Weeping Willow - Truffle Magazine, Issue 4 - Fiction (2021)

This story was first featured in Truffle Magazine Issue 4 (2021)

My Momma used to bury her feelings in the backyard. Daddy told her to, and she obliged because it was easier, tidier than the alternative. Her armor had worn thin from the lashes of his whiskey-soaked tongue, and there was only so much mess she could sweep up in the aftermath. Only so many frames left to hang over the fist-shaped holes in our plaster walls. In the backyard, by herself, it was clean. The metal from the shovel squelched through sod beneath her foot. She discarded fresh dirt in a neat little pile next to her, a shallow pit left for her to empty everything she couldn’t tell him, everything he wouldn’t hear. She’d let the salt from her tears soak the black earth below, germinating her spilled thoughts from seed to sprout.

My Daddy never tucked me in, not that I can remember. It was always Momma, pulling the sheets up to my chin, brushing back the wisps of my hair, leaning in for a gentle kiss. Sometimes she’d sit beside me and read a story in the dim light, her tired eyes creased at the corners like each page of the book. Other times we’d sit in the quiet. The faint buzz of white noise from the TV downstairs vibrating between us. On special nights she’d sing me a song, soft and sweet until my eyes went heavy:

My heart is sad, and I am lonely,

for the only one I love.

When shall I see her, oh no never,

’ Til we meet in heaven above.

Oh, bury me beneath the willow.

Under the weeping willow tree.

So she will know where I am sleeping,

And perhaps she’ll weep for me.

I’d pretend to be asleep while she’d turn down the light and drift from my room like a shadow, only to hear their muffled voices below. A door slamming shut. Squelching sod. The metal clink of a shovel outside.

At first, the holes were scattered, hard to notice. One alongside the back of the tattered shed where Daddy kept his tools. Another next to the creek that trickled between the trees at the edge of our property. With time, they multiplied, filled in craters dotting the lawn like freshly planted land mines. I would play games with them, hopscotching over them, until the yard was swallowed up and the patches of green became fewer and farther between. Daddy couldn’t stand the sight of it. He tried to plant new grass, raking and spreading seed over and over again. Nothing helped. Because he kept handing Momma the shovel. And Momma kept on burying things.

I watched the real estate agent in her cheap blush heels twist the stake of the for-sale-sign into the ground two weeks after Momma passed, the squelching sound too familiar. Daddy flashed her a smile and kept his eyes fixed on her as she walked past. Your Momma’s gone now, ain’t nothing else to do but move on. I never asked what happened. I already knew. She ran out of room in the backyard to bury what she kept inside. Grammy told me as much when I went to live with her instead. On the morning that I left, my Daddy turned his back before the door closed between us.

Standing in front of it now, almost forty years since Momma died, the house is nothing like I remember. Someone added layers to the top of it, built a detached two-car garage where the shed used to be. Flowers line a brick paver walkway; their purplish hues accent the lush green of the immaculate lawn. Momma’s feelings are buried somewhere underneath it all. There is a wrought iron fence behind the house too, and between the posts, I can see a family - two parents, two children, a dog chasing their heels. I listen to them laugh a while, take in their smiling faces, and then trace the shadows floating beneath them towards the edge of the backyard.

A tree stands tall in front of where the creek used to run. Its gangling branches hang low, dancing in the breeze. The green and yellow leaves drip in strands towards the ground, a pile of them collecting underneath. A weeping willow tree.

The willow hadn’t been there when I left, and it must have lived a whole life since. Its trunk is pockmarked and worn. Patches of its limbs are without cover. One piece of it had come down, the flesh of the tree still raw where it broke free.

The branches sway at a quickened pace as the family makes their way inside. I keep still and pull my jacket closed to watch the strings of leaves flutter down through the golden light. My eyes water, and I can faintly see Momma there, resting on the willow’s roots. Her hair is fixed to her shoulders, clothes pressed neat and clean. She wears no makeup, never did, but her cheeks are rosy, and her lips curl into a smile.

For a moment, I’m back in my childhood bed, sheets pulled up to my chin. The silhouette of Momma is black against the dim light of the room. It’s a special night, and she sings me the song again: