound of a neighbour\u2019s heat-pump kicked in and drew me out of these musings. I knew I needed to offer something to my partner, if that is what I could call her. She was here anyway, that meant something. It certainly merited an uptick in our status, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n At a loss as to what to offer myself, I realized that my mother would not be. There would be a spread of appetizers and a full selection of drinks downstairs, all done up nicely with handmade Martha Stewart decorations she had tinkered with inartistically but methodically throughout December (or maybe even the entire fall) until perfected. But there would also be small talk. Hard choice \u2013 good company and sexual frustration here or a whisky and inane banter there. The whisky had full dominion over the negotiations.<\/p>\n Downstairs, old-fashioned Christmas music played softly in the background from surround sound speakers and somewhere something was creating the scent of mingled spruce and cinnamon. My parents were stiffly trying to look casual in the formal living room. Like cats about to pounce. The low coffee table was laid with enough food for a boatload of African migrants on the Mediterranean and I spied a bottle of Bushmills on the side table with four crystal glasses. There was enough here to keep us civil for a few minutes anyway. <\/p>\n After the drinks were served and tidbits nibbled, my mom got us started, \u201cSo, Carmen, Bridget tells us you\u2019re a community organizer, working with\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I could tell the red blotches on my neck were making an entry. But I couldn\u2019t tell who this made look more stupid \u2013 my mom for not remembering, or caring, or me for not having explained Carmen\u2019s passion with enough emphasis to make it stick.<\/p>\n \u201cRecently arrived women in situations of vulnerability.\u201d And Carmen took it away. She could talk about this for hours. I sat back and tried to relax into my whisky but remained on edge, hyper vigilant for something that would set off my parent\u2019s federalist, conservative leanings.<\/p>\n I was also wound up because Carmen was looking so tantalizingly sexy in the wingback chair kitty corner to me. I kept stealing glances at the way the flesh of her upper thigh made a slight bulge in her turquoise jeans. She was running her hands up and down her quads in what was probably a nervous tick, but which seemed to be inviting me to look all the more, drawing my gaze toward the crease in her thighs. I had to give a little shake of my head – which I hoped passed off as a reaction to a particularly large sip of whisky – to get a hold of myself.<\/p>\n Both the whisky and the chit chat were having their effect. That is to say, I was feeling tranquil and provoked at the same time. I abruptly stood and asked Carmen if she wanted to go for a walk with me. The sun was just setting when we headed out and the western sky was awash in aquamarine and peach, just like Carmen\u2019s retro 1980s outfit. Carmen didn\u2019t seem to be aware of my mix of pent-up sexual tension and severe annoyance with my parents. Perhaps it was because I am just a jaded person in general, prone to a snarky, running commentary about the world we live in.<\/p>\n \u201cIls disent que la temp\u00e9rature va chuter<\/em>.\u201d Yes, I spoke of the weather. Don\u2019t judge. I was floundering, sick of false starts and not a little tipsy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019ll be like the Christmas\u2019s of our childhood,\u201d Carmen meant it cheerfully, a sweet nostalgia, but it stung to think that we were losing a whole way of being to the vagaries of unbridled capitalism and climate havoc. I kept this to myself though.<\/p>\n Our conversation turned to the news. Covid cases rising, a woman in Chelsea told she could no longer teach wearing a hijab as per Bill 21. We walked and talked and while the nature of our conversation was much more meaningful than the small talk in my oppressive living room, it annoyed me nonetheless. Annoyed and awed me. Annoyed me because it was never, absolutely never, about us. Awed me because Carmen had been in the social justice movement since she was born. On the receiving and mending end of prejudice, always. Yet, she had an unfailing spark in her. And, I, a product of privilege, was given over to bitterness, despondency and self-pity. I was a disgrace.