When Life Gives You Mangos

by Kereen Getten

  “Well, I’ll get going, then,” Uncle Albert says, and he flashes me a weak smile. Mama waits for them to leave before she closes the box. As she walks by me, she stops and rests her hand on my cheek. It’s warm and a little wet from holding the dripping blue top. She stays only for a second before her arm drops and she disappears inside the house.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve never heard Mama and Papa argue. Not really argue. I’ve heard them disagree on what TV show to watch, and heard Papa try to convince Mama to go fishing with him just once. Sometimes I hear them whispering about me. How they don’t know what to do with me—Papa will say I need time and Mama will ask him how much more time.

  I’ve never heard them argue like this.

  I listen through the walls of my room. It is supposed to be Mama’s birthday party tonight. Most of the hill, including Ms. Gee, is due in less than an hour, but I think I might have ruined it.

  “She threw it all in the river. Look!”

  “She’s going through some stuff,” Papa says, and I can imagine him trying to hug her, but she will push him away like she always does when she is mad.

  “How much longer?” Mama says. “How much longer until we do something different, Lloyd?”

  I don’t know what she means by “do something different.” What is it they want to do to me? Send me away? Where would they send me? I feel sick thinking about it.

  Everything goes quiet after that. Maybe she allowed Papa to hold her; maybe she gave up and left the room. All I know is I can’t bear to think I caused them this much pain.

  Mama has created quite a setup for her own party. She doesn’t allow anyone to plan anything for her because she always ends up redoing it the way she likes it. There are fairy lights all around the veranda. In one corner is a long table filled with every food imaginable. Curried chicken, curried lamb, fried fish, peppered prawns, dumplings, pumpkin, potato, rice and peas, and my favorite: carrot cake.

  Papa turns on the sound system, and I help him with the balloons while Mama finishes getting ready. We don’t talk about the memory box, or how Mama is sad because of me. Instead, he hums along to the song playing, the bass making the entire house vibrate.

  One by one, people begin to appear. The older neighbors turn up first; they are on time for everything. Everyone else will come at least a few hours into the party.

  An hour later Calvin arrives with his mother and father. We exchange an awkward hello, and he follows his father over to the food. Ms. Gee arrives, her arm linked with Rudy’s, Rudy’s mother walking a step behind. I can’t help but smile at what Rudy is wearing. The oversized blue bow in her hair matches her tights, which have small bows all over them. She covers the tights with a dress and black army boots. She hugs me tightly. I am finding it hard not to like Rudy.

  Papa tries to help Ms. Gee into a chair, but Ms. Gee waves him away, saying she can sit down by herself, she’s not an invalid.

  Rudy links arms with me whether I want her to or not. We leave the veranda and step into the front yard. “What a view,” she sighs, looking out to the city. Dots of yellow lights fill the horizon like flashlights. “You’re so lucky, Clara.”

  “I guess,” I say, but I’m distracted by Gaynah approaching the foot of the hill with her mother and father. They pass us without saying a word, but the cold glares from both Gaynah and her mother tell me how they really feel.

  As if sensing the tension, Papa turns up the music, and the bass fills the entire yard, and probably the hill too. Papa rocks Mama from side to side, his head nestled into her neck until she has no option but to smile.

  Rudy lets go of my arm. “Oh, I love dancing. It’s one of my favorite things to do, as well as singing, acting, and playing the piano.” She runs into the middle of the yard and spins round and round. She calls me over. “Clara, come on!” I’m not much of a public dancer. Especially not in front of Gaynah and her mother.

  Calvin doesn’t seem to mind the attention, though, because he joins her in the yard, copying Rudy and laughing at the funny faces she makes. I look up to see Gaynah seething. I try to hide a satisfied grin but fail miserably. As if sensing that her daughter is being outshone, Juliette turns to Mama and says something, her arms flying in the air. Mama starts to argue with her, and the mood changes again. Someone switches the music off just as Juliette shouts, “It’s embarrassing. Look at her, acting as if nothing’s wrong.” Papa tells her to calm down, but this only makes her worse.

