I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing, Each to Each

1

One morning Father observes that she has brought forth these downy hard nubs. So coldly forlorn in the bright morning frost as to seem almost dead, her diaphanous white buds augur a quickening in white and pink. He knows that her blossoms will soon blush awake, her young leaves will blink shyly at the chill dawn. Dressing her spindly twigs in bright green promise, her leaves and blossoms will attract flies and bees and all manner of little things.

The rain will come, persisting for several days. Petals falling with the rain. Littering the turf in innocent soft hughes, some petals yet clinging against the filaments and stigma sticking pugnaciously forth in the wet. A drop of rain clinging to a petal, a spray of moisture refracting a spider’s web. Light filtering through heavy clouds.

Father sees that she will push her fruit into the ravening world. First slowly and subtly in the dangerous early spring, then steadily throughout the developing summer, then in a rush of ripening into sweet come-hither redolence as winter again threatens, with a pressing of northern dew against a mid-September morning. The dew will steam off as the sun rises, dressing her body, now weighted down with heavy fruit and dark, shiny green leaves, in the sybaritic indolence of approaching ripeness.

He knows that creation will gather for a taste. The squirrels, so desperate to quicken their fat now that they’re sniffing winter in the dew, will spend all day gorging themselves in her limbs, her fruiting so rich that when one feels temporarily sated, she will leave her half-eaten fruit, returning for it later. The field mice and rats, scurrying to snatch a fallen fruit, perhaps discarded by a careless squirrel, will drag the flesh away to their nearby dens and nests. The ants will chase one another in hungering lines through her anfractious bark. The birds will alight upon her damp turf, snatching at a bit of fallen fruit now oozing through a wormed surface.

Mostly they are his rapacious neighbors who rattle Father’s equanimity. They cannot conceal from his fiercely observant eye how dearly they covet her fruit. They gather furtively below her boughs in late August, sniffing the air, squeezing her fruit, seeking some sign that these yellow downy stones will soon develop that richly pigmented rouge and plumpening blush of ripening youth. And of course there will be those greedy ones, even at this early stage, surreptitiously harvesting her underripe fruit. Glancing about them in case they are observed, yet bold enough to bring along a sack to fill with yellow-green, downy hard nubs, still too firm and bitter to enjoy on their own, so perhaps to pickle or to set upon a sill to ripen in the safety of their den.

For now that her fruit is ripening a new game will arise, wherein myriad participants must balance their sincere desire to allow her fruit to hang in place, attaining a perfect juicy sweetness, against the threat that the squirrels, or the birds or the other hungry people sitting obnoxiously atop the food chain will swoop in and consume or remove all her fruit. Those who have not taken theirs will be left with empty bellies and full fantasies. As the logic of the game sets in, creation, and especially the people, will lose their shame, despoiling her even at the height of day, when anyone might see.

Until one morning a woman will arrive with a look of single-minded determination, she who has been sampling and collecting the fruit in increasingly bold forays. She will appear one early morning with her two children and several baskets, greedily harvesting all the fruit for herself and her family. The woman and her children will depart, their baskets, their hearts, their fantasies richly fulfilled. And though Father will be angry at the theft, he also will sense that she has gladdened to her unburdened limbs. Father will observe that she now breathes contentedly to herself, for her leaves will already have taken on a copper hue, and she will see that creation has again turned its gaze from her, and she will bed down for a long winter.

2

Although she is growing adjacent to this attached home, she does not belong to the home or to the family that lives here. Although she brings pleasingly forth a privacy screen with her foliage from her leafing in late May until her crimson robe blows away in blustering October or bitter November, the relationship flows primarily in one direction. She provides protection to the home and its family, but the home, and the family in turn, beyond simple proximity, really do very little to protect her from the gaze, and the predations, of the creatures living around her. The family never lifts a finger to help her thrive, for she lives on the commons between the sidewalk and their little enclosed front porch. It is not within their remit to care for her. Yet still she senses that they have developed a sort of proprietary feeling for her, ducking as they do to walk under her heavy limbs in late summer, admiring her bones through the window as the seasons pass, perhaps even grieving when a heavy spring snow causes one of her limbs to snap; learning to recognize, in their own way, her diffident greeting whenever they return.

Gradually, she observes, the family’s regard for her is blossoming. They show their admiration in peculiar, jealous ways, seeking subtly to extend their ownership of her, if not physically at first, then at least psychically. One day in late August, for instance, a woman appears, gathering up her under-ripe fruit in a sack, and although it has been a very productive year, and there is more fruit than the family could consume in a month, she blushes gratefully to herself when Father raps smartly upon the window with his house key, creating an alarming noise which startles the woman from her activity. The woman looks up to the window. But Father has hidden behind the curtains where the forager can’t see him, and she smiles with satisfaction as the woman releases her fruit, which she had grasped in her greedy fingers. The woman walks quickly away with her sack half full.

She smiles to herself that autumn when Father stencils a tasteful little sign, which he plants in her soft turf near her base. ‘Please Respect Your Neighbors’. She laughs to herself at the mildly petulant tone, which nonethless seems to have its desired effect. Now Father must compete only with the squirrels and the birds for her rich fruiting, which he leaves upon her branches until each is so perfectly ripe that the sweet juices run down his cheeks and onto his shirt with every bite, his hands sticky, and wet, and sweet. The sign remains until the rain comes in early October, and then the ink runs, and the damp cardboard sags along with the bronze leaves that have begun collecting on the turf beneath her dripping limbs.

There is so much fruit that Father's family knows not what to do with it all. Through the window, she observes Mother preparing her fruit into marmalade, and ice cream, and a spicy sweet chutney. She smiles after the kids bringing sacks full of her fruit to school for teachers and friends. She is gladdened that the family eats her fruit in every meal, until they are so sated that they dare not eat another. Soon the fruit flies come, and still her ripe fruit covers every surface in the kitchen. Her fruits over-ripen upon the counter, their envelopes deteriorating as lesions appear and juices pool beneath them. She knows Mother fears for pests, and she sighs, but not in a mournful way, as Mother sends the kids out to the dumpster in the parking lot with dozens of her fruits in paper sacks. She know that Mother is just relieved, in late autumn, to get the last of her fruit away from the attached home. She understands when they take up the ruined yard sign and carry it to the dumpster.

3

Father erects a small white plastic fence along the perimeter of the turf that lies between the sidewalk and the small enclosed porch. It is technically a common area, but he knows there is none there to defend it. He has extended their proprietorship over her. He feels she is theirs. He tells himself that she is pleased.