How I Grew
When I was young, there was green. Fruits of fig, lemon, pomelo, plum, orange, and pomegranate. Avocado trees dropped warred and dimpled green billiards in the browning undertow. We ate pomegranates with our hands, cracking the fibrous skin and spilling crimson down our chins. The ruby pebbles lined the innards like cell division competing for space. I asked my dad if I was supposed to eat the white parts, and he said “No fruit is worth tasting if not for all of it”. So I put the thin white skin between my cheek and teeth and spit it out when he wasn’t looking. Every shirt I owned was stained magenta waterfall from the neck to hem.
My dad grew a plum tree with bark so black it looked burned, and leaves so deep purple the sky was night when I stood under it. It dropped black fruit with orange flesh that stained my teeth purple.
When the fires came, we put our dog and cat and fish in the car and drove across town. First we stopped at a hotel, and then the community center where I learned to play basketball and checked out movies from the library. Both did not have space for our family. We found a friend and stayed with their five siblings. There were five adults and seven kids stuck in a house as the ash fell black from a red sky for ten days.
We joked about the school burning, but I thought of the pomegranate tree growing under the porch, and what happened to the ruby pips in the fire. Would they pop like corn? What color is crimson in a fire? If the trees burned, would they turn my hands black when I climbed?
Dad snuck us behind the police barricade to try and see our house from the mountain ridge. The sky was black cotton, with wet red glowing from a deep place where our house was supposed to be. A column of red fire bent down to kiss the road, and flames erupted where it bent. We climbed down and drove away, and I asked my dad if he could see our house. He pressed his mouth and didn’t answer. I thought of the trees again.
When the police barricade moved a mile past our house, we climbed the ridge again. Tired men covered in ash and sweat drove a red truck on the grass of our home and sprayed our fruit trees with red powder, and dug trenches on the hillside. Dad sprinted down the ridge, dragging me by hand and elbow behind him. We crossed the creek onto our farm and those tired men stopped and shook my dad’s hand as he cried and said thank you. I didn’t understand why he cried.
After the fire, my pillows smelled like ash, but the fruit our trees bore was just as sweet, and dropped just as often.