Lightning split the willow in two, and the voices in Leila’s head shattered.
The smell of burnt bark and charred leaves lingered in the air as Leila stepped into her new family’s backyard, closing the large, plate-glass patio door behind her. She walked briskly towards the willow tree, gritting her teeth, as the voices screamed with the roaring wind. She stepped over some of the branches and tiny fires on the ground, still smoldering like little candles scattered about the earth. With the ruined tree in front of her, she reached out and brushed her fingers where the lightning had made its cut.
The heat from the crack scorched her fingertips, and she pulled back quickly as the voices, which usually whispered in her head, let out another roaring, anguished cry.
With closed eyes, she shook her head, pressing them to go away. Taking deep breaths, Leila focused on what felt real around her, a routine she’d been running through all her life, one she and Sarika had developed together at the group home when the voices came. Say the words. Get present. Be here.
“Grass,” she whispered, pacing her breath as the voices faded. “Rain. Wind. Cold.”
As the voices pulled back into the depths of her mind, as they always did, she looked back up at the ruined tree.
Gone was the cool-to-the-touch bark, a dark brown spotted with slightly darker specks. It had a pattern that she saw a little of herself in; her brown skin freckled in the warmer weather just the same way. Patches of the bark were discolored in places where a piece peeled away, revealing the lighter colors underneath. Her freckles came in little bursts on her face, her shoulder, her forearm, and the larger splash of cream on the right side of her face: a birthmark. What bark wasn’t burnt off by the crackling electricity that had ripped through the tree was seared crisp, and bits of black soot came off on her fingers when she ran her hands along the surface.
Instead of the welcoming, thick, V-shaped branches that grew close enough to grasp simultaneously, like two fingers waving a peace sign, there was only one branch now. She had spent so many afternoons this summer reading and reflecting on those branches, and now one sprawled out on the ground amidst burned grass and shrubbery. The once-beautiful limb looked as though it had roasted in a campfire pit, the bark like burnt, discarded charcoal, and the end where it once connected with the willow replaced with blackened, splintered wood. She looked up from the split to the rest of the tree, which still bloomed bright green, as though the other half of the old willow was unaware of what had happened.
It broke Leila’s heart.
Her willow was dead, but the rest of the tree didn’t know it yet.
But maybe there was a way to save it. If she couldn’t do it, maybe an arborist, one of those tree doctors she’d seen posting on the Urban Ecovists board she frequented with Sarika, or in articles on various local environmental news sites. She’d read that one had recently gone into Clark Park in West Philadelphia to help save a rare American Chestnut tree, which was definitely news to Leila. Who knew any kind of chestnuts were endangered?
She walked over to the half of the tree that was sprawled out on the earth and searched for any remaining bits of green, twigs that were unscathed from the lightning, but quickly turned her attention back to the still-standing section of the willow. She reached up and touched a low-hanging branch, bracing herself for the voices to come. They stayed silent, the bark still cool and wet.
“Okay,” Leila said, exhaling. “Let’s do this.”
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