The
Roots of a Mulberry Tree
by Avital Gad-Cykman
In a summer blessed by
rains, Bia was set free from high school’s mighty
grasp. To celebrate the event,
she bought a white dress that flowed softly along her
body. Her school uniform
had grown tighter since the beginning of the school
year, but she refused to buy
a larger size. The experience of growing into her
clothing and then out of them
delighted her.
She chose a few
friends at school, those who had the scent of honest
love: sweet and warm with a
semi-bitter edge like a nut-chocolate cake on Saturday
afternoons. Only her
boyfriends, the ones she asked to escort her from
school to the sandy hills, had
scents of all kinds. She attracted boys in the same way
her mother's magnet drew
the needles that her young brother spilled on the
carpet. Many days she came
home with a layer of sand covering her skin.
“These boys are doomed to
see Bia’s curves reflected in the softness of the dunes
forever,” said her
grandmother with a smile.
“Is there anyone who doesn’t
dream of her eager face, her honey-brown eyes, or her
golden skin?” Jonas, her
classmate, asked the other boys.
“Maybe someone,” they said and
laughed.
The MPB, the popular
Brazilian music the radio played from morning until
night, made Bia cry with
sweet longing. Her days carried strong excitements. She
would whirl around the
room, holding the weekly letter from a faraway aunt.
When one of the family’s
babies fell down, she would take him in her arms to
wipe his tears and kiss his
nose. Each moment was pregnant with news.
The children shared
their secrets with her for a greater sense of mystery
and drama. She conquered
everyone who entered the circle of her enchantment.
~
At times, Bia spent hours in
the guest room. Family diaries piled on top of family
diaries. The growing pile
conveyed bare substances of emotion, transmitted from
mother to daughter in a
varied intensity, since they had all emerged from the
womb of nature
itself.
The family believed
that the women’s laughter was the cause of blessing
rains. Their cries quivered
in the air like a silver web.
#
During that year, her family
sensed, without understanding, how Bia’s unique talent,
the capacity to be
drowned in her own feelings, rose like the high tide.
Bia had already acquired
some unique impressions. The family photo-album
reminded her of the pairing-up
for Noah's ark. She spent hours looking at pictures
that breathed with desire.
The pages showed her parents wooing each other,
surrounded by an ever-growing
family. She grinned at the serious pose of her
grandparents, looking up at her
from a picture placed in the center of a flowery page.
Grandfather’s white hand
rested heavily on Grandma’s shoulder, his thumb hidden
under her dress’ stripe.
They had become renowned for their display of love
sounds at night.
Bia turned the page
and found the radiating picture of her cousin, Leticia,
taken when Leticia had
fallen in love with a dead poet. Beside it, her
brothers’ happy, shameless loves
vibrated in the air.
~
Bia’s choice to change her
lovers every week or two provoked the family's
amusement. It was not a
traditional reaction, but it was a loving one.
Her mother tried,
without success, to create a bond with Bia’s
boyfriends. "We're having a Saint
Joao's dinner," she told her on a Monday. "Why don't
you bring Wilson?"
"Who?" Bia gazed up
from the stool she set in front of her frenzied
painting. It was dripping orange
and scarlet paint onto the tiled floor of the veranda
surrounding the terracotta
painted house.
"Bia! You took him to
the cinema on Wednesday!"
"Oh, him." Bia
laughed. "When is dinner?"
She ended up bringing
Edinaldo who had the sweetest kisses. The family could
not hold back a friendly
roar of laughter. Edinaldo looked surprised, but Bia
squeezed his arm and
laughed so playfully he had to laugh as well.
Her laughter was
contagious in those days.
~
Once, on a hot summer
afternoon, Bia peered down at the cobblestone-street
stretching from the house
to the cinema. Jonas had been leaning against the
house's bamboo fence for
hours. When she came out an hour later, he was still
there. He was her quiet
classmate, the hotel owners' son. His parents had moved
into town when the
government workers started assisting the town in its
growth. The government paid
them to keep the hotel vacant. That way, when a
government employee needed a
room to pair off, he was assured of having one.
