Page 14 of Death of the Author

14 The Tree

Zelu was running.

And laughing. They were at the back of the house and it was the Fourth of July. Every so often, she heard the explosive boom

of fireworks, and she wondered yet again why people set off fireworks in the middle of the day. The air smelled like smoke.

It was wonderful. She ran faster.

“I hate this game!” her friend Sarah shouted from behind her. Zelu didn’t have to look back to know that the boys were coming.

The boys had bet their portion of her mother’s brownies, and Zelu loved her mother’s brownies. She wasn’t going to lose.

She and her friends had come up with the “Hunger Games,” which was just a more violent version of tag. They threw sticks and

stones, hit each other, shoved one another down. Whoever was left standing was the winner. Zelu hadn’t even liked the movies,

but this was exhilarating— way better than regular tag or hide-and-seek. Zelu’s strategy was always to hide and wait it out. Sarah had stupidly run in the

same direction as her, drawing too much attention. No matter; Zelu had a plan. She veered to the side and shoved Sarah over.

“You’re out!” she shouted, laughing.

Sarah looked up from the concrete, rubbing her scratched elbow. “What! I thought—”

“Not when I can get all the brownies!” Zelu declared before running off. She could see three boys heading in her direction. They must have figured

out that their chances of winning were better if they teamed up to catch her first, before fighting each other. She guffawed

wildly as she raced toward the big tree that sat in the middle of the backyard. She had an advantage, and she was going to

use it.

“Bitch!” she heard Sarah shout behind her.

Zelu looked up at the tree’s high branches. She looked back one more time. The boys were only yards away.

“Don’t even bother!” shouted Mike, who was twelve like Zelu. But he was winded. She could make it.

Zelu bent her knees down low, took a deep breath, and jumped as high as she could. Then she grabbed. And grasped. Her secret

weapon was that she had remarkable upper-body strength. It was what made her so good at swimming. Even in third grade she’d

been able to do the bent-arm hang for a record time in gym class, and she could do pull-ups like a grown man.

And so, she pulled herself up on that tree branch, climbed up three more, looked down at the boys, and smugly flipped both

her middle fingers at them. She knew there was no way any of them could reach her. She could easily dodge anything they threw

at her up here.

“That’s cheating!” Mike yelled.

“Uh, no, it’s not,” Zelu said. “It’s in the books and movies. People escaped into trees all the time.” She snickered. “I’ll come down as soon as the three of you duke it out and

there’s only one of you left to fight.”

The boys exchanged glances. Then they started chasing and throwing things at one another. Zelu was laughing and laughing. She was the queen of the world, and there were stupid boys below her fighting each other. She’d kissed all three of those boys at different times in the last two years. She perched in the tree like a leopard and looked into the sky. She took another breath. Her grades were a little above average, but she planned to get them higher because she’d heard astronauts were always at the top of their class.

Something was cracking...

... She was falling, tumbling.

through leaves and branches.

They slapped, scratched her face.

And still she fell.

As if into the void of outer space.

Until the wind was knocked from her chest.

She lay there. Mike was screaming. Jamal was crying. Their voices moved around her, orbiting her. Chiedu said, “Where is she?

Where are you?”

Zelu knew only that she was surrounded by leaves, flakes of bark, and broken branches. She looked up and saw the tree’s big

trunk, arms stretching over her head, leaves waving toward her.

Then there was pain. It was so intense that she couldn’t see or hear or touch or smell or feel. She was there, but she was

gone.

The thought came to her in a haze: Roll credits .

When the paramedics lifted her up onto the gurney, she remembered only staring through the tree’s branches to the sky beyond.

Chinyere said that she was crying, but Zelu didn’t remember this. All she remembered was how the sky looked—cloudy, but with

sunlight shining behind the clouds. She imagined herself up there with the sun. Traveling inside it. Being burned up by it.

Zelu knew she would never walk again long before they told her. She’d been in that bed for a week, in and out of consciousness,

on and off painkillers. But it wasn’t any of those things that opened her mind to the truth. It was the dreams. They were

slightly different each time—sometimes set in a field of dry grass, sometimes in a huge empty parking lot, and sometimes at

a muddy construction site the size of a city.

Each time, she was sitting in the middle of the space, looking around, unable to get up. There was never anyone around, no voices or footsteps. And then came the sound of cracking—the thick, dry branches of a tree. She’d startle awake with nothing on her mind except that certainty: Her days of walking with her own two legs were done. And so were her dreams of being a NASA astronaut. A quick Google search on her phone, which she’d done the moment she’d understood her situation, had told her that the chances of a paraplegic black woman becoming one were slim to none.

