Today’s episode is guest hosted by Victoria Chang.

Transcript

I’m Victoria Chang and this is The Slowdown.

My parents spent most of their adult lives in Michigan. Even after my sister and I moved away to California, they stayed there, even though the winters were hard on them. My father worked at Ford Motor Company as an engineer, and my mother taught high school math in the Detroit Public School system. As a younger person, I never thought much about why they didn’t just pick up and leave, like we did. Now that I’m much older and wiser, I know that they probably couldn’t because of their jobs and because of money.

When they finally retired, they moved to a small town called Carlsbad in Southern California. They spent a decade in a house, enjoying the sunshine, tending to over thirty bonsai plants, and at least another fifty potted plants on the patio. In the side yard, they planted a donut peach tree.

One of the last summers before my father had a stroke, we went to visit them, and spent a hot afternoon picking the peaches off of the tree. In eight years, it had become a towering tree and had taken over most of the side yard. Our older daughter, who was two years old at the time, couldn’t reach the peaches. So my mother carried her around to pick them.

We spent the afternoon reaching for the ripest ones. When my mother wasn’t watching, we would take a large bite right off the side of the peach, before washing it. The sweetness would fill our mouths and drip down our chins. That afternoon, we ate peach after peach, as if we were eating the flesh of our love.

The next year, my father had a stroke and my mother’s lung disease worsened, so they had to move to a place where they could receive closer care. I often think about that peach tree. It was like an angel twisting in the wind, knowing things before we did. Every peach I’ve eaten since falls short of those peaches, peaches that, in my memory, get impossibly sweeter every year.

Today’s poem reminds me of how, under every tree that bears fruit, there are secret stories of desire, of loss, and of love.

The Loquat Trees & The Boy Next Door
by Saúl Hernández

             His smile captured rays of sunlight
in between his teeth. The smell of
             summer around us. In my backyard
I met him, white tee, washed-out
             blue jeans. He plucked off a
loquat from a branch. Handed
             one to me. Open your mouth, he said.
             When I tried to speak, he shoved
his loquat-soaked fingers inside.
             For six years I ate them. The sweetness
& tart remind me of his finger,
             a whisk in my mouth. He once took out
a pocketknife. His finger slid against
             the blade. I asked him, What do you
plan to do with that? What else but
             peel the fruit. Afterward, his sticky fingers on my skin,
we lay that afternoon under
             the loquat trees, bellies full of sunshine.
When the loquat trees stopped giving fruit, I planted seeds.
             I waited next spring for him to meet me under the trees & peel the fruit.
Instead, gravity pulled down the fruits.
             I ate with a hunger I’ve never felt before.
No one told me hunger & heartache feel the same.

“The Loquat Trees & The Boy Next Door” by Saúl Hernández from HOW TO KILL A GOAT AND OTHER MONSTERS © 2024 Saúl Hernández. Used by permission of University of Wisconsin Press.