  “Did you hear what she did at the river?” She’s pointing directly at me. “How long are we going to allow this disruptive behavior to go on? Aren’t you embarrassed?”

  “No,” Mama and Papa say firmly.

  “Whatever she’s done,” Ms. Gee chimes in, speaking to Juliette, “is it worth embarrassing the child like this?”

  I think I might love Ms. Gee.

  Juliette dismisses her with a roll of her eyes. “You don’t know anything about it, so stay out of it.”

  “I know more than you think I do,” Ms. Gee says, sitting so far at the edge of her chair, she is almost out of it. “I know we have bigger problems to fix in this town than some child upsetting you.”

  Juliette glares at Mama and Papa, but they fold their arms defiantly.

  “Are you going to let her talk to me this way?”

  Ms. Gee opens her mouth to reply, but Rudy’s mom lays a firm hand on her knee. For once Ms. Gee complies and slides back in her seat. Which is not like Ms. Gee at all. I feel Rudy’s hand slip into mine as Pastor Brown steps in between them. “Let us all calm down,” he says, looking from Juliette to Ms. Gee. Everyone collectively lets out a sigh of relief that Pastor Brown has spoken. He puffs out his chest and scans the room the way he does when he is about to start a sermon.

  Pastor Brown doesn’t look like any of us on the hill. He is smaller than any of the men here, and he is broad like he works out, but I’ve never even seen him run. His hair is short and wavy like Calvin’s, and his teeth are so white, I once shut off the lights and pretended the electricity had gone out in church so we could see if his teeth were still shining.

  Papa says people listen to him because he’s the head of the church and he speaks for God, but I think it’s because he looks like a movie star and people always listen to movie stars. Even when they’re not saying anything worth listening to.

  Everyone is quiet as he speaks to Mama. “For the sake of salvaging your evening, Alysa, maybe you can tell us how Clara was punished for the box.”

  He doesn’t fool me, though. I know exactly what he is. A fraud. He is the one who turned the town against my uncle. He was the one who called my uncle the witch doctor, and the name stuck. Maybe that’s why we don’t get along. Maybe that’s why he always adds my name in the church prayer. And tells Mama and Papa to encourage me to attend more Bible classes. Because he knows that I am not fooled by him.

  Mama looks at Papa, and I can’t believe she is even considering answering him. “Your daughter should have taken a few examples from mine,” Juliette says with her chin in the air, the black freckles on her cheeks the only thing we have in common. “Then we might not be in this mess.” I see Mama’s face harden, and it is enough to make me move.

  I push by Rudy, past Juliette, and inside the house. I find the memory box in my parents’ room. On the dresser. Next to a photo of Nana and me sitting under the mango tree. The blue top is gone, and so are the mirror and the pin. But the diary is still there.

  I hover over the box.

  Count, Clara, count.

  I place my hands firmly on my hips and stare hard at Nana’s photo, willing it to calm me down. I close my eyes.

  One, two, three, four.

  Maybe Mama kept the box hoping I would change my mind and want it back. She’s wrong. I don’t want it back, but I’m glad she kept it.

  One, two,
three, four, five.

  I breathe heavy through my nose, my chest rising and falling.

  Four, five, six, seven.

  I don’t want to be mad, but all I can see is Juliette’s sneer and all I can hear is her evil voice taunting me. Then Pastor Brown’s growly voice telling Mama and Papa I need to be punished. I grab the diary and return to the veranda as Papa tries calming everyone down.

  I flick the diary open under the glare of the veranda light, my chest pumping fast. I don’t need to read the pages. I know every page by heart.

