8. Pomelo
Pomelo
Xochitl Gonzalez
Once there was a man with an insatiable thirst. He had pockets filled with coins that he clutched in his extremely tight fist. With his fist and the weight of his coins, he wielded great power in the city on the wide river where he lived.
With his other hand he controlled the comings and goings of the large house where he dwelled on the outskirts of town.
The man held many secrets, therefore he was prone to suspicion of others and built his large house out of glass in the shape of a horseshoe so that from nearly any vantage point he could see two things: what everyone else was doing and his beloved grapefruit tree, which sat in the center of the courtyard.
The tree had been born of a cutting taken from the grapefruit tree at his father’s home, whose tree had been born from a cutting of his father’s tree before that.
And so on and so forth, going back to the time when this place belonged to a different country, and even, perhaps, to when it belonged to no country whatsoever.
The tree was the centerpiece of the courtyard, taller than most grapefruit trees, towering over the orange trees and lemon trees that surrounded it.
Only the ahuehuete tree eclipsed it in size, but that majestic tree did not bear fruit, and that was what the man valued.
The grapefruits of his tree were one of the few things that could quench his thirst.
Every detail of the man’s personal needs and homelife was tended to by his wife and the household servants, with one exception.
Each morning, upon rising, he would walk through the glass doors of his bedroom, cross the courtyard, and pluck a grapefruit from his tree before tearing into its pale-yellow flesh. The only time he unclenched his fists.
Most mornings he clawed off the rind and bit into the taut, thin flesh with his near-perfect teeth, the skin casually discarded for someone else to dispose of.
Some days though, he delivered it to the kitchen, silently setting it in front of his wife, who always took her coffee at the small table there.
She would rise, dutifully, and juice it.
Alma, the cook, would have done this, of course, but the man enjoyed his juice more when he knew his wife had wrung out the flesh with her own hands.
He couldn’t, he lamented, see her from the dining room table, where he sat and read his paper.
The kitchen one of the few blind spots in the home.
But he could picture her. Her delicate hands working the fruit, arm muscles contracting as she twisted the pulp around the ceramic juicer, attempting to extract every last drop.
Straining the seeds with great care. For him.
He could smell her before she entered the room, the grapefruit’s dirty, sharp scent wafting in like the sweat of a beautiful woman.
He took great pleasure in the sight of her on these mornings as she walked through the rounded doorway into the sunlit room.
The glass full nearly to the brim, balanced on a small saucer to prevent any spills.
“Your juice, my love,” she would say, smiling demurely as she set the glass down in front of him.
He would take it up with a grin, flashing the near-perfect teeth whose whiteness was set off by his just-tanned-enough face, before examining the juice admiringly and taking his first long, slow sip.
His throat, his heart, his soul, dry like smoking brush about to spark flames.
The juice dousing it all; a cleansing. Then he would release a sigh of satisfaction he otherwise reserved for the bedroom.
“How was it, my love?”
“My tree gives the most delicious juice,” he would always say, gazing only at the glass, as if to purposefully look past Marlen and her efforts.
From the corner of his eye, he could see her trying to recover herself, pick up the tiny bit of hurt feeling that dripped onto the floor, no saucer there to catch it.
“What does your day look like today?” she would ask as she leaned over him to brush crumbs from the table. This was when he would usually look into her eyes.
“Ah, Marlen, very busy. Very busy. I won’t be home until very late.”
Just as she would cast her gaze down, sad because they both knew what he really meant, he would laugh and grab her ass, take her into his broad arms, and pull her slim frame onto his lap, sending a smile to her face. And it would all be erased. For a moment.
From the kitchen they could hear her singing, their daughter Pilar. Her voice clear as a bell. Marlen jumped up—fearful to be caught being so intimate with her husband.
“Apá!” Pilar called as she bound into the room, trailed by Alma carrying a pot of fresh coffee for the man.
Pilar ran and kissed her father’s cheek.
She was, he thought, a very beautiful girl: round, amber eyes, noble nose, a mouth that turned up naturally in its corners.
