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The Mango Tree

Jade Quinn

    I used to be the King of the Garden at Mrs. Stones’ house, showing off with my rich and ripe fruit to the others. I stood tall, towering above everyone else, in the very middle of the garden. No one who passed by the lady’s street could resist the urge of gazing at my beauty and perfection.
    Each Sunday, a girl named Sarah, aged thirteen, would try to climb me to the top. Then when she couldn’t, she would go back to the lady’s house and bring a book with her. Mostly the book would be The Giving Tree, but I was the mango tree.
    She would skip a few pages in the book, and then start to read it to me. After a few minutes, she would get tired of standing and lean on my trunk. Her weight wasn’t much; maybe she was even underweight for her age, but still for some reason she would try her best not to put all of it on me. But eventually she would get tired and tired. Then she would put her arm around my branches and close her eyes. ‘This is nothing comfortable, but I would rather stay with you than being bored in my room,’ she used to say. Then she would fall asleep for a while before Mrs. Stone would come and tell Sarah to have her lunch.
    ‘Mammy, I’m coming in a few minutes,’ Sarah would say and wait until the lady went away. Then she would whisper to me, like she didn’t want anyone else to hear it, ‘My mango tree, now I’m off for lunch. See you next Sunday, babe. Take care!’
    As she would walk slowly to her door, my leaves would blow cool breeze to honor the girl who cared about me.
    She was the daughter of Mrs. Stones, the only child, though she didn’t look a bit like her mother: Mrs. Stones had rough black, dead black, hair that never grew longer than her shoulders. Sarah, on the other hand, had long, silky and brown-blonde hair that came down to her waist. Mostly in the winter, when I would be bearing no fruit, she would be in a black leather jacket that glittered in the dull sunshine. Instead of the normal flip-flop she would be wearing in the summer, sneakers would be covering her feet.
    Then the autumn would come after summer and my green leaves would start to change color, yellow, then they would fall down, and then brown. The grass would be yellow, and so would be everything in the little garden. But this would never stop Sarah from enjoying me. She would collect the leaves and play with them. Sometimes she would pretend as if they were her bed and lie there for as long her mother let her.
    In all of the other seasons, I could see Sarah almost every day. She would be watering the flowers, feeding the cats that lived in the garden, and drawing me on the little notepad in her soft hands. But when winter came, she would barely come out to see me once in a week. I would be covered in snow just like the rest of the garden. Whenever she came, it would be when the sun was shining as brightly as it could in the winter.
    After the winter, the spring would come. The flowers that made the boundary of the garden would start to blossom. I would start to get ready for giving the best fruit ever. This was when Sarah left me for two weeks because she had to see her grandparents, but she would never forget me. ‘Mango, I’ll back in fourteen days. Don’t miss me much, dear,’ she used to say before she left.
    After the summer, the spring would come. The flowers that made the boundary of the garden would start to blossom. I would start to get ready for giving the best fruit ever. This was when Sarah left me for two weeks because she had to see her grandparents, but she would never forget me. ‘Mango, I’ll back in fourteen days. Don’t miss me much, dear,’ she used to say before she left.
    The spring days would pass like they never had been there and the summer would come. My fruit, the sweet mangoes, would start to ripe. Sarah would feel thirstier and hungrier more than ever. She would have a bottle filled with water with her. After a few minutes of reading the book she had, she would take a few sips. Then she would gawk on my fruit and pluck one. Then she would wash it, and then peel it in front of me, enjoying the sweet taste and admiring the nature.
    ‘King, why doesn’t the girl love us like she loves you,’ a sunflower asked.
    ‘Yes, King, this is unfair. She doesn’t read the book to us,’ a daisy said.
    ‘She should read to us too,’ a daffodil said.
    And all of them went on like that. Sarah came to tell me goodbye. ‘Mango I’ll be back in fourteen days. Don’t miss me much, dear,’ she said. ‘My mammy would be staying here for this time. She says she’s feeling sick. Grandpa said that at least I had to visit. They’re also sick,’ she added after a while.
    The sunflowers and daises and daffodils glanced nervously at me, though I didn’t get what they wanted to say. I asked them after Sarah was gone but none of them spoke a word. I asked them if they were cross but they made no reply.
    The third day after Sarah left for her grandparents, Mrs. Stones came out of her house and saw me, and like everyone else, she gazed at me. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So this is the mango tree my daughter liked so much. But I don’t think so it’s normal to make friends with trees, isn’t it?’ She called her husband then, who looked very much like Mrs. Stones herself.
    ‘Um, yes, I guess,’ he said. ‘This is just nonsense. I can’t believe that my girl is in love with a silly tree that doesn’t even give good fruit. Should I call someone who can cut it for us? I think I should. What do you say, honey? Isn’t it a good idea?’
    Mrs. Stones nodded her head yes. ‘And if the job is done before Sarah comes back, she won’t make much fuss about it. Nasty poor little girl. She doesn’t even know what to do and what not to.’
