Your initial post is due by midnight (11:59 PM) on Thursday. You must write at least 400 words on Olive Senior's "The Pain Tree" and Ana Menéndez's "Her Mother's House" (in other words, at least 200 w

The Pain Tree OLIVE SENIORThe person who had taken care of me as a child was a woman named Larissa. She no longer worked for my family. And yet the moment I’d arrived home, I hadhad this vision of Larissa instead of my mother standing there by the front stepswaiting to greet me with a gift in her hand. It startled me, it seemed so real, for itwas many years since I’d even thought of her. But suddenly I was a child again, sopalpable was her presence. It made me feel sad and I didn’t know why, for what I’d remembered were the good times we’d had together. I felt cheated of the gift shehadn’t delivered, though I knew this to be absurd. Larissa was a poor woman, withnothing to give. My mother loved to say I was coming home to possess my inheritance. Shewrote it like that in her letters. She also told people I’d chosen to study archaeology because I’d been bornin a house with 17th century foundations. Yes, I would say to myself, built of the finest cut-stone, the mortar hard asiron because it was sweetened with molasses and slave blood. My mother would have been extremely mortified if she’d heard me say thataloud. For us, the past was a condensed version. I didn’t want to possess anything. When my parents sent me away to boarding school in England at the age often, I had happily gone. I’d managed to stay away for fifteen years but cominghome now seemed the right thing since my father died and my mother was leftalone. Duty was something new to me. But I was their only child. I had never given much thought to the life I was born into............For the first few weeks after my return I dutifully fell into whatever mymother had planned for me, trying to get my bearings, but I had no real sense ofconnecting with anyone or anything, life here seemed so untouched by the changes in the world. My mother kept talking of what a grand opportunity I had forbuilding up the estate to the grandeur it once had, but all I could think of was how165 much there was I had to break down. I was already feeling suffocated, only nowrealising how often in my childhood I had escaped to Larissa.“Is anyone living in Larissa’s old room?” I asked my mother at breakfast one day.“Of course not, dear. None of these girls want live-in jobs anymore. They’re all day-workers. Just wait till this country gets the so-called Independence they’reall clamoring for. Then there’ll be nobody to work for us at all.” She said this with such petulance that I almost laughed. I looked hard at her,at her impeccably made-up face, even at breakfast, her polished nails and her hair.‘Well preserved’ is the way one would have described her. I thought irreverentlythat that is perhaps why I had studied archaeology. My mother the well preserved.Carefully layered. The way she had always looked. The way she would look in hergrave. I saw nothing of myself in her, in this house, in this life. But then, I sawnothing of myself anywhere. ..........One day, I left the house and walked down the slope to the old slave barracks hidden behind the trees.In my childhood, the barracks were used for storage, except for a few roomsthat housed the people who worked in the Great House. As I neared, I could see the buildings were abandoned, maidenhair fern and wild fig sprouting from everycrack, the roof beginning to cave in. I had no difficulty identifying Larissa’s from that long line of doors andthough I threw open the window as soon as I entered the room, the light thatstreamed in barely penetrated the dust and cobweb. I went outside and broke off atree branch and used it to brush some away.The old iron bed was still there, without a mattress, the wash-stand, the small table and battered wooden chair. I sat on the chair, as I often did as a child, andlooked keenly at the walls which were completely covered with pages and pictures cut out of newspapers and magazines and pasted down, all now faded and peeling.This is a part of me, I thought with surprise, for I recognised many of the picturesas those I had helped Larissa to cut out. I got the feeling nothing new had beenadded since I left. I used to help Larissa make the paste from cassava starch but the job ofsticking the pictures to the wall was hers alone. I brought the newspapers andmagazines my parents were done with, and we looked at the pictures together and166 argued. I liked scenes of faroff lands and old buildings best while her favouriteswere the Holy Family, the British Royal Family and beautiful clothes. But as timewent on, headlines, scenes, whole pages about the war in Europe had taken over.Larissa now wanted me to read all the news to her before she fell to with scissorsand paste. With the rapidly changing events, even Jesus got