The Jacaranda Tree

Published in Permafrost Magazine Print Issue. Winter 2019 Vol. 41.1

Johannesburg, 1976

The Jacaranda tree, beneath which the children’s sandbox sits empty, is bare. Its brittle leaves litter the lawn where they are easily crushed beneath the child’s tekkies. Helen likes the crisp crunch of it more than the squish of purple blossoms that cover the ground like a skin in the summer and bruise, dark and wet, underfoot. The low winter sun has not yet crested the tree, which casts its quiet shadow across the yard. 

She has been waiting for a while. Her eyes scan the windows that punctuate the back of the cottage while she counts off the rooms: her parents’ bedroom, the room she shares with her older brother, the sewing room, the frosted glass of the small bathroom. As she waits, and counts, she manipulates the limbs of her brother’s favorite Action Man into star jumps and reluctant backbends. 

It is the July school holiday and her mother has taken her brother to see Robin Hood at the cinema. Helen has not gone with them because the movie is for boys. You wouldn’t like it, her brother had said. She puffs her cheeks out and exhales hard, clouding the cold air with her breath. She did want to see the movie. It’s not fair that she has been left at home. She feels the rise of emotion in her chest and throws the Action Man across the yard. The toy hits the Jacaranda and with the impact the head—with its plastic molded beard and hairstyle—is knocked from its shoulders. The body, in camouflage trousers and a vest, bounces once then lands with one leg twisted behind its back.

Her frustration at not being included in the movie has been assuaged with the promise that Anna, her nanny’s daughter, will play with her. Anna is visiting her mother for one week of the school holidays. She is older. Thirteen by now. Maybe fourteen. And it is the promise of this companionship that keeps Helen waiting. Anna doesn’t live here with her mother. She lives somewhere else and visits only during holidays. Somewhere Helen has no knowledge of but imagines as a mud hut in a village in the countryside, surrounded by cattle grazing in the veld. She pictures a wood fire, tended by a toothless African woman wearing a blanket—she knows that Anna lives with her grandmother—burning at the centre of a thatched rondavel.

Helen glances toward the toy. The decapitated body lies twisted against the base of the tree, the head face-down in the dirt. She did not mean to break it and now, as well as missing the movie, she expects to be in trouble. Under the tree, she scoops a shallow furrow in the ground into which she places the body and the head (face-up, in position above the neck) and pats the soil down to cover the evidence. She arranges two dry Jacaranda leaves in a criss-cross shape over the grave, to disguise or perhaps mark it.

Across the yard stands their new jungle gym. A multicolored metal structure of ladders and bars, uprights and horizontals arranged in overlapping layers to climb, dangle from, and twist around. In the last few weeks, since she turned six, Helen has learned to hook her knees over and hang upside down on the monkey bars, a horizontal ladder of rungs at the highest point of the climbing frame. A wing of anxiety flutters in her belly at the thought of the trick. She’s not allowed on the top without a grown up watching but wants to show Anna what she can do. She has been told to wait until Anna has finished helping her mother clean the house. From the low murmur of voices inside, she can tell they’re in the bathroom, which means they’re nearly done.

Finally, Anna appears. She wears a nylon dress under a thin cardigan done up clumsily over her breasts, already so full they give her a voluptuousness that doesn’t belong beneath her girlish face, the cheeks still round with youth. She wears white socks and black school shoes, even though it’s the holidays. Her dark face is shiny with Vaseline and her hair stands from her head in a tight halo of springy black curls. The little girl has never seen their hair worn like this. Her nanny, Anna’s mother, wears her hair knotted in neat lines or swirled patterns that she tucks under her doek. Anna’s hair has a wildness to it, unbraided, uncovered, untamed, and the little girl falters in the face of the unsmiling teenager.

Helen rushes to the jungle gym and swings herself around a standing pole.

“Have you got a jungle gym?” she asks Anna.

The older girl doesn’t meet her eye but shakes her head and takes a lazy look around the yard. “No.”

“Well you can use ours,” says Helen. Then, worried she might be misunderstood adds, “but just while you’re visiting. You can’t have it.”

Anna’s dark eyes are framed by short, curled lashes. The little girl twists away under her flat look and continues to spin around the pole. She smells the iron smell of it and feels the hard coldness in her fist.

“Why have you got the same name as your mother?” she asks. 

“It’s not the same.” Anna has not moved.

“Nearly. Anna is inside the name Johanna,” she says and repeats it for emphasis, “Joh-Anna.”

“Anna is my grandmother’s name.”

