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                        Amongst the Smiling Cypresses

 

                                                Dawn Wendt

 

“Life is solitary confinement.” Was the advice my mother had to offer me, from the time I was five years old, playing in the front yard amongst the smiling cypresses. She had been alone ever since the winter previous, years ago, when the horses had frozen over and her hair stood up. Her lover had electric hair, too. So they understood each other. It’s been years since I saw a smile come to her face. Before, she believed that we were all confined to our own prisons within our bodies. Now, she confirms that those prisons are eternal.

She is the ‘bah humbug’ of the south, the raising voice of the hikers in the mountains who call out for a lost companion in the rain. Her negative words bled bruises into my five-year-old brain. It’s not her fault. She didn’t choose to have the parents she did.

 

“It only takes once.” She told me, looking up from her knitting. “You’ll see.” She shook her head and clicked her tongue at me. She was all-knowing. You could tell, by her tattoos, and

 

the scars she wore openly on her body. She had been through hell and survived, and so it was easy enough for me to take her word as truth.

 

Her hair falls completely flat now. You can tell it’s disappointed her, by her expression in the mirror. She warns me because I’ve fallen in love, something she told me not to do. I tried to get her to meet him, once. I tried to explain that he was a nice boy – that even if he wore clothes that she didn’t approve of, that he didn’t shake her hand when he met her because he didn’t realize he had to, that he was still nice.

 

“He will leave you,” She tells me. “If you don’t have sex with him. He’ll leave you.” She was sewing a hem when she said this. She missed the fabric and pricked her finger. We watched the blood fall on the tartan lace garment. She looked at me. “You bleed when you have sex.” At the time she said this, I hadn’t had sex. So I believed her, and I told her I wouldn’t have sex until the summer at the very least. So we watched the snow in the comfort of our living room, until I had to go away for school again.

 

“You’ll be confined to your pain for the rest of your life.” She told me. “That’s what life is. You fall in love, and you are scorned. Then you have to live with knowing you weren’t enough for him.”

 

I met him at school. He is brown-eyed, and bushy-tailed, and he tells me that he thinks I’m sweet. He puts his arm around my shoulders when we walk together.

 

“You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak.” She scoffed at me. “Don’t come crying to me when he breaks your heart.”

 

“My heart beats for him.” I tell her. She doesn’t understand the hope I feel when I looked at him, that someone has finally cared enough about me that they wish to understand the inner

 

workings of my soul. She confines herself to that frozen-over mansion, where it is always winter- thumbprickingly icy cold, frostbitten and bitter. There hasn’t been leaves growing in our orchard for years now, and I don’t know when they’ll start to grow again. She isn’t taking care of the yard. She walks around those halls like a ghost, as if she lost her feet and the sound of her footsteps.

 

The sky still hasn’t stopped crying loveless snow.

 

When I was confined to visits with my mother for extended periods of time like this, I would go for walks along the property, bundled up tightly in sweaters she had knitted in her solitude. Once upon a time, apples grew on these trees. Their tops were well-nourished, green, and tall, and enjoyed being climbed. They whispered secrets in my youthful ears. They would tell the secrets of the birds, and how they are not always as sweet as they seem.

 

“They dance for their lovers to impress them.” They told me. “What a pleasure it is that you never have to go so far out of your way for the approval of someone.” I would cradle myself in their arms when my mother was off with her lover, and the wind rocked me to the sound of Spanish lullabies. They sang me songs, and gave me their apples when they were ripe. “Always treasure this.” And so I did. d

 

But now they can no longer speak, and I press a hand to throw frozen stumps and I can feel their heartbreak, their voices that are strained and frozen shut. I can feel their lack of freedom, their pounding heartbeat beneath the surface of the ice – I yearn to touch them, to feel the grooves of the stump, the sap of the trees, to feel the support of their heavy limbs as my feet clad in trainers step up, and up, and up, until I reign over all that I can see.

 

“I am powerless here.” I told them. “I have tried to convince her that the world isn’t as scary as she believes. But I think she refuses to believe there is any happiness left for her to consume.” I have no way of knowing whether or not they truly understood, seeing as they were frozen shut. I heard the whinny of a horse. I look towards the east, where the stables were. Since she hasn’t the energy to put the horses in their stables at night, she lets them go free – something that I’ve come to detest, considering she’s let it be cold all this time.

 

“If you had an apple to give her, you might change her mind.” The horse scared me with his sudden presence, but I was happier than ever to see that they were still able to survive in this cold. He wore a thick wool blanket across his back.

 

“Do you think?”

 

“You can’t blame her for the way she treats you, dear. She’s been scorned.” He said this with a mouthful of grass. “When the people we love are cruel, we have two choices: become frozen to the touch, or avenge ourselves. Your mother, it seems, isn’t the avenging type.”

 

“What if I did it for her?”

 

The horse blinked, huffing air out of its nostrils. “My dear, she wouldn’t deserve such a kind gesture.” “She deserves to have her cold heart melted.” “Do you speak with anger, angel?”

 

“Not at all.” I glanced towards the mansion. I had always entertained the idea of escape, running away from home. But I feared that she would be alone for all eternity then, and even though I wasn’t great company, I was company nonetheless. Her feet don’t touch the ground anymore.

