Valerie Hunter
KILLING AUNT MATHILDE
Sitting among the trees after the funeral, Ren Chambers wondered if he was the world’s youngest murderer. He was fairly certain he wasn’t, but thirteen was still pretty young to have killed someone. He wondered if this boulder-in-the-stomach feeling would be with him forever, or if it might possibly subside over time.
Ma always said that guilt could eat you alive; it was her standard homily whenever she’d noticed some discretion but was unsure which of her sons to blame. Ren knew she hoped that saying this would cause the guilty party to step forward, but it never did. Even now, when Ren did feel as though guilt was consuming him from the inside out, chewing his vital organs with large, fanged teeth, he wasn’t sure he wanted to confess.
Of course, the fact that no one even suspected murder and he would never be accused of a crime might have something to do with his reluctance. Even if he did go to his parents or the sheriff and told them all the facts, they would most likely scoff at him. There was only a very slight chance that anyone would be as horrified as he himself.
Ren couldn’t decide which would be worse, being scoffed at or being believed, so he kept quiet.
He went over the facts in his own mind, stacking them up like his little brother’s building blocks. He could remember when those blocks had been his, and how the grain of the wood made some of them look like they had faces. He saw those faces now, the brown, misshapen mouths shrieking, “Murderer! Murderer!”
The most important fact was this: there was something eerie about his grandfather’s grove. The story went that no one in the community had taken much notice when Mason Chambers had planted the first two trees, one for himself and one for his wife, shortly after they were married. That was in the 1870s, when everyone harbored some hope of creating a little shade on the vast, treeless prairie. The only thing was, Mason didn’t stop with just two trees. He added one for every child born into his eventually enormous family, and then planted more to honor guests to his farm, be they close or distant relatives or even friendly peddlers that Mason had taken a liking to. He didn’t stick to the cottonwood trees that had proven hearty enough to withstand the extreme prairie weather, either. No, Mason chose a menagerie of trees, sending far and wide for the saplings—fir trees and fruit bearing trees, dogwoods, and even a voluminous weeping willow in honor of his wife’s mother.
All the neighbors considered the grove an enormous joke at first. Throughout his life, Mason had been thought crazy, strange, or at least a little touched in the head by most everyone he met, labels that didn’t bother him in the least. He was a quiet man, and kind, but he did as he liked and so continued to plant trees, ignoring his neighbors’ snickers or perhaps never hearing them at all.
Over time the laughter died away to be replaced by a strange awe. No one could explain how the hodgepodge of trees managed to survive the scorching summers and winter blizzards, yet they did. The trees were admired throughout the countryside, but Mason was considered even odder than before.
By the time Ren was born, the grove was almost a forest, and the locals had grown accustomed to it in the way all miracles can be gotten used to if they’re around long enough. The Chambers family took pride in their trees, with each member having a special interest in his or her own namesake. Most were planted shortly after the child’s birth, but somehow the planting of Ren’s tree had been put off, and his first and fondest memory was of holding the little sapling up while his grandfather tamped the dirt down around it. It was a pine tree, and though it was now much taller than Ren it still had the same sinewy, fragile appearance as him. They were both stronger than they looked.
Ren had always loved the trees, and he especially enjoyed walking among them in the presence of his grandfather. He’d never heard the old man talk as much as he did right here, as though he felt the need to translate the whispers of the leaves into tales of family history that Ren found much more interesting than the stories other family members told.
Only Grandfather could remember the namesake of every tree, but Ren prided himself in knowing more of them than most of his relatives. Like his grandfather, he was also attuned to how closely each tree resembled the person it was named for. Other people who bothered to notice this fact found it faintly creepy, but Mason seemed to believe this was the way things should be and Ren accepted it as a kind of religion, fitting it neatly into his beliefs in the order of things. Why wouldn’t Grandfather Mason’s tree be as solid and unassuming as he was? How could crotchety old Great-Granny’s tree be anything other than wizened and tough-barked, and shouldn’t it make perfect sense that the apples on Aunt Ada’s tree were as sweet as the woman herself?
There were other strange connections between people and their namesake trees, connections that Ren was keenly aware of. I knew what I was going about, he reminded himself as he leaned against his own tree and clutched at the guilt in his stomach. I knew what I was setting out to do.
He wasn’t entirely sure he regretted it, either. Beneath the guilt, hate for Aunt Mathilde still boiled in him. He tried to set the facts straight in his mind again, without getting distracted by the trees. Their leaves were whispering to him, but unlike his grandfather he could not understand their message.
