Sweetie Come Brush Me

1.

I jump on my bicycle and keep my head straight when I see the girls a grade ahead of me who have boyfriends at sixteen—like that’s gonna last. They wave. I don’t. I’m heading to Pumpkin Circle to see what’s selling, last week it was crayfish and false hope. I’ll deal with the teenage-love-affairs when and where I decide. I pedal faster when I see Ma Eunice’s market truck take the corner. She sees me see her. My belly sinks in the fear that one of these mediumly able minds might know of me more than I can stomach.

2.

It was always Ma Eunice from the Pumpkin Circle that I thought might be the most observant. She remembers everything about everyone’s business. Thing is, to see is one thing. To understand quite another issue of cognitive ability. Because with an associative mind, A is cracked open and parsed and its applicable component parts are multiplied by Bs applicable component parts. Thing is, if you can’t understand A, how can the mind associate? So, scratch Pumpkin Circle Eunice off the list. She can’t understand shit. There’s also Mr. Maurice, he can add and subtract thousands of dollars but only sells last week’s crayfish. And he only sees himself. There’s an inverse ratio between the extent to which a person can decipher subliminal, or obvious for that matter, calls for emotional support and that person’s current personal hellfire. Which of course Ma Eunice reported to everyone the morning Ms. Idolene dash weh Mr. Maurice’s baby.

3.

You’re probably wondering how I know. I collect rumors and how tos. How to get a fishbone out of your throat? How to peel a mango? How to ride a bike downhill? Bend your knees and bend your back. Head and neck sinks between shoulders, tuck your lips in so the wind whipping up from town doesn’t split your lip. Both hands on handlebars with a tight grip. Because if you don’t hold on, you get knocked. It happened to Tru Juice, he was sailing down like a kite. When we bust the corner, Tru Juice’s loose hands were all we saw fly up and then a cloud of smoke from his clothes, shredded. Ms. Idolene was seen cascading down past Pumpkin Circle on her banana seat Schwinn, head bent, knees a K. Her lip already split because her father knocked her into next week for getting knocked up by a big head wotless Labor Rights who sells last week’s crayfish in Pumpkin Circle and who told her she could avoid getting pregnant by syncing up her cycle with the phases of the moon. She stopped taking birth control and when she didn’t see her period, she visited Mrs. Myrtl who gave her roots that made her nauseous. Her father saw her leaving the root’s lady holding her belly. He backhanded her, but she didn’t have time to explain she needed to get down the hill so she could wash out what was coming out between her legs in Yallahs pond.

4.

How to peel a mango? Choose a mango that is going to turn tomorrow. Ms. Idolene has seven mango trees, all of them the same type, my favorite. Ms Idolene’s mom named them sweetie, come brush me. Usually, you peel back the skin with your teeth, but that is for someone else. Your ego will have you cry over a closed door with nothing behind it, Ma Eunice told Mr. Maurice. So, you palm it and press the knife into the long side, feeling for the seed. Once it hits, tilt the knife up and slice the top off. She did this, offering Mr. Maurice a sliver. The knife is sharp, so a bit of seed comes off the top. He bites into the mango. It’s equally too sweet and too sour. Dummy. We accept the love we think we deserve.

5.

That’s what one of the mother’s told a teenage-love-affair who claimed to be crying about the shortage of sweetie come brush me mangoes but was really crying over a girl, with no shame, right in the middle of Pumpkin Circle.

And here comes Ma Eunice hopping off her market truck to cosign this with a basket of too sweet too sour mangoes on her hip. Dem sexual urges be stronger than your self-respect, that’s why y’all be at the clinic or on Mrs. Myrtl’s front stoop crying and begging. Begging? Mr. Maurice repeated shelling slimy crayfish with 31 sweetie come brush mes rotting behind him. He mouthed ‘begging’ again wanting ever so much to convince himself that he prefers too sweet too sour mangoes and not the sweetie come brush mes that we all want but can’t get any more since he stopped talking to Ms. Idolene because although she was barely weeks pregnant, he pictures what their big head baby might look like face down in Yallahs Pond.

This is not the first broken heart Pumpkin Circle has seen. After planting the seven mango trees, Ms. Idolene’s mother took sick. Ms. Idolene’s father spit at the root of each tree, a fury of spite when death took his wife. The trees bore more mangoes than Jesus. He hated them, each mango, seed, skin. The sweet, sticky juice that ran down the corner of his mouth—he hated the most.  But they fed his daughter, so the spite grew because what’s worse than needing the thing you hate?

Ask Ms. Idolene.

Ms. Idolene, who has been outside Pumpkin Circle begging Maurice to forgive her every day for a full moon cycle, barely pedals and doesn’t tuck her lips when she rides off on the thirty-first day. She takes her last haul of sweetie come brush me seeds to Yallahs Pond. She walks slowly into the center. She looks over her shoulder, a sad hope, she sees no one coming to stop her. Water covers her waist and moistness creeps up as she up ends the crocus bag and drowns each seed.

6.

Look at how we break our own hearts.