Where the Silk Cotton Tree Grows

They say the old silk cotton tree in Crabwood Creek can swallow souls.

That its roots drink more than water. That sometimes, late at night, you can hear drumming from its trunk—low, deep, and filled with a grief older than the earth it grew from.

Anjali had never believed any of it.

Not until the tree started whispering her grandmother’s name.

Anjali arrived in Guyana with her mother’s ashes in a brass urn and a suitcase full of guilt. The sun hit different here. It didn’t just warm; it clung—dense and golden, as if memory itself had weight in the air.

She hadn’t been back since she was nine. That was before her grandmother Maai passed away, before her mother became a husk of herself in New York, before the stories stopped.

Her mother had made her promise: Take me back to the land Maai sang about.

So here she was.

Alone, sweating in her jeans, standing at the edge of her ancestral village, staring at a tree taller than any she’d ever seen.

The silk cotton tree.

It loomed like a deity—its thick, twisted roots half-submerged in swamp water, its trunk etched with strange grooves that looked like script. Its branches reached out like arms, and its red flowers—soft as whispers—drifted down even though it wasn’t blooming season.

Anjali felt a chill crawl up her spine, despite the heat.

The villagers said the tree was sacred. Others said cursed.

Jumbie tree, the old men called it. Ghost tree. Portal. Don’t go near it during twilight. Don’t speak its name after sundown. And never, ever make an offering without blood.

But Anjali was not afraid.

She was grieving. And sometimes, grief looked like defiance.

So she brought her mother’s urn beneath the tree and laid a handful of rice and camphor on the earth.

She did not expect the wind to shift.

She did not expect the roots to move.

She did not expect the voice.

It wasn’t a voice, not really. More like a pull—something low and humming beneath her feet, like the memory of a drumbeat inside her bones.

Anjali.

She stumbled back. “Who’s there?”

The tree creaked. A single red flower landed on the urn.

Then came a scent—tamarind and burnt sugar, the scent of Maai’s kitchen.

Anjali blinked. The air rippled.

And suddenly, she wasn’t under the tree anymore.

She stood in a cane field. The sun was lower. The wind was louder. But it wasn’t the wind that stirred the air—it was song.

A man stood in the distance, singing in a language she barely remembered but somehow understood. Bhojpuri. His voice was soft but unbroken, the way river currents sound when you’re underwater.

Around him were others: women in faded saris, boys with sun-creased brows, girls barefoot and silent. Their eyes were hollow, but their backs were straight. They cut cane in rhythm. They bled in rhythm.

This is the past, Anjali realized. A memory. Or a dream.

The singer turned toward her.

He looked like Maai. The high cheekbones. The mouth always half in prayer.

Kanhai, she heard.

The name sounded like soil. Like grief. Like home.

He saw her. She was sure of it. His eyes widened, then softened.

He placed one palm to his chest, then extended it to her.

And the world turned.

She gasped, falling to her knees beside the tree. Drenched in sweat. Shaking.

The urn was still there. But beside it, nestled in the roots, was a single string of tulsi beads.

They hadn’t been there before.

Anjali picked them up. The scent of camphor clung to them. So did something else.

Memory.

That night, Anjali couldn’t sleep. The tree whispered in her dreams.

She saw Maai, younger. Holding a baby. Singing Ramcharitmanas. Her voice tangled with ocean wind.

She saw ships. Rows of brown bodies. Shackles traded for promises.

She saw cane, and blood, and gods hiding in mango trees.

And then—she saw herself. Sitting in New York, earbuds in, scrolling past a text from her mother: Do you want to light a diya with me tonight?

She’d left it unanswered.

The next morning, Anjali returned to the tree.

She brought a diya this time. Camphor. Ghee. A page torn from her journal.

On it, she’d written one word: forgive.

She lit the flame.

As the smoke curled, the air shimmered again.

This time, she didn’t flinch.

She saw Maai, standing barefoot at the river, dipping her sari in water and singing to the dawn. She saw her mother, eight years old, lighting incense with a shaky hand.

She saw herself, lighting the same diya now, under the same sky, the three of them linked by fire.

And in that moment, the tree pulsed.

Anjali heard them.

Not voices. Not ghosts.

But songs.

Songs of those who had crossed the kala pani—the dark waters—carrying gods in their mouths and prayers in their scars.

The tree was a keeper.

Of memory. Of story. Of soul.

And now, it had hers too.

That evening, the villagers whispered of red flowers falling in clusters, of lights flickering near the roots, of a young woman kneeling, singing in a language half-forgotten.

They did not disturb her.

The silk cotton tree had chosen her.

And from that day forward, whenever the wind rustled its branches, it did not groan.

It sang.

Anjali stayed in the village longer than she’d planned.

She helped clean the temple steps, painted faded statues, and began collecting oral histories from elders who remembered what the younger ones never asked.

The silk cotton tree became her companion. Each offering she left—fruit, flowers, verses—was met with a subtle shift in the air, as if the tree approved.

One afternoon, a child approached her with a folded paper. “For you,” he said. “From the tree.”

Inside was a charcoal sketch of Kanhai—the man from the field—his hand outstretched again.

This time, she took it.

More visions followed, clearer each time. She learned Kanhai had been a healer. That he’d hidden banned drums beneath the roots. That he died protecting sacred music during a crackdown.

His spirit had fed the roots.

And now, his song guided hers.

Anjali recorded everything. For a future she wouldn’t let forget.

She began writing—not just her family’s story, but the story of the soil. Of breath passed down. Of a tree that held centuries in its bark.

When she finally returned to New York, her suitcase was heavier.

Not just with artifacts.

With purpose.

Years later, her book would win an award. But that wasn’t the legacy.

The legacy was the grove she planted in the Bronx.

Red silk cotton saplings. Bhojpuri prayers carved in benches. A plaque that read:

Where memory grows, healing follows.

Some swore the trees whispered at dusk.

Anjali never denied it.

She just smiled.

And lit another diya.