Left at the Mango Tree

by Stephanie Siciarz

  LEFT

  AT THE

  MANGO

  TREE

  A Novel

  STEPHANIE SICIARZ

  PINK MOON PRESS

  Left at the Mango Tree

  Stephanie Siciarz

  Copyright © 2013 Stephanie Siciarz

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art: Patti Schermerhorn

  Cover Design: Andrew Bly

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Ant resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express permission of the author. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing text.

  ISBN: 0989686302

  ISBN-13: 9780989686303

  eBook ISBN:978-0-9896863-1-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013912672

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Barry

  WANTED: information concerning circumstances surrounding recent pregnancy of Edda Orlean. If you were party to/witness to/privy to details/events/evidence explaining origin of daughter of Edda Orlean, you are urged come forward. Call evenings 45468.

  My name is Almondine and I grew up in black and white. I didn’t live in black and white or see in black and white—no home was more colorful than mine—but somehow it always seemed to boil down to that. At first, my lack of color was only whispered about, but as I grew and everyone got used to me, it came to be discussed as plainly as two neighbors might talk of their chickens or the summer rains: Where did she come from? What brand of magic is this?

  My face was the problem. It was as white as the moon’s, and where I come from, the moon makes us all a bit nervous—and the faces all tend to be black. My mother’s is, and my father’s, and my grandfather Raoul’s. Everyone I’ve ever known on the island of Oh is black, except for me.

  You see now why the islanders should wish to debate my very existence. I puzzled over it myself for a long time, struggled with my impossible reflection in the mirror, and finally determined that the flesh of an almond could no more camouflage itself against the dark shell of the nutmeg than could the sun’s orb against a nighttime sky. When I was old enough, I left. Trouble is, you can’t know where you’re meant to be going, if you don’t first make out where you’ve been, and my unfinished tale was loath to let me get away so easily. Soon enough it came knocking—quite literally—and looked me in the face.

  I gave it hot chocolate and listened to what it had to say, every word a tile in a quickly-forming mosaic that was me. But still there were holes that wanted filling in, and the tiles missing could only be got back home: in the island sand, in old pockets and bureau drawers, in intimations blown about by tattletale winds. I collected them all. I scavenged until I had every last one, and pieced together my multicolored past.

  I found that my story, long before it was mine, belonged to a whole cast of islanders, and to my grandfather above them all. Raoul Orlean lived his whole life in black and white; whispers of magic granddaughters implied areas of gray to which he simply could not subscribe. Nor could he allow me to.

  Still, I wonder: had he imagined the truths to be discovered, would he have bothered to do all that he did? I’ve never asked him, and doubt that I ever will. He’s entitled to harbor his private regrets, as I am mine. Even on Oh, where secrets, like mangoes, seem to fall from the sky.

  1

  If my story has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is for certain. Not the palm trees or the tides. Or even the weight of these pages in your hand. Acres of pineapple can disappear under the trickster moon at night. Your favorite book can drive you nearly mad. One day your black eyes might turn out to be red. Such, in fact, was the case, in the place—my place—called Oh.

  When you arrive at Oh, they don’t stamp your passport. You make your way bovinely through zigs and zags of blue plastic rope that navigate the gritty concrete of the airport floor, a sandpaper sea emptying into the river of Raoul. Behind the Formica counter from which he draws his authority, Raoul is an impressive sight. Flanked and backed by wooden cratefuls of pineapple, his black skin shines with subtle sweat against the pallor of the plywood slats, while the dull metal of his rounded specs vaguely obtrudes, like an artist’s signature on still life. His close-cropped hair and pronounced but gentle features foreshadow his demeanor, pointedly official, but given to flights of unofficial tolerance.

  You reach his post, dulled by the sight, the scent, the oddity of the scene, and extend your passport with the trepidation of one who desires what another has the power to refuse. Raoul takes the document and thumbs the pages. He glances at you, at your picture, and back at you again. This he does less to verify your identity than to ponder how it is you came to be from where you’re from. Were it only as simple as a passport!

  When he’s satisfied, he types your name on a carbon-paper form in his typewriter that records your arrival, date of birth, and eye color in triplicate, which he prises from the roller’s grip with an impatient “aaah.” He removes the dry end of an ink stamp from between his teeth and expels a “huh, huh” as he pounds it first onto his inkpad and then onto your triplicate form one time. Then in a single, masterful sleight of hand, Raoul completes the transaction, and you find yourself, passport and creased copy three in your left palm, a pineapple in your right. And so to the rhythmic aaah-huh-huhs of Raoul the line slowly scrapes forward, his airy triads punctuated with a My word! or a What’s this? or a hesitant Thank you very much (Merci beaucoup, Muito obrigado, or Kiitoksia paljon, depending on the traveler’s provenance).

  You can no more escape Raoul’s sweet and prickly offering than you can his pondering eye or sticky digits. You can try to refuse it, tell him your hands are full, you aren’t hungry, you’re allergic, but you won’t get through without a pineapple. Oh was blessed with more of them than any tiny island knew what to do with and the inhabitants were torn between their pride in the island’s fertility, in its sexy fruits, and their desire to dispose of as many of these same as possible.