pasted over. The newspaper pages had looked so fresh when we put them up, the ink soblack and startling, the headlines imposing on the room names and images thatwere heavy and ponderous like tolling bells: Dun-kirk, Stalin-grad, Roose-velt,Church-ill. And the most important one, the one facing Larissa’s bed with thecaption above it saying: “The Contingent Embarking”. Larissa and I had spentcountless hours searching that picture in vain, trying to find among the hundreds of young men on the deck of the ship, to decipher from the black dots composing thepicture, the faces of her two sons.And it was I, then about eight years old, who had signed for and brought thetelegram to Larissa.The moment she saw what was in my hand she said, “Wait, make me sit down,” even though she was already sitting on the stepsoutside the barracks. She got up and slowly walked into her room, took off her apron, straightened her cap, sat on the bed and smoothed down her dress, her back straight. I stood inthe doorway and read the message. Her youngest son was on a ship that wentdown. I remember being struck by the phrase, “All hands”. I never met Larissa’s sons for they were raised by her mother someplaceelse but she talked of them constantly, especially the youngest whose name wasZebedee. When the war came, both Moses and Zebedee like ten thousand otheryoung men, had rushed off to join the Contingents. So far as I know, Moses wasnever heard of again, even after the war ended.I can still see myself reading to Larissa about the loss of Zebedee Breeze.“All hands. All hands,” kept echoing in my head. Larissa didn’t cry. She sat there staring silently at the pictures which covered the walls to a significant depth, for the layers represented not just the many years of her own occupancy, but those of the nameless other women who had passedthrough that room.167 I went to sit very close beside her on the bed and she put her arm around meand we sat like that for a long time. I wanted to speak but my mouth felt very dryand I could hardly get the words out. “He, Zebedee, was a hero,” was all I could think of saying. Larissa hugged me tightly with both hands then pulled away and resumedstaring at the wall. She did it with such intensity, it was as if she expected all theimages to fly together and coalesce, finally, into one grand design, to signifysomething meaningful.“Zebedee Breeze”, I said to myself, over and over, and his name was like alight wind passing. How could he have drowned?After a while Larissa got up and washed her face, straightened her clothes,and walked with me back to the house to resume her duties. My parents must havespoken to her, but she took no time off. I never saw her cry that day or any other.She never mentioned her sons.And something comes to me now that would never have occurred to methen: how when the son of one of my parents’ friends had died, his mother hadbeen treated so tenderly by everyone, the drama of his illness and death freelyshared, the funeral a community event. That mother had worn full black for a yearto underline her grief and cried often into her white lace handkerchief which madeus all want to cry with her. Women like Larissa pulled far from their homes and families by the promiseof work were not expected to grieve; their sorrow, like their true selves, remainingmuted and hidden. Alone in countless little rooms like the one in which I wassitting, they had papered over the layers, smoothed down the edges, till the flat andunreflective surface mirrored the selves they showed to us, the people whoemployed them. Was that why we had come to believe that people like Larissa, people whowere not us, had no feelings?I was suddenly flooded with the shame of a memory that I had long hiddenfrom myself. When I was going off to England, I had left without saying goodbyeto Larissa, closest companion of my first ten years!I can see it now. Me the child with boundless energy, raring to go. Larissacalmly grooming me, re-tying my ribbons, straightening my socks, spinning mearound to check that my slip didn’t show. Was it just my imagination that she wasdoing it more slowly than usual? The trunks and suitcases were stowed. My168 parents were already seated in the car. I was about to get in when Larissa suddenlysaid, “Wait! I forget. I have something for you.” And she rushed off. I stood there for a moment or two. No one was hurrying me. But with achild’s impatience, I couldn’t wait. I got into the car and the driver shut the door. “Tell Larissa bye,” I shouted out the window to no one in particular.