    I skipped a beat. They were going to chop me so I could never give away fruit. Then someone called on Mrs. Stones’ phone. ‘Yes, Mrs. Stones,’ she said.
    ‘I think Sarah should stay here until summer starts,’ said the other line.
    They argued a little, but finally Mrs. Stones gave in. So at least I wasn’t going to be chopped down anytime soon. As soon as the couple was gone, I wished that Sarah would come back as a surprise and save my life. And she did.
    Fifteen days after she left for her grandparents, an old car dropped off a girl who looked very familiar. Then I realized that she was actually Sarah, back from her grandparents’.
    ‘Mango, I’m back!’ she yelled at the top of her lungs and hugged my trunk as if I were a human of her age. ‘I missed you so much, Mango. Grandpa said that I had to stay there until summer started but I didn’t want to, so I let their cat pee on Grandpa’s bed. He asked who had done it and then he saw my face. He said that I had done it and I confessed as soon as I could. He got pissed on me and sent me home! Yay!’
    I wanted to tell her that Mrs. Stones had planned to get rid of me, but humans don’t understand tree-language. It is far too difficult and impossible for them to learn.
    The spring went fine: The same everything. Sarah played with me more than ever. She sometimes had another girl with her, who was probably her friend.
    ‘This is my Mango,’ Sarah told her friend.
    ‘What?’ the friend asked.
    ‘This is my Mango,’ Sarah said again. ‘He’s my best friend.’
    ‘What? You’re best friends with a mango tree? Oh, please, come on. You’re definitely crazy,’ the friend said. ‘You can be best friends with me, Sarah. That’s just a tree.’
    Sarah laughed and plucked my fruit. ‘Hannah, I think it’s better to be alone then being best friends with you,’ she joked, but Hannah took it seriously.
    ‘If you don’t want to be my friend, then I don’t need to beg you for that,’ she said rudely. ‘You go and live your little miserable life with that stupid tree, and I go and find someone other.’
    Sarah didn’t argue a bit. She didn’t even say sorry. ‘Ok, then it’s your choice. I certainly don’t have any right over it.’
    Then when Hannah was gone, Sarah told me in her lowest of low voice how much she loved me and my fruit. ‘God, your mangoes are the best in the world. They are to die for. I’m so lucky to be the only one who enjoys them. Mammy and Daddy think that they should chop you down, but I’m not going to let that happen. Like, who wants her best friend to be chopped down?’
    ‘I’m proud to be your friend,’ I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t. I was a mango tree. She was a human.
    The next day when Sarah came she wasn’t looking much happy. I wanted to ask her what happened, but she answered before I could – but again, I couldn’t talk to a human – she said, ‘Mango, my mammy and daddy say that you have to be chopped down,’ and then she started plucking all of my fruit. It hurt this time. Not because my fruit was being plucked, but because Sarah was unhappy with the idea of me being chopped.
    Cool breeze tried to soothe her but it didn’t work. I threw my fruit down so she wouldn’t have to work so hard but she muttered, ‘I can do that all by myself, Mango. You don’t have to put yourself in trouble in your last few days. It’s all my fault. If I had never been so obsessed with you, or at least not shown it, you’d never be chopped like that.’
    Sarah put the fruit in a basket beside me and vowed to spend the whole day with me until her parents forced her to stay in.
    The more time she spent with me the more I hurt. She could ask her parents to do a favor and promise them not to be with me, couldn’t she? Then why she was being like that? I wanted to ask her.
    The next morning, I could see Sarah sleeping, in her bedroom, through the window. I wanted her to wake up. I wanted her to save me. I wanted and wanted and wanted.
    Two men came late that morning when she was still asleep. One of them had an axe in his hand, and the other, I realized, was Sarah’s father.
    ‘My daughter is obsessed with this tree,’ her father said, pointing at me. ‘Can you please chop that down?’
    ‘Oh yes, of course,’ the man with an axe in his hand said and started chopping me down. He chopped my branches until there wasn’t a leaf left. Then he chopped my trunk until I looked nothing but a backless wooden stool.
    Sarah came to see me later that morning. She started to cry when she saw what became of me. She yelled at her parents for chopping down her best friend. They yelled back and said, ‘You were crazy so chopping that down was the only way we could save our daughter from the TWS, the Tree Worshipping Syndrome.’
    ‘I didn’t worship Mango,’ Sarah shot back. ‘I just liked him.’
    ‘Mango this and Mango that and Mango this and Mango that,’ her mother said rudely.

    Sarah wasn’t happy. She spent the whole day sitting on the backless wooden stool I was, reading The Giving Tree to me. ‘Mango, you aren’t The Giving Tree, are you? But you’re my mango tree. The mango tree,’ she said quietly.
    Then she walked to her room and came back with a mango seed. My mango seed. A few inches from where I used to stand tall, Sarah planted the seed. ‘No one can take my Mango back from me,’ she said angrily. ‘I’ll plant a thousand seeds and soon this garden will be full of Mangoes.’
    A little plant grew from the seed. I looked at it, then looked at Sarah, and then again at the Small Mango.

    At least my fate wasn’t like the other Mangoes.
    At least I had a friend like Sarah.
    At least I was lucky.
    At least someone cared about me.
    At least Sarah could sit on me.
    At least now she wouldn’t get scolded by her mother.
    At least everything was fine now.
    At least Small Mango would be able to give Sarah the satisfaction I did.
    At least I had a kid.

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