Mango Delight

by Fracaswell Hyman

  I didn’t speak, although I knew the answer.

  “It came from the money he has been saving to open his own restaurant. To follow his dream. To make a better life for all of us. So your actions have cut into all of our futures. Do you understand?”

  Dada held his hand up to Mom. “Settle down, Marjorie.”

  I pushed back. “That’s not my fault. He didn’t have to buy a four-hundred-dollar phone.”

  “Mango, you know Brook’s father is my boss. If we don’t make this right, it’s not only you who is going to have a hard time. Do you understand?”

  “I guess, but I’m still not sorry.”

  “Mango!” Mom said.

  “I’m not!”

  “Fine. If you won’t be sorry for what you’ve done, maybe you’ll be sorry for this: you will not get your own phone until you are fourteen years old. Not thirteen anymore but fourteen. Your actions have cost you another year.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “Is it fair that you’ve cost your father nearly five hundred dollars? Is it fair that he has to walk on eggshells around his boss because of what you did? Tell me, Mango, what in all of this mess is fair?”

  Jasper started to whimper, agitated by the raised voices and the tension that threatened to blow our kitchen to pieces. I wanted to shout at my mother, scream that it was all her fault. I didn’t tell what really happened because I was standing up for her. I was hurting for her. Here I was protecting her feelings, and she turned out to be the cruelest one of all.

  No one I knew had to wait until they were fourteen to get a phone. No one. Having to wait until I was thirteen when lots of kids were getting their first phones at eleven or twelve was bad enough, but if I had no phone until I was fourteen, I’d be more of a social outcast than anyone.

  I turned to Dada, but he just shook his head and looked away. He wasn’t going to go against Mom. They always stuck together, whether they agreed with each other or not. I wished I had a missile strong enough to break through their united front.

  Dada broke the silence as he headed for the door. “I have to get back to the restaurant before the dinner service begins.”

  Mom asked, “Aren’t you going to take the phone with you?”

  “No. The principal wants Mango to hand it over to Brooklyn in her office tomorrow and apologize.”

  I turned away. It would be a waste of breath telling them that I refused to apologize, so I didn’t say anything. But I wasn’t sorry for what happened. And although I was pretty good at pretending to be happy for someone when I really wasn’t, I was terrible at faking my feelings to myself. I’d rather be banned from having a phone until I was one hundred and fourteen than apologize to Brooklyn—not after what she texted.

  CHAPTER 5

  Unsorry

  Dada made cook-up rice for dinner before he left for work. It was one of my favorite meals. It had rice and peas cooked with coconut milk, carrots, onion, and whatever meat was left over from the week’s meals cut into bite-size cubes. Tonight’s dish had jerk chicken, pork, and ground beef. Cook-up rice was different each time but always a highlight of the week. Even so, I had no appetite.

  Mom sat across the table from me, and neither one of us spoke except to ask to pass the orange juice or the soy sauce. Once in awhile, I would glance up and catch her looking at me. Her eyes were softer than they’d been a couple of hours earlier when she laid out my punishment. I sensed she wanted to make up with me, but my feelings were still way too sore to make eye contact long enough to give her an opening.

  Dada always said, “My two best gals are twins in two ways: how beautiful they are, and how stubborn they are.”

  I loved my mother, but we did have lots of … disagreements. Whenever we reached an impasse—a point where each of us was deadlocked on our side of an argument—we settled it by saying “Let’s agree to disagree.” Then I’d walk away convinced I was right and she was too pigheaded to admit she was wrong. I’d bet a hundred dollars Mom felt the same.

  After moving my dinner around the plate with my fork, now and then picking up cubes of spicy chicken, the meal was over. Mom took Jasper away for a bath, and I cleared the table and washed and put away the dishes.

  I didn’t have much homework seeing as I didn’t finish out the entire school day, so I did my math assignment and sat down to read more about Anne Frank, who seemed to have similar problems when it came to relating to her mother. What was it about girls and mothers that made us so hard on each other? Well, actually, I wasn’t hard on my mom; she was hard on me.