“When you have a daughter one day, will you call her Johanna?”

“Maybe I’ll call her Helen, like you.”

The words feel like a threat, like the older girl might take something from her, something more than just her name. Helen leans her body weight around the pole until she falls into a swing. Once around. Twice. She imagines a tiny black baby with its mother’s dark eyes and wild hair, wrapped in a blanket next to the fire in that round room. 

“Helen wouldn’t fit.”

“Why not?” The older girl walks past Helen and effortlessly pulls herself up the ladder, quickly reaching the top of the jungle gym. “Don’t you like your own name?”

“You’re not allowed up there,” Helen says, backing away from the metal frame. She shades her eyes and squints up at the older girl. Anna’s woman’s body, silhouetted against the low sun which draws its watery light across the yard, seems incongruous on the children’s play frame. “You’ll get in trouble.”

“Why?” Anna asks, her face shadowed by the light behind her head. 

Helen watches Anna pull herself over the top rung to perch at the jungle gym’s highest point, her feet hanging between the monkey bars.

“It’s too high.”

“Too high for you.”

“I’ll tell.” Helen moves towards the kitchen door. “I’m telling your mom.”

“She said I must play with you.”

“Not all the way up there. It’s too high. You’re too high.”

Anna chuckles low in her throat and slowly shakes her head. She mumbles something in a language that Helen doesn’t understand.

“Come down.”

Anna swings her legs over the edge of the frame.

“Please, Anna. Come down. I want to show you something.”

“Mind, out of the way.” Anna flicks her wrist in a gesture of dismissal. “I’m going to jump.”

Helen steps back. Anna scoots forward until she’s perched on the top rung of the ladder, gripping it loosely on either side of her thighs with her pale palms. She leans out, lifts her bottom off the bar, holds for a beat and jumps, landing neatly with her feet together, knees bending on the impact that kicks up dust around both their feet. She stands upright and wipes her palms on her skirt. 

“Are those your school shoes?” asks Helen.

The older girl shrugs and pulls the sides of her mouth down. She doesn’t look at her feet. “Yes.”

“It’s the holidays. You shouldn’t wear your school shoes during the holidays.” 

Helen’s own school shoes are sitting in her closet. Polished by Johanna once a week, they are stored—heels together—in a neat pair among a dozen or so other neat pairs of shoes; tennis shoes, tap shoes, slip slops, Wellington boots, shoes for ‘special’ and shoes for play. The shoes she is wearing today are her current favorites. Blue North Star tekkies. 

“Why don’t you wear other shoes?”

Anna blinks slowly. “Because.”

“Because, why?”

“Because.”

“‘Because’ is not an answer.”

The older girl shrugs again. “What do you want to show me?”

Helen walks past her to the jungle gym. “Watch me.”

She climbs up the ladder and at the top, grips one of the monkey bars and drops down between them. She hangs for a second, then curls her legs into her body allowing the momentum to twist her upside down. She hooks her knees over the bar, lets go with her hands and lowers her trunk until she is hanging, head down. She opens her arms in a flamboyant gesture of triumph, like an acrobat in a sparkly leotard. The world is reversed. The dry leaf-strewn lawn is above her and the bare fingers of the Jacaranda branches are splayed around her feet. Helen looks at Anna upside down. Her school shoes are worn but polished and slightly dusty from her landing. Her knees, just visible below the hem of her dress are grey with dry winter skin, her cardigan is missing a button, and her puff of hair springs out from her head against the crisp blue sky. Her face is still.

“Look!” Helen rotates her shoulders until her body begins to swing but Anna has turned toward the Jacaranda.

“Watch me, Anna. I’m not finished.”

Anna crosses her arms across her woman’s chest and slouches into her hip.

“Watch me.” With the blood rushing to her head, Helen’s voice sounds hollow, like she’s in a tunnel. She hums experimentally. The sound buzzes in her skull. “It’s like the inside of my head tickles.” 

Anna walks to the tree and bends to dig in the smooth mound of sand Helen has marked with the crossed leaves. She retrieves the headless Action Man, pulling him out by his boot, taps the dirt off and twists his leg back into position.

“That’s my brother’s,” Helen calls. “You can’t play with that!” 

She reaches up to grab the bar above her. Her fingertips brush the metal but she does not find purchase. Helpless, she dangles upside down again. 

Anna combs her fingers through the sand until they find the head. She blows on it to clear the dirt from the molded crevices of its eyes, then pushes and screws the blind head back onto the plastic nub of neck. She bends the repaired toy into a sitting position and rests it neatly on the sand, leaning against a root of the tree. 

