The Mango Man
© Lorelei Williams
I am the son of Hyacinth and Dean, last of my brothers to die. I used to be a pretty brown boy. Mama’s favorite mango. I had more to tell. I die with all my secrets.
My liver is dripping. I need a cigarette. I need my legs. There is a wind blowing through my body, this abandoned building. Once my flesh was sweet with seed. Now I tear too easily in God’s teeth.
My mother loved my Scottish bones, Indian hair, African eyes. I was her mango baby, her best child. When she died, I could not go back home. Nobody even looked for me.
Does she know her grandma smoked a pipe? Healed a blind man once with a secret root salve and a prayer she knew? Fed me mangos from her same mouth; bit the skin, sucked, and spit fruit into mine?
My bones are thirsty. They clack together when I cross my ankles under this chafing blanket. I want to die right, like a man but I cannot fix my limbs.
Will she burn or bury me? Who will come? Who will cry? Will she pile my bones like an eaten chicken or burn me whole? Will she close my eyes? My mouth before my jaw stiffens? Will she sing for me? Will she pray?
I want my mother, my mangos, my woman. I want my daughters, my death. I miss my boat, my shore, my mother’s mango tree.
I die with all my secrets.
* * *
My father never told me why he chose my name. Now I am too late to ask. His mouth is wide open as a fish on a hook, fooled by bait. His eyes are just as surprised.
No one came to him in time. I was in Mexico, my twin sister in New York, and my mother en route to Jamaica. My sister was the one to get the call and has already started making arrangements. This task of identifying our father’s body falls on me.
I have to hold my breath. If I inhale, the ache will spread like sarin gas. If I exhale, it will free the scream that has been rising for three days. The carpet is blood red, my favorite color since age nine. This is good because I cannot look up. My heart is anchored to the floor. My limbs are lead. My head is a helium balloon and I have lost the string. Mr. Bianchi, a tall Sicilian, walks me to a coffin-length cardboard box that rests on a metal stand.
“You can never be too sure in a case like this. I am glad you could come.”
I can only nod. He continues.
“Now, I am warning you. He’s just like how he came from the morgue. We have not cleaned him up.”
My aunt’s hand is light on my left shoulder, an elegant butterfly. She leans over to peer into the box that holds her sister’s Calypso man. The one she had to hide us from. Auntie sucks in a sharp breath. I cannot hear what she says to the Italian. Their sounds are muffled and mellifluous, an underwater echo. My father and I are the only two people in the room. Except now he is not a person, he is dead.
I barely recognize him and cannot bear to look for long. He has shrunken to a third of his size and fits in the white cardboard box with room to spare. It is smaller than a casket and reminds me of the boxes I use for office storage. Same width, only longer. I have boxes just like this labeled bills, internships, poems, frequent flyer miles, love letters, bank statements. Now I have a new box labeled father. I would let them write his name on the blank line near the lid, but it no longer matters. We have decided to burn him. There is no money for a burial. There might not be any mourners either.
My father lays in an opaque plastic body bag, unzipped halfway for my task. Near where his hands should be, there is a clear hospital bag with a blank blue stripe: Belongings of ______. It holds a pair of worn red boxers and the black plastic Woolworth’s reading glasses I bought him.
His whole body is an arc, straining upwards. It looks like he was trying to lift himself up off the bed he died in, but his legs would not take him where he wanted to go. I can tell it took my father some effort to die. The Devil and the Holy Ghost warring over him and he didn’t want either.
It is his mouth that stops me cold. The lip line is gone and every tooth is missing. His face opens into a hole so wide you can almost hear the last breath he drew; hear him strain like drowning man. I am sucked into the silence where his voice last landed. I will not hyperventilate, although I feel it coming. I will stay composed. I am a mistress of masks; this is what is expected of me. The sound I find for shock is laughter.
