I can still smell the sweetness of the wild plums that grew in your back yard when we were too young to know that we would not be friends. The tree was so laden with fruit that gravity pulled the branches down to the ground to form the walls of our sanctuary. All afternoon, hiding inside the overgrown foliage, we were content in our cavernous refuge. You sitting on one branch, facing the road, I on another, facing the field. The sweet-tart flesh filling our stomachs, and our conversation innocent. Juice running down our sun-kissed chins, dust clinging to our sticky hands. The fruit was warm from the sunshine and so bursting with promise, the silky smooth skin “popped” when you bit into it.

I sought out your companionship, the boy next door, sandy-haired and freckled in the shadows. My feelings toward you were never enamoured, but somehow it was reassuring to be near someone who shared the same street name, someone who came into the world just seven days after me. A picturesque childhood as seen from the outside, some would say. But your stutter betrayed you. Something kept you from telling. Kept you from screaming your outrage. Made you check yourself on every syllable, hesitant before asserting yourself.

One day, I understood your secret. Your dad didn’t know I was waiting for you under the willow tree when he threw you down the stairs, his thundering voice fuelled by whisky and rage. The orange shag carpet burned you as you tumbled down step after step. You picked yourself up from the bottom of the stairwell even before you could feel the sting and rushed outside sooner than he could catch you, the squeaky metallic screen door punctuating your exit with a slam. I came out from behind the tree towards you, breathless and full of bruises, masked with a white, steely face. The sweetness of the plums helped you swallow the bitterness of your tears.

One day, you understood my secret. I was cornered in the barn filled with hay and sawdust, my wrist in an inescapable hold. My uncle, holding me just a little too close. Fear in my eyes like a fawn caught in the beam of car headlights. “No, she can’t come play right now.” I looked at you with pleading eyes as you turned and left, kicking pinecones along the way. I spent hours in your yard, avoiding the touches that turned me to stone. Looking at the unspoiled flowers on your side of the street. Hiding among the wild plums. My red, swollen eyes were not the effect of hay fever, like my mother thought.

The morning your father and my uncle left together on their fishing trip, we were playing in the rickety, old, wooden boat on its trailer-pull as your dad put his endless supply of hooks and lines and bait and beer in the back. In the pile of provisions were two musty-smelling life vests, half-stuffed under one of the seats. My uncle hadn’t yet arrived and your Dad was in the house looking for more material. After a moment of hesitation, you pulled one of the vests out and discretely handed it to me. You ripped the other from its place, leapt over the side of the boat and raced to the back of the old chicken coop. I sprung after you, immediately conscious of what we were doing. The hole under the siding was just big enough for a small child to slide under, and led to a perfect hiding place under the floor of the coop. Smelling the cool moist earth under the stench of poultry, we worked our way toward the central post that held up the structure. There, we tied the two life vests to one another around the post, like an orange straightjacket, and crawled back towards the light of day. I chased you back to the plum tree. Breathless, our hearts pounding within the confines of our ribcages, we were already anticipating the punishment that surely awaited us, revelling in the impish knowledge of wrongdoings before they are discovered. We savoured our breakfast of plums with mud-caked hands.

Suddenly, you turned and looked me squarely in the eyes.
“D-d-d-don’t tell.”
“I won’t if you don’t.”
Our pact was sealed.

The lake, wide and shallow, hid many rocks and currents. That day, a violent sun pierced even the darkest waters and the mirrored reflection on the undulating surface was enough to blind. The cormorants, indifferent spectators, were the only ones to give witness to the boat as it sank. The tragedy that claimed their lives remained void of explanation. Amidst everyone’s tears and remorse, you and I knew that God had been in on our secret. For us, life went on.

During the years of school where boys and girls become two different species, we went through the motions, pretending we barely knew each other, as if we were estranged relations. But, you still knew more about me than even my closest friends. The plum tree stretched taller, as did we, but I no longer dared to cross the tarred ribbon that separated us.

When graduation came, we both ran as far away as we possibly could, but in opposite directions. At the time, I didn’t imagine that I would miss you, but now, I often think of where your life must have led you. You even revisit me in my dreams, my silent partner, looking childlike, the way you did the day we stole the life vests. You must look like your dad now. Do you still stutter? Did you preserve the space I occupied in your childhood or has it all faded with age, overwritten by lovers and children?

I’ve planted a plum tree in my back yard. On lazy spring days, I sit under it in the setting sun, propelled, in spite of myself, to my childhood by the aroma of the blossoms. I have escaped, like you, from the wilderness of our hometown and have planted my roots on foreign soil. Instead of your companionship, I content myself with the innocent sound of smooth skin popping under my teeth and the gush of sweetness in my mouth to heal my wounds.