Wishtree

In conversation with Bongo, Red reveals that they want to grant Samar’s wish for a friend. Bongo reacts with scrutiny, suggesting that there are more important things to see through, such as Red’s impending doom. FreshBakedBread arrives and lets Red know that she has offered to make room in her lodging for one of the families that Red shelters—“preferably the opossums,” as “They’re better behaved than the Yous” (89). BigYou, the raccoon mother, soon interjects to defend her children, and HairySpiders, the opossum mother, pokes her head out of a hollow to carefully listen to the conversation.

BigYou continues with her indignation, declaring that she doesn’t even want to share lodging with FreshBakedBread’s family now that she knows they aren’t welcome. She also derides the opossum children, who aren’t spunky and crafty like her own, but instead play dead at the drop of a hat. HairySpiders tells BigYou that her babies cannot help it. Besides, the act is an advantageous adaptation. Agnes, the owl mother, chimes in to the conversation, saying that she is scoping out a nearby linden tree as her new lodging, although the feral tomcat and “big, slobbery dog” (92) that like to roam near it are a problem. Red tries to calm all of them down, assuring them that her fate is still unknown. The mothers do not take kindly to this, and retreat.

Bongo then asks Red what will become of her without Red, and reminds Red that perhaps now is not the best time to be worrying about Samar’s wish. But Red stubbornly holds her ground, and Bongo begrudgingly continues to formulate a plan with Red. 

Red and Bongo put their first plan regarding Samar into motion. Bongo accosts Stephen as he makes his way to school and steals his homework. Although he clamors to get it back, he eventually gives up and leaves. 

Bongo gives Stephen’s homework—now tattered—to Samar, in hopes that she will return it to him and the interaction will spur a friendship. However, when Samar sees one of Stephen’s friends walking by, she simply gives him the paper so that it makes its way back to Stephen. Though the plan fails, Red insists that they must try again—and soon. 

The very same afternoon, Red and Bongo attempt their second plan, which they formulated after much fuss and arguing. Meanwhile, Red continues feeling dismayed at the situation in their hollows. The families “turn on one another when faced with a problem” (102). In the past, Red always solved these problems. BigYou jockeys to have one of her children perform the main duty for the second plan, which is to have Flash (short for “Flashlight”), one of the opossum babies, play dead when Samar and Stephen walk by. This way, the children will have to coordinate with each other about what to do next. Bongo, however, believes the plan will fail. 

When the school bell rings, each of the animals assumes their position and Flash makes his way out to the middle of the lawn. After much humorous and agitated coaching from the animals, he manages to play his part at the last moment, just as the children walk by. Samar sees the baby opossum and immediately tells Stephen that she will summon her mother. With that, their interaction is over. Red irritably wonders how, exactly, people do become friends. Although she has gotten Samar and Stephen at least talking, it’s still not good enough. When Flash does not rouse, Bongo begins to peck at him, much to HairySpiders’s dismay and protest. The animals commence bickering with one another, as Red tries to get them to bring Flash to the skunk den beneath the porch. Just as the door to Stephen’s home opens, Red yells at them to spring into action, in a rare and uncharacteristic moment. The animals succeed in stashing Flash away. 

Stephen and his mother search fruitlessly for the baby opossum, as Samar watches from her window. They eventually give up, and the opossum family returns to their den. Red finds their plan foiled again. Bongo has grown very agitated and impatient by this point, worried as she is about the fate of her friend. She asks Red why granting Samar’s wish is so important. Red replies, “She reminds me of a little girl I knew a long time ago” (113). Bongo calls Red a buttinski, but assures Red that she loves them. Bongo then asks what their third plan is.  