Jonas helped his
parents on summer vacations. Most of the hotel guests,
especially the flamboyant
women who accompanied several different men in the same
week, demanded his
presence. He moved about pleasant and almost unnoticed
while serving drinks or
showing the guests to their rooms. When they called for
room service, he entered
with such delicacy the room felt emptier than it had
been without him.
"Ola," he said to Bia,
"Are you going somewhere?"
She looked at his
expectant face. "To the field," she said. "My sister
said the mulberry tree is
loaded with fruit."
"Um, maybe I'll go
there too," he murmured, mopping his hands on his khaki
hotel uniform. "I don't
have to work now.” He looked at her with imploring blue
eyes, his blond
moustache writhing.
Bia smiled at him. He had
the refreshing scent of drying eucalyptus twigs. "Sure,
let's go."
~
Clouds filtered though
the gnarled branches and framed her face. Light and
shadow played with her
silken black hair. Bia's long white dress swayed in the
breeze and clung to her
body. At the top of her legs, her white underwear
gleamed.
"Here it comes!" she
warned Jonas. A fall of mulberries covered his face,
his aching naked shoulders,
his feet. She leaned on the branches, then, slid her
feet from his shoulders to
his back and down to the ground. When she finally stood
upright, her head was at
the height of his chest.
"Now feed me and I'll
feed you," she told him.
Through the thin
fabric of her dress, he could see the lines of her
belly and
breasts.
"I can paint your lips
with a berry," he suggested.
"I can paint your nose
with a berry," she said, laughing.
"I will paint your toenails red." He kneeled in front of her, his knees
squeezing berries.
She filled her hands with
fruit and passed it over the back of his neck.
His shyness vanished as he
painted his way up her ankles, her knees, her thighs.
By evening, their
whole skin was red and they laughed in their sleep when
small ants tickled their
bodies.
~
Bia stopped dating
other boys. A month later, her grandmother argued that
if Bia had blossomed in
the wilderness, then a danger of withering could be
threatening her soul now.
"What's so wonderful
about him?" her cousin asked in wonder.
"Oh, Leticia, I can
feel him deep inside."
"Couldn't you feel the
others?" Leticia wondered.
Bia held her hips,
bent with laughter. "No, I just feel him."
~
They developed games
of joy. In the slightest breath, in the finest
movement, they felt each other.
She smelled him to find where his cravings lay and then
set him ablaze tasting
his skin with her tongue. His trailing fingers
responded to her desires. In
their awakening, their bodies entangled. He looked at
her delicate face, filling
with demand, and let howls of lust escape.
The essence of Jonas's
receptive nature fit in the mold of Bia's passion. She
could not tell if Jonas
made her wishes bend to his measure or if he was an
ideal lover.
But as the weeks moved by,
Bia took her mother aside and cried in her arms. Gray
circles formed under her
eyes. The overwhelming force of Jonas’s desire for her
had shaken his spirit. He
had confessed he was condemned to see her in other
women, and to lust for her in
them.
In lonely mornings,
he confronted "senhoras" whom government workers had
brought to the hotel. They
took him under their guidance, but he could only feel
Bia in their adult
body-love. In their arms he would touch her, and in her
arms regret having loved
them.
She smelled their
heavy scent on him, but through her cutting ache she
knew how he loved her. She
loved him back.
#
Their days stretched
into weeks and then into months. They spent the entire
summer together, every
day from noon until night, every month from November to
February. Then, she
learned he had planned to go to Bahia for the Carnival.
His savings almost made
his ceramic piggy bank explode. He had aspired to
attend the Carnival
celebrations for years.
"Come with me," he
said.
But Bia could not
imagine herself out of her land, away in a strange
place without her family.
"There are crowds there, filling the streets for days,"
she said. She danced for
people she loved, but her body refused her that grace
when strangers surrounded
her.
"You'll be with
me."
