The Mulberry Gate

I have lived in the city for thirty years now, but my mind still drifts back to the small town of Ashford, where I spent my first ten years. I can’t recall the faces of my teachers or the names of my classmates, but I remember our house on Willow Lane with a clarity that unnerves me. It was a two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch, and in the back yard stood a gnarled old mulberry tree that my mother said had been there since the town was founded. The tree’s branches hung low, forming a sort of natural archway that we called the Mulberry Gate.

My most vivid memory is of a summer afternoon when I was eight. The sun was high, and the air was thick with the scent of ripening berries. My brother and I were playing in the yard, pretending we were explorers in a jungle, when I noticed a woman standing under the tree. She was old, with long gray hair that fell over her shoulders, and she wore a faded floral dress that looked like it had been washed a thousand times. I didn’t recognize her, but she smiled at me with a gap-toothed grin and pointed to the ground beneath the tree. There, nestled in the grass, was a small porcelain doll with cracked eyes.

My brother didn’t see her. He was too busy trying to climb the fence. But when I called out to her, she vanished. The doll remained, and I picked it up. It was cold, even in the heat. That night, I dreamed of the woman standing at the foot of my bed, her mouth moving silently. When I woke, the doll was on my nightstand, though I had left it in the kitchen.

The woman began to appear more often. She would be sitting on the porch swing when I came out to get the mail, or standing by the kitchen window while I ate my cereal. My parents thought I had an imaginary friend. But my grandmother, who visited once a month, took me aside and told me, ‘That’s the lady of the mulberry tree. She waits for her child. She lost him in the fire long ago. Don’t talk to her.’ I asked how she knew, and Grandma just shook her head.

One evening, my parents were out, and my brother was in the basement playing video games. I was alone in my room, reading a comic book, when I heard a faint humming from the yard. I looked out the window and saw the woman under the mulberry tree, holding a lantern. She looked up at me and beckoned. Without thinking, I went outside. The grass felt wrong under my bare feet, as if it was vibrating. The tree’s branches seemed to reach for the sky, and the lantern cast long shadows that danced like fingers.

The woman spoke, her voice like rustling leaves. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I need you to find him.’ I followed her to the base of the tree, where there was a large, gnarled root shaped like a cradle. She pointed down, and I saw a small opening in the earth, just large enough for a child to crawl through. ‘He’s down there,’ she said. ‘He’s been waiting so long.’ I knelt down and peered into the hole. It was pitch black, but I could hear a faint sobbing from below.

I wanted to run, but the woman’s eyes held me. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Only you can reach him. The others were too afraid.’ Just then, my brother’s voice called out from the house, sharp and angry. The woman’s face twisted, and she dissolved like smoke. The opening in the ground closed, leaving only the grass. I ran inside, my heart pounding, and found my brother standing at the back door, his face pale. ‘I saw her too,’ he whispered. ‘She was in my mirror.’

We didn’t sleep that night. We sat in the living room with all the lights on, counting the minutes until our parents came home. But when dawn broke, something had changed. The mulberry tree was gone, replaced by a bare patch of earth. And in the center of that patch, were three small stones arranged in a triangle. My mother said maybe a windstorm had taken it, but we knew better. The woman had finally taken what she wanted.

Now, at fifty, I still have nightmares of that hole in the ground. But the worse part is, sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see the mulberry tree reflected behind me, and the woman’s smiling face staring back. And I know she’s still waiting, for someone else to hear the crying. And I know, someday, I’ll have to go back.