As night falls, Red informs Bongo that she must untie Samar’s wish from their branch. After Bongo has no luck removing the wish on her own, Red reminds her to follow the ways of her species and use a tool. But when Bongo fishes a straightened paperclip out of her stash of trinkets to aid her, the paperclip doesn’t get the job done either. Just as Red is about to give up on the entire venture, BigYou decides to take on the challenge. Although the branch is thin, she clambers onto it and, with her crafty paws, loosens Samar’s wish (written on a piece of fabric) from Red’s branch. When Bongo sulkily maintains that she did the hard part, Red reminds her that it was a team effort. Agnes asks Red what to do now that they have Samar’s wish. Red tells her that they will now wait for Samar’s nighttime visit. 

Samar arrives by moonlight in her robe and slippers, per usual. She wears the small silver key gifted to her by Bongo around her neck. She wonders where Bongo, whom Red has instructed to hide on Stephen’s roof, is. Like clockwork, Bongo alights on Stephen’s windowsill and places Samar’s wish upon it. As the family of owls and raccoons distract Samar, Bongo mimics a siren in order to get Stephen’s attention. When Stephen opens the window to investigate the noise, he finds Samar’s wish and looks down the street to see a group of animals entertaining her.  

Stephen makes his way down the street with a flashlight. He asks Samar why the animals like her, likening it to magic. Samar denies the assertion, however, offering instead that she is simply quiet, which the animals enjoy. When Bongo arrives to perch on her shoulder and mimic her hello, Stephen is very impressed. Samar shows Stephen the key that Bongo gifted her, and they muse about what it could open. Then, Stephen opens his hand to reveal Samar’s wish within it. He tells her that he found it on his windowsill. Samar blushes and looks away, and then Stephen apologizes for the vandal’s message. He assures her that his family isn’t responsible for it: “My parents aren’t bad people. They’re just afraid of things” (125). Samar says that her parents are also afraid, and Stephen tells her that he is sorry.

The animal babies, sensing that Stephen is trustworthy, resume their activities around the children. Samar will miss the animals if she has to leave the neighborhood, and Stephen hopes she will not leave. When the light flickers on in his home, Stephen tells Samar that he doesn’t want his parents to see him so he must go. Samar whispers goodbye. Red wishes that she could reason with the children: “I wanted to tell them that friendship doesn’t have to be hard. That sometimes we let the world make it hard” (126). Red wants the children to keep talking, and because Red wants “to make a difference, just a little difference, before I left this lovely world” (126), Red breaks the rule and says “stay” to the two children.  

Red’s choice shocks the animals. Even the babies know and honor the “Don’t Talk to People rule” (127). Red persists in their transgression, however, as the children agree among themselves that they must be dreaming: “I have two hundred sixteen rings’ worth of wisdom to convey. And not much time” (128), Red tells them. And then Red begins their story. 

Red explains how they weren’t always a wishtree—they became one in 1848. That year, the neighborhood hosted in influx of immigrants. One newcomer was a 16-year-old girl from Ireland named Maeve: “She’d voyaged across the Atlantic with her nineteen-year-old brother, who’d died of dysentery during the trip. Their mother had passed away shortly after Maeve was born; their father, when the children were nine and twelve” (130). Red remembers Maeve as sturdy and plain, but beautiful when she smiled. Alone in the world, she shared her small room with five other immigrants, and worked around the clock cleaning and cooking in order to survive.

Maeve soon discovered that she had a gift for caring for the ill. Word spread of her unmatched ability to soothe and bring relief, and people began to bring their ailing animals and family members to her. Although she always explained that her methods were not fail-proof, the townspeople did not have enough money to visit a doctor—and so, they relied on Maeve’s healing abilities. And even though Maeve was not always successful, she always tried to help. In lieu of money, the townspeople would leave Maeve gifts, which they would deposit in Red’s hollows. One of those gifts was a small leather notebook clasped with a small silver lock. 

The years went on, and Maeve developed a deep and intimate bond with the neighborhood—“even as newcomers from other lands added their music and food and language to [that] little part of the world” (133). In the meantime, Red grew more rigid in their composition. They’d housed a multitude of animal families by that time, and their closest friend was a squirrel named Squibbles. Squibbles enjoyed a special relationship with Maeve, who regularly shared her table scraps with him. The tree and the squirrel worried about their Maeve, who had had a few suitors over the years that had never amounted to anything. They could see that Maeve was lonely. One day, Maeve surprised Red by tying a wish of her own to one of Red’s branches: “I wish [...] for someone to love with all my heart” (136), Maeve whispered beneath Red’s shade. 

