Hymen
Figs are not native to Turkey.
They are native to the small grove of trees backing my grandmother’s house.
I will take you there-
Where I used to gambol beneath a mobile of peaches and plums, waltzing close at hand with the wind.
It whistles against the leaves, still, speaking to me in secret.
And I’ve decided, I will share those charms.
Sitting on that makeshift porch, which was really a carport, but had no cars, my Granny taught me how to peel figs.
My chair was an upside down basket, and her chair was the second stair from the door. We sat there, flanking one another, steadying the pile of freshly gleaned figs in our skirts. Our laps served as tables. Our hands, utensils, digging into the waxy skin of the fig, and separating it from the meat.Strange thing about old hands- they are always so graceful. And my weedy, little fingers could only scratch at the leather which cocooned the fruit. Stabbing pocket incisions into the body, and scraping the skin away in patches, with my nails.
My Granny had only half a mind. The half she had lost was the half that remembered me. But the other half retained instructions on how to shell peas, shuck corn, and peel figs. Each, she did nimbly as burlesque.
When it came to peeling figs, she began with the stem. Balancing the fig in her hand, she quietly skimmed the flat of her thumb up against the leather, pressing gently against the fruit. Once she reached the stalk, she held it between her thumb and index, quickly snapping the stem off with one twist. From there, she buried the tips of her fingers into the tender opening, latching her nail to the inside of the peel, and began to pare.
Figs feel no pain-
When they are being stripped naked, to the pulp, by practiced hands.
But my hands are common, still.
I sat there, harassing the fruit with my nubby fingers, punching gashes where my Granny told me to peel.
“Just peel child,”she moaned, watching me humiliate her in front of the ancestors skulking behind antique wells and retired outhouses.
“Aint yo’ daddy taught you nothin’?”
I did not say a word, as I studied my grandmother skin one fig, and then another, popping the buds into her mouth between each flay.
My lap was a pile of balding, beads of pulp, and my Granny’s lap was nearly empty. She had already eaten half the figs she picked, and I had not eaten one, still learning how to remove the rind without scaring the meat.
Author: Maya Price
Maya Price is an undergraduate student at Columbus State University.
