How to Pick a Mulberry
The first thing you have to do is to be bored. Very, bored. It has to be summer, close to noon. After throwing a few rocks at the mailbox, you’ll hear a car coming. By the sound of the missing muffler, you’ll know it’s your cousin Debbie. It has only been an hour since you last saw her pass but she’ll wave with her whole arm outside the window, leaving behind a thick trail of smoke.
In the stink and silence that remains, you’ll walk out into the road. There you’ll find a weather-shaven tennis ball in the weeds. You and your little sister Holly will present it to your big brother, Stephen, in hopes that he will play with you. He’ll accept, tossing it into the air to smack it with a baseball bat. As it arches high out into the field, you’ll need to watch and see where it lands, because Holly will race you to it.
She’s a whole year younger than you are, but she’s quick. You’ll both land on the ball at the same time. Don’t fight for it too long, because it’ll remind Stephen that you are both too little to be hanging around. You’ll need to compromise. Holly can be the one to give Stephen the ball so he can hit it into the woods.
No one will see where it lands. You’ll take the trail Paw Paw drives his station wagon down to chop wood. At the creek, you’ll forget the tennis ball when you dig up a clear glass coke bottle caked with brown dirt. Give the bottle to Stephen and step back. He’s going to try to smash it against the iron sides of a tilted birch tree.
He’ll count, 1, 2, 3, and throw it hard. The bottle will bounce, fly over his shoulder, and hit your knee. Fall to the ground, but don’t cry more than a few tears. He’ll help you up and, if you promise not to tell Mamma, he’ll let you hit a golf ball he’s just found with the baseball bat. You try but no matter how hard you swing, the ball will never go as far as it does when Stephen hits it.
As you start to head home, it’s important that you continue to limp. Otherwise, Stephen will go into the house to cool off instead of stopping in the shade of the mulberry tree. Once you’ve all arrived, the low branches will compel Stephen to start climbing. As he vanishes above the canopy of heart-shaped leaves, take a stick from the ground and divert the line of ants crawling up the tree, scrape away a few layers of bark, throw the stick in the ditch.
Then, when Stephen finishes doing whatever big brothers do in the heights we little brothers and sisters will never reach, he’ll jump down cradling a tiny harvest in his cupped hand as if it’s a living thing. When he extends his fingers to share what he holds in his purple-stained palm, pinch the mulberry by the stem. Hold it up to the light. Notice how the berry changes from deep purple at the tip to bursts of bitter red closer to the stem. Then, before you take a single step away, take a bite. Taste the day’s heat and fading sweetness. When you finish sucking the microscopic pits from your teeth, Debbie’s car will come hollering, once again, over the hill. As she passes, she’ll throw one arm out the window and toot the horn with the other. When you see her, throw your hand up and wave back with all you’ve got.
Say hey, because it might be goodbye.