As Maeve’s fellow Irish neighbors walked by the tree, they would notice her wish and nod approvingly. Others, unfamiliar with the tradition, would frown at Maeve’s bit of fabric and try to remove it. But she’d always tell them not to disturb her tradition. Sometimes people would ask Maeve what she wished for, and some would mock her for thinking her wish could come true. Ultimately, most people would listen to Maeve’s wish for someone to love with sympathy and compassion—and then ask to make a wish of their own. And that’s how Red became the neighborhood wishtree. 

When another year passed, Red found themself hosting more wishes than leaves in their branches. They protected the wishes from Squibbles, who wanted to use a few of the strips of fabric to line his nest. And together, they honored Maeve’s tradition of letting the wishes remain until after May Day. After that, humans or animals could take down any of the wishes. Red felt that Maeve made this rule up in order to allow Red time to grow and function as a natural tree. At dawn, right before May 1 was about to begin, a young woman with dark, wavy hair and a threadbare coat deposited a bundle into Red’s hollow. Red guessed that it was another gift for Maeve’s services—a loaf of bread, perhaps. Then, the woman quickly disappeared into the night.

A few moments later, Maeve opened her front door. A baby’s cry told Red what the bundle inserted into their hollow actually was. 

The baby left in Red’s hollow had a note written in Italian secured to her blanket. Upon translation by one of Maeve’s patients, Maeve learned what it stated: “Please give her the care I cannot. I wish for you both a life of love” (145). Although the baby did not look like Maeve, and the heritage of different countries ran in each of their veins, “they were made for each other […] Maeve named the baby Amadora, which meant, in Italian, ‘the gift of love’” (146). 

Many within the neighborhood did not approve of “an unmarried Irish woman raising an abandoned Italian baby” (147). They told Maeve that Amadora “did not belong,” and that “Maeve and the baby should leave” (147). But Maeve good-naturedly bided her time in hopefulness. She would console herself and the child by singing an ancestral Irish song. Maeve intermingled the song’s words with an Italian tune she’d picked up from a neighbor: “The melody was sweet. The words were silly. The effect was always the same: a smile from little Ama” (148).

Over time, and through Maeve’s quiet persistence, Ama became a beloved part of the community. Ama grew into a girl and began feeding Squibbles and climbing Red’s branches. She also began tying wishes of her own to the tree’s branches. She grew up with the same affable characteristics as her mother, and then raised a family of her own in the diminutive brown house. Her children proceeded to have children of their own, and Ama eventually bought the house as well as the one next door. She painted them blue and green, and began renting them out when she moved across the street. Red watched the family grow, observing that laughter always carried them through their lives together. Ama’s grandson eventually had a baby girl, whom they gave a fine Italian first name, complete with a lovely Irish middle name: Francesca Maeve. 

Red’s reputation as the wishtree also flourished. Of the period, Red admits that “A blessing and a burden it has been, all those wishes, all those years. But everyone needs to hope” (152). 

Red finishes their recollection to the two children. Once Red stops speaking, Red regards Samar and Stephen, both of whom gape at Red. The children remained silent for the entire duration of Red’s story. When Stephen’s father calls him home, he offers Red a puzzled “thank you” before retreating. Samar tells Red that she knows she must be dreaming. Before closing the door to her own home, Samar admits that she wishes she did not have to rouse from her dream. 

Red feels an instantaneous regret for her transgression against the rules of nature. They regret the selfish motivation of their act, and the animals have fallen silent in shock. But Bongo comforts Red, assuring the tree that they have not made a foolish choice: “Everyone needs to hope,” the crow offers, “Even Wise Old Trees” (156).