  It was difficult to concentrate. Usually when I was reading, I’d get so wrapped up in the book that I’d lose track of time, but tonight was different. I was too caught up in how the day had gone so wrong to pay attention to my reading. I finally put the book down when there was a soft knock at my door.

  I didn’t even turn to look at the door, but I said “Come in” anyway.

  Mom opened the door and asked if I wanted to say good night to Jasper before he went to sleep. I looked over my shoulder but not at her and said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  I thought Mom would close my door and leave, but she came into the room. I could tell that her false leg was bothering her by the step hesitate step rhythm of her walk as she crossed to my bed and sat down.

  “Mango, sweetie, I want to … well, to say I’m sorry that I was so angry this afternoon. I didn’t mean to be the Wicked Witch, but things are …” I turned to face her, and Mom looked up at the ceiling for a second, almost as though she were trying to hold back tears. I turned away.

  After taking a moment to compose herself, she went on. “Mango, look at me. Please.”

  I turned around in my swiveling desk chair. I treasured that chair because it swiveled three hundred and sixty degrees. Jasper loved when I would hold him in my lap and spin around and around. He laughed so hard one time that he spit up, and the force of the spinning chair whipped the vomit right into my face. Gross.

  I looked at Mom sitting on my bed. Her head was down, but she looked up at me from under her brow.

  “Mango, I know you are a good girl. The best daughter anyone could hope for. Truly. I know this. And because I know you, I also know that you couldn’t, you wouldn’t do anything as vindictive as ruining that child’s phone on purpose. I know that even without your explaining what exactly happened.”

  My harsh feelings, like steel in the path of lava, were melting, and I guess she could tell, because Mom reached her hand out to me and beckoned. “Come.” I got up from my chair and slid in close to her on the bed. Mom put an arm around me. “You and I are so much alike. Sometimes it causes lots of problems, but there are times, like now, when it helps me to understand how you feel.” Mom looked deep into my eyes. “Apologizing is one thing that has always been hard for me to do. Very hard. Particularly when I knew the person I was supposed to say sorry to didn’t really deserve an apology.” Mom straightened out her leg and rubbed the stump a little before going on.

  “When you were born, your granny Reva came all the way from Jamaica to help me take care of you. I was happy to have her here—at first. But, oh my goodness, after about six weeks, I would have rather climbed a tree in the rain forest and live up there with a baby, some cockatoos, monkeys, and who knows what other whoosey-whatsits rather than spend another moment in the house with that, um … ‘challenging’ woman.”

  I giggled, and wondered what bad word she wanted to use instead of challenging.

  “I felt as though she picked on me all the time. Nothing I could do was right. I didn’t hold you right. I didn’t feed you right. I didn’t sweep or mop the floor right. And my cooking—OMGZ, as you girls say—she lost ten pounds from refusing to eat anything I would set on the table. One day, she pushed me too far, complaining I was lazy and wasteful for using disposable diapers instead of the cloth ones that had to be washed and hung out to dry each time you pooped or peed. Well …” Mom shook her head at the memory. “I snapped and
told Miss Reva all about herself and how I wish she’d put her big bottom on her broom and fly back to Jamaica during the next thunderstorm.”

  My hand flew to my mouth. “You didn’t!”

  “Oh, yes, I did. Your granny locked herself in her room and didn’t come out for two days. She wouldn’t accept any food or water, not even from your father. I pretended to feel bad, but actually, it was nice to be on my own without that old hen pecking at me all the time. But after the second day, I realized that the one who was really suffering was your father. You see, he was in the middle. Torn between the two women he loved the most. So, I swallowed my pride, made a coconut cake from a box, took it to her door, and apologized. She accepted my apology but threw the cake in the trash without taking a bite.” Mom and I laughed—that was Granny all right. “She took my hand, walked me straight into the kitchen and showed me how to make a coconut cake from scratch. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It was better than my box cake. Much better.” I smiled and snuggled up to Mom. “Miss Reva and I spent the rest of her time here—another month—with her giving me cooking lessons and the space to take care of you the way I wanted. We parted friends. But most important of all was that your father didn’t have to tiptoe around us anymore. Even if I didn’t want to do it, I apologized to your granny for Sid’s sake, because I knew that if the situation were reversed, he would have done it for me.”

