Mangos cont.

Our tiny house was the hotspot during mango season. I invited you over once that summer, remember? No, wait, you had something else to do… maybe next time. I can clearly see that sticky sweet yellow juice dripping down the chins and arms of my family. Moms would jump up every chance they got to try and scrub yellow splotches off of their children’s clothing before admitting total defeat. The juice leaves quite a stain you see, and even though we tried oh so hard, our sticky fingers would find a way onto something or someone, somewhere.

In late August when the days got even more humid (if that was even possible), and our shirts were in a perpetual state of sick nasty sweatiness, Mami would bring out the mangos she had carefully sliced and frozen months before and make a delicious mango slushy, nothing but mango and ice from the little blue ice molds our old refrigerator had. Then the little air conditioner that couldn’t would clunk out and we’d press the cold glasses to our faces and stand by the windows hoping to catch an incredibly delightful breeze that so rarely knocked upon our door.

You remember that old scooter I brought to school once? The one with the green wheels? Sweat and blood bought those wheels baby. Well… sweat, blood and mangos. Papi asked us to come up with at least half of what a scooter might cost. Forget the lemonade stand! We sat out in the middle of Douglas park with boxes full of mangos. I bet he doesn't know that I still remember that. The biggest ones cost a dollar, naturally and the long and thin Filipino mangos cost 50¢ apiece. The viejitas would stagger on up to us, leaning on their bastones and would ask us to give them one for free. Call it ye olde Catholic guilt or what have you, but we ended up giving more mangos away than actually selling them. I don’t know how we managed to make bank that year, selling mangos in the sweltering summer heat.

You hadn’t been under my radar when the Naranjo family stayed at our house for a while. It was right after they had arrived from Venezuela. William had been a friend of papi’s for a pretty long time and they had worked together in the same orchestra back in the day. The Naranjos had four kids. FOUR! And they stayed in our two bedroom house with us. Guillermo and William Jr. were the youngest, our age. We would climb the Filipino mango tree all the way at the end of our backyard and knock down the young, bright green fruit by the armful. We would sneak the container of Morton salt and the glass jar of sugar out of the house and climb up onto the forbidden roof. We’d spend hours dipping the sour fruit in sugar, then salt, and then we’d wait for the explosion of flavor on our young taste buds. Our parents always wondered why we had such strong stomach aches after those days. Es el sol, they would say, sun sickness.