Adjusting was ugly. She didn’t sleep. Eating wasn’t satisfying, except when Chinyere cooked for her. Chinyere was thirteen

at the time and devastated by the incident. She’d been in the front yard with some friends when it happened, but she’d heard

Zelu and the other kids screaming and had come running. She’d been the one to lift the branch off Mike, who had been hit with

debris when Zelu came down. Mike was bruised but more scared than anything else, which was why he was screaming. Chiedu had

been too hysterical to do more than run around saying, “I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what happened! Is this the

real Hunger Games?” Chinyere had stayed with Zelu the entire time until the paramedics arrived.

While Zelu was in the hospital, Chinyere would stay and fall asleep on the plastic couch. Sometimes she had nightmares, and

Zelu would wake up because Chinyere was crying and crying and calling for Zelu in her sleep. Their parents were barely able

to process what had happened to their second-oldest child, and the other siblings were too young to be of much help, so Chinyere

had to get a hold of herself on her own. And the method she chose was cooking.

Chinyere had always been a good cook because she was the oldest and closest to their mother. She would ask for ingredients

and their parents gave her whatever she wanted. She cooked and cooked. All for Zelu, but everyone else ate, too. When she

came home from school, Chinyere cooked. After track practice, Chinyere cooked. After hanging out with her friends, Chinyere

cooked. Though she visited Zelu at the hospital often enough, it was their parents who delivered the foil-wrapped plates to

Zelu every day.

That cooking kept Zelu’s body and soul going. Egusi soup and fufu, fried spiced fish, puff puff, her special macaroni and cheese, shrimp étouffée, akara, efo riro, gbegiri, corn bread, pepper soup with tons of meat, fried plantain, Cajun chicken alfredo, and, of course, plenty of jollof rice. Zelu ate it all. It got her through those early days.

When she was well enough to receive visitors, Sarah, Jamal, Chiedu, and Mike came by so often that Zelu’s room always sounded

like a party. Nurses and the more mobile patients often dropped in to join them. It brought joy and light to the whole hospital

wing.

This was how Zelu met Tyrone, a sixteen-year-old kid who was there because he’d shattered both his legs when he jumped from

a fourth-story apartment building window. Tyrone was a drug dealer and proud of it. He’d wheeled by Zelu’s room one day when

she, Mike, and Chinyere were eating jollof rice and fried fish. After hanging around in the hall, passing by and peering in

several times, he’d boldly entered the room and said, “Can I have some of your African food? The food here is trash.” He was

a skinny, small kid, but his intensity was unmistakable. The moment he showed up at that door, all attention shifted to him.

He knowingly grinned as it happened.

“Sure,” Chinyere said, grabbing a plate and reaching into the cooler she’d brought. She dished out some jollof rice, beef,

and plantain. He wheeled in and accepted the plate and fork. He speared a plantain and took a bite, and his eyes widened.

“This is good! What the heck is it?”

“Fried plantain,” Chinyere said softly.

He shoveled in another mouthful. “I was expecting something that tasted like potatoes or some shit! But it’s sweet! And...

mmm! Tangy!”

Zelu giggled. Chinyere beamed like a queen.

“Try the jollof rice,” Mike said.

Tyrone tried a spoonful, and his eyes got even wider. Now Zelu was utterly cracking up, tears in her eyes.

“Oh my God !” he exclaimed, holding up his fork. “This is so good ! Yo, who made this?”

Chinyere smirked and raised her hand.

“Girl, you’re an angel,” he said.

“I know,” Chinyere said.

“Hey, I’m Tyrone.”

They all introduced themselves, and just like that, a sixteen-year-old drug dealer with healing legs became part of their

group. Tyrone would come to hang out often. His father came by, too, but he operated a food truck and thus could never stay

long and Tyrone didn’t seem to want him to. But Tyrone didn’t mind spending time with Zelu and her family and friends.

A month later, Tyrone came by her room just after she’d returned from physical therapy. She was learning how to use a wheelchair

and exercising her arms. She was irritable and frustrated. Tyrone wheeled into her room with a smile on his face. He looked

good; his hair was freshly braided. He handed her an Almond Joy.

“Oh, Tyrone, thanks,” she said, grinning back.

“Today’s been shit, so I’m trying to balance it out by spreading joy.”

She opened it. She usually found Almond Joys nasty, but she wanted to appreciate what Tyrone had given her. She took a nibble.

Not terrible. Actually, not bad at all. “Why?” she asked.

“They think I’ll need to be in these casts for a few more weeks,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “That is bad.”

“My girl, Mika, keeps wanting to come see me here...” He shook his head with frustration. “Fuck no, man. I don’t want none

of them to see me like this.”

She hesitated for a moment, taking a bite of her candy bar. Then she just asked. “Why?”

He gestured toward himself as if it were obvious. “ Look at me.”

She shrugged. “They’re just casts.”

He hit his fist on the armrest of his chair, squeezing his eyes shut. “I look like a fucked-up, rusted-out robot ! I can’t fuckin’ walk!” he shouted.

She should have been angry... but it was odd. She wasn’t. “At least you’ll walk again eventually,” she said evenly. She took another bite of her Almond Joy.