  Mom and I put our arms around each other and hugged real tight. I understood what she was trying to tell me, and I spent the rest of the night awake in bed, trying to figure out what kind of peace offering I could make to Brooklyn, because remaining enemies with her could make things hard for Dada at work. I thought about making a coconut cake, but as much as I love Dada, it would have been too hard for me to resist smashing it on top of her head.

  In the morning, I got out of bed before my alarm went off, sat at my desk, took out my stationery with the lavender paper and the big letter M monogrammed on top that Brooklyn had given me for Christmas, and wrote:

  Dear Brooklyn,

  I’ve been trying to understand what happened to our friendship. In just one day, we went from being besties to where we are now. To be honest, I’ve been jealous of you since we met to walk to school together yesterday.

  My jealousy wasn’t only about the phone, although to be perfectly honest, I was being a big phony when I acted like I was so happy for you. Now that you have a phone, we aren’t equals anymore. You get to be a part of the iPhonies that we both despised so much.

  It hurts that after all the time we spent with Hateful Jo as our sworn enemy, she’s now suddenly your best friend after one night of shopping together. Where does that leave me? Out in the cold, feeling alone and angry.

  Still, what hurts most of all is the way you made fun of my mother in your text. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have read it. I know that was wrong. But I did read it, and the things you said hurt more than anything has ever hurt before. I felt betrayed by you, Brook, but I swear on my little brother’s life (and you know how much I love him) that I did not drop your phone into the sink on purpose. It slipped from my hand. It really did. I would never do anything so mean or stupid on purpose because:

  #1. I would get into terrible trouble, like I am now.

  #2. I still care about you as a friend.

  I wouldn’t feel as bad as I do if what you texted had been written by Hateful Jo, because you are my friend and she is not. I hope we can move past what happened yesterday and be friends again.

  Sincerely,

  Mango Delight Fuller

  By the time my alarm went off, I was done. I scanned the letter once to make sure there were no glaring errors, put it in an envelope, licked it shut, and put it in my backpack before I changed my mind. I hurried into the shower, dressed, and had my breakfast. Before I left for school, I gift-wrapped Brooklyn’s new phone. The apology letter would be my peace-offering cake, and the wrapping would be the frosting.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Cold War

  I wasn’t sure Brooklyn and I could ever be besties again. If we did patch things up, I knew our relationship wouldn’t ever be exactly the same, but I had to try. I had to do my best to apologize, for me and especially for Dada. To make his life at work a little easier.

  It was a nice, breezy, cool morning, the perfect spring day. As I approached Martin Luther King Boulevard, I decided to take a detour and not walk down Brooklyn’s Jacaranda-shaded street. It would be über awkward if I ran into her coming out of her house. Principal Lipschultz’s office would be a neutral ground where we could have peace talks and hopefully end the war with a friendly settlement.

  Walking down the street adjacent to Brooklyn’s block, I ran into Isabel “Izzy” Otero. She was one of my playdate friends in preschool and kindergarten, but since then we had gone to different elementary schools and lost touch. Now we were in the same middle school, and though we waved at each other and were friendly acquaintances, we never really took the time to become friend-friends again. I guess it was because I was so busy being besties with Brook.

  Izzy called out to me as I passed her house. “Hey, Mango! Mango, wait up!” I paused while she ran, huffing and puffing, to catch up to me. I’d always liked Izzy. She was a chubby girl with the sweetest, round kewpie-doll face. And boy, could she talk! Even when we were in kindergarten, she would gab your head off. As she hurried down the path from her house toward me, it made me smile to remember how much that girl loved syrup. One day when we were little, Mom took Izzy and me to IHOP for lunch, and she ordered pancakes and drowned them in so much syrup that it was dripping off the plate. She actually ate her pancakes with a spoon, like it was soup!

