AS I PARK in front of L.W.’s house on Rosewood, I notice that there’s one of those trees with green bark in the yard. I guess I didn’t see it last time. Glenna and Cissy are always arguing about those trees. Cissy saying that they’re called huisache; Glenna that no sir they’re retamas.
Their argument is a lot like Mom and Cissy’s about the white flag (does it mean truce or surrender?): it isn’t going anywhere. That is, neither one of them is ever going to check in some tree book and see for sure which tree has leaves like needles and a green bark. Because in my family nobody really wants to risk being the loser in a fight.
I’m convinced that’s why Mom and Dad finally let me move in with Glenna and Brogan, because otherwise with all the stealing back and forth, one day one of them was going to get backed into a corner and have to get a lawyer and have a court case. And then some judge would get to settle once and for all who I really belonged to.
This way, I can see that I’ll be sixty years old and Mom will still be claiming, She’s mine because I raised her, and Dad will still be insisting, She’s mine because I gave her a normal life, and Brogan and Glenna will be swearing, She’s ours because we provided her a decent home and a college education.
I’m thinking about all that when I park my car and look at the green-barked tree, whatever it is, because I’m wishing I could disappear for good into L.W.’s house. Become a fixture like his mom in the living room ironing on her puffed sleeves and his dad at the dining table putting to rest the wandering week. Jolene in the kitchen, say, making chocolate chip cookies with toasted pecans and condensed milk, pulling the hot trays out of the oven, having reversed them top to bottom and front to back twice during the baking to be sure they are all even, calling to the rest of the household, “Come and get it, you all.” Pouring four glasses of cold milk to set on the counter.
I see it like the opening of a play. The curtain goes up and Mom spits on the iron to see if it’s hot enough and Pop wets the tip of his pencil and shuffles some papers—they’re on either side of the stage—then, upstage, Buddy is sitting on his single bed under a hanging light bulb smacking his fist into a baseball glove, while downstage the Niece is pulling the trays out of the oven with two big potholders shaped like puppies.
Mom’s call has put the fear in me for sure.