My aunt watches me as I take him in. “I’ve seen some go with their mouths open, but never that wide. And the nurses always close the eyes.” Her hand is on my shoulder again. We do not know what more to say.
I have my father’s eyes: squinty, deeply set and dark rimmed. My sister has our mother’s. No one knew the egg could split that way with twins. My father’s eyes are different now. His have turned a milky blue. They are rounder and more sharply focused than I ever remember. His gaze pierces through the ceiling straight to God or some other terror. I have seen my father high, somber, and irate, jubilant on a rare occasion, but I have never seen him look surprised. I have never seen him beg. I want to know what to do with this.
Maybe I should hold his face in my hands? Close his mouth? Kiss him on the forehead one last time? Reach in and save his glasses? See if the scent is still in his clothes? I don’t want them to see me touch him, but I don’t want them to leave me alone with him either. I used to cringe at his touch, until this last month.
His hands are flattened along his thighs, I can tell from the bag’s contours. My body begins its tremor. A shrill flurry rises through my bones like the warning wind of a twister. I hold it in so they don’t notice. I stand my ground but slowly feel my body trespass, trembling. It is muscular memory. My stomach churns like it used to when my body expressed what my mouth could not.
To ground myself, I look back into his mouth. And then at the place his hands should be. I imagine his black-rimmed nails, the bloated fingers that always smelled of overripe mango and salty metal. I want to see the insides of his arms, the river of blues in his veins, the train of needle tracks along the only tender place on his body.
They said it was his heart. A jagged scar travels from the hollow of his neck to the zipper. Spotted white dots are sprinkled along the seam. His chest is arched upwards like a turkey’s breast after the meat has been plucked from it.
I could play piano on his ribs. And if I touched them, the sheet of bone would break off easily in my hand. My father’s legs are so thin that the brittle shins cut through his plastic sheet. His size thirteen feet point towards the open window. They look too big for his ninety pound frame. I can see the knuckles through the sheet and the thick toenails. His toes are long, like mine.
“Yes,” I tell Mr. Bianchi. “He is mine.”
I am the son of Hyacinth and Dean, last of my brothers to die. I used to be a pretty brown boy. Mama’s favorite mango. I had more to tell. I die with all my secrets.
My liver is dripping. I need a cigarette. I need my legs. There is a wind blowing through my body, this abandoned building. Once my flesh was sweet with seed. Now I tear too easily in God’s teeth.
My mother loved my Scottish bones, Indian hair, African eyes. I was her mango baby, her best child. When she died, I could not go back home. Nobody even looked for me.
Does she know her grandma smoked a pipe? Healed a blind man once with a secret root salve and a prayer she knew? Fed me mangos from her same mouth; bit the skin, sucked, and spit fruit into mine?
My bones are thirsty. They clack together when I cross my ankles under this chafing blanket. I want to die right, like a man but I cannot fix my limbs.
Will she burn or bury me? Who will come? Who will cry? Will she pile my bones like an eaten chicken or burn me whole? Will she close my eyes? My mouth before my jaw stiffens? Will she sing for me? Will she pray?
I want my mother, my mangos, my woman. I want my daughters, my death. I miss my boat, my shore, my mother’s mango tree.
I die with all my secrets.
* * *
My father never told me why he chose my name. Now I am too late to ask. His mouth is wide open as a fish on a hook, fooled by bait. His eyes are just as surprised.
No one came to him in time. I was in Mexico, my twin sister in New York, and my mother en route to Jamaica. My sister was the one to get the call and has already started making arrangements. This task of identifying our father’s body falls on me.
I have to hold my breath. If I inhale, the ache will spread like sarin gas. If I exhale, it will free the scream that has been rising for three days. The carpet is blood red, my favorite color since age nine. This is good because I cannot look up. My heart is anchored to the floor. My limbs are lead. My head is a helium balloon and I have lost the string. Mr. Bianchi, a tall Sicilian, walks me to a coffin-length cardboard box that rests on a metal stand.