<\/p>\n I was swinging us back toward the house after about an hour of ambling, homing in on the canopy of the Witness Tree, which stood high above everything else in the distance. The walk wore off both the acute irritation of middle-class banality and the whisky glow. Ironically, to get back to the latter I had to walk right into the former. As we rounded the final corner, the moon came into view. It hung like an eyelash shed on a cheek and made me want to reach out and brush the snow off Carmen\u2019s. <\/p>\n All through the afternoon, more family arrived. I tripped through introductions, trying to feel confident and comfortable introducing Carmen to homophobes. Luckily, everyone was too sober and socially pandemic-stricken to make a scene. Eyes seemed to have nowhere to rest, hands fluttered in self-deprecation, the simplest polite formulas came out confused, syllables stuck on tongues so long out of use. Even air hugs missed their mark. <\/p>\n Dinner was informal and gift sharing, well, you know, hit or miss. We were at that part in the festivities where we pretended we were in the olden days by making a mockery of time-honored traditions. My uncle\u2019s fingers were like spiders on the piano keys. He always creeped me out. I don\u2019t believe anything untoward ever happened, but, you never know, the subconscious can be a powerful thing.<\/p>\n Carmen sidled up close to me as a hush fell over the house. I loved the way her ass fit so snugly in the triangle created by the coming together of my legs and flat pubic bone. But despite being officially out for over ten years, I felt scrutinized whenever I brought a girlfriend home. It didn\u2019t help that none of my relationships ever lasted. As such, I couldn\u2019t even fully enjoy this rare closeness to my crush.<\/p>\n It was amazing that any of these people could stand the sight of me, really. I had been such an angry, naively politicized teen. I made every family gathering into a trial, each person\u2019s lifestyle was under scrutiny. They endured me ungraciously. Then I had the audacity to be a lesbian. <\/p>\n After a few dozen Christmas carols Carmen went outside for a smoke. I decided to venture a conversation with my cousin, Tyler, my father\u2019s brother\u2019s son. We hadn\u2019t seen much of each other in recent years, but we were close as kids. I couldn\u2019t stand playing with my girl cousins and Tyler was a bit of a loner, so we gravitated toward each other. Things had changed, but he still seemed a safer bet than anyone else at the party. \u201cWhat\u2019s on your mind these days, Tyler?\u201d It was meant as a fairly general opening, could go anywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cI was thinking about the different kinds of liquid paper. You remember the kind we used to put on with a tiny brush? It was always so lumpy.\u201d<\/p>\n So much for my gamble. I had to stifle an outburst of mirth at the stupidity of his thoughts. Then, I considered which of the options was likely to be the most environmental, but this was exactly the line of thinking that got me so despised in earlier years, so I let it go. Finally, since I was at a complete loss as how to further this conversation, I filled his champagne glass.<\/p>\n I was not the only one filling glasses. I glanced around the room and noted that everyone had a drink to hand and that some people had already seemed to have had too many, the two-meter distance we were all going to keep had flown out the window as people swayed dangerously close to one another.<\/p>\n Carmen came in with a gushing of cold air. The gust seemed to suck the murmur of conversation and background music from the room, and everyone turned to look at her. Either she didn\u2019t notice the attention, or I was imagining things, because she proceeded to take off her winter clothes in the most conspicuous and unabashed way. She had chosen a pair of black skinny jeans and a tight, black mohair sweater with sparkles in the waft. The fabric hugged her breasts in a way I could only imagine doing myself and the softness of the yarn seemed to mock me, giving me a premonition of the smoothness of the skin underneath.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t even enjoy the scene because I could feel the disdain in the air. I had had just as much to drink as everyone else, I realized, as I tottered over to her to help her with her coat, but not before my uncle Steve got there.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019re living in Montr\u00e9al, are you? Where are you from?\u201d interrogated Steve. Carmen says she gets this every day of her life, despite having been born here and having not a speck of accent in French. She has a stock answer.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m from Montr\u00e9al. Where are you from?