 

“How could I leave her like this?”

 

The horse scoffed, but he nonetheless stepped closer to me. “You will pay for your kindness, my dear. Shall we go and find an apple?”

 

“In this cold?”

 

“I am well acquainted with the intimacies of the forest. I know where we’ll find one.” We rode deep into the orchard. Branches scraped my cheeks, and against the cotton of my coat.

 

“The only ripe apple in the forest.”

 

A drop of blood fell onto the back of my hand. I looked at the tree – a measly tree, not quite as tall as the others. It wasn’t the kind I’d pick out when I was a child, running along the trees and deciding ideas for my future. It was the kind of tree you’d read against, and it would comfort you, and read the story along with you, telling its friend, the wind, to turn the page even if you hadn’t finished it yet. The branches were all dark and dim and seemingly weak. There were only three apples on the tree. Two were frozen into ice blocks, impermeable and stuck in time. I tapped against the ice block with my finger, and watched as the apple icicle started to swing and fell to the forest floor. It fell with an unimpressive thud to sit comfortably in the dirt, remaining locked in its cage. The horse inclined his head to look back at me. The only ripe apple in the frozen over first stood eight feet up – too tall for me to grasp at, even on horseback.

 

“Wouldn’t it be easier to melt that one?”

 

“Now how do you think that’d taste, my dear? Thawing once-frozen things leaves them never the same again, you know that.” He was right. Mother would be disappointed.

 

“How do I get it?”

 

“I can see how far we can get if I jump. Hold on tight.”

 

He thrust himself on his hind legs, lifting himself up an extra foot or so in a beautiful statuesque pose of beauty. I grasped onto the branch right below it, and added my second hand. If I could balance and get my hands on the next branch above, I could get the apple. But upper body strength was never quite my strong suit.

 

“I’ll catch you if you fall.”

 

I reached for the branch quickly, feeling sticky sap and rough bark against the soft skin of my delicate palms. Moving quickly would be my only saving grace, to catch my balance. I barely missed it, but my right hand found the thicker branch carrying the only thing that could save my mother. The second hand followed after, and I looked to my right, to see the apple dangling at the end of the branch. I inched my hands, little by little, towards the end. The horse walked below me, looking up at me with interest, though he offered no advice. It was shiny, and red, and gleamed from the unforgiving light of the winter sun. It seemed bruiseless, and untouched, and it was a wonder to me how this apple could be sitting at the end of the branch, so untouched by the world around it, so unaffected. How could life persist in such cold, unforgiving conditions? How could something persevere so completely?

 

I was afraid the second I let go of the branch with my right hand to reach the apple, I would fall. It was inevitable, I figured. I got as close as I could, feeling the branch dip towards the earth with the added affect of my weight upon it. The apple spun by the force, but it stayed tact to the tree.

 

“You are stronger than you think you are.”

 

I believed the words of the horse, hushed, as focused as I was on our prize. I reached for the apple, feeling the firm skin in my hands and felt my body fall to the frozen floor.

 

I came to in the den of our house, with the fire lit and raging. Night had fallen. “Mother?”

 

She floated into the room, hair flat and traipsing behind her like the dress of a bride. it was so long that when she left a room, her hair would stay behind, and would take a few seconds or so to keep up with her body.

 

“You’re an idiot.” She told me. “Going out in that orchard alone? You know it’s dangerous.” She’s the one that made it so.

 

I looked toward my hand, to show her the apple, to give her the one prize that would help her bring her back to her normal self. To have her static, vertical hair again…to have it floating against the ceiling as it once did before. When I was young, and she was in love, her hair oozed electricity. It stood straight up and crazed. It was as captivating as the smile that never left her lips. She was so much happier then. Now, these rooms feel empty, even though they are filled with her body, and the length of her hair as it falls behind her.

 

The apple was in the pocket of my sweater, with a note from the horse.

 

Sorry for the fall.  I caught you.

 

Best of luck.

 

I would hold the note dearly for the rest of my days, I was sure of that.

 

“I can’t believe your audacity.” She continued.

 

“I have a gift for you, mother.”

 

“What’s this?” She turned to me, eyes blinking and green. She lost her pupils along with her presence.

 

I presented the apple to her, small, though mighty. Red, and gleaming, a bright, warm light in a room full of muted cools.

 

“An apple? From the orchard?”

 

I nodded, watching as she took the apple in her palm and examined it in her palm, turning it around. Her long fingernails easily surcompassed the entire fruit.

 

“What is this supposed to solve?” She cried. “Why have you given this to me?”

 

“I wanted you to see that there is still life, when it is cold, and dark.” She blinked at me. “It has been winter for years, mother! There is more to this life than wallowing.”

 

“I know that.” She dug a fingernail into the skin of apple, watching a droplet of apple juice fell down into her palm. “But there isn’t much more to this life than love. And I have lost that.” She glared at me. “Just who do you think you are, some kind of hero?” I watched as she walked towards the front entrance of our home, and threw the apple out into the snow, where it rested – red, pricked by my mother’s claw-like fingernails, in a nest of snow. I watch it bleed red onto the icy white.