  “Gaynah Campbell cheated on the math test when she was nine because she didn’t know her eight times table. Gaynah doesn’t like it when you make her corned beef sandwiches; she gives them to the dog outside school and tells you a bully from the high school stole them, but she can never remember his name because HE DOESN’T EXIST. Gaynah has a crush on Calvin Brown and that’s the only reason she begged you to let her have private Bible study at Pastor Brown’s house. Gaynah Campbell wishes her mother didn’t teach at our school because she is embarrassed by the old granny clothes she wears.” I catch my breath. Everyone is staring at me in horror. Juliette’s mouth twists from side to side like a snake slithering toward you before it opens its jaw to swallow you whole. Mama has that look again. The one of desperation.

  “Clara” is all she manages.

  Pastor Brown demands that Mama and Papa punish me. “This is abhorrent behavior. You are members of this community. This”—he wags his finger at me—“this is inexcusable.”

  I want Mama to tell him that I was right to do what I did. That she will not quiet me, because I am just like her, like a force of wind that will not be tamed. Maybe that is the problem. I am too much like her, and I am not enough like them.

  The diary falls out of my hands. I run down the steps and around the back. As I stumble down the hill, I hear Rudy shouting after me. And both our mamas yelling at us to come back.

  “WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS? She’s not perfect. None of them are.” I march ahead as Rudy tries to keep up with me. “I could have told her all the things her perfect daughter did to me, but I didn’t.”

  “You sure showed them,” Rudy says.

  “That woman is the meanest person I’ve ever met. I thought it was Ms. Gee, but it’s not.”

  “Grandma really came through for you,” Rudy agrees.

  I ignore her ongoing commentary and continue my rant.

  “I’ll bet she’s in this mean-old-lady club, but she kicked everyone out for not being mean enough, because she’s the meanest out of anybody.”

  A snort escapes Rudy. I glare at her as she desperately tries to hold back a laugh. Her cheeks get bigger, and her eyes start to bulge; then the laugh escapes.

  “A mean-old-ladies club?” she hollers, holding her stomach. “I can just imagine them in their nightgowns and head ties, sitting in a circle in their rocking chairs with a cauldron in the middle.”

  I have no idea what a cauldron is, but it sounds like something Juliette would have.

  We are in the banana grove. I didn’t realize we had gotten this far.

  “They’ll chant spells about all the children they hate.” Rudy adopts this croaky voice, pinches her nose, and turns her lips downward. “Every night when all the children are asleep, we will pick out of a hat the name of which child to cast a spell on.”

  Rudy takes hold of my hands in the middle of the banana field. “Let’s make up a song about them. I’m really good at making up songs.” She screws up her face and wiggles her nose. Then she looks me deep in the eye and starts to chant.

  Evil old ladies are here to say

  We want Clara Dee to pay

  Evil ladies every day chant

  We want Rudy out the way.

  I join in the chant. We skip in a circle, chanting louder, skipping faster and faster until we are so dizzy, we fall on the ground laughing.

  I lay spread-eagled in the dirt, staring up at the night sky. I try to catch my breath.

  “Will they be mad that we ran off?” Rudy asks.

  I think about Mama’s worried face as I read from the diary, knowing full well that her worry turned to anger when I ran off.

  “I can’t go back,” I tell her. I feel her take my hand.

  “We’ll get in trouble together,” she whispers. I remember her mother at Ms. Gee’s, worried that I was walking home alone. She will blame me for taking Rudy with me.

  I sigh, pulling my hand away. “You should go.” I can’t have another person mad at me. I just can’t.

  Rudy continues to stare at the sky, unfazed by me pulling away.

  “You shouldn’t let people make you so angry,” she says. “My mother says if they make you angry, then they’ve won.”

  I turn my head to look at her. “Is that why she didn’t get mad at Ms. Gee that night when I was over there?”

  She nods, not looking away from the sky. “Mm-hmm.”

  I turn on my side to face her.

  “Why didn’t Ms. Gee tell anybody she had a daughter?”

  Her chest rises and falls, and her hands link across her chest. For moment, she says nothing. Then, as if making a firm decision, she turns on her side to face me. I make myself comfortable. This feels like it’s going to be juicy.