  Right past Customs and Excise Officer Raoul, who alone represents Border Control on most days, sits the baggage. The daily plane to (and from) Oh usually accommodates only a dozen people, which is fortunate in that the dozen or so arriving passengers need then only sift through the dozen or so more departing bags to find their own. Bags coming and going are heaped into one big pile, you see. (Not to worry, what goes out by mistake will make it back the next day.) So in the cool shade of three concrete walls, concrete floor and concrete ceiling, the twelve or so newly arrived bend over some twenty-odd bags and suitcases until each finds his (or her) own.

  The view here is really best at ground level, since the ground is where most of the pineapples end up. Some travelers set them down reverently, four or five feet away from the maelstrom of bare knees and Samsonite. Others rest them on their sides, where they roll round and round themselves, like dogs chasing their ta
ils. Still others hang on to them by the tops of the leaves and swing them back and forth while walking round the pile of luggage. Some tuck them into their bags, where the spiky leaves seem to sprout from the concrete floor up through the lining of a resting tote, or, as your gaze moves upward, from the armpits and elbows of travelers hugging the fruits to their sides. Farther upward still, the sun creeps across the travelers’ damp faces as they collect their packs and piñas and head toward the airport’s gaping exit, where it’s not uncommon, amid ouches and curses, to hear a “Madam, mind your fruit!” or a “Sir, would you kindly stop poking that thing in my eye?”

  The exit spills out onto more concrete and sand, the square, chunky sidewalks of the former dusted not-so-lightly with the latter. During the windy season a grainy breeze rolls over the island like a wave slipping over shore. It advances and recedes, quietly, seductively, invades and retreats, its gritty deposits the only reminder that it’s been there at all. The sand it leaves behind hugs the convex surface of the road that carries you away from the airport and out to sea; it merges with the rubber tires of taxis and bicycles, presses itself against windshields and windows; it sticks to mailboxes and public phones and spreads itself over rusting Toyotas and corrugated roofs and inner tube swings tied to branches; it rubs your cheeks, touches your lips, licks your batting eyelids; it whispers in your ears, climbs under your fingernails and in between your naked toes in their sandals; it hides deep in your pockets, where, back home months and washings later, your naive fingers plunge into the grit and you are reminded of your visit to Oh. Of your lodgings with the pale blue sheets and smell of coffee, of the aloe sweat on your sun-darkened skin, of the white mariposa, and the man outside the airport selling pineapple knives. It will seem very far away. Your memories advance and recede, invade and retreat, until only the gritty deposit convinces you that you were ever really there at all.

  The man outside the airport selling pineapple knives is Bang. The mystery of his name is a tile my mosaic still lacks, but he’s one of Raoul’s closest friends and godfather to my mother Edda, Raoul’s only daughter. As much a character as any in the story that will one day be mine, Bang sells pen-knives to arriving tourists, that they might slice their inconveniences into cubes or rondelles and digest them more easily. The knives have wooden handles in which Bang carves a capital B that he transforms into a pineapple figure by scratching diamond shapes into the letter’s cavities and pointed leaves sprouting from its top. He displays the knives on a card table whose padded top was once bright yellow but is now faded in spots and torn in others, where dirty white matting peeks through. To attract customers Bang tosses whole pineapples in the air above the table and filets them on their way down, the slices landing with a wet smack onto paper plates strategically placed near the merchandise. Onlookers rarely have free hands to applaud, but they praise him with their oohs and ahs and eyes, attentive pupils reflecting the flying fruit that dances in the mirrors of Bang’s sunglasses. Those unenticed by the performance he lures with the sweet smell of the freshly sliced pulp, which he happily gives away. So through those two most common channels to the heart, the eye and the stomach, Bang wins over the tiny crowd and empties his table daily.

  What you remember when you leave Bang’s sidewalk display are his long, thick braids, his shiny sunglasses, and his even shinier tooth. He has a gold one, right in front, that returns the sun’s hard glare, affording him the impression of one endowed with light, and not exposed by it like the rest of us. You might also remember his voice if you happened to speak to him (though there may not have been need if you had exact change). For the islanders, in fact, it is precisely this melodic attribute with which Bang is most associated. When he isn’t carving or selling pineapple knives, he’s singing, in soft tones, thick and sharp at once, that rival those of the rolling marimba. He sang lullabies to my mother when she was a child, but now performs exclusively at the Buddha’s Belly Bar and Lounge, where almost every night from eight to two he regales the audience with love songs and dance songs and traditional ballads his grandfather taught him.

  Bang’s grandfather wrote many of the island’s ballads himself, to commemorate its struggles with colonialism, communism, capitalism, Catholicism, and the crippling, some 50 years ago, of the pineapple trade. The pineapples of Oh were famous then, and the demand for them so great that the island governors taxed the island growers, who were becoming too rich. The growers in turn cut the wages of the pickers, who quit, leaving the growers to pick the heavy fruits themselves, for sums that hardly made the effort worthwhile. Eventually the growers gave up, certain that sooner or later the windy season would deposit sand in the gears of government, forcing a substitution. So, indeed, it came to pass and soon the plantations were producing the sweet un-taxed Oh variety once more. But like a reader who abandons his (or her) cushion for a cup of tea, the growers could never again find the comfortable position they enjoyed before. The hole they left in the market had been plugged, by Oh’s island neighbor, whose fruits and governors were sweeter. Oh’s growers would have given up again, but feared even more bad luck. So for superstition’s sake, they grew (and still grow) untold and unwanted pineapples, sweet reminders of their bitter past.