“You can never be too sure in a case like this. I am glad you could come.”
I can only nod. He continues.
“Now, I am warning you. He’s just like how he came from the morgue. We have not cleaned him up.”
My aunt’s hand is light on my left shoulder, an elegant butterfly. She leans over to peer into the box that holds her sister’s Calypso man. The one she had to hide us from. Auntie sucks in a sharp breath. I cannot hear what she says to the Italian. Their sounds are muffled and mellifluous, an underwater echo. My father and I are the only two people in the room. Except now he is not a person, he is dead.
I barely recognize him and cannot bear to look for long. He has shrunken to a third of his size and fits in the white cardboard box with room to spare. It is smaller than a casket and reminds me of the boxes I use for office storage. Same width, only longer. I have boxes just like this labeled bills, internships, poems, frequent flyer miles, love letters, bank statements. Now I have a new box labeled father. I would let them write his name on the blank line near the lid, but it no longer matters. We have decided to burn him. There is no money for a burial. There might not be any mourners either.
My father lays in an opaque plastic body bag, unzipped halfway for my task. Near where his hands should be, there is a clear hospital bag with a blank blue stripe: Belongings of ______. It holds a pair of worn red boxers and the black plastic Woolworth’s reading glasses I bought him.
His whole body is an arc, straining upwards. It looks like he was trying to lift himself up off the bed he died in, but his legs would not take him where he wanted to go. I can tell it took my father some effort to die. The Devil and the Holy Ghost warring over him and he didn’t want either.
It is his mouth that stops me cold. The lip line is gone and every tooth is missing. His face opens into a hole so wide you can almost hear the last breath he drew; hear him strain like drowning man. I am sucked into the silence where his voice last landed. I will not hyperventilate, although I feel it coming. I will stay composed. I am a mistress of masks; this is what is expected of me. The sound I find for shock is laughter.
My aunt watches me as I take him in. “I’ve seen some go with their mouths open, but never that wide. And the nurses always close the eyes.” Her hand is on my shoulder again. We do not know what more to say.
I have my father’s eyes: squinty, deeply set and dark rimmed. My sister has our mother’s. No one knew the egg could split that way with twins. My father’s eyes are different now. His have turned a milky blue. They are rounder and more sharply focused than I ever remember. His gaze pierces through the ceiling straight to God or some other terror. I have seen my father high, somber, and irate, jubilant on a rare occasion, but I have never seen him look surprised. I have never seen him beg. I want to know what to do with this.
Maybe I should hold his face in my hands? Close his mouth? Kiss him on the forehead one last time? Reach in and save his glasses? See if the scent is still in his clothes? I don’t want them to see me touch him, but I don’t want them to leave me alone with him either. I used to cringe at his touch, until this last month.
His hands are flattened along his thighs, I can tell from the bag’s contours. My body begins its tremor. A shrill flurry rises through my bones like the warning wind of a twister. I hold it in so they don’t notice. I stand my ground but slowly feel my body trespass, trembling. It is muscular memory. My stomach churns like it used to when my body expressed what my mouth could not.
To ground myself, I look back into his mouth. And then at the place his hands should be. I imagine his black-rimmed nails, the bloated fingers that always smelled of overripe mango and salty metal. I want to see the insides of his arms, the river of blues in his veins, the train of needle tracks along the only tender place on his body.
They said it was his heart. A jagged scar travels from the hollow of his neck to the zipper. Spotted white dots are sprinkled along the seam. His chest is arched upwards like a turkey’s breast after the meat has been plucked from it.
I could play piano on his ribs. And if I touched them, the sheet of bone would break off easily in my hand. My father’s legs are so thin that the brittle shins cut through his plastic sheet. His size thirteen feet point towards the open window. They look too big for his ninety pound frame. I can see the knuckles through the sheet and the thick toenails. His toes are long, like mine.
“Yes,” I tell Mr. Bianchi. “He is mine.”