  “My nana and my grandpa fell out when Mom was fifteen. He got a job in New York, but Nana didn’t want to leave Sycamore Hill. Mom said they asked her to choose. Stay in Sycamore with Nana or go to New York with Grandpa.”

  My heart beats fast, as if I didn’t already know the ending. “She chose New York?”

  Rudy nods. “It’s not her fault,” she mumbles. “They should never have made her choose.”

  “So Ms. Gee got mad?”

  “She thought when Mom chose New York, she chose Grandpa and that meant Mom didn’t love her anymore. So they stopped speaking. Your mom might remember her.”

  I think about Ms. Gee and how she pushes people away. Now it all makes sense.

  “Mom kept trying to contact her, but she wouldn’t answer her letters. She told me she didn’t know how much longer Nana had left, so if she wouldn’t answer our letters, we would go to her.”

  I’ve seen Ms. Gee’s letters. I don’t know who picks them up from the post office, but she makes us read them to her. I’ve never seen a letter from New York. Maybe Gaynah or Calvin did, but wouldn’t they have mentioned it?

  “I don’t know if she received the letters.”

  I explain to Rudy how it works around here. Ms. Gee yells at us and we do things for her. If there was a letter from New York, we would know about it.

  She shrugs. “Mom didn’t like where we lived anyway. It wasn’t good for me. She said it was time I saw where she came from and maybe we might like it and stay. But before we could even think about how to go about it, we got a letter out of the blue inviting us down. Mom isn’t sure why Nana Gee sent the letter inviting us, though, because now we’re here, she doesn’t talk to Mom at all if she can help it.”

  Suddenly I feel very sorry for Rudy, this girl from New York. It’s not easy dealing with Ms. Gee. Around here, we try not to take anything she says to heart, but I think I might take it to heart if she were my nana.

  Rudy jumps to her feet suddenly. “Last one in the river turns into Juliette!” She darts through the trees. She peeks behind her to see me catching up and squeals, digging her feet in the dirt and pushing herself faster.

  How weird she would change the subject like that. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s already fitting in. This town is full of things no one wants to talk about.

  I catch her at the slope and we both run down it at full speed.

  Rudy is squealing, “I can’t stop.” I veer into her, using her as a barrier. She does the same to me until we are entwined, holding on to each other and tum
bling into the water. My trousers expand in the water. I look like an inflatable toy. Rudy points at me, laughing hysterically. I splash her, and her eyes widen in shock.

  “Oh no you didn’t!” She wades toward me, but the water pulls her back and she can’t get to me fast enough. This makes us laugh harder.

  “Can we join?” The voice comes from across the river. It’s Calvin with his friend Anton.

  Without waiting for an answer, Calvin rolls up his jeans and wades over, beaming from ear to ear. I withdraw a little, remembering he was with Gaynah laughing at me.

  “Clara”—he is pointing down at my feet—“you’re in water.” I look down at my feet under the water. It isn’t deep water, it only reaches my knees, but I back out as if a shark were coming toward me. I clamber to my feet and run up the hill, my eyes stinging with tears.

  “Clara!” I hear Rudy call behind me, but I continue climbing until I reach the top. I am out of breath and my throat is stinging. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Rudy turns me to face her with her wet hands and water dripping from her clothes. She pulls me into a hug and now my face is wet, and I can smell the river on her.

  I hear a rustle among the banana trees, and Uncle Albert appears, still in his gray work trousers and matching shirt. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear anything else.

  “Thought I would find you here,” he says in his usual quiet voice. “Why you always running away, Clara?”

  I lower my eyes to the ground. “Is Mama mad?”

  He makes a noise in his throat that’s neither a yes nor a no. He nods to Rudy. “I told your mother I’d keep an eye on you. Come, I’m going to see Leroy. Clara, you can show your friend your place.”

  I break into a wide smile, relieved he won’t force me back to the party. I turn to Rudy. “I have something really cool to show you.”

  Her eyes widen, and they are a light brown with black specks. “Cooler than this night?” she cries.

  I shake my head in dismay. This poor girl. I am about to blow her mind.