"You know I can't. My
roots are here." A cloud of sorrow settled upon her
face. Still, she was on the
verge of acceptance. For him. But he didn't ask her
again.
She listened to her
grandfather, as he advised her to join Jonas. His
wrinkled albino face reddened
when he read to her from his diary:
"The carnival leaves
people with no identity, no barriers, no past. Fancy
dress makes origins and
differences indistinct. It balances loves and lights
strong desires. Powerful
drinks are poured into bodies that have already
forgotten their own limits,
bodies dressed with colorful clothes exposing dancing
legs, round edges of
buttocks, sculpted belly buttons, waving breasts or
sweaty chests. What exists
is the call: in the eyes, in the dance, in the voice.
Go, or don't wait," he
said.
Bia sensed Jonas's
excitement and smelled his heat of adventure,
sentiments she couldn’t share. She
decided to stay.
~
When Jonas did
not return, Bia’s eyes sunk back into her dreams. She
took little interest in
anything but his image. Dreamlike, she drifted to the
garden and planted herself
behind the house in the fertile soil. She stood there
day and night, her mouth a
red leaf swaying in the breeze.
Her parents held her arms
and tried to lead her home, but she would not move,
only cry. She had grown
roots into the ground. Her brothers and cousins watered
her with fruit juices
through her beautifully drawn lips and waited for a
miracle to save her.
She stood there, a
tree in growth: quiet and passive, witnessing time.
~
A week stretched into
a month that stretched into a year.
Rumors flew and found
their way from Bahia to Bia's town.
The popular roaming
story-tellers went from town to town and chanted,
accompanied by a crying guitar
and a small drum:
"On Jonas's ride towards his
venture,
His longings framed sweet Bia's
picture.
He reached Bahia-the Promised Land
The sunset color cruel and rough
Dancing Samba on the sand
A pretty woman laughed."
In beat and rhythm:
"The women danced seductively
The men responded ardently
They swung and teased desire
With human flames of fire."
Telling while
playing a crying guitar:
"Warm breeze raised a soft red dress,
stripping a dancer's long dark legs.
Jonas was
open-mouthed! Jonas was open-eyed!
In her hair around
her body, so silky and long, he saw an image of a
graceful black
stork.
How the wind
wrapped their bodies! How they danced!
Jonas was a good
dancer, and he had a blond moustache."
In a loud dramatic voice:
"They danced to the music, caressed by
the breeze, dazed by their heat.
They danced on the
beach, until a ray of sun appeared.
Diana was her name.
A name of a dream.
It was in the power
of the wind!"
Slowly, the family unveiled
Jonas's story through the tales, gossip, and verses.
Professional
gossipers said that Diana had danced in eighteen
carnivals before meeting Jonas.
She and her mother used dreams to sew their dancing
clothes.
Diana would tell:
"I dreamt I saw a clown."
"What did he look
like?" Her mother would ask.
"He had green legs
like a frog, a big belly like a bear and a red butt
like a baboon."
But usually she dreamed about fatal lover
women.
Now, Diana would tell Jonas: "Your eyes
are velvety dark blue like a night sky."
"Your nails are shaped
like shells."
"Your skin is soft and
tight and warm."
"Love me like a
monkey," then, "love me like a dog," then, "love me,
love me!"
Jonas would love her like a monkey, like
a dog, like the lover he had become with Bia not that
long ago.
Diana always
realized her dreams. Her father became richer by the
year, and her mother sewed
the family's fantasies.
Jonas
surrendered.
She made him dream.
She made him forget.
Their son was named
Daniel.
#
All that year Bia stood
under the sunlight and in changing shadows. Her
cousins, who had found her to be
their favorite doll, brushed her black hair daily. Her
beauty became so delicate
it made lovers cry.
In the afternoons,
the family sat in the shadow of Bia’s long hair and
gazed at the wavy line of
the dunes. The youngest children would tell their
parents if Bia moved a hand or
gave a possible hint of a smile.
