The Strangler Fig

by Lucy Joyce

Adelaide - dressed in men’s boots and the loose-fitting muslin dress which she referred to as her ‘jungle dress’ - packed her pencils and sketchpad and walked towards the dense foliage. In a moment, she would disappear into the jungle, hidden among the deep green ferns and tall palms. Before she did so, she paused and turned to look at the house and garden, shading her squinting eyes with a freckled hand. The large, colonial house was white, with rows of windows which glinted in the bright, tropical sun. The curtains sighed out of the open windows of her upper-floor bedroom, billowing voluptuously.

The garden below had the ramshackle air of neglected orderliness. The lawn was overgrown. Tall weeds had sprung up, and the shambolic shapes of jungle foliage had begun to creep towards the house; a burst of bougainvillea tumbled over the garden shed and an enormous staghorn fern jutted out from a tree trunk in a jaunty bouquet of green layers. Adelaide happily observed that the rose bushes, which her late husband Charles had insisted on keeping cut into box shapes with military precision, had relaxed into roundness; sprigs and leaves poked out messily. As was usual in the summer months, the roses had a wilted and stressed look. Just as Charles had, the roses yearned for the cool British soil which they had never actually grown in.

Satisfied with the progress of the garden - her garden now, she reminded herself - she turned and walked into the foliage which fringed the yard, her feet picking up a path that her previous footsteps had worn through the bracken. Adelaide’s contributions to a few recognized and celebrated works - Flowering Plants of the Caribbean, and Tropical Birds of the Americas - did not excuse her unladylike pastime in the eyes of the other local well-to-do families. Her husband’s death had not slowed her down, the clucking women observed. If anything, Adelaide seemed to have embraced her strange lifestyle with renewed vigor. The woman was sixty years old! What was she thinking, tramping through the wilderness? Even the beautiful Bradford family home, they lamented, seemed to be retreating further into the jungle.

Adelaide continued along the winding track, occasionally gently pushing aside hanging vines or large leaves which hung in her path. Her feet moved across a sea of red flowers which disrupted the brown uniformity of the loamy, damp leaf litter; she paused to observe the flowering poinciana tree which stood out among the jungle’s many rich shades of green. She picked up an untrampled flower, noting its silken softness beneath her fingertips and breathing in its subtle, sweet scent before putting it into the hat band of her straw panama.

The air was filled with the rhythmic, clicking hums of cicada songs. Prisms of light danced across her face as a wind rippled across the thick, layered canopy of leaves above. The wind brought with it a hint of the sharp, briney freshness of the nearby ocean. She ducked under the fronds of a low fern and emerged into the familiar clearing. As it had been on that day fifty years earlier, the low waterfall was full with runoff from the surrounding hills; it was the wet season. Ferns, trees, moss and lichen crowded around the damp edges of the gurgling waterfall and the creek beyond, which wound its way towards the ocean. The break in the foliage above the waterfall framed a patch of bright blue sky. A heron flew above the trees in a yellow gray streak, squawking loudly. Adelaide picked her way along the side of the waterfall - careful to avoid those rocks which were deceptively damp and slippery. She settled herself on a dry rock and set up her materials, turning her attention to the coupled trees which grew directly beside the waterfall.

The editor of a book on tropical and subtropical flora had reached out with a request; was she familiar with, and if so would she contribute drawings and notes on, Ficus Aurea - the Strangler Fig. Adelaide had read the letter with shaking hands; she was certainly familiar with strangler figs. One in particular lived constantly in her heart and mind; it visited her in nightmares where she would find herself trapped in wooden vines, bound against the tree which the strangler fig was wrapping itself around. The many-limbed fig of her nightmare didn’t move with the gradual slowness of a growing tree, but instead it reached and grabbed and bound her with quick and terrifying movements. She would wake, sweating and thrashing, as the wooden limbs - or were they human limbs? - began to tighten around her, strangling her breath and her cries.

Even remembering the nightmare, as she was now, could conjure that same feeling of helpless terror. She focused on breathing the fragrant air to calm her racing pulse; the tree was no threat. She was simply here to observe it and draw it as an example of the fig tree’s progress from the third stage into the fourth and final stage of its life cycle: from strangler to tree.

The interlocking trees - which at a glance appeared to be a single tree - reached the tallest layer of the canopy, stretching into the shining sun with branching limbs. The kapok tree - easily eighty years older than its younger parasite - was wrapped in a sinister lovers’ embrace. Only small parts of the kapok tree’s bark were now visible between the fig’s fused vines, looking buckled and strained.

About one hundred and fifty years ago, Adelaide reflected, the seed of the fig would have fallen onto a branch of the kapok tree. A flock of fruit bats might have passed, she mused, in a burst of ear-splitting screeches above the moon-lit canopy. One bat would have released a sticky mess which hurtled into the canopy below.

