Hilda

The morning arrived quietly on the day we were to make the slow walk together to leave our mark. It wasn’t so much for me or for us as it was for anyone else who came along after to find and wonder about. A story left untold was still a story somewhere. It mattered just the same.

I couldn’t have known it would turn into this, a lonely day made worse by bad news. Gordon and I were both terminal, due to the water and the mess the factory had made of things over the years. When we bought the house, we didn’t know. No one knew. Well, there were those who did, but they certainly didn’t tell us. Gordon would be gone first, we knew that much, quite a bit sooner than me, and it was more knowledge than we ever would have wanted to possess.

We didn’t have the means to leave, and the damage had been done, but my brother has taken us in now for the time being. For the duration of time I have left, to be particular about it, and to protect her — my daughter, Hilda — from any future harm. Our former house is empty and hollow with a backdrop of late summer Georgia sun. I drive by it some days and look at its stolen potential. So sweet and innocent standing there with its painted yellow door like a shining sun beckoning you in. Sitting still. Under prevaricating blue skies that turn to deep violet every night without us, hiding the truth.

I parked the car in the driveway, our old driveway. To our abandoned house. No one would see us, or even care if they did. There was no one left to pull back a curtain to peek at a stranger; those days had long passed. I pulled my key out of the ignition and sat a minute until Hilda stirred me from my trance asking if we were coming home again. No, honey, not really. Well, just for a walk, I’d said, opening my car door and climbing out. I waited for her to walk around the car to me and peeked into the back seat to look at the box of flyers, only one box left of them, to hand out to adjacent communities. I wondered if it was worth the time, if it would change anything at all. Hilda came up beside me. I stood looking at the car, knowing what else it contained. The sealed can of gasoline and bundled newspapers in the trunk, the box of wooden matches in the glove box. The original thoughts and plans about an action I had to take, still contained in me behind tight lips. Before I’d realized it would spread too far and destroy the small amount of goodness that was left.

We walked along the side of the house and into the tall, unattended grass that had grown across the backyard, Hilda’s hand in mine, so small there cradled inside my own, my immediate need to be her protector from all things. Even in my afterlife, that thought always pulsing through me. I wanted to tell her that I would always be there for her no matter what, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure she would know what I meant.

Behind our house we had discovered early on that you could go to the far edges of the yard and disappear into the trees along a pathway that deer had found well before us. Hilda had loved to go there and listen. I had loved to go there to feel. To intuit that even after I was gone, something of me would still be right here under the sky, leaning into the breeze, whispering to Hilda in the days ahead when she sought silence and peace away from the noise and indecipherable pain she couldn’t possibly imagine yet.

“What kind of trees are these?” Hilda asked me that day. We had walked just far enough into the woods to one of our favorite spots in the shade. I pulled my Buck knife out of my satchel and looked around for the right one.

“They’re birch trees,” I told her, as I stopped and inspected the side of one of them. I passed my hand across its bark. She asked me if I was petting the tree, like we do to Dodie, our beagle, on the couch at home and I told her, Yes, sort of, something like that.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

“Will what hurt, honey?” I asked, turning to look at her face, so inquisitive, so much concern and wonder living inside such a little person.

“The tree, Mama. Will it hurt the tree when you do that to it?”

I didn’t know, couldn’t know for sure so I paused and tried to figure out how to answer her question. I looked back at the tree, standing there strong and free, surrounded and supported by its family of faithful spires, unified into something so simple yet so beautiful. So taken for granted. The whole of them there, living a long, supple, sturdy life together.

“Well, Hilda. Hmm. I don’t think it will hurt. It’ll be just a scratch. Like when you scraped your knee that time on your birthday, falling on the gravel road at the park? Remember, you said it looked like it should hurt but it wasn’t that bad. That you were okay and didn’t need to cry, especially not on your birthday. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. I remember there was blood. And look, it left a scar, but it doesn’t bother me. I kind of like it now,” Hilda said, looking down at her knee and pointing to it.

“That’s right. A thing that no one else has, to mark a certain moment in your life.”

Okay, Mama, she said then and I turned back to the tree. I started to carve out the first number. Would I leave my message across in a horizontal line or up and down, I hadn’t decided yet. After Gordon left us, I’d decided something of him had to remain behind in that stand of trees where we walked in the early days of our habitation there. Before Hilda. And then when she’d arrived it all seemed so perfect. Before everything changed from pink to gray. From warmth to a shivering, brutal dark. The day Gordon left us were the numbers that would mark that tree better than a gravestone ever could, if he’d ever even wanted one of those, and he hadn’t.

I scratched and dug out little bits of white bark, listening to the leaves fluttering around me in a tonal tribute to the air. As I chipped away the first number, the redolence of an interior life underneath the surface reached my senses fully. I stopped and took it in. I touched the number 7 with my hand and brushed away little fragments of bark. I ran my forefinger through the indentation of it to smooth it even more and a memory flashed across my mind.

