Bitter Cherries
A short story about childhood, memory, innocence, and the complicated relationship between love and the feeling of deserving it. Through the memory of a cherry tree planted with my grandfather, the story explores how small experiences can leave lasting emotional traces.
Bitter Cherries
I was raised as the only grandchild of my family for seven years before my brother was born, blessed to be the center of all the love and attention of my family. Unhappy and alone, I often felt cursed growing up with no other children around to be friends with. There are not that many vivid memories from those years, everything seems to be covered by a white satin sheet: colors and details are not quite tangible, but one can make out hints of shapes under the fabric.
Some moments stand out and they are always revealing something. They might be clues, evidence that I really was a child once. Like a red rose lying under a poorly plaster cast of Michelangelo’s David, surrounded by empty bottles and a discolored sheep skull. Listening to the sound of a thousand strokes of pencils on the blank sheets of paper. Living in a still-life composition that is set up haphazardly for a quick drawing practice. And then there is me on the other side of the room with a red rose in the center of my paper, all its carefully drawn details banishing everything else around it into the background, reducing it to be white noise in the form of simple, arbitrary strokes. After the practice, everything is put back into cupboards, the other students leave, and the objects wait for the next practice to be looked at again. Only the rose sits in a glass of water on the windowsill, knowing there is no next time to be drawn.
I’m still not sure if those moments are so powerful or if the white sheet is just not big enough to cover them.
I remember my fifth winter when the cold slowly left the soil when it was still cold, but one could smell the spring in the air. I spent most of the winter at my grandparents’ house. I was lying on the carpet in the living room in front of the window. Tracing the shadow of naked branches on my paper. I was rotating around it to keep it safe from moving, careful not to disturb the branches’ shadows with mine. But they were moving slightly anyway with every single breeze outside, but my pencil was not that precise for a slight shake to matter. I stopped when I heard the door opening, I ran toward it, as fast as I could. Not that I was in a hurry or waiting for something. I ran for no reason, only because I could.
My grandpa was behind the door, standing near a tall stick shoved in a bucket of dirt. He kissed me on my forehead and told me: “Go ask your grandma to help you put your jacket on. We want to go out and plant your cherry tree.”
I never thought about owning a tree before. I knew what owning was, a barrier that keeps others from my things. I was aware that my chocolates were only for me to eat, my grandma could only hug and love me, and all the other things that I owned were for no one else to use, but owning a tree. How can it be only for me? What is the barrier that keeps others from having my tree? I was excited and confused with all these questions in my head, while my grandma guided my arm through the sleeve of the warm jacket.
It was a stick in a bucket and I wasn’t sure of its use, but I was happy to have a new thing in the collection of the stuff I owned regardless. It was sunny in the garden, bright without heat, but not cold either. It was pleasantly silent while I waited there for my grandpa. Waiting for him to walk down to where I was standing, he was moving slowly, and I was hugging the tree with one hand and a shovel in the other. The dirt seemed much harder than it looked as he started to dig, harder than the times I was looking for worms in the summer. The harsh sound of the shovel cutting through a thick root broke the rhythm of his digging, but after the pile of dirt grew faster. I was holding the tip of my glove between my teeth to take it off. Grandpa was looking at me while I was trying to push the cold soil back to the ditch, to cover the roots of my tree. How proud he was, looking at my small hands planting my first tree, bringing something to life for the first time. How hopeful he was toward the future.
Distance grew between us with each year that I got older. With each year that passed, I drifted more from his imagination. We barely even talked in the past few years. Only a notion of me stayed with him and I became a total stranger. We just say hi whenever we see each other and there is a silence afterward. Nothing between us now is as pleasant as that winter day. The space between us feels more like that rose that night, alone on the table with all the lights out.
He patted the ground with the back of his shovel and said: “Now we wait for summer, to pick your cherries.” I never waited that long for something, and I learned the meaning of that word there and then. A pleasant feeling of excitement colored this time. Now, whatever waiting cannot be defined by excitement and pleasantness. But I learned how to survive. Everyone does eventually, in their own way. Only the strongest will lose, and in this case, being strong is not a value, nor losing a shame.
Nothing happened until the next summer, only waiting. That is all I remember, at least. The dried stick probably started to grow at the first glimpse of life, early in the spring, growing bouquets of bright green patches, like all other trees do, in all other seasons of spring, the ones that passed and the ones that are yet to come. Later, beautiful cherry blossoms dropped on freshly grown grass, its beauty almost ruined by being so cliché. Then summer came. Few new branches sprouted, and the ones that budded were a bit heavy for the modest trunk. All the fully grown leaves lost their vigor and shine. Dark green leaves, a little bigger than my palm. The only way for me to keep a record of growth. The leaves were growing way faster than my hands. Every small change was a landmark, even though I had never been a curious kid. But every little transformation became an augur of those cherries to come.
And they did.
One summer day, while escaping the heat after playing outside by lying on the carpet, right after my grandma asked me to not lie in front of the air conditioner’s cold wind, Grandpa opened the door once again and shouted “Have you seen all those cherries that are ready for you to pick?”
I had been playing around that tree all day that day and every single one during the past months and had never set foot in that garden without inspecting my tree. It had been a simple, but sacred ritual, to run toward that tree whenever I went into the garden. Looking closely at each small change, everything else became peripheral. I had never played in that garden without checking my precious tree. I had done so that morning. I was ashamed that I had not noticed the cherries that day. I betrayed my tree and all those days of waiting. I went out to check it, but was too ashamed to run this time. I walked. It was painful for a kid who loves running. No matter how short my every step had been and how hard I tried to take my time, delaying reaching the tree, I knew I would arrive there either way. The walk was long enough to blame myself for having missed the cherries, for whatever reason a boy that age blames himself for something like that. Blood started to pound loudly through my body, thumping in my ears, when I saw all those red flecks adorning the tree from a distance. There were hundreds of cherries hanging from those feeble branches, bending so that they were on the verge of breaking. I picked all of them and left the tree as naked as I saw it that morning. They were sweet, but I couldn’t enjoy them. They were my cherries, but I did not deserve them.
I missed them again the next day and every day after that. No matter how closely I looked at the tree every morning, everything always happened the same way. Whenever I could not stand the heat of the sun and went inside, my grandpa opened the door and broke my heart again and again. I missed it every single time, for weeks, until the bitterness of the shame became stronger than the sweetness of the cherries. I did not collect them on the last day. I did not even go outside to look at them. I only told my grandpa that I did not like cherries, and that he could have them, if he wanted to. That was the first time I let go of something I owned.
That tree never bore any fruit on any other day that year, and I could not forgive myself for it. I am still unable to, even though I know now that cherry trees do not bear fruit for the first year. Even though I know how long it must have taken my grandpa to hang those cherries onto those branches every day. Cherries he bought from the small shop near his house.
I still cannot enjoy cherries. They make me wonder if I am worthy of enjoying their sweet taste.
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