\u201d She asked politely while she waited for the second part of this formula.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I\u2019m from here. I mean, what\u2019s your ancestry?\u201d Steve postured, not without a bit of each of the opposing forces of pomp and waffle.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents came from Chile. What\u2019s your ancestry?\u201d This question always throws White people off, even the most well-meaning. Not that they don\u2019t know, mind you, just that they\u2019re not used to being asked. Such a simple response and it is amazing to watch how people get so flustered. Either they think it\u2019s impertinent (for themselves but not the other) or they have finally clued into the insensitivity of their opening line and are feeling like bigots \u2013 unintentional bigots, but bigots nonetheless.<\/p>\n After an obvious hesitation in which my uncle\u2019s discomfort was palpable, he went with bravado and entitlement as a response. \u201cWhy, I\u2019m from here, of course. And, well, before that my ancestors were from various parts of Europe, a very long time ago,\u201d he replied, waving away the question with his hands. I looked out the window to the Witness Tree, wishing I could hide away in the non-existent treehouse.<\/p>\n Carmen doesn\u2019t usually let them off the hook easily, \u201cOh, how interesting! From which parts of Europe?\u201d My uncle\u2019s face was ballooning, his cheeks puffing out in indignation. He didn\u2019t want to be having a conversation about where he<\/em> was from. They were supposed to be having a conversation about where she<\/em> was from. Carmen was expertly turning the tables with no small amount of avoidance, sarcasm and pleasure. A conversation that he was supposed to be controlling had turned 180 and he felt the squeeze of it. That squeeze landed directly on his ego and the only tools he had to reduce the pressure being exerted on this fragile organ was to lash out. Bluster is the only word I can think of for what happened next. It\u2019s amazing how very close to the surface vileness lives.<\/p>\n The exact words he said were, \u201cYou\u2019re like a watched pot\u201d\u2026loaded pause\u2026 \u201cof Chili. It never boils.\u201d<\/p>\n My other uncle had doddered over to join us by this point, and he chortled at this. I wondered what my father would have done, but only for an instant, because part of me was afraid to know and I wasn\u2019t going to wait around to find out. I glanced again at the Witness Tree. It rose there stoically, as always.<\/p>\n Nothing I could say would make those words disappear, or even convince anyone of anything, but I couldn\u2019t say nothing.<\/p>\n \u201cYou heinous, racist, old man,\u201d I spluttered.<\/p>\n To Carmen I said, deliberately in French, which most of my family from that generation hardly understands despite, as my uncle was so careful to have pointed out, living in Qu\u00e9bec \u2018forever,\u2019 \u201cOn d\u00e9c\u00e2lisse<\/em>.\u201d \u201cLet\u2019s get the fuck out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n I punched the Witness Tree\u2019s trunk as we bolted past, my mitten only deadening the blow somewhat. There was nothing I felt I could say to Carmen to make things right. So, we both fumed \u2013 her literally smoking a cigarette and me like that pot that had finally boiled over and was steaming on the stove top.<\/p>\n My redhead complexion always betrayed my feelings. I hated to think what I might look like now, splotchy with hot, raw anger and shiny-purple blotches forming from the cold, so I pulled my scarf higher up over my face and sunk into myself.<\/p>\n Carmen hadn\u2019t asked where we were going, and I wouldn\u2019t have been able to tell her if she had. We walked like Quebeckers do in winter \u2013 like children in a walking race. As my murderous thoughts about my uncle, and by extension my family, subsided, I began to wonder what matters most in these moments? What makes the biggest difference? What constitutes solidarity? Carmen wasn\u2019t offering guidance, and it wasn\u2019t up to her to do so, anyway. But I didn\u2019t know the answer to those questions. And, so, I stayed silent.<\/p>\n The party had been coming to a close when we stormed out and I guessed that our dramatic exit would have precipitated that end. After about an hour of walking, I led us back to my street and, through the bare branches of the Witness Tree, saw that most of the lights in the house had been closed. It seemed safe to venture back in.<\/p>\n No one was there to apologise.