A catalpa can give two brown girls in western Kansas a green umbrella from the sun. Don’t get too dark, too dark, our mother would remind us as we ambled out into the relentless midwestern light. Every day after school, the bus dropped me and my younger sister off at Larned State Hospital, and every day, our classmates stared at us as the bus pulled away. I’d unlock the door to the doctor’s quarters with a key tied to my yarn necklace and we’d go inside, fix ourselves snacks, and finish worksheets on fractions or spelling. We’d wait till our mom called to say we could meet her in her office, a call that meant she was about ten minutes away from being done for the day. We’d click off the TV and scramble to get our plastic jelly sandals on for the block-long walk to the hospital’s administration building. Catalpa trees dotted the wide prairie grounds and watched over us as we made our way to Mom’s office. My sister and I knew not to go anywhere near the fence line of the patients’ residence because they sometimes were given basketball privileges outside, behind three layers of barbed wire. But occasionally I allowed myself to look at them when I rode my maroon three-speed bike, and sometimes an inmate would wave as I passed.
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Catalpas stand as one of the largest deciduous trees at almost sixty feet tall, and dangle long bean pods and flat seeds with wings to help them fly. These bean pods inspire some to call the catalpa cigar tree, trumpet creeper, or catawba. Catalpa trees can help you record the wind as it claps their giant heart-shaped leaves together—leaves with spit curls, not unlike a naughty boy from a fifties movie, whose first drag race ends in defeat and spilled milkshakes. But these leaves can make a right riot of applause on a particularly breezy day. A catalpa planted too close to a house is a calamity just waiting to happen, but perhaps some people think the danger isn’t too menacing since catalpas also yield good tone wood for guitars. And who would challenge that song out there on the plains?
All those songs call out to the sphinx moth, who lays about five hundred half-millimeter eggs at a time on the catalpa’s leaves. These leaves are the moth’s only source of food, and if left unchecked, the caterpillars can completely defoliate a single mighty tree. Kids in the Central Plains know these “worms” as good spending money. The sphinx caterpillars (also known as “catfish candy”) make prized fishing bait; catfish and bluegill gobble them without seeming to get the least bit suspicious about their sudden appearance in the water.
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Sometimes, before we left to pick up our mom, my sister and I gathered coins for the vending machine in the lobby of her office. In 1986, a Little Debbie brownie cost a precious thirty-five cents—precious because what little allowance we received was inconsistent, and so we couldn’t count on it for gummy bracelets stacked up my arm in imitation of Madonna, or for the occasional ninety-nine-cent ice cream sandwich at Dairy Queen, or to save up for another colorful pair of jelly sandals. We were known as the daughters of the new doctor in that sleepy little county, but my mom made sure we weren’t spoiled, unlike most of her coworkers’ kids—children who had six or seven pairs of the latest high-tops, or were already talking about what luxury sports car would be their first. Extravagance, then, was the occasional afternoon when my sister and I found just enough to split a brownie between us. After greeting the receptionist, riding the elevator up a few stories, and walking past the patients’ pool tables and lounge, we’d greet our mother with bits of chocolate in our smiles. Cavities, cavities! she’d cluck at us, dropping whatever she was doing to hug and kiss us hello. I only pieced it together years later—how her day was spent trying to help patients who often hurled racist taunts and violent threats against her, like Get out of here, Chink, or I’ll choke you with my own hands!
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I can’t believe how she managed the microaggressions of families who told her that they couldn’t understand her accent, who spoke loud and slow at her, like she—the valedictorian of her class, the first doctora of her tiny village in northern Philippines—was a child who couldn’t understand. But my mother always kept her calm, repeating recommendations and filing reports without losing her temper. How did she manage to leave it all behind in that office, switching gears to listen to the ramblings of her fifth and sixth-grade girls with their playground dramas, slights, and victories? I don’t remember her talking about work while she walked home, changed out of her stylish suits, or fixed us hot meals from scratch. I only knew of what she regularly had to suffer because I’d sneak into and skim over her journals while she was in the shower or brushing her teeth. If not for those little peeks, I never would have known what she had to endure that year.
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Thirty years later, I find myself underneath the largest catalpa tree in Mississippi. This tree is one of the centerpieces of the famous “tree walk” at the University of Mississippi, where I now teach. Its branches stretch horizontally to nearly the length of a bus, and have to be reinforced by metal supports in several areas so the branches that are soft and starting to get mushy at the center don’t fall on an unsuspecting coed. The foot-long leaves of catalpa trees like this one, for me, always meant shade from persistent sun and shelter from unblinking eyes. When I moved to the South, I thought I’d need to make use of those wide leaves constantly, but for the first time in my life, I haven’t had to. And for the first time in their young lives, my kids see brown people other than me on a daily basis. Nobody stares at me here in the South. No one stares at my parents when they visit, or when they’re at home now in central Florida. In their backyard, my parents spend their retirement crafting an elaborate garden, planting trees with much smaller leaves, and one of their great joys is to tend to the trees after a daily walk. To tug off any dead leaves or branches, pruning them just so, more orderly than any haircut they’ve ever given me. When I visit, one of my favorite things is to walk among the fruit trees with my mother while she regales me with all the tree-drama that’s occurred since I was last there: Can you believe all the flowers fell off this tree during the last hurricane? Too bad—no mangoes this year. Here is the tree where the vanda orchid grows best, remember? I told your father the birds are going to steal everything on this tree and he didn’t listen, can you imagine?
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On campus, when I pass the giant catalpa tree, I think of that shy sixth grader who was so nervous when people stared. But then I remember the confident clickety-clack of my mother’s heels as she walked home from work with me and my sister—when people would stare at us but my mother didn’t seem to mind or notice. I remember her radiant smile when we burst through her office door, and then her laugh as she listened to our tales of the lunchroom and gym dramas of the day. I hear my own heels as I rush to meet my first class. The campus catalpa offers up its creamy blossoms to the morning, already sultry and humid at nine o’clock in the morning. It still stands, even through the two or three tornado warnings we’ve had just this first windy year in Mississippi. As I pass the enormous tree, I make note of which leaves could cover my face entire if I ever needed them again. If I ever needed to be anonymous and shield myself from questions of What are you? and Where are you from? I keep walking. My students are waiting. My sweet southern students, who insist on calling me “Ma’am,” no matter how much I gently protest. And I can’t wait to see their beautiful faces.