“Homecoming” by Elana Kloss

Homecoming

The fire tree is shedding, just as I soon will shed you. In winter, the tree was dry and hard-limbed, sticking like a spider from my window. Over the months, it grew lush and bloomed verdant leaves that made shapes with its hands and clapped over the terrace. I never noticed its body until then. Now, months later, I watch the fire drop from my bedroom, one leaf at a time. It’s red. And with each new fall, I imagine you will come soon.
Ezra, I am certain this is your name. I say it to myself, but under my breath, so as not to wake the rest of us. Yesterday I felt you reach for me in the bath, a finger or a palm stretched along the lower side of my belly and pressed against my hand. Your papa was in the room next door, whirling Beethoven off the piano. The one we brought from New York. He has been drawing me baths with Epsom salts and dimming the light so it’s dark. “C’est bien?” he whispers. I take long breaths and wade in the water, swish like the fire tree, but she knows more.
The tree, she sways in no particular direction, just with the blow of the day. She does not ask what will happen and does not swing tirelessly for resolution. Perhaps she is confident in whatever is bound to her future self. It makes me wonder, do trees have faith? I hear her breathe outside, a sound I used to believe was the result of shuffling leaves. But now I trust that it’s the inhaling and exhaling of Earth itself, a breathing tree, if I may, taking in the world as it moves forward in its next cycle.
Contrary to the tree, I have always been a perfectionist. My limbs do not bend, and they do not billow. Hard on myself and hard on others is how I’ve fared. When I was little, I would collect my toenail clippings in Altoids boxes on the side of my desk, organized by size. What we wouldn’t do for a little bit of control. I wonder if the fire tree ever feels this way. Since autumn I have become soft, mushy in fact, slipping apart like warm meat. The “loosening” hormone that secretes in the pregnant body, relaxin, is on full speed now. It thaws my bones and melts my compulsions. I have this feeling when I go to bed: I wash off the shore, unknowing how the story will end, but I slip in with ease and move with the tide. Where will we go?
Last night I dreamed I swam with whales. Humpbacks. A pod of them formed a diamond, and their arcs and fins cut shapes in the sun. Right next to them, I swam in the water and didn’t look down. Mama appeared by my feet, offering full-belly laughs and splashes of salt in our eyes. “Don’t be scared,” she said.
I remember learning about whales and their intelligence on a field trip. Miss Judy produced strange smacking noises, illustrating their communication skills, and flapped around the classroom. “Clicking, pulsing, and whistling,” she explained. We marveled at this information. Whales traverse the darkest parts of the ocean, protecting their young while facing grave threats of starvation, boat strikes, and habitat degradation. Regardless of peril, they continue. They must because in order to complete their cycle, they have no choice but to make their way back home, even if they lose a part of their pod or part of themselves. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, make our way home? Where I grew up in Alaska, we would see orcas, humpbacks, and minke,
and I always wished that I could lie underwater and hear their echoes.
It is said that pregnant people become panicked, controlling, and even paranoid due to fear hormones that inflate in a pregnant person’s brain. A person with a child becomes indefinitely and scientifically terrified of any potential harm to their young. However, when I look at the garden, the flowers are steady and their eyes are closed. Ready to jump in, grow, wilt, die again, all with the notion that this must be going somewhere and going again.
I have so much to learn.
One of the songs from Alice in Wonderland goes, You can learn a lot of things from the flowers, especially in the month of June. It’s from the song “Golden Afternoon.” It struck me as a child, and it strikes me now. All those flowers were only trying to expound on the invaluable wealth of nature. I just have to listen. In the evenings, I sometimes rest my head against the window and catch the glare of the changing poppies outside when they’re closed and sleeping. The reflection of my face forms a strange duet with them, and I relish this brief merging of worlds. We look different, but we are one and the same.
It’s November now, and Papa and I decide on a trip to the desert before your arrival. We stuff the trunk with slippers and notebooks, and half-read books flail in the back seat. I look in the rearview mirror when we turn the corner. Will I remember this?
We zip down the 10 and fill our heads with Jim Morrison and Paul Simon. When we
arrive, your papa takes the luggage. “Go see the moon, mon chat,” he says close to my ear. He tosses my favorite blue sweater, and I walk toward the sand. Near the flowering jimsonweed and yellow cactus blossoms, I sit for a small meditation under a palm tree. And for the first time, I recognize you as separate from myself. A petal, a leaf, something that will fall. The song “Summertime” threads through the air from the motel, and its familiarity picks at my memory. A tiny little piece of my childhood forms where our family Steinway appears, and I sit next to my papa, and my nine-year-old voice croons the end of this song: Hush, little baby, don’t you cry. We belt and strike the notes with vigor. I help flip the pages and sit in a dress my mother sewed for choir. One she still keeps in her closet. We all have our cycles.
I have been here before; it is the feeling of home. And I see now that the beginning and the end are one and the same, and I am either on my way out or my way in. It doesn’t matter because the difference is moot. I am circling as you turn in my belly, and together we swirl in a pool of what will be. The thousands of steps I’ve taken from my childhood have led me here — the hurt, love, loss, growth, panic, joy. The noise I’ve been chasing my whole life twists and passes like a siren ringing in my ears. Only to discover that all of this time, I was making my way home.
My phone buzzes. Our neighbor writes: THE TREE SHED ITS LAST LEAF TODAY. ARE YOU HOME SOON?
I collect my sweater and walk back to our motel. A beetle crawls on the door, and wind wraps my face like a blanket. You will soon cast away from me, and me away from you. And this race that is not a race at all, but rather a rhythm, will spin this wheel around, around, and around.

Elana Kloss

Elana Kloss received a BFA in Fashion Design at Otis College of Art and Design and attended a short story writing class at UCLA with Ron Darian and an essay class at Gotham Writers Workshop in New York. She works designing and sketching for a small fashion company and is also a board member at Active-Plus, a nonprofit that provides wellness programming for children in underserved areas. Elana was born in Alaska and has a passion for figure drawing, backpacking, and classical music. Her work has been published in LiterallyStories, Sortes, Angel City Review, Isele Magazine, and Cantos. 

Headshot: Jean-Damien Ladeuil

Photo Credit: Staff