<\/p>\n We extricated ourselves from the multiple layers of winter clothing we were wearing as quietly as we could and slipped upstairs.<\/p>\n We both lay down in our separate beds, in our separate heads, and Carmen fell asleep.<\/p>\n I, myself, couldn\u2019t even shut my eyes I was still so livid. Even seeing Carmen\u2019s long lashes flutter in her dream-state didn\u2019t calm me. Instead of going out the window like I used to, I went straight out the front door. Quietly, mind you. I leaned my back heavily along an indentation in the Witness Tree, crossed one ankle over the other, and lit a joint. At -5 it was a balmy Christmas night and I swear that the tree was emanating a soothing heat even though I knew Maples are dormant for the winter. I felt like the tree was reading me, sending warm feelers into my core. Or maybe it was just that I was still searing with anger.<\/p>\n Along my parents\u2019 lane of majestic old estates, the neighbours\u2019 places were some distance off and the streets were empty of people this Christmas night, so I felt no compunction talking to myself and the Witness Tree. I turned to face it, leaning my tuque padded forehead on its solid trunk and started to murmur in a hoarse whisper about the indignity of my life, \u201cWhere do these people come from? And why are their heads so clogged up with decades old liquid paper? Frozen solid in the 1990s. My uncle\u2019s joke wouldn\u2019t have been funny even if it wasn\u2019t racist.\u201d I had a few more choice things to say about my coloniser family and the crescendo was rising. With nothing but rolling, snow-covered lawns behind me and the Witness Tree before me, and considering the hour, I began to gesticulate and cry out a jumble of grievances. \u201cWho serves Christmas dinner on STYROFOAM PLATES for God\u2019s sake? Only my<\/em> Mom. STYROFOAM at CHRISTMAS in 2021! I didn\u2019t even know they SOLD Styrofoam anymore!\u201d<\/p>\n I laid my head on the Witness Tree\u2019s unyielding trunk again. A shiver went through me from the centre out. Followed by an eruption. \u201cAnd my Dad! He\u2019s cut from the same cloth as my uncle! Could he have said such an odious thing?\u201d I recoiled at the thought and then I simply screamed, the Witness Tree\u2019s porous wood absorbing my wrath. Now, instead of my whisper being hoarse, my throat was.<\/p>\n My thoughts turned to Carmen. \u201cWhat must she think of us?\u201d As I shook my head, my cheeks brushed against the Witness Tree\u2019s rough bark. \u201cWhy, why, whenever you open your mouth to say something to her does it have to be so fucking acerbic, Bridget? There she is, being sweet, which is actually what you like<\/em> about her, for once, and you repay her with sarcasm and bitterness.\u201d My shoulders dropped, deflated, and, again, I shook my head. \u201cOr worse, silence,\u201d I whispered. The steam had run out of me, like the roach I had flicked into the snowdrift built up around the base of the Witness Tree.<\/p>\n I went downstairs perforce for a glass of water to wash down my Advil, though they never even take the edge off the pain. Carmen was in the kitchen having a coffee with my brother. I peeked in and the only word for her was resplendent. A word from my technicolour childhood, trying to surface through the layers of calcification and the fog of a hangover. I hung back to avoid being seen. You will despise me, but the last thing I felt I could do at that moment was interact with Carmen. I then peeped out the bay window of the kitchen nook at the Witness Tree and silently supplicated, \u201cPlease let me survive this day. Give me strength.\u201d<\/p>\n I heard my mom rustling in the study and dutifully, yet reluctantly, went over to see her. She was folding wrapping paper that was still good for another year. It didn\u2019t excuse the Styrofoam, but it was a signal that she was making some sort of effort, because it wasn\u2019t her reflex to pose that sort of environmental gesture. Even the soft crinkling sounds cut through the bones of my forehead. You would think I couldn\u2019t bear it, but I was used to functioning through a migraine. Ok, maybe not functioning, but managing, let\u2019s just say. I crouched down with a wince and began helping her wordlessly. After a few layers were tucked away for safe keeping she suddenly said, \u201cYou\u2019ve met your match, Bridget,\u201d the sudden noise peaking the sear of migraine.<\/p>\n My eyes rose from their task wearily and sought hers with the faintest hint of a question mark I could muster. She elaborated, \u201cCarmen. You\u2019ve finally found a woman as determined and stubborn as you.