I love your dimple, he’d said, running a finger through the single groove it created on the outer perimeter of my mouth. We laid there on cool sheets in hot summer twilight after making love, our first Saturday in the house.

I paused, considering my next placement to commemorate the day of his departure. Why not his birth date, I’d asked myself a few times once I’d decided on doing this thing. But his last day on this earth seemed like the day I’d wanted to preserve. He wasn’t born here, after all, though he’d tried to make a life here and this place had taken it away. People had taken it away in careless, callous aforethought. They didn’t know me or Gordon or anyone else in this town; they only knew their own bank account balances and contact numbers for attorneys on spinning, desktop Rolodexes. I wanted to preserve that life somehow and it only made sense that someone, even if only I in my own abbreviated version, should make it lasting.

I started scratching with my knife again, carving out the number 1 was easy, the 9 a little bit trickier, with its curving line. The birds were twittering above us and Hilda had been so quiet. Like she was in church or something and been told to keep still even though I’d said nothing like that to her at all. And maybe she was in a kind of church, we both were, in our own special way. Holding sacred space any way possible. Hilda somehow knew it intuitively. Such a reverent child. I watched her for a minute in awe, the child that Gordon and I made, before returning to my task. Finishing up that row of numbers, I blew at them to whisk away papery white debris. I stood back for a second to see my work, like an artist subtracting marble from a sculpture.

“Will he always be watching like that, Mama?” Hilda asked.

“Who, honey? Will who always be watching?”

“Daddy. His eyes. On the tree, there. It’s Daddy watching us. Keeping an eye on us to make sure we’re okay. Isn’t he?” Hilda asked.

I turned to look at the tree, the markings that looked like eyes. She was right. They seemed to be taking notice of us just like she said.

“I think so.”

“But who else is watching? Who belongs to all those other eyes?” she asked.

So many questions I couldn’t answer, that had always been my challenge with her which grew with each day exponentially, especially these days. Sometimes the simplest questions get lost on us adults, the poetry of our children’s curiosities tossed into a tumbler inside unbound profundity. I knew it would be my eyes watching along with Gordon’s, much too soon, and I worried for that. Who would she ask all her questions to then? I had my own questions that could never be answered. Questions about Hilda’s happiness. What challenges the world would present to her, what the future health of the planet would be and how her own mental and physical health would evolve. I couldn’t help but wonder about all the things I’d never get to witness, to learn about her. I puzzled over how she would come to understand her losses, and if she would maybe never understand them and be forced to simply accept them.

I looked over at her sitting on the ground, cross legged, drawing two big eyes in the dirt with a stick. It snapped in half just then, from the weight of her purpose, and she simply laid the pieces down next to her drawing and wiped her hands on her skirt. She looked at me, expectant of my answer about all those eyes.

“Well, I think … they are the spirits in the trees. The shadows of those who pass through this land become part of it, frozen in time. Part of the soil and the grass. And the roots and the branches of these trees. Like Daddy. He’s here for eternity. Do you understand?”

“Daddy is in the dirt? Daddy lives inside the tree?” she asked.

“Yes, honey. Something like that,” I said.

I turned back to my task. Just two more numbers to incise. The 0 was the hardest, and at one point, the knife slipped and nearly stabbed my wrist but left only a white scratch. I took a breath and tipped my head back, gazing into the upper reaches of the tree and thanked her for her patience. I wrapped my arms around the tree, whispering into the strength of her, quietly, under my breath, all my gratitude for her allowing me to intermingle our fates, however difficult they were. I swallowed. Emotion was coming forward, past my own layers of hardened bone and peeling exterior. I took to the 0 again, more carefully this time, until I formed a closed circle. The last number remained, an easy repeat of the number 7, where I had started.

When I was done, I brushed my free hand over the whole of my work, picking away any stray fibers with my fingertips, touching it gently, lovingly. In the same way that I’d brushed tears from Gordon’s face and wiped his brow, petted his hair, in those remaining hours, those last minutes together.

I’ll love you forever. Nothing and no one can steal that from us, I’d said, as he nodded, reaching for my hand to say goodbye before falling into a deep sleep that would drift into nothingness.

I put my Buck knife back in its sheath and dropped it into my satchel, strapped across my body. I turned to look at Hilda. I stood there for a moment and exhaled slowly. I reached out for her hand and she got up from the ground and walked over to me. I turned us both toward the tree and touched the numbers with the palm of my left hand, holding Hilda’s delicate nature close to my side.

“Let’s say goodbye to Daddy, now,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

We stood silent. Together. Her small hand in mine. I looked over at her and her eyes were closed like she was making a birthday wish before blowing out the candles on a cake. I closed my eyes, too.