Within the dropping was a seed, which would have awoken from its dormancy in the hot morning sun a few hours later. Adelaide imagined the miniscule shoot, green and springy, emerging as the seed broke open. Who could have known then, she thought, that the tiny plant would grow to engulf the very tree that it was housed on? Water droplets would have drifted up to the tiny plant from the waterfall below, which would have been caught by the outstretched roots of the small aerial plant - known as an epiphyte. As the apparently innocuous plant grew upwards towards the sun-dappled canopy above, it would have also sensed the promising dampness of the forest floor many feet below, stretching tiny finger-like roots around the wide bough and towards the earth.

When she had been here fifty years ago, there had been gaps in the curtain-like vines of the strangler fig closer to the ground. Hollows were formed between the fusing roots and the kapok’s trunk, wide enough for a small body to fit into.

The fig was in the final stages of taking its lover’s life. Its roots had fused around the kapok’s trunk, encasing it. Like a tomb. Having exploited the stability which the older kapok provided, the fig would strangle its host, which would eventually rot - the victim of cruel exploitation - leaving the fig as a hollow, self-sufficient tree.

Was she the strangler fig, Adelaide wondered - a parasite and a thief? Or was she the kapok tree - the victim of a powerful and cruel force?

The sketch in her lap was half finished; the pencil had rolled - unnoticed - onto the mossy ground at her feet. Time felt slippery and unreal; she felt at once like she was experiencing all of the years which had passed in the clearing. The wrinkles on her hands and the progress of the fig told her that she was here and that it was now, but in her mind's eye, it was fifty years ago. She was ten.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, Adelaide Dalton’s arrival caused quite a stir. It was tragic, the women clucked, that the child had been left orphaned. However, there was an air of smug satisfaction in their tone which belied the words. In the tiny aristocracy nestled in the port, the few families wore the latest fashions shipped from London, and affected the self-conscious, clipped tones of those who needed to ascertain that, though they were away from Britain, they were most certainly British. Adelaide’s family was of the most elite of London’s aristocracy; even though the child was only coming because the Bradfords were her only remaining family, her arrival vindicated the island-dwelling families’ belief that they were a privileged set.

“She would be just the right age for Quentin in a few years if the two get on,” the women had clucked; “they aren’t close family!” The girl was Charles’s mother’s second-cousin, which made her Charles’s second-cousin once removed.

Charles’s mother had given her son, who was thirteen, the task of welcoming Adelaide. He was to show her around the town on their way home; a carriage would retrieve her things. Charles had met the shy young girl as she alighted onto the port’s large, bustling jetty; she had been rowed in from the massive ship moored in the deeper water of the bay. Her face was puckered into a squint from the overwhelming brightness of the sun above and the reflected, glinting diamonds of sunlight rippling on the ocean below. She was dressed in a light blue chiffon dress with white lace trimmings. She looked around at the bustling portside town and the green hills beyond with trepidation, half-heartedly greeting the cousin she had never met, who had sought her out in the milieu of people and goods and extended a hand to introduce himself pompously.

Adelaide took in the busy and noisy scene with wide eyes. People called to each other in English, Creole, and Spanish as thumping footfalls moved up and down the jetty. Seagulls squawked overhead, sails snapped in the breeze and timber tenders and dinghies creaked in the rolling swells. The unmistakable smell of a slave ship - putrid human sweat, excrement, illness, and death - reached the port’s jetty on a sea breeze from the moored ships in the harbor. The children jumped aside as a group of dock workers, some black and some white, passed by them rolling huge barrels - so heavy that they made the boards underfoot shake. Others carried roping and fabric across heavy-set, sweating shoulders. The hot, midday sun blazed down upon it all; Adelaide’s complexion under her fashionable straw hat was painfully fair, it seemed already to be slightly pink.

Charles affected the air of a knowledgeable plantation owner as he led the small girl through the crowd, reeling off facts about sugar exports. He felt a pleasant and unaccustomed sense of worldliness; he was enjoying Adelaide’s obvious fear at the sights which were familiar to him. Instead of showing her the more polished parts of the port town, as his mother had instructed, Charles led Adelaide home through a meandering jungle route. The port’s aristocratic families preferred to live in the rolling hills to the North, away from the unpleasantness of the southern plantations which they profited handsomely from.

Feeling capable and manly, he led her into the tangled brush, swatting at leaves with a stick as he told her exaggerated stories about ferocious run-away slaves hiding among the trees - which he had encountered and overcome many times - noticing with satisfaction how she glanced around worriedly.

Adelaide had to stop a few times to free the hem of her dress from thorny vines. In a small voice, she asked how much farther they needed to walk. Charles explained that they needed to cross a creek and then walk about a mile farther. She bit her lip but said nothing.

Finally, they reached the clearing with the waterfall. Adelaide looked at the flowing water in their path fearfully. Her shoes and dress were dirty. Was she always going to be expected to get around by traipsing through the jungle? Did they not have roads? She hated this cousin and she hated this country. These were Adelaide’s thoughts as she tried to follow Charles’s skipping progress across the mossy rocks above the waterfall.