Every good thing inherited from her mother, with the fortunate exception of Marlen’s melancholy disposition.
It dragged on his wife like tiny weights on a fishing net.
She had not been like that in the beginning.
Certainly not on the night that they first met; both guests at a dinner party thrown by a mutual family friend.
She had sat across from him at the long, narrow table, and he remembered how bright her eyes looked, the light of the tall tapered candles reflecting off them.
How her long waves of brown hair cascaded against her bare shoulders, the color of a rich crème.
How she would throw her head back when she laughed, which she’d seemed to do often that night and throughout their brief courtship.
How he’d leaned into her and began to whisper slightly ribald jokes to see if she could handle it—but also to glimpse the perfect pink flick of her tongue when she giggled.
How it had tantalized him that night. Now the sadness hovered around her like a cloud that chilled his bones unnecessarily.
But Pilar? Pure light. Beautiful and bright with a jovial personality that reminded him of his own youngest sister, long dead, and for whom she was named.
It was this tie that lived in his mind, between his small Pilar and his favorite sibling, that elevated his daughter and allowed him to see past the fact that she was not a son.
“Apá,” she said, jumping onto his lap, “Alma said there was juice today.”
“Yes,” the man replied.
“I came for a sip.”
“Just a sip, mija,” he said.
The juice glass so big in her seven-year-old hands. With the reverence of a devout disciple, she purses her lips, taking just a few drops before throwing her head back and dramatically smacking her lips.
“Ahhhhh!” Pilar exclaimed. “There is no grapefruit tree like ours, Apá.”
“I think that’s true, mija,” he said, “except, maybe Welo’s, because his tree is the father of my tree.”
“I can’t wait to grow up and have my own grapefruit tree so I can have juice every morning!”
Marlen shifted her weight and looked out into the courtyard while the man chuckled lightheartedly and tugged at his daughter’s impeccable braid. Her hair, sable-colored and thick, the one trait of his she carried.
“Pilar, only sons can take cuttings from the grapefruit tree, you know that. Besides,” he said, hugging her close to him, “you’re the youngest girl. You’re going to stay here and take care of Apá and Mamá.”
A look of upset crossed Pilar’s face.
“I’m the oldest!” she cried out.
“Mija,” said Alma as she cleared the man’s breakfast plate, “you are the only. Which makes you oldest and youngest.”
“Pilar!” her mother exclaimed, more tightness in her voice than she’d intended. “Go get dressed; we need to go soon. Alma! My husband needs more toast.”
Alone, the man noticed his wife had pulled her cloak of sadness tighter to her, attempting to bind the wound he knew had just reopened. The one they both knew had never truly healed.
She leaned closer to him, taking the napkin from his lap, re-folding it into smoothness.
“You’re going out?” he asked.
“I need a bit of money, my love,” Marlen stated demurely.
“For what?” he’d replied, taking his eyes back to his paper. “What could you need that this house doesn’t already have?”
This was (and Marlen would concede if asked) generally true.
Fresh vegetables, the best cuts of meat, newly caught fish, the freshest of bread, wines, tequilas, and whiskeys were constantly delivered to the glass house.
Everything the man might ever want or crave.
If she had to accompany him to a business function or a gala, he almost always picked out a gown for her and had it delivered to the house.
He loved her hair a shade more auburn than its natural brown, so a colorist came bimonthly to keep it just so.
Her lingerie, her perfume. All of it chosen by him.
Everything that Marlen or Pilar could possibly need or want. At least according to the man.
“Pilar’s communion is coming up; I have to take her to the city for a dress.”
The man gladly paid for Pilar’s Catholic school, because it was the very best and was filled with the daughters of other important men whose gardens held trees sprouted from the cuttings of their ancestors.
But he shunned religion. Feared its hellfire and brimstone.
Disdained its disdain for his larger thirsts. His wife knew this.
“All the families from her school will be there,” she added flatly, pressing her lissome body into him.
The man scoffed, irritated that she knew this was the button to push. He shoved himself away from the table—away from her—and begrudgingly took his billfold from his pocket, thumbing out money onto the table before he got up and walked away.