  “Oh my goodness! Phew! I gotta catch my breath. I don’t get to run that much. Mamí says ladies aren’t supposed to run. It’s the boys who should run to catch up with the ladies. Ain’t that crazy? She is always talking her crazy old-fashioned talk. Anyway, I guess I take her a little seriously, since I don’t run as much as I should. And look at you! You be running all the time in that running club of yours. I don’t know how you do it, girl.” Izzy finally took a breath. “So what’s good?”

  “Oh, nothing much.” I knew that if I got started on what was really going on with me, it would be around the school faster than a lice infestation. Not that Izzy was a gossip, it’s just that a motormouth like hers needed fuel to keep pumping. So I threw out a diversion. “You look so cute today.” It was true. Her skirt, sweater set, and leggings were always on trend. Since my mom was always counting coins, I didn’t get the latest styles. She would only buy from the sale rack. She’d say, “It doesn’t make sense to buy you expensive clothes, Mango. Every year you get taller and your feet get longer. We’d go broke keeping you in style.”

  Izzy said, “Thanks. I like what you have on, too. It’s retro cool.”

  From any other girl, I would have taken that as throwing major shade, but I knew Izzy had a good heart and meant what she said in the best way. I smiled and said, “Really? Thanks.”

  “Totally. Studded jeans were so hot three years ago, I knew that style would come around again sooner or later.”

  She took a quick breath and went on, “Did you hear about my brother Enrique? He got accepted into Yale pre-med. That’s right, he’s going to be a doctor. Hashtag: I’m so proud. Hashtag: I’m so relieved.”

  “How come?”

  “Because now that Mamí and Abuela have got their doctor in the family, the pressure is off me. I can concentrate on being a triple-threat superstar.”

  Izzy has always wanted to be a star. Even in kindergarten, when we did the winter concert lined up in our holiday best, singing “Jingle Bells,” Izzy jumped out in front of everyone and started shimmying, shaking, and jingling as though she were the bells we were singing about. Of course, all of the rest of us watched as the rows of video cameras and camera phones swung in her direction while we were completely upstaged. You couldn’t blame her though. Izzy just
had an extra enthusiasm gene. She couldn’t help always becoming the center of attention. It was in her DNA.

  She was one of our school’s leading Dramanerds. She was so good and funny, everyone looked forward to her coming on stage. Nobody ever booed Isabel Otero.

  I had to go directly to the principal’s office when we walked into school, but I didn’t want Izzy to know what was up, so I stopped at the water fountain. “Okay, Izzy, see you later, girl.” She waved as I bent down to get a drink, but before I could stand, Izzy was back whispering in my ear.

  “Listen, I heard about what happened yesterday. And just so you know, I got your back. From kinder to the ender!” With that, she patted my shoulder twice and headed to her homeroom. I smiled. That was really nice of Izzy. Maybe we still had a bond. I guess I had been too busy hanging out with Brooklyn to notice.

  Ms. Lipschultz’s office was chillier than the freezer of an ice cream truck and not because the principal was wearing a gray suit to match her frosty gray eyes. It had everything to do with the way Brooklyn and I sat ramrod straight in the low chairs facing the imposing desk. Brooklyn hadn’t even turned to glance at me when I entered the room. My chest felt like I was being hugged from behind by a grizzly bear. Shallow breaths were the best I could take while listening to Ms. Lipschultz lay down the law.

  “Whatever happened between you girls is over now. I want no retaliation whatsoever. Do you understand?” I nodded, and I guess Brooklyn did, too, because Ms. Lipschultz went on. “Trust me, there will come a time when you both look back on this incident and laugh. It may not happen tomorrow or even next week, but I assure you, the time will come. Now, Brooklyn, Mango has something to give to you and something to say.” She turned her frosty gaze to me. “Mango … ?”

  For some reason, the low chairs just didn’t feel appropriate for what I was about to do, so I stood. Surprisingly, Brooklyn stood up, too. We faced each other. The outlaw and the sheriff ready for a showdown at the O.K. Corral. I took a deep breath, “I’m sorry for what happened yesterday. I didn’t mean to ruin your phone.”