The Redwood Grove

This fiction piece was written in November 2018 for my Magical Realism class in high school, as an imitation of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.

1.

Hi! My name is Van, and I am currently wrapped up in Mom’s fuzzy quilted blanket on my bed. Do you know why I was named Van? Well, of course not. I just started this diary, after all. You might think my parents are just some weird truck freaks, the kind of couple who lives in Kansas and yells at kids from their porch. But it’s because Mom wanted to immortalize the sweaty July afternoon when she gave birth to me in the back of the old Ford Transit.

On my eleventh birthday, after hours of asking, Mom finally agreed to recount the tale of my birth. “You were soooo tiny, just five pounds. You looked like a little prune.” I remember her soft smile, the way she poked the end of my nose. “Giving birth in the back of that van was a transformative experience for me. It was scary and amazing at the same time. It made me realize that stuff happens, and we can’t always control it.”

For those who don’t know, Ford vans look like chubby trapezoids, which coincidentally became the shape of my body as I reached the tender age of thirteen. I always envied the girls in my class with soft curves because they looked like delicate koi fish in a pond. Three years later and my frame has rounded out a bit, but I’ve retained my signature boxy chin that incessantly jabs itself in other people’s business.

People start diaries for all sorts of reasons. My friend Frida started a diary when her grandpa passed away in order “to cope,” which was amusing because all she wrote in it was a list of boys she had crushes on. Dad has kept journals since he was a teenager, one every year. On the cover of his most recent, written in big screaming letters, is “2005: A RETROSPECTIVE.” He likes the word retrospective. Sometimes I catch him in his bedroom, rolling the word around in his mouth like a piece of dried gum.

But MY reason for starting a diary is kind of dumb. A few hours ago, I was walking through Stonestown mall with a Panda Express cup when I came across this neglected stationery store. It looked so decrepit, with sun-stained posters peeling off the windows, that I decided to enter. I had to cough a bunch to catch the attention of the store manager, a husk of a woman in her mid-seventies who had a dozen beaded necklaces wrapped around her neck like a noose. Looking into her sunken eyes made me shiver. I picked up the first thing I saw, a thin red notebook by the cash register, and purchased it with a crumpled five-dollar bill. As I walked out of that store, I convinced myself that I had just evaded certain death.

The existence of the red notebook didn’t cross my mind until I got home. And here I am, sitting on my bed, with a bright blue pen, writing this to you. Who is this you I’m writing to, anyways? Dad says when you run out of people to talk to, it’s okay to talk to yourself. But the thought of talking to myself creeps me out. It’s like singing in a cave, listening to your own voice ricochet off the stalactites. The echoes might sound cool, but it’s lonely as hell. That’s why I like the idea of writing to someone. Because it makes me feel less like a loser.

2.

I guess I’ll start by telling you a little about myself, cause that’s what people do in diaries. I’m a sophomore at a dingy public school in San Francisco. Every morning, I pull the mess of fur that is my cat off my face, get dressed, and devour a piece of toast before taking the bus. If I’m feeling charitable, I’ll make Dad a cup of coffee and leave it by his bedside table, since he’s usually still sleeping.

Frida goes to an elite private school in Pacific Heights, so I don’t see her much. I miss her a lot. The girls at my school vape and get stick-and-poke tattoos underneath the bleachers, which sounds fun and all, unless you’re too chicken like me. On the other hand, the guys at my school have the intellects of croutons. Just looking at a boy in my class, Trent, makes me wonder how much alcohol his mom ingested during her gestation period. I guess I’m a mean person, huh? Sometimes I catch myself saying stuff like that, and I want to grab the words and stuff them back inside my head.

I wish I was back at Frida’s house like in middle school, making paper dolls from the models in old magazines and trying on her aunt’s expensive Chanel perfume. But these days, whenever I ask Frida to hang out, she always has some excuse. “I’ve got too much homework, Van,” she told me over the phone last week. “Besides, paper dolls were only fun when we were kids.”

Anyways, tomorrow’s the anniversary of Mom’s death. Dad and I are going to visit the redwood grove where her ashes were scattered. There’s this obscure system in California where you can name a tree after a dead person. Can you believe it? Imagine being a hundred-year-old redwood, just minding its own business, when some father-daughter family comes along and slaps a plaque on your trunk and calls you “Sandra Powell.” But I don’t know. Maybe in fifty years I’ll like the idea of being memorialized in a forest. It does sound nice, the idea of my ashes seeping into the soil and being sucked up by a towering sequoia, having little bits of me in each of its leaves.

3.

It was raining by the time we reached Mom’s tree. We fashioned makeshift umbrellas; I held my flannel over my head, while Dad used one of the folded plastic chairs we keep in the trunk. We stood side by side, looking at the metal plaque. I could hear Dad’s little sobs. He sounded like a child. I tried not to look at him. Instead, I looked at the big redwood, like I was subconsciously trying to untangle an answer from the patterns of its bark, an old secret that only hundred-year-old trees share. I felt guilty that my eyes were dry, but for some reason I couldn’t muster up any sadness. Maybe it’s because it’s all so fresh, and I instinctively use humor to deal with grief. Or maybe it’s because I have no remorse, and I’m just a terrible, cynical person.

I hope that’s not the case.

Staring at that tree, I had time to think. I thought about that creepy woman in the stationery store. I thought about Frida. But most of all, I thought about what Mom had said, that stuff happens and we can’t control it.

Dad and I didn’t talk much on the way back. He just glided the van down the curvy road and I stared at the blur of green going past. We were exhausted when we got home. Dad didn’t even watch his usual eight o’clock Science Channel special. I lay in my bed underneath Mom’s warm blanket counting slowly to one hundred, something I do when I don’t know what to do.

4.

I woke to the smell of slightly burnt toast. When I headed downstairs, I spotted Dad donning an apron. He gave me a big grin. Mom had been the cook in our family, so I was surprised when Dad revealed a nice lunch of sandwiches and olives and sparkling water. It was laid out on a bright blue tablecloth. “It’s not much, but...” Dad said, wiping his brow. I gave Dad a long hug, and it made me feel kind of sad, cause I haven’t hugged him in a while.

Right now I’m sitting at the table, listening to Dad sing along to a David Bowie song, sipping some pulpy orange juice. You know, all this talking about myself and Dad has got me thinking about you, the stranger who’s holding this red notebook in their hands. I wonder what you’re doing right now. Are you watching your dad cut sandwiches into neat little triangles, swishing the crumbs into the sink? Are you wincing while getting a weird tattoo underneath the bleachers? Are you standing in the rain with a flannel on your head? Maybe you’re doing something fun, like go-kart racing. I’ve always wanted to try go-kart racing. Or maybe you’re doing something boring, like sitting at your desk, picking at peeling nail polish while flipping through a history study guide. Whatever you’re doing right now, I hope you’re happy, and even if you’re not, even if your happiness feels a million miles away like ashes scattered in the wind, I hope you can learn to let go of the things you can’t control. 

God. That sounded really cheesy. I’m going to go eat my sandwiches now. Signing off!

Photo from californiathroughmylens.com