Adelaide retrieved her dropped pencil and fought to return her focus to the entangled trees which dipped their woody toes into the gurgling waterfall. Around one hundred and forty years ago, she considered as she sketched, the creek and its small waterfall would have been once again flooded with tropical downpours; the plant would have reached the ground with a single, spindly root. Its next life stage, as a primary hemi-epiphyte, began.

From there, it would have sunk its root into the damp richness of the soil, where it branched and multiplied. Nutrients and water were pulled up the central root, thickening and strengthening it. The once spindly sprouts of the fig on the bough above would have widened into thicker, encircling limbs, which wrapped around the branch of the kapok and crept incrementally towards its trunk. Meanwhile, below ground, the fig’s roots continued to create a stabilizing network which burrowed around, below, and through the roots of the kapok, stealing its water and nutrients. By the time the tender embrace of the apparently innocuous vine became a death grip, it was too late; the kapok was already dying.

Tiny Adelaide slipped. Her head hit the rock with a sickening, dull thunk. She fell a few feet down, following the water’s progress over the small, rocky ledge, and disappeared into the shallow pool below. There was a long moment of suspended time, where Charles stared, appalled and dumbfounded, and then he was suddenly willed into clumsy animation.

Stumbling in panic, he jumped down the rocks beside the waterfall, and waded into the pool of water. He pulled the tiny, prostrate body onto the dry rocks. Dread filled him when she didn’t immediately cough or sit up. Desperately, he shook her small shoulders, and cast around himself, searching for inspiration.

Shock jolted through his body when he met a pair of eyes, watching from among the ferns across the clearing. He had thought he was alone.

“Help me!” Charles bellowed at the person; he realized that it was a timid child he had seen around the port - probably the son of a British merchant or sailor - slightly younger than himself.

The child shyly came out from among the ferns and crouched beside Charles. They both looked fearfully at the prostrate girl.

“We need to get her to wake up,” Charles explained to the silent child. It was clear that he was trying to sound calm and rational, but his voice was high and strained with desperate panic. He shook Adelaide again, harder.

Adelaide remembered the end of that appalling day; it was the beginning of a new chapter of her life. Both dripping wet, she and Charles had left the clearing and trudged silently through the jungle, finally reaching the house. Mrs. Bradford, Charles’s mother, had clicked her tongue in concern and thrown Charles reproachful looks as she fussed over the state of the dirty and wet dress, which had obviously shrunk in the water; Adelaide had been bustled off to be bathed and a hot dinner was prepared for her.

Although the bed Adelaide was tucked into that night was soft, with a feather-stuffed duvet and crisp cotton sheets, and the room beautifully furnished with windows overlooking the undulating green hills and the ocean, she had felt only desolation and fear. Charles had told his mother that Adelaide had slipped into the water - leaving her to assume that he meant the ocean - and that he had helped her out. He avoided mentioning any details of their misguided jaunt through the jungle; Adelaide, too, had remained fearfully silent.

Charles and Adelaide never spoke of the incident - their secret - ever again, not as children and not in the thirty-nine years of their marriage, although it lived in the yawning chasm of resentment and bitterness between them. Mainly, it lived on in the dark and lonely recesses of Adelaide’s mind, and in her nightmares, where the woody branches came for her.

Their marriage had merely been another layer of their pact of silence, their commitment to hide their wicked secret from the world. He had treated her with cruelty and repugnance because their union disgraced and humiliated him; she bound him to his treachery. Likewise, she had loathed and feared him. The jungle remained her only friend.

Adelaide finished her sketch. Her eye was drawn again to the place at the base of the tree, where there used to be a curtain of tentacle-like vines, but which was now fused into a smooth surface. There had been three children in the clearing that long-ago morning, but only two had left it.

“You’re a girl,” Charles had said abruptly, shocked, staring anew at the child kneeling beside him. Tiny Adelaide had remained motionless in front of them, her face blanched of all color and no breath escaping from between her small, blue lips.

Secrets, like new sprouts in the morning sun, can grow to immense proportions. They can take over a life and cover it entirely, imitating every contour, until only the smallest, buckling cracks of the truth beneath are visible. A suitcase full of beautiful gowns, all slightly too small. A girl - almost always silent - who only occasionally utters something in an accent too coarse for her history. A girl who escapes into the jungle every day, and seems to already know the meandering paths left by the feet of a local orphan girl.

His breath had been hot and fetid in her face, his expression contorted with fear-rage, “You can never tell anyone.” His hand gripped her arm painfully, the fingers encircling her forearm, spreading and holding fast like the ruthless limbs of a parasitic vine.

The woman known as Adelaide finished the sketch of the strangler fig. Acting on impulse, she wrote a quick note beside the drawing and ripped it out of her sketchbook. She curled the edges and rolled them together, forming a scroll, and pushed it into the soft earth beside the tree. In years to come, the strangler fig tree would be almost completely hollow. The only thing remaining inside it would be the small skeleton of a ten-year old girl, dressed in the borrowed clothes of another young orphan girl, one who escaped from both of her adopted families by roaming in the jungle.

Dear Adelaide,
This is a sketch of Ficus Aurea in the final stages of its parasitic engulfment of its host.
I’m sorry for what I did.