Laura Furman - The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I’m hungry.” It was the only excuse I could think of. It was four o’clock and Raimunda had strict instructions not to let us into the pantry after lunch. My mother knew this. She looked relieved-it was a chance for both of us to escape. We went back to the kitchen and my mother cut open a mango for us.

“Lúcia,” she said as she sliced the fruit with her knife, “there's a slip of paper in my skirt pocket. I don’t want to touch it because my hands have juice on them. Take it out for me and tell me what it says.”

My mother could not read or write very well. She tried to write grocery lists by herself, but always gave up and handed me the pen and paper. I would cross out her shaky writing and begin the list again as she stood in the pantry and called out the items we needed to buy. She was raised on a sugar plantation in Paraíba, and as the oldest girl among eight children, she had to quit school early to help her mother. She used to tell me that as a teenager she had gone into the city and had seen a car for the first time in her life. “After that,” she’d said, “I told myself that one day I would ride in one of those machines. That one day I would have one of my own.” So, when my father came into town in his white suit and convertible to sell imported machines to the local sugar mill, she saw her opportunity. She never phrased it that crudely, though.

This is her story of how they met: She was standing under an orange tree near the road and he saw her. He pulled his car alongside the tree and asked if he could have an orange. “One?” my mother said. “You can have the whole tree if you want it.” She was seventeen. He was forty-one. They were married one year later, and a year after that, Edgar was born, and a year after that, I was born.

“What does it say?” my mother asked. I unfolded the paper, which looked as though it had been ripped out of a book.

“It's a poem,” I said, recognizing the shape of the typed lines. Some of the words were too big for me to understand, but the ebb and flow of the rhymes made me recall the kiss between Doralice and her coconut boy, their tongues swirling in and out of each other, their hands and mouths and bodies moving in a perfect rhythm.

“What is it about?” my mother asked, placing the mango slices on a plate for us.

“Nothing,” I mumbled, folding the paper up, and putting it back in her pocket. “It's about the ocean, that's all.”

I always believed my father's family liked my mother-why wouldn’t they? My mother had dark hair, an hourglass figure, and perfect skin except for the mosquito bites on her legs. My mother smelled like soap and talcum powder, and she carried a handkerchief in the belt of her dress to wipe her brow and neck on hot days. My mother taught Aunt Annali how to knit, and she used to rub aloe vera on Aunt Gilmara's back to relieve sunburns. But when my aunts had afternoon luncheons at their homes in the city, my mother never attended, even though she was always invited. She said she had too much to do at home, that she was too busy with the children. Once, when I pressed her on why she didn’t accept an offer to go to lunch, she snapped at me and said, “The invitation is just a formality, Lúcia.” Sometimes my mother would laugh with our maids, but would immediately catch herself and then leave the room to let them finish their work. When I was a girl, I believed she was just a shy and silent person. Many times she tried to teach me how to sew, how to make jam. But I was never interested. I wanted to read, to play chess, to hide and observe everyone except her.

The mango was the sweetest thing we had in the house that day, and my mother and I sat in the kitchen for a long time peeling back its red skin and sucking on its insides, without saying a word.

I wiped my eyes and left my aunt Annali's porch after they had finished eating dessert. I went back to the beach to check on Rita's body. My older cousins were playing football at the top of the beach, showing off for the sunbathing Brennand girls who had turned to watch them. My brothers were in the surf, starting a game we all liked to play in the afternoons, as the tide got higher. We liked to build forts by the edge of the water. We would dig moats in the sand and build barricades out of palm fronds, coconuts, and driftwood. Anything that was natural could be used; those were the rules. The waves would pound the forts when high tide would come and whoever s structure was left standing would win. We would scramble to keep our forts up the longest. Sometimes we stayed on the beach so long my mother had to send Raimunda to bring us in.

The tide was rising that afternoon. The water lapped up to Rita's toes whenever a wave hit. Her raised arm made a shadow across her body. My brothers argued. Artur yelled at Edgar that yes, a corpse was natural and that he could use it to barricade his fort. Edgar disagreed. João was already digging up sand around Rita

“Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t touch her! Get away from her!” I walked up to Artur and pushed him hard. “No one can use her for their fort,” I screamed, “Go play somewhere else.”

Edgar smirked. João obeyed.

Artur narrowed his eyes. “I can do whatever I want.”

I pushed him a second time and he fell to the sand. Edgar laughed and clapped me on the back. Artur started to run for the house to tell our mother, but Edgar grabbed his shoulder.

“Don’t be a baby, Artur. She's right. I told you you can’t use the body. It's not fair for the rest of us. Come on, let's build down the beach over there.”

Artur considered this, then walked down the beach without looking at me. Soon, the three of them were laughing and yelling, scampering in the sand, fighting for pieces of wood and tackling each other for tufts of seaweed while I sat next to Rita. Her red lipstick had come off and her lips were pink and dry. Sand had crept into the corners of her mouth. I pictured Rita underwater, her body loose and free, her dress fluttering like a fin. I could picture the salt water going into and out of her, a sea creature taking up residence in her open mouth, small fish hiding in her hair. It was a shame she had been washed ashore. I thought of the rocks and shells I liked to pick up off the beach. They were so brilliant and colorful in the tide, but always dried off when I brought them home and became dull without the shine of the water. Like Rita, they were more beautiful in the sea. I took a handkerchief from my pocket-a small square of fabric that my grandmother had embroidered for me, decorating it with flowers and butterflies and my initials, LCR. I began to slowly wipe the sand from Rita's face.

Two days before we found Rita's body on the beach, I had gone to her room and was surprised to find her there. Grandmother Dulce had taken an unexpected nap, complaining that she had not slept well the night before. Rita stood over her dresser, admiring a new gold box of chocolates and deciding which one she would have first. She saw me, looked surprised, then smiled and invited me in.

“Come here, Lúcia,” she said.

She brushed back hairs from my face. Her nails felt so good on my scalp I almost closed my eyes.

“Do you want one?” She motioned to the box.

I looked at her, unsure.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone. Our secret.”

I nodded.

“Which one do you want?”

I pointed to the dark one, the one with a pink swirl. She took it from its wrapper and handed it to me.

“Try it.”

I did. It was filled with a caramel crème that dripped on my chin. I smiled. So did Rita. She wiped my chin with her thumb. She took a nutty one out of the box and popped it in her mouth all at once. I heard it crunch. She gave me another, then another.