Rooted - A Short Story

This was a short story (adhering to a 1,000 word limit) that I wrote for my A level coursework, it also featured in my university application portfolio.
In my commentary I briefly mention (and reference properly) Helen Oyeyemi's interview. I still, months later, find the way that she talks about perception really resonates with my own interest in it. Differing perceptions are really fun to play around with.

Rooted

When no one’s looking it's like I'm living in the cracks of the world. Safely concealed in the periphery of life, I lurk - motionless until everyone’s heads are turned. And then I do things.

My dad doesn’t appreciate this. He revels in dragging me out with a discerning glare of disappointment.  He's frowning at me now. "You put my flowers in the bin," he says.

"They were dead. I didn't think you'd want them anymore," I say.

"They were dried flowers." He digs his fingers into his temples, like he’s pushing together thoughts. "That's the point of them, and you know that." He pauses, hands shaping his next notion. "Are you still mad because we had to move?"

I pause.

"I don’t like it here. And your flowers smelt bad."

They were pungent. The stale scent of mildew whispered at my ears, but the biting smell of the white roses passes by him unnoticed. I wither a little; he just doesn't see.

"I'm sorry," I say softly.

He's sorry too, he won't buy them again. But it's not enough, the whole city smells like death; thick, viscous cords wrapping eagerly around the place. I tried to make things better, collecting plants to ward away the ropey tendrils and it worked for a while. The house smelt cleaner, I could breathe again. Until my mum found where I'd been keeping them; crammed onto my small balcony, spilling inwards, a breathing carpet of colours. My mum doesn't like carpets.

I begged her to lessen my loss: “Let me keep just one?” I think she imagined the chrysanthemums would stay, but I forsook the yellow blossoms. I kept the ash tree.

It seems silly to have kept such a feral tree, but I can feel something blooming within the frail sapling’s brittle branches; history being reborn. She's My Little Yggdrasill, so lost in this concrete city, but still outstretching tirelessly to weave the world back together. She weaves me back together too, even now. Stretching through the walls to stitch every fraying hole in my skin.

My dad is blind to this. I leave him, closing my bedroom door behind me to sit beside the ash tree. Her original pot splintered so I’ve begun steadily layering the balcony with soil.

All I can do for her now is get another bucket of soil. I clasp one of her branches gently in my hand, promising to return soon.

I’m out for an hour, lugging the clumsy rubber bucket through the city. It’s quiet when I return; my parents in their room or around at the neighbour’s. My door's ajar and I back through it slowly before setting the bucket down to close it behind me. Wiping my mouth with my sleeve I bend over, heaving the bucket back up, and turn to walk the last few steps across my room. I falter.

My parents are not in their room, or with the neighbours. They’re standing on my balcony watching me apprehensively, curling tendrils of death snaking around them like malformed shadows.

"Hey sweetie," my mum calls gently to me.

I put the bucket down.

"Look, I know you really liked the tree, but it was starting to get too big, so I thought maybe we would prune it to make it smaller, like a pot-tree or something."

I don't say anything.

They leave me to my misery; all my thoughts and emotions leaking out - a thick, viscid fluid that pools on the floor around me. I drag my feet toward the balcony, the sticky liquid of my emotions trailing behind me like dripping spittle; a burden that pulls my knees down with a crack into the soil. My heart dislodges, slipping out my ribcage to join the throbbing mass behind me. I'm so close to her, breathing the air leaving her shuddering lungs. My Yggdrasil.

And I throw myself.

Sobbing and screaming I fall down into her, into the pit of her world where I find her; a fragile bud torn and cut up. But her petals hold endless mirrors, glitteringly cold even doused in blood. Cradling her tightly, I beg her to stay with me, because without her I can’t breathe.

A burning ache begins to spread from my chest, as if the world is awakening within me. Where my heart had left a ragged hole, Yggdrasil is taking root. Her thorny branches push through my veins, green growth ripping them open and reaching further into me. I bear the pain, the blistering ache that only the joy of being born anew could hold. My skin tears, a peach beneath knife; flesh and muscles splitting open to reveal ripe tissue. Slowly, I harden. The soft pulp of my body knots into bark and sapwood, twisting and contorting into something entirely unfamiliar.

 My eyes don't open, but I begin to see. I mean really see - the world fulminating into treacherous greens and reds. And greys. The tips of my roots touch grey, a solid block of silence. As I see in new vibrancies I also learn. I feel the ache of hopelessness caged into my branches, and I know how wrong I was when I once saw roots ever-reaching to link and shelter worlds.

"Sweetie, are you coming down for dinner?"

It's my mother, oh god, my parents. I want to scream out to them, but my mouth is fixed still, shelled in bark. I feel them opening the door, coming closer. Until they find me here, twisted and tied up in wood. My father looks at me, blinking back tears. I have no eyelids to blink; my tears drip freely down my rough surface. He turns away, "She probably just needs some space right?"

" I don't get it, her tree's fine. Look, it's weeping sap all over the place," my mother says frowning, wiping a sticky, tear-covered finger on her leg. "Gross."

The city falls quiet at night. A Tree of the World, I am world-less. Can you hear me keening?

Commentary:

This was inspired in part by Helen Oyeyemi’s What is Not Yours is Not Yours[i]. In particular the moments where she draws on conventions of both magical realism and horror. I wanted to create a story that ‘doesn’t want to be read’ where ‘Feelings are forces’ that cause us ‘to leave ourselves, to leave our bodies’[ii]. The moments of horror-inspired description ‘a peach beneath knife’ are reminiscent of horror author Eric LaRocca’s imagery in The Trees Grew Because I Bled There[iii].

Oyeyemi’s work is often built on Nigerian mythology; I drew on Scandinavian mythology (Yggdrasil the ‘Tree of the World’, associated with rebirth, healing and shelter) as well as British folklore of the Green Man (a guardian of nature). The hypocritical themes of domestication ‘My Little Yggdrasil’ and the narrator’s monstrous transformation juxtaposes the conventional association of nature with purity and innocence.

I built an overarching theme of (as Oyeyemi says) ‘levels of seeing’ into the story; the plot driven by differing levels of perception and the ignorance, revelation, isolation and connection they bring.

References

[i] Oyeyemi, H. (2017) What is Not Yours is Not Yours. London: Picador.

[ii] Quinn, A. (2014) The Professionally Haunted Life of Helen Oyeyemi Available at: https://www.npr.org/2014/03/07/282065410/the-professionally-haunted-life-of-helen-oyeyemi (Accessed: 24/11/23)

[iii] La Rocca, E. (2023) The Trees Grew Because I Bled There. London: Titan Books.