A Story By Vanessa
We must have had fruit in the house growing up, but I can’t remember there being any when we lived on family hill. I remember eating mangoes in the sea as a little girl, but I don’t remember there being a fruit bowl until my teens. This wasn’t a problem because like all Bequia children I preferred to pick my own fruit.
I always seemed to be one step behind the other kinds in terms of raiding trees. I could never keep track of what ‘season’ it was for various fruit. By the time I realized the sea-grapes were bearing, the bushes would be picked clean; the low hanging tamarinds would be gone; the mangoes would be stoned from their heights, and the plum trees picked bare by other school children, sometimes before they were even ripe!
We were lucky when we moved to the house daddy built that there were many mature fruit trees already on the property, and many more planted over the years. We had mangoes, limes, papaya, grapefruit, guava, red and yellow plums, and avocado, which grew so heavy with fruit one year it fell over! But my favourite fruit was the Bequia red plum. I spent many hours in plum trees, even when no fruit was bearing; the limbs were perfect for climbing and reclining. And I had many a belly ache from eating too many plums!
I am sure many Bequia children would agree with me. In fact, even children from town agreed, so much so that my sister and I made a business of it in secondary school. When we took plums to school as a snack, so many people would beg for a plum, with some offering to pay for it, they wanted it so bad. So we would find ourselves at first light picking plums and bagging them, 6 to a bag. I believe we charged .50 for a bag. For the few weeks we sold plums, kids would be waiting outside our classroom each morning, and we would be sold out before the morning bell.
The only fruit I was successful in stealing were the tangerines in the little garden at the Frangipani Hotel. Either the local kids did not know about it (which I find hard to believe) or they were afraid of Son Mitchell! Either way, I ate myself to many a belly ache in that garden!
Bequia Plum
I tell you there is nothing sweeter
than a Bequia plum
There is no season –
not cricket not football
not rainy not dry
not carnival not nine mornings –
that can compare to the season
of the Bequia plum
When is plum season children fo’get
’bout mango, damsel and hogfruit
You think is seagrape they want?
They become sky grazers and bush rangers
of foreign yards
Looking to see
the colour red
But patience is a virtue
children do not have
so green and half ripe are
(drowned in salt, lime and pepper sauce)
robbed of their chance
Oh what a crime, to steal from the tree
it’s red ambition!
Then suddenly there it is:
burgandy melon of sticky afternoons,
taut skin over golden belly,
stains of gluttonous pleasure
on forgotten uniforms.
Oh the wine filled weekends
spent lounging in trees
barefoot and dyed
full of laughter and fruit!
There is nothing sweeter
than a Bequia plum
the only fruit I know never
to make it to market,
encased as they are
in the belly ache of a Bequia child