Aunt Mathilde. She wasn’t his actual aunt, just his grandmother’s spinster cousin. She lurked in all of his memories of long ago family gatherings, but only in the background, a fairy tale witch huddled in the shadows. He couldn’t recall ever speaking to her until a few summers ago, when he had first been allowed to stay at his grandparents’ farm for a fortnight. Aunt Mathilde always summered there, and as they were the only guests at the time, they couldn’t avoid each another.
She was one of those pursed-mouthed, squinchy-eyed pessimists whose sole purpose was finding fault with others. Ren had encountered several such people in his young life, including others who were related to him, so he was fairly adept at staying out from under the gray cloud of misery that Aunt Mathilde seemed to emanate. The fact that his grandparents never humored any of her ill-willed whims made it easier, and Ren enjoyed his visit on the whole.
It was repeated again the following summer. This time Aunt Mathilde had a young girl with her, the orphaned child of her step-brother’s niece or some such distant connection. The girl was no relation to the Chambers, but Ren’s grandparents treated her like family. The same could not be said for Aunt Mathilde, who had been entrusted with the orphan’s care but treated her more like a servant or an unwanted pet.
When Ren got over his horror that Aunt Mathilde could be responsible for anyone’s care, he found that he quite liked the girl, Rebeckah. Normally a girl two years younger than him would not be worth noticing, but the usual laws of life seemed not to apply on his grandparents’ farm, and the two struck up a friendship.
“Isn’t living with her terrible?” Ren asked on the fourth day of their acquaintance.
“I’ve only been with her three months, since Aunt Callie died,” Rebeckah said cautiously, as though there was hope of things improving over time. Ren was glad Aunt Mathilde’s black cloud hadn’t snuffed out the girl’s optimism.
“Haven’t you anywhere else you can go?”
“No. She’s the only relative I’ve got left. I’m her duty.” She managed to enunciate the last word in Aunt Mathilde’s exact tone, and Ren laughed.
“Anyhow, I like it here,” Rebeckah continued. “Your grandparents are so kind. Your grandfather’s even planted a tree for me.”
Ren smiled. Grandfather had already shown him the tree, a pear sapling that seemed to suit Rebeckah. Mason Chambers was a genius at choosing the right tree for any guest he so chose to honor, though this didn’t explain how the trees he planted to honor babies still grew to resemble their namesakes.
Grandfather happened to mention Rebeckah’s tree at supper that night, causing Aunt Mathilde to snipe, “I really don’t know why you bothered to plant a tree for her.”
Ren stabbed viciously at his piece of chicken, wishing he could hack at Aunt Mathilde’s voice and shatter its vile pettiness. He dared not look at Rebeckah.
“Why wouldn’t I plant a tree for Rebeckah? She’s part of the family now,” Grandfather said in his calm, even voice. He smiled at the girl. “And she’s very tree-worthy.”
Ren could not detect a hint of malice in his grandfather’s voice, and yet he could hear the words hanging over the table: Rebeckah is worthy of a tree, and you are not. Of course Aunt Mathilde did have a tree, a stunted little dogwood that refused to bloom. Grandfather had once told Ren that perhaps it didn’t bloom because Aunt Mathilde never showed it a speck of interest.
If there was ever anyone unworthy of a tree, it was Aunt Mathilde.
When Ren left his grandparents’ farm that summer he took with him his affection for Rebeckah and a deep fury toward Aunt Mathilde. He’d found her insufferable the previous summer, but had quickly forgotten her when he’d gone home. This time her memory lingered within him like a speck of mold, causing him to wrinkle his nose every time her name was mentioned in his presence. He even had dreams about her, almost-nightmares in which she slunk around, claw-like hands outstretched, ready to take something from him, though he was never quite sure what.
Summer came again. Of course he was glad to go to the farm, to hear his grandmother sing as she fed the chickens, to walk among the trees with his grandfather, but he found it hard to be in the same room as Aunt Mathilde. When he was near her he could feel something happen to his insides, part cringe and part something else, something more violent. He thought he had disliked Aunt Mathilde last year, but that was nothing compared to what he felt now, after seeing Rebeckah.
An entire year with Aunt Mathilde had clearly taken its toll on the girl. Physically, there was nothing wrong with her; she hadn’t lost any weight and her dark hair was just as shiny as last year. Still, Ren knew something was different from the moment he saw her. He could tell that such a long period of living with Aunt Mathilde had drained her of something vital.
She wouldn’t walk with him among the trees anymore, or go on a jaunt to visit Uncle Coley down the road. She hardly ever spoke, as though she feared her voice might upset the balance of something, and she never laughed. Ren tried desperately to make her, and when he failed he felt miserable, as though he had swallowed a ghastly mouthful of sadness that could expand and expand until it crushed the life out of him from the inside out. It made him feel even worse to realize this must be the way Rebeckah felt all the time.