“It doesn’t go there!” Helen shouts and twists her head upright, keeping her eyes on Anna who kneels on the ground, dusting the sand off the shoulders of the toy. Helen wants to be down there, to get her hands on the Action Man. Grunting with effort, she makes a another grab at the bar above her head, but misses again. She tries a third time, swinging her hand in a hard arc that passes just beneath the rung, catching the very tip of her middle finger against the metal bar. She yelps. A hot sting swells in her fingertip. 

“Anna,” she calls, “help me down.” 

Anna doesn’t move. She is hunkered beneath the tree with her black school shoes flattening the unmown grass that grows among the roots. She keeps her fingers resting gently on the Action Man and her eyes on Helen.

Helen sucks her burning finger and her turned-around view of the yard begins to swim and distort. Her head feels hot. Being upside down is no longer any fun. She wants to be on the ground, right-side up with the earth under her feet. 

She makes a hard lunge at the bar and successfully connects with her right hand. Keeping her eyes on Anna and the repaired toy, Helen hurries to unbuckle her knees, eager to get down. Her legs drop. With only one hand on the rung, the added weight is too much for her to bear and her grip on the bar slips and gives. She throws her left arm up but it swings through clear air. Her small legs and arms flail like a dung beetle trapped on the dome of its back. 

Helen falls.

The impact of her landing lifts the dust in a fine cloud that rises quickly, slows, then seems to hold its position as if waiting for gravity to exhale. Tiny motes swim in the sunlight pushing through the branches of the Jacaranda and everything in the yard is still. The winter sky is so blue, it vibrates. 

She blinks. 

The awareness of a low hum builds in her head and as she tunes into it, she begins to feel her body. She’s on her back. She’s on the ground. It is hard and she is cold. 

The world rushes in. Pain dawns in her head and in her shoulders. She tastes dry dust in the back of her nose. The neighbor’s poodle yaps over the drone of distant traffic. A bird passes like a shadow overhead. The bars of the climbing frame are dark stripes of shade against the clear winter sky. Anna is there, looking at her, lying stunned on the ground. 

The shock of her landing and the sting of humiliation swell in Helen’s chest and she waits for the inhalation of air as her eyes fill with tears. But it does not come. She cannot draw a breath. She opens her mouth in a silent gasp, unable to fill her lungs. Her eyes hold Anna’s who watches her, expressionless, her arms at her side. 

Why isn’t she helping me? Why isn’t she doing something? 

Helen’s small body arches with panic just as something releases and breath wails into her. She screws up her eyes, gives in to the relief in her lungs, opens her mouth and screams. Shaking, Helen rises and begins toward the house. She is met halfway to the kitchen door by Johanna. Worry creases her nanny’s face and she holds her arms in expectation of their requirement.

“Hau, my baby.” Johanna stoops before her. Her eyes and fingertips cruise Helen’s body seeking breaks or bruises. Helen inhales and exhales in jagged sobs. She leans into her nanny’s arms and their familiar weight. Anna has followed her around the corner of the house and waits as her mother comforts her young charge.

“What happened?” Johanna asks. Helen points at Anna and Johanna addresses her daughter in a rapid string of words. Anna replies in Sotho and her words, like her mother’s, are just sounds to Helen, who recognizes the only two spoken in English: Jungle Gym.

“Tula, tula.” Johanna plucks leaves and dirt off Helen’s sweater as her breathing slowly evens.

“I couldn’t breathe,” she manages to sob. 

“Shh, ntombi,” Johanna croons as she pulls the weeping child into her lap. Her support makes Helen bold.

“Anna didn’t help me,” she says.

Johanna speaks to her daughter again. Harsh, quick words that cause Anna’s face to darken. The girl walks in the direction of the staff compound where her mother has a room.

“She didn’t help me,” Helen repeats.

“Shh, baby.” Johanna wipes at the little girl’s tears with the heel of her palm, clumsy but tender. “No more crying. Mommy will be home soon. I’ll make you tea, with extra sugar.”

Inside the warm kitchen, Helen sits in a chair at the end of the large table that Johanna has cleared after the family’s breakfast. She watches the woman who has taken care of her since she was born choose her favorite mug from the cupboard and spark the gas into a blue flame beneath the kettle. She thinks of the repaired Action Man resting upright against the Jacaranda tree and Anna’s brown eyes looking down at her lying in the dust.

“She should’ve helped me,” she says.