He opened his eyes, realizing. “Oh, oh, Zelu, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

She shook her head. “It’s fine.”

“No, I’m an asshole.”

“Seriously, it’s fine,” she said. “You can stay angry. You can stay scared. But it doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t change the

situation. My legs may not work, but the rest of my body does. My brain still works. So... so, onward.” She’d meant to

be straightforward, no-nonsense about it. But tears started to tumble from her eyes as she spoke. She’d come to this realization

a few days ago, after a sleepless night lying in bed, facing her reflection in the dark window. Then the sun had risen, and

her reflection had disappeared as the city beyond came into focus. It felt like standing in fire and realizing that though

it burned, it wouldn’t swallow her. This was who she was now.

“Most definitely,” Tyrone said, clearly unsure what else he could say.

“Anyway,” Zelu said, wiping her cheek quickly. “I’d love to meet your friends, too. We’re stuck here for a while, so the more

people who come through the better. You’ve met my whole family.”

He looked at her for a long time and then cracked a very sheepish grin. “Nah, man, they ain’t comin’ here and they ain’t meeting

you.”

She’d blinked. Had he just insulted her?

He looked away ruefully. “Zelu, this place, this fuckin’ hospital, these rooms, these walls... It’s all limbo. I’m...

I’m not this .”

Zelu frowned deeply, hurt. “I... don’t understand.”

He shrugged, still not looking up. “I’m not Tyrone out there. I’m T. You know who I am. They can’t come here, they can’t meet you; I don’t want them to.” He thought for a moment. “I can be who I am here,

but only while here.”

She wanted to disagree, but she understood now. The world worked differently here in the hospital. She was different. The other day, she’d yelled at her physical therapist for working her too hard; she wasn’t like that at all back home. And where else would she be able to form a close friendship with a sixteen-year-old drug dealer from the West

Side of Chicago?

Tyrone left the hospital a week before she did. It wasn’t so bad because her family and friends constantly came to see her,

but she did miss him. Only he could relate to what she was going through. When he left, she’d been in physical therapy, so

she didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye. She found one of those cheap composition notebooks and a personalized gold-plated

pen with a diamond embedded in the side of it sitting on her bed—a parting gift. On the first page, he’d written a note: Onward. Sincerely, T .

He’d left no email or mailing address, no phone number. Just the words.

And onward she’d gone. Her arms grew stronger. She mastered using a wheelchair, and when it came time to buy her own, her

parents could fortunately afford a lightweight, expensive one. It was her favorite color—aqua blue—and she stuck colorful

stickers all over it with images of the ocean, fish, Aquaman, Conan the Destroyer, Moomin, butterflies, and Godzilla.

The day before she was released, she had her first panic attack. It came out of nowhere. She’d adjusted to her chair and the

changes to her life and goals. Her wounds were healed. And in the last two weeks, she’d started growing more adventurous,

wheeling around the hospital. That day, she’d taken a left turn instead of a right and found a beautiful courtyard. She’d

pushed the button to open the door and wheeled onto the patio. She hadn’t been outside in days, and the first thing she did

was look up at the sky and let the sun warm her face. It was glorious.

And then her eyes had migrated from the sky to an overhanging tree. And then the breeze had blown, fluttering the leaves.

And then she was hearing the leaves shaking as if there were a violent wind. And then the tree was tall like the iroko trees

in Nigeria. And it had thick branches. That. Were. Cracking.

She heard her heart slamming in her ears, and she couldn’t breathe. If her legs worked, they’d be flailing; instead, it was just her arms. She hit the ground and the little air she had in her lungs was knocked out of them. She didn’t know how long she lay there, freaking out, frozen within that strange flashback, but when she came back to herself, she was still alone in that courtyard, upright, in her chair, her head tilted back, the sunshine on her face, her eyes closed.

As her heart rate slowed, she took a deep breath. She was drenched with sweat, her hands shaking, her shoulders shuddering.

She opened her mouth wide and inhaled. When her lungs were full, she exhaled loudly. She felt better. Then she cried. And

still no one came into the courtyard, and she was glad. After a few minutes, she wiped her face with her arm. It felt swollen

and sunbaked. And she was tired. She wheeled back to her room, let the nurse help her into bed, and went to sleep, and when

she woke up, her hospital dinner was still sitting on its tray (she never ate those meals anyway, since her sister’s cooking

was enough). There was nothing more this place could give her.

It was time to go home.

When her parents drove her back to the house, she saw that the huge ancient tree that had failed her was gone. Her parents

had paid someone to cut it down. But not for the reason she’d thought. They had not had it removed to save her from having

to look at the reason she was paraplegic. They’d had the tree checked by the gardeners, who’d found that it was infested with

emerald ash borer beetles, as so many of the trees in the area were. The entire tree was already dead, which was why the branch

had been unable to take her weight. The gardeners had spray-painted a bright red X on its trunk and then come by a week later

and chopped it down.