“Wait! she coming,” one of the workers called out, for quite a group hadgathered to see us off. But the driver had put the car in gear and we were moving. Ididn’t even look back. I had planned to write to Larissa but had never done so. For a few years Isent her my love via letters to my mother and received hers in return, then even that trickled away. I had never for one moment wondered what it was she had wantedto give me and turned back for. I had completely forgotten about it, until now.I felt shame, not just for the way I had treated Larissa, but for a whole way oflife I had inherited. People who mattered, we believed, resided in the Great House.It was we who made History, a series of events unfolding with each generation. And yet, I realised now, it was in this room, Larissa’s, that I had first learntthat history is not dates or abstraction but a space where memory becomes layeredand textured. What is real is what you carry around inside of you. This thought came unbidden: that only those who are born rich can affordthe luxury of not wanting to own anything. We can try it on as a way of avoidingcomplicity. But in my heart of hearts I know: my inheritance already possesses me.What Larissa wanted more than anything was the one thing a poor womancould never afford: beautiful clothes. Sometimes when she and I had come to paste new pictures on the wall, wewent a little bit crazy and ripped at torn edges with glee, digging deep down intothe layers and pulling up old pages that had stuck together, revealing earlier timesand treasures. “Look Larissa,” I would cry, and read aloud: ‘Full white underskirts with 19 inch flounce carrying three insertions of Real Linen Torchon lace three inches wide.’ Three inches, Larissa! ‘Edging at foot tomatch. Only ten shillings and sixpence’ .”“Oh Lord,” Larissa would say and clap her hands, “just the thing for me!”169 After our laughter subsided, Larissa would carefully lay down her newpictures to cover over what we had ripped up. She did it slowly and carefully butsometimes her hands would pause, as if her thoughts were already travelling...........Meeting the past like this in Larissa’s room, I began to feel almost faint: as ifthe walls were crawling in towards me, the layers of fractured images thickening,shrinking the space, absorbing the light coming through the window and from theopen door until I felt I was inside a tomb surrounded by hieroglyphics: images ofwar and the crucified Christ, princesses and movie stars, cowboys andcurly-haired children, pampered cats and dogs, lions and zebras in zoos,long-haired girls strutting the latest fashions, ads for beauty creams, toothpaste and motor cars. Images of people who were never like the people who had occupiedthis room. What had these pictures meant to them, the women who had lived here?What were they like, really, these women who were such close witnesses to ourlives? Women who were here one day then going – , gone – , like Larissa. Leavingno forwarding address because we had never asked them for any. ..........Larissa’s room with its silent layers of sorrow so humbly borne suffocatedme. I had this urge to strip the walls, tear the layers apart. I felt such rage, I roseand put both hands against the wall facing me and I pushed, wanting to send ittumbling, all of it. Such rage that my hands battered at the walls. War! I couldn’tstop, couldn’t stop my fingers digging into the layers of paper, gouging andripping. This is where these women buried their rage. Here! I sent huge sheetsflying. Here! Half a wall of paper down in one big clump. Over there! Diggingdown now, struggling with layers of centuries, almost falling over as the big pieces came away in my hands. I couldn’t stop scratching at the fragments left behind,wanting to destroy it all, till my nails were broken to the quick and bleeding...........I came to my senses in that dust-laden room sobbing loudly and holdingclumps of rotting old paper in my hand, fragments flying about, clinging to my hair and clothing, sticking to my nose, my mouth, clogging my throat. I coughed andsneezed and spun around shaking my hair like a mad dog, setting the fragmentsspinning too, joining the dust motes floating in the sunlight streaming in.What a mess I was!170 Ashamed, I finally summoned up the nerve to look at my handiwork. Therewere places that could never be stripped, the layers so old they were foreverbonded to the walls, in some parts I had managed to strip the walls down to revealthe dark ugly stains from centuries of glue and printers ink and whatever else canstain. The walls were an abstract collage now: no single recognisable image wasleft. Without meaning to, I had erased the previous occupants. I felt sick at my behaviour, as if I had committed a desecration. Larissa’sroom. I had no right.But the longer I sat in the room the more I realised it was giving off nodisturbing emanations. What I had done had neither added to nor diminished it.The rage had not been the women’s but mine. In the wider scheme of things, it wasa gesture without meaning. The women like Larissa would always be one stepahead, rooms like this serving only as temporary refuge. They knew from thehistory of their mothers and their mothers