Estella gave me the idea for the list the day we met three years and eleven days ago, when she came from Romania to be at my school.
I was in the playground, up in the cherry tree. The bell had rung and I was stuck.
“You stuck, no?”
I looked down from the tree, eyes screwed up, and pushed aside a branch with lots of yellow leaves on it. Standing near the tree, arms crossed, was a janitor I’d never seen at school before. She was tall and had dark hair, and even though I couldn’t see what color her eyes were, they looked really big and really black and almost scared me.
“Well, I help. Then you go school.”
I sat motionless in the tree, frightened I might fall.
“Put foot here.” The janitor with the scary eyes was pointing to a piece of trunk jutting out just below me. I was holding on tight to the branch I was sitting on. I tried to lower my foot, but it slipped, and the bark cracked under my weight. I went straight back to my original position.
“I’m not coming down.”
“You stay up rest of life?”
“Yes.”
“Bye, then.” The janitor took a step toward the school. There was a crunching sound under her feet. She bent down and picked up a pair of red glasses. They’d been hidden in the leaves.
“What’s this? Is yours?”
“They’re my glasses. They fell when I was climbing up. And now I can’t get back down!”
“No cry. Not need.” The lady with the black in her eyes was back below my branch. “You know, in Romania I always climb trees. I liked play at top.”
I sniffed and asked what games she played.
“I made the game . . . what you call it . . . Amazon. You know what is Amazon?”
“Amazon is female warrior on horse. Not afraid to come down tree.”
“But she doesn’t wear glasses.”
“No. She very strong. Afraid of nothing. She cut off piece of breast to fire bow and arrow.”
“A piece of her breast?”
“Yes. The grandmother of the grandmother of my grandmother was from an Amazon family, long time ago.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
The lady with the scary black eyes was hurriedly rolling up her shirtsleeves. Then she started climbing up the tree. I clung to my branch. When she reached me, she sat down beside me like she was riding a horse.
“See? Amazon.”
“But how will we get down now?”
She took my glasses out of her shirt pocket and handed them to me. I put them on right away. They were a bit dusty and crooked, but at least I could see better.
“You follow me now,” the janitor said. Up close, I could see she also had very bright pink lipstick. She started to descend as quickly as she’d climbed up.
“Wait!”
“I don’t want to come down.”
“Good the God! Come down—I must work!”
I felt bad about wasting her time. She had been nice bringing up my glasses, but I didn’t want to come down because the day before, Doctor Olga had said I had a bad thing in my eyes and I was frightened.
I felt better in the tree. Nothing could happen to me here.
I told the lady this. I also explained that I couldn’t see very well and it was going to get worse. I said that I didn’t want to not be able to climb the tree anymore.
“If there are things you can’t do anymore, you must write list. That way you not forget anything.”
“A list?”
“Of course. List. I make list too, years ago.”
“Could you not see well either?”
“No. It wasn’t that.”
“What was wrong, then?”
The lady sighed and set off back down the tree.
“I had less problem than now, you pain in neck.”
I followed her gingerly, edging along my branch. I was a bit miffed at what she’d said, but I was also curious.
“What was on your list?”
“Come down, I show you. What’s your name?”
“Estella.”
Estella jumped down from the bottom branch of the cherry tree and turned to face me.
I’d reached the lower branches and had also jumped. She caught me in midair and placed me firmly on the ground. Then she walked over to the main entrance of the school, but not before she held out her hand and called my name. “Mafalda. Estella does not tell lies. Only truth. We go see Estella’s list.”
* * *
I see Estella now every day at school.
When I get there at ten minutes to eight, she’s at the door waiting for me. She makes our secret signal—a whistle loud enough to burst your eardrums—which everyone hears, though, so it’s not really that secret. She does it with two fingers in her mouth. I don’t know anyone else who can whistle like that. I hear it from far, far away, and I run to meet her.
But first, I stop to greet the cherry tree. I can see it from a long way away (well, quite far away) on the road I take every morning with Dad. In truth, all I actually see is a colored blob in front of me, but I know it’s the tree—I mean, the giant’s hair, if the giant is as nice as I imagine him.
Grandma always said that there are giants living inside the trunks of trees, giant tree spirits that move away to another tree when theirs gets chopped down. There used to be a cherry tree in Grandma’s garden. I climbed it all the time when I was small. I’d help Grandma pick the ripened cherries. I didn’t even need glasses.
Right away, we’d make a cake with the cherries, or maybe jam to eat in winter. Grandma’s tree got infected with a sort of tree lice, though, and we had to cut it down. I thought cutting the leaves off would have been enough. When we get head lice at school, they don’t kill us, do they? They just wash our hair with smelly shampoo.
When they chopped it down, I decided that the giant had gone to live in the cherry tree at school and that he’d taken Grandma’s spirit with him, and that it would be fun to count how many steps there are between the tree and when I can see it. That way I’d know how close I am to Grandma’s giant. I screw my eyes up and try my best and, finally, yes, there it is—a red, yellow, and orange blob, like the wigs clowns wear. It’s all blurry, but it’s there. The school next to it is a blue blob. I start counting right away: one, two, three. . . .
“Come on, Mafalda, we’ll be late if you walk like that,” Dad says, gently tugging my hand.
“Dad, how long is one of my steps?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure. It must be about fifty centimeters. You’re quite tall for your age.”
I keep counting. I count thirty steps before I hear Estella whistle. Thirty-five, thirty-six . . . forty, fifty, one hundred. We reach the school gates. Estella comes to meet me, says hello to Dad. I pick up a leaf near the tree. It’s wet and yellow on the front, brown on the back. It is perfectly shaped and smells earthy. It reminds me of working in the garden with Grandma. I slip it into my pocket as Estella takes me inside.
It took me one hundred and forty steps to reach the cherry tree from where I started to see it.
Seventy meters.