Fruit of the Drunken Tree and Setting That Is Alive
Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s Fruit of the Drunken Tree is set in Colombia in the time of Pablo Escobar and follows the friendship between seven-year-old Chula and her family’s thirteen-year-old maid, Petrona.
I’d like to look at a very early passage, when I first thought, oh, this world is alive. The moment is only a few pages in, and we don’t yet know very much about the characters—just that two children (Chula is the narrator, Cassandra is her sister) are watching the arrival of Petrona, who has been hired to work in their house.
The garden yawned between us like an abyss. Cassandra and I gazed at the girl Petrona from behind the two left-most columns of our house. The white columns rose from the porch and supported the overhang of the second floor. The second floor stuck out like an overbite. It was a typical Bogotà house, made to look like the old colonials, white with wide windows and black iron bars and a clay roof with red-blue half-moon tiles. It was part of a row of identical houses linked one to the other by the sidewalls. I didn’t know then why the girl Petrona looked at our house that way, but Cassandra and I gaped back at her with the same kind of awe. The girl Petrona lived in an invasión. There were invasiones in almost every tall hill in the city, government land taken over by the displaced and the poor. Mamà herself had grown up in an invasión—but not in Bogotà.
On a surface level, we’re getting a description of a house that includes its color, shape, and architectural style (Chula’s “colonial”), alongside a functional explanation of a very different kind of home, which we might not immediately picture but can understand (Petrona’s invasión). We’re also learning about the circumstances of the characters. Chula’s home exhibits wealth, while Petrona’s suggests poverty.
But there’s a lot more happening.
At the level of language, the first few sentences feel like they’re jumping up and down. The garden doesn’t passively seem like an abyss—it yawns. That’s an action that I can visualize, that I can feel. (Just the word “yawn” can make the reader need to—what a way to put the story inside a reader’s body!)
When I reach the white columns that “rose,” my brain is primed to understand that as active too, as though they are springing up from the ground. Consider that a different writer might have simply said there were columns instead of noting that they rise and that they support—they are working. The same thing happens with the phrase “stuck out.” I know it means that one level is longer than the other, but I can feel the action of sticking, almost like a jab.
As a matter of personal taste, I appreciate the texture of descriptive passages that are somehow in motion. But beyond that, bringing setting to energetic life helps the reader recognize it as something that will interact with the characters and the greater story.
The action calms down a bit after those first few sentences with some less energetic verbs (“was”). But since the opening has already set this structure rumbling, I feel the house as dynamic throughout. Additionally, the more passive language still brims with tension—or potential motion—through word choice and association.
The house is “colonial,” which names colonization and therefore suggests great violence. Other details add friction—the bars on the window and colors that fight with each other: white then black, red-blue tiles. Consider also how the houses are “linked one to the other by the sidewalls.” It makes an impenetrable barricade. I think of a fortress, or perhaps a line of soldiers in formation.
I should say that I was not familiar with the term invasión when I reached this paragraph (I’m sure other readers will know it). The text’s quick explanation helps me understand, of course. But with a name that looks like the English word, “invasion,” I recognize it as representative of whatever the colonial house is defending against with those bars and that barricade.
Maybe this doesn’t seem like subtext. We know that a gated community exists to keep out the less privileged. But emphasis is always purposeful. And it’s not just about the physical structures but setting up relationship dynamics between characters.
Most readers understand on a gut level that a home might represent a person. This sense becomes explicit with the parallel gaze. The children gape at Petrona, while Petrona looks at their house “with the same kind of awe.” Because the stares are alike and simultaneous, the house equates with the people who live there. When we learn of Petrona’s home in the same paragraph, the home-to-person connection extends to her too.
Let’s go back to that yawning abyss of a garden. Staging comes into play here. Consider how it would be different if the characters were standing close together or in a tight circle. Putting a large space between them emphasizes the metaphorical distance of their circumstances. And, of course, the garden is not described as green or pretty or alive—but an abyss. A more inviting description would have created a warm atmosphere between these characters and set them up for an easier friendship. This is something else.
Also note that paragraphing really matters here. A different writer might have created a break between describing the house of the girls and explaining Petrona’s home in the invasión. Grouping them together makes a claim that they have a stronger relationship than if they were separated by a hard return. Petrona’s home (representing her life and self) is infiltrating the children’s. It is even wiggling between them and their mother. At this point in the story, we don’t know if they will be friends or enemies. But the paragraphing creates both tension between them and the suggestion that, nonetheless, they will come together in a meaningful way.
Whenever a character observes something, they describe it through the lens of their own personality, experience, and values—their sensibility. The sense of wealth and hostility is certainly coming from the house, but it’s necessarily interpreted by the narrator, a seven-year-old girl. She’s feeling these things too, even if she doesn’t have the means or inclination to explain that to us outright.
The words “I didn’t know then why” then both remind us of Chula’s perspective and broaden it. The voice has some retrospection, so it can relate not only seven-year-old Chula’s experience, but interpret it as someone a bit older and wiser.
Chula’s sensibility plays out strongly in the word “typical.” Typical to whom? The narrator seems to claim her house is normal. But does that mean it’s like every other house in the city, or only like every other house that she knows? In the second half of the paragraph, we learn that there are invasions all over Bogotà. And so what “typical” really shows is that up to this point Chula has lived the sort of sheltered life that makes her unaware, or unwilling to notice, those with different circumstances.
The retrospection helps make space for both concepts. One version of the narrator can claim the house is typical, while an older version can admit that other types are abundant. Various ways of knowing and unknowing crash against each other to create additional tension and a purposeful unease.
I’m not claiming the paragraph to be a microcosm of the book—that would be too simple. But it establishes important relationship dynamics and creates intriguing tension that will play out later.
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