\u201d It had been fifteen years since the worst of it, but our mutual distaste for each other in my teen years was so virulent that it had left echoes through our adult mother-daughter relationship. I realized that I had forgotten that my mother also loved me. The last time she outwardly praised me was at a silly pageant when I was eleven \u2013 also the last time I had worn anything with frills. And there she was, both admiring me, in a way, and wishing the best for me, in one breath.<\/p>\n It was also one of those moments in which my perceptions went \u201cchink.\u201d They were lifted up, rattled around and when they were let go, they settled into place just next to where they had been. I had considered Carmen out of my league, but my mom had considered my previous string of frumpy and sullen girlfriends to be \u201csettling.\u201d<\/p>\n Just then, my dad appeared. He shifted his slippered feet and adjusted his large hand several times along the doorframe, darting his eyes around the mess. He took in the scene with a deep breath and said, \u201cBridget, my brother\u2026well, I\u2019m just sorry.\u201d It wasn\u2019t much, but it was enough, for now. He\u2019d troubled himself to do it. He came to help with the wrapping paper, which was even more surprising than my mom having taken the initiative. We worked in silence, mercifully. When we were done, he rose and said, \u201cYou know, Bridget, characters and a setting do not a story make,\u201d and left the room. As my brows drew together in incomprehension, I felt a vein of pain spring out from the furrows and travel along my forehead to the top of my skull. Time for a coffee. <\/p>\n My brother and Carmen were deep into a conversation about her work over a fresh brew. I poured myself an oversized mug and tried to join in, but the migraine and the glow of resentment kept me on the outside. I resisted sinking the perfectly convex ceramic mug into the concave equivalent of my eye socket for its warmth lest I look pathetic, which I know you\u2019re thinking, I already do. Once my coffee had time to start working its miracles, I waited for a lull in the conversation and invited Carmen for a walk, knowing that the only thing that would further alleviate the migraine was fresh air. By looking up at the Witness Tree\u2019s branches I could tell that the temperature had dropped substantially over night. They were as still as if they had been painted there on a crystal blue canvas.<\/p>\n The overflowing recycling bins, lined up like school children at attention during assembly (that is to say, haphazardly), looked like angry, blue Oscar the grouches with their Amazon boxes and plastic strapping exploding in a riot of wicked, irate hair.<\/p>\n It was bitter cold. I could do up to -20. That morning it was -27\u00b0C and with the windchill it was minus a fucking gazillion. Holy shit. After just ten minutes, my thighs felt like someone – maybe myself in a self-harm craze – had twanged a rubber band, one of the thick ones for broccoli stems, all up and down my thighs. Only the thighs. Why not the shins? Was it the fat that reacts to the cold? <\/em>At any rate, the word frost bite was on the tip of my tongue.<\/p>\n Thinking of this made me immediately ache for Carmen\u2019s hips, those curves that I had not yet had the permission or pleasure of fully exploring in their nakedness. Only clothed teasing \u2013 occasionally. And watching, studying how the pocket of flesh just under the hip in the back was created and erased with each step.<\/p>\n A wall loomed between us like a third presence, despite our mittened hands swaying side-by-side. Today, this familiar barrier looked different, not a monolithic construction of Carmen\u2019s alone. My side was a petrified layer of cynicism, hers was\u2026invisible through mine, but palpable.<\/p>\n Instinctively, I scooped up her hand and tugged a bit to the right. \u201cViens<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOn va o\u00f9<\/em>?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll see.\u201d After a few years with masks, I figured she could see the mischievous smile in my eyes despite the scarf brushing against the bottom rim of my glasses.<\/p>\n We walked in silence across an empty lot adjacent to ours to the back of the Witness Tree. I knew that the paths were a landmine of seemingly frozen over puddles. All winter long they froze and thawed, and you never could tell in what state they were. I was studying the ground for darker yellow spots of fermenting muck seeping through the snow, black pools of open water, and particularly flat stretches that might indicate a poorly frozen-over puddle vs. rougher solid ground. When I stopped, Carmen bumped into me; she had also been carefully watching the ground. I brought my index finger to my mouth, but all she would have seen would have been the whole mitten. She got the message though and squinted to see what lay ahead.