The entire family
put their ears to the ground every Friday to hear if
the bus from Bahia had
arrived. It came to town only when there were
passengers coming.
With time, Bia's roots
absorbed the ground's fertility and grew their knots
and ropes very deep and
very far. They found their way to Bahia and then into
Jonas's dreams. Soon, he
had to make love with Diana only in the light or
otherwise, he would touch Bia
in her. Bia sensed how he could almost smell her. How
he had to smell
her.
In the beginning of
March, on a Friday, the family heard sand cracking at a
short distance from town
under heavy wheels. Bia's mother left the house
sobbing. She ran to Bia, kneeled
in front of her, and wetting the ground with tears, she
dug around the roots.
"He is here, Bia, he
is here," she cried.
Bia fell off and
closed her eyes when her roots gradually melted.
Her warming body
spread the sugared ginger scent of happiness and fear.
~
Jonas was sitting on the
hotel's balcony overlooking the street, when Bia
arrived. The angelic lightness
of her features combined with her newly learnt walk,
her baby steps. Her face
glowed, and her body fit softly into her new blue
dress. She stood near the
balcony, on the pavement, and drank in his looks.
He had changed. He
wore a suit of fine white linen, the kind the idle rich
wear in the films. His
arms had turned paternal, stronger than before, and his
hands grew golden curls
on their back. Jonas's eyes met Bia's with dark blue
alarm, as his moustache
quivered.
"Bia!" he said in a voice
that mixed appeal and wonder.
"Yes," she answered
tenderly. "I am here."
She walked around the balcony to the door
where he was clenching the doorknob with sweating
fingers. When she entered the
small lobby, her legs failed her, and she held on to
Jonas' shoulder. "You smell
so good," she said.
~
Bia had acquired the
ability to remain still through all seasons and
affairs. The hotel, bubbling
with Jonas’ confusion like a champagne glass on
New-Year’s Eve, served for that
matter as any other place. For three days, Jonas
wandered drunkenly around the
hotel, and Bia sat on the brown leather sofa of the
lobby.
Diana acknowledged
Bia's presence on the third day. She cradled Daniel in
her arms and sat to
breastfeed him next to Bia.
"Sweet!" Bia observed
when Diana leaned back, "He looks like Jonas."
"He does."
Bia put a finger in
Daniel's hand and he closed his fist on it.
For half an hour,
Daniel sucked milk and held Bia's finger.
They were quiet.
Only the suckling sound could be heard and the ticking
of the wall-clock.
"We will go back to
Bahia," Diana told Bia, buttoning her purple blouse.
Bia sighed, thus
hurling the grip of her sorrow.
"What do you want?" Diana
asked Bia. Her eyes reddened.
"Nothing," Bia said.
"Just to sit here."
"Because of Jonas,"
Diana said.
"Because of
Jonas."
Diana's gaze
wandered around the room and caught a shade of Jonas.
"He can't stay," she
said.
"He can," Bia said
quietly. "He has to stay, you know."
"If he would," Diana's
voice trembled, "then I would too."
Bia's presence had
never been so concentrated as in that moment. Diana and
Daniel huddled within a
circle she could somehow penetrate. It bore the scent
of honest
love.
#
The mulberry tree gave
much fruit that year. It was a fortunate thing, as Bia
and Jonas never lost
their taste for berries. At times, Diana dreamed Jonas
in the dunes when he
joined her under the soothing breeze.
Breezes and berries
marked the family days. Berries and Breezes.
Nine months later
Bia gave birth to Rafael.
"Sweet!" Diana observed. "He
looks like Jonas."
"He does."
Avital Gad-Cykman's work has been published or is forthcoming in
Glimmer Train, Prism International,
Other Voices, Happy, Stand Magazine, AIM Quarterly, The
Bridge, Gargoyle Magazine, The Binnacle and other publications. It has
also appeared online in Salon, Zoetrope All-story Extra, Salt Hill
Review, 3am,
In-Posse Review and
elsewhere. Her story collection was one of the six
finalists for Iowa Fiction
Award.
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