The apartment building had a courtyard, though her mother called it a garden.
It was not really a garden. It had three trees planted in a square of dirt, a gap-riddled hedge, and a bench covered in graffiti. Gardens were what they had back home, at her nano’s—the fat rosebushes and gummy-leafed greenery, the guava tree. Lizards clinging lazily to the walls, and lines of black ants she’d used to follow with her cheek pressed to the cool concrete floor.
The building was new to the three of them. Everything was new to them, technically, and there was very little she could recognize as familiar. Fine, there were cars on the street, but there was no smell of petrol hanging in the air, no rickshaws, hardly any motorbikes. The sun rose the same, but her window no longer faced it, and she woke in the mornings to the dim impression of light that could not touch her.
The things they brought from the old country—this was what they felt they now had to call it—were their only real constants. Her father’s shirts, stiffly ironed, hung in the window the same way they’d used to, and they ate off the same white plates, with little pink flowers around the edges. The floors were flimsy and wooden, but the carpets on top, rough and red, brought a sense of familiarity. “It’s not so bad, her mother had said when they first opened the door. She thought they should strive for more than ‘not so bad’, but it was obvious this comment would not be appreciated by either of her exhausted parents, so she kept it to herself.
And in some ways, it wasn’t so bad! They had the place to themselves, no cousins coming underfoot and no cleaning up after too many people, but the sounds were different, and this was discomfiting. It was too quiet; and when it wasn’t quiet, it was people she did not know and could not see rattling around upstairs.
They had moved to the new apartment in August so that she could start school in the Fall. August was not too dissimilar from August back home, because it was sticky and hot and the sun beamed sickle-bright. Fall was a different affair. The first week of September was alright, but it got cold quickly after that, obliging them to wear socks around the house so as not to freeze. She did not like this—it felt like the year was already coming to a close with four months to go. When she expressed this, both her parents grew a little sullen, like teenagers caught in a lie.
“It’s not so bad,” her father said, and her mother said, “We’ll get used to it!”
She did not want to get used to it, and hearing her parents say so plainly that she would have to adapt put her in a foul mood. Will we have to wear gloves inside, too? She imagined asking that night. And hats, and scarves? Will we spend all winter bundled up and barely moving? The fact that they had heaters barely mattered to her. It was a matter of principle. And it was this bitterness that drove her into the false garden on the Saturday before her first day of school. She walked the perimeter of the small, sad square of grass, breeze ruffling the leaves in the trees above her. The apartment had two wings bracketing the courtyard, and in the afternoon, it was dark in their shadow.
Her school uniform was pressed and laid out on her bed, though it was different from the salwar-kameez and dupatta she was used to—a button-down like her father might wear, and uncomfortable brown pants. She did not care for the uniform.
She was distracted by the noise of geese. Looking up, she saw an uneven V of them, course set. Here was something else: the birds were leaving, and what sort of place was this, that even the birds routinely abandoned? She did not know overmuch of snow beyond photos her uncle had taken on his trip to Murree. The lady who’d helped them with their immigration had joked about how they’d better be ready for it, which was all the more reason to despair because it meant that even her three sorry trees would be stripped of their green attire.
But they were alive now, she supposed. She abandoned her useless walking to approach one and, after a moment, to press her cheek against its hardy brown bark. As she did, the door across the way opened, and a woman stepped out, a basket of laundry balanced on her hip. She cut across the courtyard on a shortcut to the laundry room, and when she saw her, the woman smiled and raised a hand in greeting. She did not smile back, but she did wave once. The woman disappeared, and she went back inside, too, shortly, with the impression of the bark still grooved in phantom lines against her skin.
The first day of school was remarkable in its mundanity. She went in a yellow school bus, like in the movies, and the school looked like the schools in the movies, too, flat and sturdy. Most of the children did not look anything like her, and the ones who did did not speak anything like her. Her homeroom teacher pointed her out and told everyone to be very nice and welcoming to her, which she was not sure she appreciated, exactly, but she took it, and ate her lunch in a corner of the cafeteria, wishing she could be with her friends from the old country.
At the airport, after they said goodbye to her nano and her dado and her aunts and uncles and cousins, her father cried, and she cried, and her mother cried, and all three of them pretended they had not, were not, would not. They pretended that they were going somewhere for a little while, and that the suitcases would be opened quickly and then repacked. Pretended that the new language that surrounded them would remain a language on the TV and on the radio at the market, and pretended that the things they had left behind were waiting untouched instead of dusted and tucked away in boxes in the store room.
And here was the thing—the year was ending prematurely, and yet, at school, everything had just begun. There were many firsts: quizzes and homework, substitute teachers and assemblies. Death in the air, and textbooks that smelled new.
She liked her new teachers, even though they tended to treat her like a teacup liable to break. She did not make friends, but she spoke to other children, and that was alright, wasn’t it? And it was alright that the grass would yellow, that the leaves would fall? Alright that the world would freeze over and that her breath would puff in the air?
On Friday, her teacher gave her a stack of books to carry to the library. This was the first time someone had asked her to do something without speaking to her as though she were stupid.
The library had tall, clear windows which opened at the top to let in air. A tall oak tree stood sentry outside. The librarian showed her where to put the books and thanked her, and that was that. The anxiety churning in her gut abated. She was sent back to class with little fanfare.
Her class returned to the library next week and sat on the blue carpet to listen to the librarian read them a story. The story was fine, if a little boring. In a lull, she glanced at the windows again and saw that some of the oak leaves had begun to turn patchily to a sickly green, more yellow than deep emerald. Despite the ugliness, something about it made her gaze linger.
A robin hopped on one of the branches nearby, cocked its small head. She thought that maybe it was looking at her, that it saw her, but it flew away before she could make up her mind.
At home, she told her mother the trees were dying. Her mother was chopping onions, a task she had always been incapable of performing without a profuse amount of tears. This had always disturbed her.
“Trees lose their leaves,” she said, sniffling.
“Why?” This was a child’s question, but it felt pertinent to ask.
“Because it gets cold.”
“Then they die.”
“No.” She scraped the onions into a pot, set them to simmer.
“Then what’s the point of it, then?”
Her mother frowned, wiped her hands on a dish towel. “So they can survive the winter and come back again in the spring. Now I know you know this, so there’s no use asking anything else.”
“That was at home, though,” she said, sullenly. “And not all the leaves fell off, but you knew the ones that did would come back. You don’t know that they will, here.”
Her mother looked at her for a moment.
“You’re right,” she said. “But everybody here says they’ll grow back.”
That night, her father came home with a bag of groceries. He put apples on the counter, then oranges, then a small packet of biscuits he knew she liked.
Outside, the evening had come early.
She excused herself briefly and went down to the courtyard. It was awash in blue, and the shadows had an ominous quality about them, as if they were all hiding things from her. She looked up at the three solid trees she’d thought looked so pathetic that first day, and was startled to find she was somewhat fond of them now. The derision had melted away, in any case.
She remembered the feeling of touching the bark and did so again, after a moment’s hesitation: Wrapped her arms around the solid trunk and pressed her forehead hard against it. The tickle of her hair made her think of the black ants she’d used to watch. She stood like that for a minute, or maybe two, listening to the rustle of the leaves and the sounds of the distant highway.
What to make of it? All of it? This place or that place?
She didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure that she ever would, but she would be able to check in on her three trees, would be able to see if the leaves all really did grow back after the winter’s desolation. The promise of a future adventure was not so easy to give up on.
She stepped back, took a deep breath of the cool night air. She went back inside.
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