Ghosts in the Orchard
My father comes into town. Unexpected, uninvited. He drives to the store in Ann Arbor where my sister and I work and just walks right in. We squeal when we see him and clap our hands. Then we parade him around, introducing him to everyone we find. They’re delighted to meet our Dad.
We decide to go for a drive together. Dad wants to see the places where our family use to live. There are two. He’s walking ahead of us, fast, and Dora and I laugh as we follow him to the truck. He is very, very tall.
Soon we are sharking through tiny streets in Ypsilanti with houses that are very small. Dad parks the truck in front of the first house and we sit and look at it. I can barely remember living here; the green porch, the bare wooden floors. Dad is narrating into his window…”just before you were born, Dora. Yep. That summer I took a shovel and dug out a basement under this house…can still see where the yard is raised up a good six inches…” My sister and I smile at each other and watch Dad remember. We don’t stay long.
As we drive to the second house, the one in Saline on Willis road, the house we all loved, Dad tells us stories of his days as a county sheriff. “…Me and Chet was chasin some guy up Ecorse here, they gave us a ’66 Dodge that night. We must have been doing a hundred and ten up this stretch when that guy decided to give up and just stopped. We shot passed him of course…”
I ask my father, “What was he doing? Why were you chasing him?” I’m in the back seat.
“I dunno,” he shrugs. “Somebody called for help and we were chasing him.” We keep driving and Dad keeps talking and I look out the window at the rain. I think about my Father chasing bad guys and how simple things must have been for him in 1975. I think about how much easier it is lately for me to let Dad be Dad.
The drive into Saline is lush and when I point out one of the huge birds I keep seeing in little trees, he says, “Oh use to be you’d hardly ever see any red-tailed hawks when they were using all of that DDT. Now they’re everywhere.” I wonder how it is that as I grow older, my father gets smarter.
As we get closer to our old house, we’re quiet in the rain. Going back to Willis road is hard. We spent years and birthdays and storms here. My dog Freckles is buried here. I was married in the back yard here, right where I use to lay in the soft grass and laugh at the sky. And for all of my childhood, the cottonwood tree sang to me here—beautiful multiple women’s voices in harmony.
After our Mother left we finally got to know our father here. And when he really did sell the house and moved away from it all, I lay at the top of the stairs and cried harder than I can ever remember.
Dad slows the truck as we pass our house. It’s the same; same color, same neighbors, same flagpole. But twenty years later, the trees that line our long drive reach the sky. When we planted them they were just little sticks, like us, but we watered them every night hoping they’d grow. I close my eyes and imagine walking among them, showing them how I’ve much I’ve grown too.
As we pass our house and crest a hill, surprise, there’s a new road that takes us into what use to be an orchard. Massive, brooding houses have sprouted in tight circles where rows of gnarled apple trees once stood. Why would someone pay a bazillion dollars for a house that’s right next to another? Why would they fill in the sand pit, cut down the trees and cornfield?
I spent long summer days right where these houses are. The day Dora was born, Dad’s third and final daughter, he came home from the hospital and said to me, “Well it looks like you’re the boy.”
He was serious. He taught me to weld, hunt, box and ride a dirt bike. We built a dune buggy out of a VW frame and rode up and down the sand dunes. And at night we would sneak out to steal apples from the orchard.
The passage of time and space leaves me feeling small.
The Earth surrounding my home was everything to me, but by the time I was in Jr. High, things started to go bad at home. Quite bad, actually. Not even the singing trees could comfort me and my suffering seeped into what was suppose to be my educational experience.
I remember several of the high school teachers reaching out to me, trying to help a troubled student. Some were quite kind, others carried only contempt.
It would have been nice if one of the genuinely concerned teachers had known the right questions to ask, the right action to take. But this was the late seventies and we didn’t talk about such things in our little town. The good news is that I emerged from these times a Truth Speaker and today, I’m grateful for the each of life’s lessons. Proud of who I’ve become.
In high school, my friends came from several different “clicks.” Some Jocks, some Theater People, some Brains, but it was The Freaks that truly loved and accepted me. We were all outcasts, bonded together in our isolation. One of my attempts to fit in was by competing in the Miss Saline Pageant. I took 1st runner up and made all the Freaks proud. I felt like a spy, like I’d infiltrated the Popular Girls turf and quite easily at that. We had one of our own right there on stage, in the middle of the dirt at the fairgrounds.
Bobby Brown told me that night, right after the competition, “Girl, you were the finest girl up there.” He and I had been crowned King and Queen of The Freaks in 7th grade one day during lunch. Despite being a good foot shorter that me, Bobby was the coolest and most gorgous guy in our school, with crystal blue eyes and perfectly feathered brown hair. His attention that night made me feel like an actual Queen. But he was dead just a few years later, murdered outside of a Chicago bar late one night after an altercation. It’s still hard to believe he’s gone.
Amazingly, not all of the past has vanished. As Dad, Dora and I slowly drive around the cul-de-sac of monstrous houses, in what use to be our backyard, Dad has spots his old deer blind. It sits wedged in a tree, in a little square of woods that’s somehow remained intact. Standing sentinel on a little hill that overlooks the development.
As we pull away, we don’t say anything but I wonder about the children in these houses. What are their lives like? Where are their dogs buried? Do they play in Dad’s deer blind?
Can they hear the trees?