<\/p>\n In a whisper, my scarf millimetres from her tuque, I began, \u201cSee, up there? Perched up higher in the trunks? See the bench?\u201d My mitten traced the line of the \u201cbench,\u201d finely made out of a light-coloured wood \u2013 a massive fallen branch, polished to a shine, having lost its bark long ago, caught horizontally in the crux of two main trunks of the Witness Tree.<\/p>\n Carmen cocked her head to the side, hesitated and finally nodded.<\/p>\n \u201cSee the forest fairy sitting there?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n Again, a silent nod.<\/p>\n I continued painting a picture of one of my childhood fancies, \u201cShe\u2019s wearing a Cossack in rusted, fallen oak leaf colour. Layers of velour garments in natural hues are piled one on top of the other like leaf litter. She looks like a mushroom.\u201d Carmen was no longer looking in the direction of the fallen log. She was looking directly at me. \u201cHer legs are splayed out in front of her with just her feet dangling off the edge. Her walking stick, made of a knobby oak branch, is resting against the leg of the bench, at the ready for when she\u2019ll spirit away. That\u2019s why we must be quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n Carmen turned back in the direction of the fairy. She squinted again and her neck extended forward. \u201cHer face reminds me of an Arcimboldo portrait. Her features are made of fruits and vegetables,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n I took up her mitten again and we lifted our boots high, laying our feet down ever so quietly. In an instant, though, the fairy had grabbed her cane and disappeared in a flourish of ochre. We clambered up into the crux of the tree to the \u201cbench\u201d and our legs hung off the edge like the forest fairy\u2019s. I had never been up there before. At the time I thought it was to not disturb the fairy, but I realized at that moment that it would have been much too high for me back when I was a child, without the support of a carefully constructed treehouse. I sat there with my legs hanging off the edge, the weight of my boots pulling them down. I could feel the blood rush into my feet, pounding there. From up there I began to contemplate the woods of the empty lot. It was scraggly, littered, untended and sorely underappreciated, but its mere existence, despite the odds, its tenacious survival, lent it a sort of staunch beauty.<\/p>\n A tenuous peace fell over me. It was as if everything in that abandoned plot was just right, without even trying. It was messy, chaotic, but at the same time everything had its place, perfect right where it was. You can guess that the peace didn\u2019t last long. And wouldn\u2019t you know that it was humans that broke it? I<\/em> was messy and chaotic, but in my case, things did not seem \u2018just right.\u2019 How could they be when there are Steve-Uncles in this world? I felt humbled, but also hardened. You\u2019ll recognize my usual caustic adult self. The structure of the bare Witness Tree branches on the pale, sepia sky stood out like the negative of a photograph. It came to me that that is how I see the world, in the negative.<\/p>\n \u201cC\u2019\u00e9tait le fun, \u00e7a<\/em>. You surprised me,\u201d Carmen said as she interlaced her arm with mine. I let my head fall to her shoulder.<\/p>\n Upon coming in the house, the reaction on my thighs was immediate. Soft-drink bubbles popped all over the skin. A stinging penetrated my fascia. I was so focused on the sensation at first that I could not move. In the bathroom, I pulled my pants down a bit further than necessary to appraise the damage. My thighs were a patchwork of pink and blue-white islands. As I looked at them, they seemed as though they belonged to another. There was little recognition as I slid my palm over the surface. Only their own intense tingling was making it through the neurons.<\/p>\n The rest of the afternoon progressed at an excruciatingly slow pace, each sound, each bright light, a dagger through my eye. My brother and his family left around mid-day, so at least the toddler screeches were subtracted from the equation. For the remainder of the day, we each did our own thing. At the end of it, as we were turning in for the night, Carmen shared with me that my mom, my father and my brother had all, in their own way, expressed their dismay and regret at my uncle\u2019s behaviour the night before. She seemed appreciative.