An Elegy in Nine Trees

It’s mermaid day. She’ll pick up sea shells, lie on the beach like a washed-up starfish, go to an art gallery, and eat grilled fish. Yesterday, she took a boat trip to watch seals sunbathe on ragged rocks, and the captain flirted with her, the only single woman on the tour. It was pirate day; she let him.

The cliff-side path sparkles in the breeze. But even the gentle wind, like a breath in, doesn’t help her get a lungful. She’s been so short on oxygen it makes her wonder if she was a fish in a previous life. Maybe she needs gills. The glistening dew cools her feet in strappy sandals. She squints to observe the blades of grass wink, and in the distance, the sea also glistens, calls to her. Her moist footsteps echo on the path. She’s trying to name all the kinds of trees she can see, and the breath comes a little easier.

Cypress. Doesn’t sound very English, no, sir, not like steak and kidney pie. It promises halloumi, citrus, fresh acerbity on the tongue, saltiness between the legs. The cypress, tall and pointy like a middle finger. Much like the one shown to her just before he crossed over the threshold and slammed the front door, and she whispered that it was bad luck to leave in the middle of a fight. But he couldn’t hear.

Plumeria. Promises dark fruit, and a venereal disease when whispered. So what if she catches something here; medicine has taken strides. In the evenings, she visits bar after bar, sipping drink upon drink, never paid for from her own purse. And then, she brings the men to the same hotel room that smelled so distinctly of jasmine when she checked in. Now, it’s darker. She throws windows open, requests new sheets daily. The staff explain it’s the sea, tinting all fabrics a salty hue, but she knows better. The magnificent secretions that auger victory in the middle of the night sicken in the light of dawn. And there’s so much daylight, so little time to hide in the darkness before the greens and blues break out. I can’t have children, she whispers in their ear, you can stay, and they do with a groan. That helps. To be a vessel of relief, to be useful.

Eucalyptus. Rolling off the tongue like something ancient, a forgotten dinosaur. Or holy, like the eucharyst. You part your lips, a cloaked man inserts a wafer, you bow, walk away. And that’s a wrap, amen. She’s done it many times now: dipped into churches, cool despite the scorch, and perched at the back, listening to mass in a language she can’t understand. And her legs carry her to the altar. She mimics the old crumpled ladies, taking the body of god on her knees and mouth agape with thanks, in a posture so familiar she sneaks out of the church flushing before the final blessings are gifted.

Oleander. Like expensive furniture, ornamental benches, beds with decorative posts. A bygone era of beautiful words and rooms. Her own lodging is sparse, but she has a bed comfortable enough, and a chair where she sometimes leads the faces that are slowly becoming one, and takes them on the cool surface. The wood creaks, privy to her pleasure, also in crescendo. She never tells them her first name, and they don’t ask. And if they do, she lies that it turns her on to remain strangers. Or maybe that is true. It hacks away at parts she doesn’t want right now, those of identity.

Rubber tree. But here, they also call it the tree of Orinoco, which she much prefers. She hates rubber. The smell of it scares her ever since the night she lost her virginity, and the wrapped tool that was wielded looked like a probing device and not a transmitter of intimacy and pleasure. She’s never used protection since, but always lost blood at the end of the month. And with an actual probe wrapped in a condom, she finally found out the truth. When he insisted.

‘Have you always known this?’

She shook her head.

‘I think this is entrapment. Some kind of trickery. Maybe we can still get an annulment, or whatever you call them.’

‘We could adopt. If you wanted to.’

‘Adopt? I don’t want to fucking adopt. God gave me two balls for a reason.’

She can’t stand coarseness.

Lemon. Not many people know, but the lemon tree is like a rose bush, thorny and protective of its fruits. When she first arrived, she took it as a great shock to see lemons everywhere: rotting on sidewalks, falling to the ground with a dull thump, and not neatly netted in supermarket aisles. But here, they aren’t just sour with a suggestion of sweetness at the end; no, here they open with sugar, and follow with increasing acidity, a gentle study in sweet and sour. Also how her short-lived relationships develop. They start with gratification, then burn the tongue when she asks them to leave. How they want to stay the night, get breakfast together. Take her to this attraction or that. So different from the men back home who can’t dress and disappear in more hurry into the cold and moist nights; no, here men want to serve her, to repay for their pleasure in the light of day.

‘What is wrong with you?’ one asks, looking through their strewn clothes to find his share.

‘I… I don’t know,’ she confesses under the sheets, stretching up to her neck.

‘If you’re trying to forget something, that’s one fucked-up way to go about it,’ he throws out, slotting his feet into flip-flops, and patting trouser pockets. ‘Do you want a smoke?’

Avocado. There is a stone inside her too, a hard and sturdy core. She can be cut wide open, but the knife will hit an obstacle. Something about her so impenetrable he thought she’d tricked him with the baby business. She loves avocados for their rough skin, for how they give under a knife, how she can slice in a big circle all around and split the flesh in halves, leaving the stone in one like a wishbone. If every millennial loves this ritual like she does, as they claim, and lattes, what really is wrong with that — you have a good and tender generation.

She eats them here almost every day. The hotel room has a kitchenette she uses to spread them on hard bread, so much tougher than back home where it flops and breaks until made to behave in a toaster. Her counter top overflows with the fruits, to the amusement of men passing by. She sure has a healthy appetite, they say. Does she know how best to remove the stone, they ask. She answers yes: place your index and middle finger on the flesh either side of the stone, and push into the skin on the other side with your thumb. And if the fruit is good and ready, the stone will pop out with great ease. Very good, they answer, and put their index and middle fingers all over her, and press with thumbs.

Weeping fig. Fleshy, sweet, and sad.

‘I’m going to get the rest of my shit,’ he messaged. ‘If you could just go out. Won’t take long, thanks’

‘Just wanted to say goodbye,’ she sent back. ‘Will you be back another time?’

‘Come on

Hate theatrics’

And that was it. She found the house a little less populated on her return, though he’d left all the things that were theirs collectively: the pots and pans and trinkets and towels. He wanted to start fresh, he said. Forget the dud marriage.

Now there is a hole in her mind where a host of images once lived, vibrant, saturated. A black-and-white film of a woman in her thirties plays silently. Nothing to look forward to. So she booked this holiday. Something to look forward to. A blurry home video in pastels.

Olive, the mighty. The abundant, the sparse, the life giver to crop most delicious and versatile. This one she’s passing on the path is old, it’s tired, it’s twisted out of shape. Arthritic but relevant. It’d tried hard. She stops to look. She will never bring any olives into the world, either.

She’ll have to go back to England soon. People keep tropical plants there, too, without any real hope for fruit. All she needs is someone to water.