“I’m worried about Rebeckah,” he told his grandfather during one of their walks in the grove. They had just passed the little pear tree with its drooping brown leaves, and Ren was desperate for advice.
But all Grandfather said was, “So am I.” They continued the walk in silence, and Ren had the sickening realization that there would be no simple solution to this problem.
Now he wondered which was worse: that ghastly sad feeling of not being able to help, or the crushing guilt of having committed an irreversible act. He took a deep breath in an attempt to clear his head. Facts. Just stick to the facts.
The fact was there hadn’t been any one thing that had set him off, just ten days of watching Rebeckah’s ghostlike existence, of listening to Aunt Mathilde continue to suck the life out of the girl. There was no single comment that stuck out, no one thing bad enough to make Grandfather raise his voice or to lead Grandmother to chide her cousin. But Ren knew that a year of pinpricks was enough to make a person bleed to death, and that if Rebeckah wasn’t already too far gone, she soon would be.
So it was a premeditated act. He had known what he was doing that evening in the grove. There was no sudden rage, no violent fury, just a steady, workmanlike resolve.
He was aware of the connection between people and their trees, both in life and in death. He had heard the stories from his grandfather, how Aunt Mari’s tree had dried up and died a month after she’d passed away of pneumonia, even though there hadn’t been a drought. How the tree planted for old Mr. Kendell had been attacked by a strange fungus and slowly rotted away after he passed on from the cancer, and how baby cousin Addie’s sapling had refused to grow, just like she had, and both quietly wasted away. Ren had seen for himself what had happened to Cousin Harry’s tree—the big maple had been split in two by lightning just a week after Harry had been shot dead at Ypres.
Of course there were trees that had survived their namesakes, prospering on like living monuments even after their people’s deaths. As far as Ren knew, however, a tree had never died while its person still lived. He might be mistaken, but he doubted it, and now he couldn’t ask, too afraid to have this belief confirmed.
This thought had been fully in Ren’s mind four days ago when he’d taken the axe into the grove. His hands shook, and the first blow was timid and soft, but he soon built up steam. The bark of Aunt Mathilde’s tree was tough and unyielding, but he continued doggedly until it fell, and then stood over it for a moment before returning to the house.
It had been more of a release than anything. He had done it with intention, it was true, but he had still been shocked when Aunt Mathilde had gone to bed with a sharp pain in her side the next day at mid-morning, shocked and yet secretly proud. He knew it was silly to think he had caused it, and yet—and yet—
He convinced Rebeckah to go riding with him that afternoon, both of them on the same horse. They didn’t speak. He would have liked to have told her what he’d done, but it seemed so petty, so insignificant now that it was daylight. When they returned, Aunt Mathilde was still in bed, still complaining in that same querulous tone she always used. When Grandfather offered to go for Doc Lewis she refused, whining about the doctor’s incompetence and the way he smelled.
She died that night. Rebeckah was the one who found her, although Ren didn’t learn this until later. He awoke to confusion and hushed, tense voices. By the time the doctor came and looked and said he thought perhaps Aunt Mathilde’s appendix had burst, though he couldn’t be certain, things had begun to sink in for Ren. He saw the axe hitting the tree and rupturing something, saw blood running down the trunk.
He said nothing, only faded into the background and watched his grandparents make the arrangements. He tried to tell himself that this had nothing to do with him, but Ren was a poor liar, even to himself. The initial cold, goosebumpy feeling he’d had the morning of Aunt Mathilde’s death was soon replaced by a heavy, squeezing nausea. He was thankful only that everyone was too busy to notice. Relatives had flocked to the house, congregating in small groups to talk and gossip. Ren had been to funerals before, but never one so pleasant. Everyone was decorous, of course, but there were no tears, no sorrowful eyes, no strangled, desperate voices. If anything pervaded the room, it was relief. Ren could sense it, though he couldn’t share in it.
While the pastor spoke (even his words seemed to lack their usual solemnity), Ren had watched Rebeckah. Clad in black, she sat beside his grandmother with a blank expression. Ren tried to catch her eye, but her gaze never wavered from the coffin. Afterwards, Grandmother had to lead her away as though she was a much younger child. The doctor followed them, and though Ren was too far away to hear the conversation between the two adults, he knew that their voices would be serious and worried. He knew, without looking, that Rebeckah wouldn’t say a word.
He had left the house as soon as he could, going to the trees. He wasn’t sure what he’d been looking for—solace, or punishment, or help—but regardless, he hadn’t found it. He swung his fist as hard as he could at his pine tree, but though his hand stung afterwards he did not throw up as he hoped he might.