<\/p>\n The next day was as slow and painful as boxing day was. But the following day I woke, enveloped within a post-migraine glow of appreciation. I could feel exactly where the migraine had been and instead of feeling pain there, I felt gratitude. Gratitude in my forehead instead of the hit from the dull end of an ax.<\/p>\n We were planning our departure the following day, when the edict came in. The government was imposing a lockdown due to the omicron variant. We had instantaneously become a bubble \u2013 the four of us. Whatever we might have thought possible for New Year\u2019s Eve this deep into the pandemic was probably a pipe dream anyway. You wouldn\u2019t think me capable of it and it also amazed me that with my brittle, bitter, fractured mind hope was in my repertoire. I guess hope manufactures itself in some cases.<\/p>\n But all that blew up like the champagne cork we wouldn\u2019t be popping with friends for New Year\u2019s. Our possibilities became: go back to our respective apartments and spend New Year\u2019s alone or stay at my parents\u2019. I genuinely had a hard time deciding which was worse. But for Carmen it was clear \u2013 being alone was worse. She seemed to be getting on nicely here. So that settled that. And while my chances of making it further with her here were slim, with me sleeping on the floor, they were nil if we were in separate parts of a lonely city under police surveillance.<\/p>\n So, it was decided that we would go cross country skiing the next day, New Year\u2019s Eve. Carmen would take my mom\u2019s skis and mine were still in the garage, as my urban life didn\u2019t accommodate winter sports.<\/p>\n I had been skiing since before I could remember so I probably didn\u2019t have much sympathy or even comprehension as to how it could be so difficult. But Carmen, thoroughly city raised, by parents who had themselves been raised in the Mediterranean climate of Santiago, had never cross country skied in her life. She couldn\u2019t even stand still on the skis at first, let alone move forward. My two-year old niece would do better than my 34-year-old girlfriend.<\/p>\n Carmen is self-righteous, in a good kind of way, if that is possible, or maybe I\u2019m thinking of another word, but anyway, she\u2019s principled and politically correct (she would say \u201cwoke\u201d but as a White, settler I couldn\u2019t credibly, with any decency, use that term). It was startling and, admittedly, a little pleasing, to see her out of her element. Don\u2019t judge me. <\/p>\n She had mastered the standing still part and we were now working on moving forward on flat land. Granted, the conditions were a little slippery, but the trails were well kept. As I helped her up for the umpteenth time, I saw that her initial good humour at her ineptitude was wearing thin. Carmen was embarrassed. In the six months we\u2019d been dating and the year or so I\u2019d known her before that I had never seen Carmen Antonia Rodriguez Paredes embarrassed. I felt a flood of compassion replace the exasperation that had been welling up in me.<\/p>\n Many skiers were out that day \u2013 it was the only thing to do, really \u2013 adding to Carmen\u2019s humiliation. A child was having a full melt down, flat on her back, and her mother was having nothing of it. A smartly attired couple, she absurdly pregnant and he dashing, were strolling on the walking path. Another pair of new parents were toeing along their progeny in one of those fancy strollers with skis. An elderly couple were making progress with interlaced fingers, a single ski pole in their free hands. It was too chilly to stay there for any length of time, so we continued on. Sometime later, off the side of the ski trail I could see markings in the snow that looked like a string of parenthesis in an E.E. Cummings poem. Curious, I inched off the path to get a closer look, leaving Carmen on the trail. The snow had melted and refrozen a few days ago, and the wind had blown the new dusting into drifts, leaving bare patches where the surface was a crust \u2013 spring-like conditions. I cautiously creeped over one such patch on my skis. The markings were created by slender, curved, short branches that had blown off the bushes and made indents in the snow upon falling. As I tiptoed around, one of my skis hit a patch of ice and I landed on my bottom \u2013 in a mess of asides. It was then that my father\u2019s comment hit me. The whole world needed fixing, and I was lashing out in all directions with my parenthetic, snarky remarks \u2013 a character, me, and a setting, an imperfect world, with no plot. Carmen\u2019s singular drive, her ability to focus on her chosen issue, while all the while acknowledging the rest, crystallised into brilliance in that moment.