Monday Guests @ FlashFiction.Net: Writer (Meg) Interviews Reader (Tim)
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We were transplanted Pennsylvanians who understood the value of fresh fruit. The rental house had lemons, oranges, tangelos, loquats, figs. My mother let me take the bedroom that faced the orchard.
I saw him the second week. It was the middle of summer. He lay on a striped beach towel between our two yards, near the loquat tree. I went outside to say hello. I was not exactly shy, though my voice sounded it. An elaborate coconut scent surrounded him. He smiled and asked me to join him. He was tanning, though his body was already brown.
I went inside for my SPF 50 Coppertone, grabbed a beach towel, and went out to where he lay. I asked what his ancestry was, admiring his black tilted eyes and dark, thick skin.
Sioux, he said. He was one quarter Native-American, one-quarter Spanish, one-quarter French, and one-quarter Norwegian. No surprise that he’d been exotically grafted.
He told me not to put on the sunscreen, offered me his wonderful smelling basking oil instead. He said I was pretty, but would fit in better with a really good tan.
I burn quickly from the sun, and mother had warned me not to try. My dad never told me to be careful about anything, but he was dead now. I knew that Mom’s voice had gotten too strong.
He told me not to worry about sunburns, assured me that my freckled skin would adapt, just like his. He asked me if I would be interested in meeting him again that night when our parents were asleep.
Climb out a window and you’ll make no sound, he whispered, as if there were spies in the loquat tree.
That night I put on my nightgown and went to bed. My skin was stinging and bright red. When I touched it, it turned white for a second, then bright red again. I took two aspirin. I couldn’t wait to see him again, under a softer light. I was not too young to understand what this meant.
Under the night sky, he looked as dark as a hazelnut. His eyes were thirsty. We started laughing about nothing, rolling on the ground and grabbing the grass—flicking it at each other.
It’s warm tonight, he said, unbuttoning my shirt.
He ran his hands over my breasts, my stomach.
What’s here? he whispered. He put his finger inside my bellybutton, and scooped out a small fruit seed. He laughed.
I went crazy eating tangerines today, I said. I was glad it was dark because my face felt hot. It seemed I could not get enough citrus flesh.
Juice, he said, moving his fingers inside my jeans and into a place I couldn’t believe.
***
The next night we met again. When we took off our clothes, he stroked my irritated skin curiously, as if offering first aid.
Soon you’ll get tan, then brown, then perfect, he said.
What is it with the tan thing? I asked. I really wanted to know.
He flinched and stiffened. My skin got cold.
Bugs, he said, swiping at the air. I realized my family’s bad fortune could slip over me like a dark curtain.
We lay silent for a while listening to the sounds of night. I decided to tell him about a friend of mine… a girl I knew, whose father insisted their family move to Alaska. He worked for the telephone company because that was where the money was.
She’s never even had a boyfriend, I said.
Or fresh fruit, he added, bringing my hands to the place above his thighs. We did things new to me that I’d never forget.
***
A week later, he disappeared. I found out that he’d been visiting his aunt next door. He lived somewhere in Wisconsin. I had been so sure he was a Californian… that meeting his strange expectations meant belonging.
It was our first winter in California—just mom and I. No cousins, no aunt and uncle, no grandparents to visit. I sent them postcards of my beautiful new land. Pictures of palm trees lined up like chorus girls. Huge waves and white beaches. Bikinied women the color of the dark pine furniture we left back home.
My chronic sunburn peeled in tiny pieces like snow.
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How do you feel about the fact that I chose not to name the two characters?
Some folks are sticklers for character names, but I’m not especially. I feel I know this narrator sufficiently without a name, and her love interest’s namelessness makes sense to me, as he’s as much an apparition or an idea to her as a real person.
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How does the first person narrative style work on you as the reader here, to bring you into the story?
I read this story as a rumination, almost memoir-esque, and as such I think it relies heavily on its first-person POV. It would not have the same sensuality, intimacy or sense of urgency if told by a more omniscient narrator, as all of these qualities are intimately linked with the narrator and her voice.
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Do you see the girl as an unreliable narrator?—do you believe what she is telling the reader? Do you believe what she is telling the other character about her friend in Alaska?
I do not necessarily think of her as actively unreliable, as in telling us clear falsehoods, but I do feel the narrative is refracted through the partiality of her gaze, experiences, perspective, etc, particularly where the boy is concerned—it seems quite clear to me what she relates about him has more to do with her own needs and fantasies than with him as an individual. She exoticizes, views him as “other,” sort of intoxicating in his alien-ness. She believes he will guide her not only through her unfamiliar sexuality, but also provide a sense of belonging in her new home, and this vision she has of him eclipses his actual identity and origins.
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What can be deduced by the main character’s physical sloppiness (lack of self consciousness?). Does this detail (flaw) indicate more to you as a reader, for example, is this character also an emotional risk taker?
I don’t know that I read her as sloppy—such images as the seed in her belly button I see as having more to do with her sensuality and eroticism than with a disorganized physical presentation. But her involvement with her body, the boy, the earth, does lack inhibitions. Although she is inexperienced, she knows what she wants and has a great deal of agency, and I don’t think the story would be as effective if she didn’t. The narrative also subtly hints her home life may not be fully stable, and so her lack of control within her family provides an interesting context for her sexual decision-making.
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How is the main character like fresh fruit, or IS she like fresh fruit to the neighbor boy?
Hm…I feel like I can only speculate about how the neighbor boy views her, given his viewpoint is mostly located outside the narrative. I definitely feel the narrator is fresh fruit in the greater sense, in that she’s sexually inexperienced and new to California, but also… burgeoning? Ripening? (Is that too crass/obvious?) She’s becoming aware of her own deliciousness.
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Do you feel that this is a coming-of-age story, and if so, how?
Honestly, I’ve always been a little bit suspicious of the implied linearity of the term “coming-of-age,” as if the “age” at the end of all this coming (ha!) is a place we can clearly identify, demarcate, and say we’ve arrived.
But if “coming-of-age” stories are stories about sexual awakening, the anxieties of adolescence, shifting/unreliable physical and emotional maturity, pitched emotions, etc, then this is absolutely a coming-of-age story, and since my memories of this life stage continue to haunt me, this is a story I value quite a bit.
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