The Book of Trees (9 page)

He pointed toward a tiled staircase. “The roof.”

The music, U2’s “One,” grew louder as I climbed up six flights. Rows of drying laundry lined one side of the roof. On the other side loomed the Dome of the Rock and the Citadel, with the Mount of Olives behind. A group of travelers sat in the shade of an outstretched tarp on an assortment of rickety stools, rough benches and crates. Two blond guys in jean cutoffs and ball-caps led the song on guitars, toes tapping in their sport sandals. From the top of the staircase I could see Andrew strumming along, his back to me. The round chords of the song reverberated across the roof. I started singing along.

I paused at the edge of the circle and dug my nails into my wrists to fight the urge to push up the sleeves of my plain T-shirt. I imagined the travelers thinking, What the hell is someone dressed like that doing here?

I wouldn’t stay for the music. I’d just ask Andrew about the trees; then I’d be off. I hovered behind him until the song finished. When he saw me, one light brown eyebrow slid toward his hairline. “Hey, sandwich girl, good to see you. Have a seat.”

“I can’t stay.”

“You playing hooky again?”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Not for one song?”

“Well…”

The musicians started playing “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

“Um…okay.” I started singing along again.

Secular music wasn’t really what my life was about now, but it was only for a few minutes. I found a chair among the lines of drying laundry, and Andrew moved over to let me in. A blond woman with a violin offered me a beer. I hesitated and then accepted. The icy bitterness instantly made me feel cooler. A joint made its way around the circle. I held it a moment, letting the sweet smell tickle my nostrils, then passed it along without inhaling. It reminded me of listening to Led Zeppelin with Matt.

The U2 song ended and someone struck up “Country Roads.” My hands ached to play.

“You want?” Andrew held out his guitar.

I shook my head.

“Here, c’mon. You look like you know this one.”

I hesitated and then reached for the guitar. “Like the back of my hand.”

I wanted to take off my hat and shake my sweaty hair out of my tight braids. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand instead. I played G, E minor, D, my voice quietly harmonizing with the others.

“Yeah,” one of the blond guys called out.

“Sounds good,” another said.

I relaxed into the familiar chords and let my head tip back, my eyes close. My mom’s friend Deirdre used to play the song at Sheila’s potluck guitar nights. I’d fall asleep to the music, the smell of chili lingering in the air.

The song ended and the blond guys launched into a Beatles’
Abbey Road
medley
.
I held the guitar out to Andrew, but he folded his arms across his chest. “I’m sure you know this too.”

I strummed along. “Actually, I came to ask you something.”

“What’s up?” Andrew leaned back in his chair.

Around me the others sang, “
You never give me your
money
.” I stopped playing the guitar and hugged it to my chest. I didn’t know where to start. “It’s about the trees here. I thought maybe you would know something about them. I don’t know very much about politics. Well, nothing at all.” I paused and tried to think of what to say next. Andrew sat, eyes wide, listening intently, ignoring the others around us. I felt my cheeks redden. “I’m going to start all over again.”

“Take your time.”

The travelers sang, “
And in the middle of negotiation,
you break down
.” The guitar felt good in my hands, like I was sitting in an old familiar position.

I took a deep breath. “I was at this retreat this weekend, near Jerusalem, and there was this forest… well, it wasn’t really a forest, more like a park. Planted trees, one of those JNF forests—that means Jewish National Fund. I don’t know if you know about them. And then, all of a sudden it dawned on me—you’ll think this is really stupid—but there was this plaque that talked about the soldiers who died taking over the area. I guess I thought Israel was an empty country or that all the Arabs took off when the Jews arrived. I don’t know if I read that or—or if I just thought that.”

“I think half the country is built over former Arab villages.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” I felt my forehead wrinkle. “I know there was a war and all, but I didn’t realize they did that with trees—planted over villages.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “You win the war, you keep the land.”

“I know. I just…well, maybe I didn’t know.”

“The government is still taking over land.” His face lost its usual teasing grin.

“Really?”

“Sure. There’s this girl here, Sonia, who works for some peace organization. She was saying they force Palestinians to sell their land so they can build more Jewish housing.”

“That’s terrible.”

Andrew shrugged. “They don’t recognize the Palestinians as citizens.”

I cracked my knuckles in my lap. “It seems so twisted to use trees to claim the land. I mean, I love trees.”

Andrew nodded.

“My grandmother used to send money to plant those JNF trees.”

“Uh-huh.”

I sighed and hugged my arms around me. “I was hoping you’d say something reassuring.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. That it’s for a greater cause. My roommate says it was our land to start with.”

Andrew rested one foot on his other knee. “And what do you think of that?”

“I’m not sure what to think. I always thought being Jewish meant being moral and taking the higher ground.”

“Seems to me the Jews are always killing for their land.”

My face grew hot. “That’s because the Jews are always under attack. Someone is always trying to take away our land. And what about the Holocaust? Where were the Jews supposed to go after that?”

Andrew shrugged. “Displacing other people only makes more problems. We should get Sonia over here. Hey, Sonia.”

A thin girl wearing a bandanna over short dark hair looked at us across the circle. She had a nose ring and a tattoo of the sun on her exposed shoulder. Andrew motioned her over. “Mia and I were just talking politics, and I was telling her that you were our local expert.”

Sonia grinned and shook her head. “What do you want to know?”

“We were discussing what happened to the Palestinians after ’48. They all moved away, right?” He winked at me.

Sonia gripped her bony hands together. “Some people left, but others had to flee, and others were killed.”

I leaned forward. “Why didn’t they go to Arab countries?”

“They weren’t wanted there and they still aren’t. This is their homeland.”

“So that’s why there are terrorists?”