<\/p>\n There were some downhills on the way back. I had planned the route accordingly, to give her time to practice. Her eyebrows did a better snowplough than her skis, but we made it home with limbs and dignity intact.<\/p>\n That night Carmen invited me into my bed with her. I was ecstatic, but not getting my hopes up too high and going real slow. She stopped my hand with a sad smile and whispered, \u201cMoi aussi<\/em>.\u201d Me too. Two loaded words. In that moment everything coalesced and nothing more needed to be said. I felt grief for her, of course, but also so much relief, a relief that having had sex with her could not have come close to approximating. Here was Carmen, opening herself up to me – divulging an assault – in a way that was so much more profound than anything the skin could have shared. We slept side by side in the cocoon of this new shared understanding.<\/p>\n Before heading back to Montr\u00e9al the next day, I climbed up into the Witness Tree. The snow drifts had made convenient steps, allowing me to get fairly high up. Once in the crux of the bouquet of main trunks, I was able to use some smaller branches and tension to shimmy a little farther up. I let my mind go blank, inviting the Witness Tree to share its vision with me. My hands caressed the surface of the bark, and my fist probed the solidness of the wood. My eyes followed the rough surface of the trunk up into the canopy where smaller twigs branched off in many different directions. Despite the messiness of the secondary branches, the trajectory of the main trunk was obvious. The plot of the trunk did not get distracted by the bracketed, interposed branching off of intention.<\/p>\n The character (the Witness Tree) was not only an observer of its setting (the transformations and transgressions of an imperfect world). It set in motion a plot, it was a change agent by providing shade, food, habitat, memory and peace.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Witness Tree The moment I credit with becoming a cynic happened on the day the city came to take down our treehouse without warning. Perhaps 13, I was alone in the house fretting over the tissue paper I had farcically stuffed in my bra and struggling with my unruly, red hair in the mirror beside the mullioned door.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5240,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/5240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue27\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nTHE NEXT MORNING, I awoke chaste. My brother arrived with his family first. His impeccable sense of decorum and integrity was, in truth, a welcome counterpoint to my parent\u2019s cluelessness and complacency, but it made me resent him all the same. Especially in light of the fact that Carmen seemed to have taken a shining to him. While I busied myself wrapping the few presents of mine that had arrived, she and he were fast becoming friends.<\/p>\n
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\nTHE NEXT MORNING, I woke with a throbbing migraine. It traveled up my right nostril and over my brow. It penetrated deep back into my skull and emanated out from this shaft. It was both persistent and stabbing.<\/p>\n
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\nDiscomfited she might be, but determined Carmen still was. We kept on at it, the falls coming less and less often. It was increasingly possible to take in the scenery. We heard a pecking from above and clumsily padded around a tree on our skis in the soft snow that had built up there. This kind of movement is ridiculous on even the most experienced of skiers. We were finally at the right angle to see a piliated woodpecker banging on a dead branch. I had an electric shock of memory through my migraine core. The chips of wood flung about, gleaming in the sun like so many pieces of confetti. Perhaps we would have our New Year\u2019s celebration after all. Out of nowhere, I guess from staring up and not down at her skis, Carmen fell into the deep snow, this time laughing. I crept over and purposefully fell, landing just shy of her in a puff of snow, also laughing. She retaliated by flicking a handful of light, powdery snow right down my neck. I rolled on top of her in an awkward hug, our skis clanging and tangling.<\/p>\n