before them, they would always moveon. To other rooms elsewhere. To raise for a while children not their own who –like their own – would repay them with indifference or ingratitude – or death. I thought I was taking possession, but the room had already beencondemned. I got up and leaned out the window and was surprised at how fresh and cleanthe air felt. I offered up my face, my hair, my arms to the wind that was lightlyblowing and I closed my eyes so it would wash away the last fragments of paperand cobweb. O Zebedee Breeze! The name of Larissa’s son had seemed somagical to me as a child I had often whispered it to myself, and as I whispered itnow, it conjured up the long-forgotten image of Larissa and the Pain Tree...........A few days after I had brought the news of Zebedee’s death to Larissa, I sawher walking back and forth in the yard, searching the ground for something.Finally, she bent and picked up what I discovered afterwards was a nail. Then shetook up a stone and walked a little way into the bushes. I was so curious, I followed her, but something told me not to reveal myself.She stopped when she reached the cedar tree and I watched as she stood for a good while with her head bent close to the tree and her lips moving as if she werepraying. Then she pounded the trunk of the tree with the stone, threw the stonedown, and strode off without looking back. When I went and examined the tree, Isaw that she had hammered in a nail. But I was even more astonished when Inoticed there were many nails hammered right into the trunk.171 At first, I sensed that this was something so private I should keep quiet aboutit. But I couldn’t help it, one day I did ask Larissa why she had put the nail into thetree. “Don’t is the Pain Tree?” she asked in a surprised voice, as if that wassomething everyone knew.“What do you mean by Pain Tree?”“Eh, where you come from, girl?” Larissa exclaimed. “Don’t is the tree yougive your pain to?” I must have looked puzzled still for she took the trouble to explain. “Let ussay, Lorraine, I feel a heavy burden, too heavy for me to bear, if I give the nail tothe tree and ask it to take my burden from me, is so it go. Then I get relief.”“So you one put all those nails in the tree?” I asked, for I could not imagineone person having so much pain.She looked embarassed then she said, “Not all of them. I find some when Icome here. That’s how I know is a Pain Tree.”“You mean, other people do this?”“Of course”, she said. “Plenty people do it.” Then she paused and saidalmost to herself, “What else to do”?After that, whenever I remembered, I would go and look at the tree but Inever detected any new nails. Perhaps if I had been older and wiser I would haveinterpreted this differently, but at the time I took it to mean that Larissa felt nomore pain.Once or twice when I was particularly unhappy, I had myself gone to the tree to try and drive a nail in. But I did so without conviction and the magic didn’t workfor me, the nails bent and never went in properly and I ended up throwing both nailand stone away in disgust. “Maybe people like you don’t need the Pain Tree,” Larissa had said after mysecond or third try. It was the only time I ever felt uncomfortable with her...........Leaving Larissa’s room, I deliberately left the door and window wide openfor the breeze to blow through and I went outside and stood on the steps of thebarracks to get my bearings, for the landscape had vastly changed. Then I literally172 waded into the bushes, looking for a cedar. I had decided to try and find the PainTree.It took me a while and at first I couldn’t believe I had found the right tree forwhat had been a sapling was now of massive growth, its trunk straight and tall, itscanopy high in the air. I didn’t expect to see any nail marks, for the place where they had beenpounded in was now way above the ground, but I knew they were there and I keptwalking around the tree and looking up until finally with the sun striking at theright angle – and, yes, it might have been my imagination – I caught a glint ofsomething metallic and what looked like pockmarks high up on the trunk. Standing there, gazing upwards, it came to me why Larissa and all thosewomen had kept on giving the tree their pain, like prayers. Because they knew nomatter what else happened in their lives, the tree would keep on bearing them up,higher and higher, year after year. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I should be grieving not for them, butfor myself. People like me would always inherit the land, but they were the oneswho already possessed the Earth. ..........Before I went back to the house, I spent a long time searching the ground fora nail and when I found one, I picked up a stone and I went and stood close to thetree and whispered to it and then I carefully positioned the nail and pounded itwith the stone, and it went straight in. 173