A Pear and an Apple
For Jewish Comics Day.
This is some ungainly handwavey mix of canons, mostly because I wanted young Kitty but also to retain her recognisable codename. I've also undoubtedly taken liberties with her grandfather's background, but as I have no idea what canon has established there I don't feel too guilty.
Title by way of the Hebrew version of "Katyusha" (לבלבו אגס וגם תפוח), as sung by the Gevatron, which is also the song mentioned inside. Thanks to Vavia for being my sanity-check on this one; it's been ages since I read the comics.
The first time she remembers doing this, she was four years old.
(The Pryde backyard in Deerfield, Grandpa Sam's gnarled hands guiding her own on as they eased the sapling carefully into the hole he'd dug. The scent of loam thick in the air, the promise of growing things. "I'll hold it," he had said, "and you fill up the hole again," and she'd gleefully applied herself first with trowel and then with hands, singing nonsense along with the tune he'd been humming.
They'd said the shehecheyanu at the end, as they'd tipped the watering can over the packed earth to dampen it, and then she'd leaned forward and kissed the sapling and wished it a happy birthday, and Grandpa Sam had laughed and ruffled her hair and they'd walked back to the house.
Her mother had been upset about the dirt later, but Kitty hadn't cared.)
There's dirt under her fingernails now, and she's dug the hole herself, and she doesn't know the seasons here in Westchester County - the sales clerk had assured her that the apple will be fine, that it's the right time of year to plant it, but she still worries a little (can't help thinking it'll be a bad omen if it dies, though she's not usually superstitious) - but it matters to her to do this. It had become a ritual; every year, she and Grandpa Sam had picked out a different fruit tree and planted it in her parents' yard, and every year she'd given the tree a kiss and said "happy birthday", as silly as it was.
(It matters, and this - Westchester, school, being a mutant - isn't going to change who she is. She can be Shadowcat and Kitty Pryde at the same time. It's been hard trying to figure out how to make that happen in these new surroundings; she misses being able to go to temple, misses having family around to share things with. And she hasn't figured out how to tell anyone yet, doesn't even know if she wants to, because it's personal in a way she can't really explain, even if her fellow mutants are bound to understand more than most what it's like to be different than most of the people around you. It's still different.)
But there are birds chattering somewhere above her and new leaves just unfurling on the trees in this corner of the property, and the knees of her jeans are damp and her hair is straggling loose from the ponytail she'd pulled it into, and she breathes in the smell of green and growing things and it feels right, because for the first time it's like she's not alone during her observances. It's a holiday for trees, after all, and she's got the old and the new with her, and if it's a rather ridiculously on-point metaphor it doesn't do anything but make her smile as she works.
Grandpa Sam's gone now, and she'd planted on her own in her parent's back yard last year - a pear, for the song he'd learned in the halutzim after the war and taught her. She's sure her pronunciation is still wrong and that if he were here he'd correct her, but she sings it under her breath anyway as she crouches to set the sapling into the hole and imagines his hands guiding hers as they had all those years ago, as she'd imagined them on that pear last year. Agas ve gam tapuach; she'd wanted an apple tree this morning as much for the song as to come back to the first tree that she remembers.
She reaches back behind her for the bucket of loam she'd taken from the potting shed this morning, only to find it closer than she'd expected - spins on her heels, sure she's in trouble somehow, and lands (ungracefully, but managing not to topple her little tree over in the process) on her butt.
"Ah," is all Ororo says, though, nodding at the trowel. "I wondered where that had wandered off to."
"I -" But the older woman is smiling, and Kitty's apology dies on her lips. "I'll be done with it soon," she says instead, when she finds her voice again.
"Do you want me to leave you to finish?" There's no judgement in the words, and that more than anything makes her stop and think rather than just blurting out an answer. Because she does want to share this, now that the chance is here, because it's part of who she is, and part of being a team (part of being a family) is understanding the others in it, and she wants these people to be her family one day. (She squelches the part of her that asks what she'll do if they don't understand. She'll never know if she doesn't meet the hand that's been extended to her.)
"Do you want to help?" she asks instead, and watches that smile deepen as Ororo drops down beside her without hesitation.
"Tell me what you want me to do, then."
At her direction, Ororo scoops handfuls of the loam in around the sapling while Kitty holds it steady. She's quiet - doesn't ask, just is - and Kitty's grateful for that, though it feels like she ought to say something. If she wants understanding, she's going to have to offer up something of herself, and so she says, into the silence, "It's a holiday today - a Jewish one, I mean."
"A planting festival?" Pale brows lift questioningly. "It seems an odd time of year for that."
The tree's settled enough now that Kitty can let go of it. She reaches into the bucket for more dirt, letting it sift through her fingers as she shakes her head. "It's not that, though. It's a celebration of trees - or for trees, I guess, depending on how you translate it. When I was little, I called it their birthday, and it's kind of like that." Now that the words have begun, they come more easily. "It's supposed to be about sap rising and things coming back to life, and - I don't really know, it's just something I've been doing as long as I can remember. My grandfather and I would plant a new tree every year, and I just - I wanted to keep doing it." It sounds so awkward when she tries to put words to it, because how do you explain things you know in your bones and have always been a part of you?
Ororo's quiet after that, but it doesn't feel as awkward this time, and they work together to finish filling the hole back in. When they've finished, she looks down at the little mound of earth, and there's something in her face that reminds Kitty that this is another person who doesn't quite fit into the whole American norm of the house - reminds her that Ororo, too, carries pieces of her that the rest of the house isn't going to understand, and they all grew up in different ways but there are common threads neither of them will ever really have (and maybe it's the same with her, to want them and not want them in the same breath, because it's hard to be different even when you don't want to give up what you are). "Can I?" she's asking, though, and there's a little cloud hovering above her fingertips, and Kitty realises what she's asking and nods and watches in fascination as a gentle shower pours down on the new soil.
"Baruch ata Adonai," she says, thinking back to age-knotted fingers helping her chubby childish ones lift a watering can and voices raised together, "Eloheinu melech ha-olam, shehecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higiyanu la zman hazeh."
The rain slackens to a trickle and then to nothing as the cloud dissipates. "Amen," Ororo murmurs, and Kitty blinks at that. She wouldn't have expected it. (But then again, there's a lot she still doesn't know about the people she's living with. It's time she started changing that.)
She rises and dusts off her jeans, leans forward to kiss the little sapling and whispers a 'happy birthday' before retrieving the discarded tools. "You're also supposed to have fruit for Tu b'Shevat. Mom and Dad sent me some dates for this year. D'you want - I mean - would you like some?"
(Memory, visceral and sudden: Grandpa Sam's hand in her own in the winter sun as they walk back to the house. Being jeered at for being different hadn't mattered in moments like that, because she'd known there would always be someone who understood and because she'd known what she was. Standing here with that familiar scent of wet earth and impending spring surrounding her, she realises that who she is now isn't that different. It is in her bones, in her heart and her soul, and nothing is ever going to change that.)
"I'd be honoured."
(A hand extended, a hand grasped.)
As they walk back to the shed, she thinks of spring.
The blessing Kitty recites is the Shehecheyanu: "Blessed are you, Eternal our God, ruler of the universe, for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season."