He left his tree and walked to where Aunt Mathilde’s had fallen. It didn’t look right lying there, as though it, too, should have been boxed up in a coffin and buried. Ren put a tentative hand on it; it felt heavy and stiff. He thought for a moment that his hand might be stuck there, that he would be forever connected to Aunt Mathilde, the person he most despised. When he couldn’t bare it a second longer he wrenched his hand away, and was surprised at how easily it came.
His grandfather had always been a quiet man. When Ren turned to find him there, as strong and calm as the trees, he was not surprised that he hadn’t heard his arrival. He looked up at the old man, though he was afraid to meet his eyes.
“Oren,” Grandfather said in a tone that was neither inviting nor disapproving.
Ren took strength from the sound of his full name hovering in the air, and met the blue-eyed gaze. He took a deep breath. “I killed her.”
Grandfather’s expression did not change. He knew when to speak and when not to, and he said nothing now.
“For Rebeckah,” Ren continued, his voice hoarse. The words seemed to be coming from deep inside of him, from where the poison in his stomach was. “I couldn’t watch . . . She needed to be rid of . . .”
When Ren’s voice trailed off, Grandfather picked up. “You killed her because she was killing Rebeckah.” It was neither a question nor an accusation.
Ren nodded and looked at the fallen tree again. “I chopped it down, the night before she died.”
Again Grandfather’s expression did not change. He did not smile; he did not look disapproving. He just nodded.
Ren looked at him. “Grandfather, I—”
“It can take great courage, sometimes,” Grandfather said, his voice resonating although he wasn’t speaking loudly, “to do what we think is right. And to live with it, afterwards.”
Ren rolled the words around in his mind. Grandfather wasn’t saying he had done right. Or was he?
“Were you going to do something?” he asked. “For Rebeckah?”
“I would have liked to,” Grandfather said. “Yes, I would have like to. But I was plagued by indecision. An awful thing. Makes me feel sick, right here.”
Ren watched his grandfather motion to his stomach, to the same place where Ren felt so terrible now.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked.
“I still never made a decision, did I?”
“But you don’t have to anymore.”
Grandfather didn’t answer.
“What about Rebeckah?” Ren asked. “Will she stay with you and Gram?”
His grandfather nodded. “That’s one decision that won’t be delayed.”
“And do you think . . . do you think she’ll be all right?”
Grandfather was quiet for awhile, then said, “It’s hard to say, rightly. Some people are resilient, like the trees. They might not have the strength to bloom every year, to unfurl their leaves, but it doesn’t mean they’re still not solid and strong.”
When Grandfather did not continue, Ren finished for him. “And other people aren’t resilient, are they?”
“No, not everyone is.”
He still felt sick, sick and weak. He feared that he himself was not resilient. “Grandfather, I—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t ask if he’d done right.
Ren watched his grandfather study him. It wasn’t the kind of look new teachers gave him when they were trying to figure out if he was trouble, or the look his mother gave when she checked to see if he was presentable enough to sit at the table with company. Rather it was the look his youngest brother had when he crouched in the dirt to examine a beetle, or a newly sprouted plant, or any other wonderment that happened to captivate him.
“I don’t think I can tell you what you want to hear,” Grandfather said finally.
Ren didn’t think he could possibly feel worse, but it was as though his grandfather had taken away his last breath of air. “Can I do anything?” he asked. “Can I . . .” He let his words trail off, unable to finish the question. Can I ever be all right again?
He was afraid of the answer, afraid there was no answer. When, after a long pause, Grandfather said, “Listen to the trees,” Ren did not feel as disappointed as he might have if his grandfather had answered immediately. The trees didn’t offer much, but they were better than nothing.
“Can you help me listen?” Ren asked. “I don’t understand—” But as he pulled his gaze away from the dead tree, he realized Grandfather was gone.
He took a deep breath, resigned to listening on his own. As he walked deeper into the trees, he tried attuning himself to their rustles and whispers. He wondered what his grandfather heard here, and when he had first learned the language.
Ren walked and walked, forming erratic circles as he strained his ears for something that wasn’t there. A tiny voice deep inside of him told him he was being an idiot, that the trees were never going to speak to him, but he ignored it because if he stopped he would have to give into the strangling pain.
He wasn’t sure how long he walked, stumbling among the roots, touching a trunk here and there, when he heard the voice say his name. At first he thought he had imagined it, turning a bird’s chirp into what he wanted to hear, but then it came again, clearer and slightly louder. “Ren.”
When Rebeckah slipped her hand into his he wasn’t even disappointed that it had been her voice and not the tree’s. She said nothing more, but they continued to walk, and though his stomach still ached he felt something else, too. It was not relief, but something stronger.
He was careful to avoid Aunt Mathilde’s tree, but they walked past Rebeckah’s on their way back to the house and Ren couldn’t help but notice the single green leaf amidst the brown.
Valerie Hunter teaches high school English in New Jersey, and has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.