Mess, Mingle, and Chop

“Nothing fills me up here,” I say.  Julio reaches across Aunt Ally’s whale of a couch and pats my hands and I slip him two weeks’ worth of lunch money.  And then he preaches, the same way Father Beni does when Ally drags us sometimes for mass.  I  almost pretend he pushes a program on Adrianna and me, like a summer camp for smarty-pants kids (the kind of place I should want to get into and have seen a flier a time or two attached to a math exam except all I can think of to do with those fliers is ball them up).

Whatever Julio’s agreement with Adrianna is about me, our new religion is the train and leaving town.  And the same as Adrianna’s gospel that we are all motherless and fatherless too, I dip into everything he says.  My mind plays out conversations with them, yes and then no about the train, yes and then no about whether any of it (even hanging out with them in Ally’s living room is a good idea).

I don’t remember why Julio and Adrianna leave, maybe it is Thom, Thom is sick.  I’m wondering about what he has and whether I’ll catch it too and how sickness shelters you from things for a while, so maybe I want whatever it is Thom has.

“Stop that,” G.D. says.

It sounds as if G.D.’s outside.  And it’s almost as if he knows I took a swig out of Thom’s water bottle, he knows I want to get sick.

“Ally’s yard is a mess.  Can you do something with it please?”  G.D. asks.

“Not today.  Where is Big Sister?” I ask.  But G.D. doesn’t answer.

Don’s giant pruning shears start chasing the small clippers and they fly around like remote controlled airplanes before smashing into one another and crash landing on the tile.  I applaud and look around for G.D. but he’s gone.  I gaze past the gardening tools and into the yard.

“G.D. I’m tired, my throat hurts.”

“No one here will pluck the mangoes when they’re ready.  And Ally will thank you for pruning her trees and for saving her from all the nastiness, from all those flies that gather around spoiled fruit,” G.D. says.

And then I hear someone giggling out there in the yard.  It sounds like Big Sister.

“Julio could make walking barefoot across the country sound cool, but anyway Adrianna doesn’t want you to go,” Big Sister says.

Her bubbly voice swells as if she has the microphone on the public address system at school.  It grows until I can't stand it anymore and I grab Don’s shears and head for the mango.

Did G.D. say the mango or was it the avocado that needed to be trimmed?  Or is it all the trees?  Her peals continue and only ease up when I begin to hack away at anything green.