  But Bang’s grandfather did more than write songs about Oh. He was mostly a marimbist. On a marimba he fashioned out of sanded mahogany and polished gourds that he attached beneath the wooden keys, he hammered his way to first place in the island’s annual marimba competition ten years running. He could hold six mallets at once, three in each hand, and he maneuvered their woolen heads across two octaves with even more dexterity than that required by Bang’s mid-air pineapple chopping. From his grandfather Bang inherited his legerdemain, along with the old man’s marimba and mallets when he died.

  And Bang too became a gifted marimbist, though eventually his granddad’s gourds cracked, forcing him to modernize. He bought a marimba with both mahogany keys and mahogany pipes that hung below them, and upgraded from woolen mallets to silken ones.

  Now almost every night at the Buddha’s Belly from eight to two, when Bang’s voice gets tired, he plays the marimba so it can rest. He has a small back-up band, and sometimes even Raoul is coaxed to join in, on maracas, tambourine, triangle, or all three at once. They play on a low stage near the back of the lounge, a dark, cool gathering-place with ceiling fans that distribute the smoke from the patrons’ cigars and cigarettes. In front of the stage sit twenty round tables of wood, thatched chairs tucked beneath them, and behind the tables, at the opposite end of the room, a bar accommodates a dozen imbibers easily. Over the bar hangs a wooden canopy with cubbies for rum and for whiskey, and from its edge, cloudy beer mugs dangle on hooks.

  There are two entrances to the Belly, where much of my story—or rather Raoul’s part in it—plays out. One leads to the lobby of the Hotel Sincero. The other, to the strip of shore reserved for the hotel’s guests. On a crowded night the hotel’s owner, Cougar Zanne, drags the tables and chairs onto the beach and props open the door, freeing the inside for dancing, and extending his property and profits by fifty yards. Last year he put loudspeakers on the side of the building, so now Bang’s percussion and song can be heard equally within and without.

  Our Mr. Zanne has been known as Cougar for so long, that few of the islanders remember his real name anymore. He came up with the feline moniker himself and insisted on its adoption, claiming rights to it because his grandfather rid the island of the scourge of cougars that used to run wild there. Cougar’s friends and neighbors (myself included, I might add) don’t believe there ever were such beasts on Oh, for surely some evidence of them (hunting spears or pelts, perhaps) would have survived in the Parliamentary Museum for the Preservation of Artistic and Historical Sciences. To such protests, Cougar replies, “Well of course there’s no evidence. Grandpa got rid of the cougars’ every last trace!”

  The grandson dedicates himself to more genteel arts, namely the running of the Hotel Sincero, a locale popular in no small par
t because of its popular owner. Tall and handsome by island standards, and with a je ne sais quoi that straddles smart and smarm, Cougar reeks of tender allure. He likes to dress himself up—his bold dinner jackets, silk foulards, and calfskin shoes are flown in—and might look pimpish were it not for his innate and genuine sense of style. He’s the sort of chap who’d do anything for you, really, so long as he has nothing else to do. He’s a problem-solver, icebreaker, cheerleader, pinch-hitter, heartthrob, legal advisor and last resort. It was he who taught my mother Edda to dance.

  In the hotel lobby he’s quick to fill your hands with maps and brochures, and your head with the local lore, while at the Belly he refills every glass (never taking no for an answer) and adds on to every tab. Upstairs, in the rooms, it’s the ambitious island girls he fills, first their bodies, then their minds with poetry to salve their broken hearts: “Silly thing! What’s all this talk of love?” He charges money to swim with dolphins lest the creatures be exploited, and lets you carry your own bags lest they get lost. In short, Cougar never means ill.

  His Hotel Sincero isn’t Oh’s poshest, but for two-star accommodations and rates, you get four-star atmosphere. The beach, like all the beaches of Oh, is so smooth and white and wide that any description of it waxes banal. Same for the sea, whose blue distinguishes itself from that of the sky by just the subtlest suggestion of green. Half the rooms overlook this view, and half survey a courtyard of concentric circles in bricks of various shades, the outer edge of which is enclosed by sandstone benches that imitate Italian marble.

  Inside the flaxen-colored walls of the two-story hotel, the guest rooms are high-ceilinged and clean. On their tiled floors of cobalt and gray rest low, smallish beds hugged by white headboards and footboards, the wood repainted annually to hide wear. Same for each room’s wardrobe, coffee table, and pair of rocking chairs, whose patinas are likewise pristine. And from every room a grand window stretching floor to ceiling opens onto a three-inch ledge with wrought-iron fauxbalcony railing, each pane equipped with a wooden shutter to let in light when the window is closed, a positioning the climate forbids.