I balance my elbows on the vanity, pulling my legs up and accidentally hitting the bottom only to hear an echo.
Blinking, I knock where I bumped and realize it’s a false drawer.
I didn’t even know it had that. Mama never said anything.
I slide to my knees and find a crescent carved into the center of the wood, but there are no handles to pull the drawer out. So I stick my pinkie into the crescent, barely managing to wiggle in past my nail. It’s stuck, but I know I can make it budge, so I strain and pull until a dent appears around my pinkie.
Finally, it gives, nearly clattering to the floor.
I scramble up and find one thing inside.
A notebook.
No, a sketchbook.
I pick it up, feeling its heaviness. The pages are empty, as fresh as if it’s been newly bought.
I flip back to the first page, and tears prick my eyes.
In someone’s unfamiliar Arabic handwriting—
All your wild imaginations, draw them here.
She gives you her dying blessing.
I stare at the words, reading them over and over again.
Her blessing?
My mind whirs with a thousand and one thoughts, all scrambling to find the right frequency to be heard.
Mama got this vanity as a gift from her aunt. The one she told us could talk to the trees.
My breath hitches, and tears form in the corners of my eyes. This must be one of the trees she knew. I run my hand over the vanity, and a quiet thrum of life vibrates from it. This Syrian tree that lived and died in Tartus now giving me something beyond her death. My great-aunt’s blessing surviving after all these years.
She must have hoped Mama would find the false drawer. A surprise for her in New York. But Mama and her aunt passed away before this blessing could ease the hardship in Mama’s life. I wonder how my great-aunt knew this tree. What made the tree fall ill and have one last dying wish.
The stories of my family are lost to memory and time. All we have are the stories Mama told us. Our connection to where we come from is frayed and breaking and invisible.
I understand why it feels difficult for Baba to talk about it. The homesickness is chronic, and there’s no cure. It’s an eternal gray. But the result is that I don’t know much about where I come from. I’m a mosaic of everyone who came before me, and yet, I don’t recognize who these eyes and nose and lips belong to.
But this sketchbook in my hand, this vanity, they’re real and tangible and a part of my heritage.
There are stories I can immortalize.
I push back the false drawer and rush to my room, shutting the door behind me and sinking to the floor.
My hands tremble a bit when I open the first page again. As I trace the letters, my mind calms, the white noise is gone, and my fingers itch with the promise of art. I see what I want to paint so clearly. I canfeelthe tree humming through the pages.
I crawl under my bed, pulling out the box I store my brushes andpaint in. I haven’t touched them in a year; a thick layer of dust coats the top. I blow it away, opening the set. I still remember where each color sits.
The need to draw something soft, something innocent, is overwhelming. This sketchbook was made for Mama, so something of Mama needs to be in it. The empty page waits eagerly for me, and I can almost hear the tree murmuring encouragingly. I want to start from the beginning. I’m so lost in what I’m doing I don’t even realize Baba is home.
He opens the door, sees me on the floor painting, tubes and brushes scattered around me, and pauses.
I stare up at him, and his eyes widen when he registers what I’m doing.
He clears his throat, opens his mouth to say something, and then reconsiders before shuffling out and closing the door.