Sonia shook her head. “If you lost your homeland, wouldn’t you fight for it? Jews created Israel through acts of terrorism against the British. Freedom fighter, terrorist—it all depends on your point of view.”

Andrew said, “Most Palestinians just want clean water and good schools—basic human rights.”

I nodded, trying to absorb everything. Jews had been terrorists too? Sonia and Andrew talked about the Palestinian leaders and whether they really wanted peace, and if negotiations with the Israeli government would ever proceed. Sonia said something about the UN being imperialistic, and I tried to remember what Aviva said about the UN’s two-state solution. The guitarists played Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

Sonia stood up. “I’m sorry but I have to get going. It was nice meeting you, Mia. Keep asking questions. I can recommend some books if you like.”

I nodded. “Sure, thanks.” I slouched back in my chair. “I don’t understand politics at all.”

Andrew smiled. “I don’t get most of it either, but I do know one thing: there’s a power imbalance. And it’s not fair.”

I sighed. “Power imbalance?” This was far more complicated than trees planted over a village.

“Israel is a first-world country with huge American financial backing. The Palestinians are a poor native people who have been uprooted.” I must have given him a quizzical look. He sighed. “Have you ever walked the ramparts, the wall around the Old City?”

“Um, no. I’ve been wanting to go, but I didn’t want to go alone.”

“Your seminary buddies too busy?”

“Um, I guess so.”

“Meet me at Jaffa Gate tomorrow after your classes. I’ll take you on a tour.”

I felt my cheeks f lush. “That would be great,” I whispered.

Andrew nodded. “Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I wanna hear you play that song of your dad’s, the one you were telling me about. The one about the trees.”

“Oh, well, sure.” I stood up. “Okay, bye then.” I started backing away.

“So what time are you done?”

I stumbled over a crate and bent to rub my calf. “Um, two. If that’s okay.”

“See you at two.” Andrew gave me another one of his sexy grins, and I felt heat flood my face again, like the Jerusalem sun blazing through me.

I could hear the chords to Don’s tree song in my head as I waited at the bus stop. Don had played the song for me the previous summer at his cottage, just before we went home. We were up on the saggy porch watching the squirrels run along the railing to take the nuts Sheila had put out.

You said you could always come home,
But it’ d never be the same.
Oh, Momma, I’m getting old as you,
But I fear I’ ll never be as wise.

I lay stretched out in a hammock on the rickety screened-in porch. Don’s other songs revealed glimpses of the mystery of his life: songs of driving, of working on a beet farm, of hiding out in a barn in Peterborough, of a field of wild flowers. But this song, I knew it exactly. I’d been in love with Grandma Quinn’s willow too.

Call off the bulldozers,
Call off our western ways.
This progress, I’ ll have none of it,
’Cause I lost my weeping willow where I used to sit.

The summer I was twelve, Don took me on a car trip to West Virginia to visit his mother, my Grandma Quinn. I had never been away with just Don, and I was thrilled to spend time with him. The rare times Don stayed at our house, he barely hung out with us. He would lie on the couch, his legs hanging off the edge of the armrest, listening to old blues singers who sounded like they carried heavy burdens. He said he needed stillness to chase away the rumble of the car after being on tour so long. Sometimes he’d take me with him on his walks along the Beaches’ boardwalk. I’d dance around him doing cartwheels, talking nonstop, not expecting answers. Anything Don said was like a little nugget of gold to keep, no matter how banal. I kept his comments in my head the way other girls kept trinkets in a jewelry box: study hard at school, try to see all points of view, take a deep breath every now and then.

I had spent the first part of that summer at a socialist camp singing “We Shall Overcome” and learning about Mother Jones. Three weeks of bunk beds, communal showers, sweating around a campfire, chanting “white rabbit, white rabbit” whenever the smoke blew my way. Three weeks of splashing dock noise, rec-hall rumble, dinner-hall chanting and late-night giggles.

All the way to West Virginia, Don sat silent on the sticky bench seat of his Buick. Every few hours he’d squint his green eyes and reach for the small spiral notebook he kept tucked in the sun visor. He’d scribble a few lines in his bird-claw scrawl, the notebook balanced delicately on the steering wheel.

“So”—I rested my feet on the dash—“this is what you do.”

Don stroked his beard. I could see the dimple in his chin through the gray. “Yes. I drive and I think. Then I stop and I play songs.”

“What do you think about?”

Don paused so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “I think about my street, and the tree in Grandma Quinn’s yard—it’s an old weeping willow. I think about the poems she read to us before we went to sleep. We were very poor. I don’t remember wanting a lot, other than a bicycle.”

“And?”

Another long pause. “Sometimes I think about important questions.”

“Like?”

“I think, where have I been and where am I going? Who am I? If you’ve got those figured out, life’s easy.”

I scrunched up my face, peering at him. Those were the important questions? A cinch! I was Mia Quinn, daughter of Don Quinn and Sheila Katz. Where had I been? I’d been to Bowmore Senior Public School. Next I was off to Monarch Park Collegiate. Easy.

On the second day, Don sat me in the backseat and gave me his guitar. “We’ll pretend we’re on tour and you’re in the band. When we get to Arlington, you’ll play for your gran.”

I practiced “Country Roads” and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” Over and over I strummed the chorus of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine.”

When we arrived, Grandma Quinn was in her back garden sitting in a lawn chair among hollyhocks and sunflowers. She wore a mauve floral-print house-dress and stout beige leather shoes. Her long white hair was spread out over the back of her chair. I stared at the blue tinge radiating down the strands like tie-dye. “I thought I’d best give it a wash before you came,” Grandma Quinn said, coiling her hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. She turned to me. “I like blue. It’s my favorite color.”