Memories of Persimmons

“I remember…” Jasmine said, pressing her lips together in hesitation. “So much. Yet she remembers nothing. I feel as though I can pass Violet in the street and she would not spare me a second glance.”

The forest said nothing in response, which was a logical outcome, Jasmine knew, as she was the only person for miles around. Yet still, it felt like there was a presence there. The presence of memories that seeped into the soil and grew with the roots of the vines, the presence of two lost young girls hand in hand, skipping stones down the stream.

There was only one of those girls in the forest that day, and she had grown into a young woman. Jasmine had the ability to speak words aloud, but she felt like a shell of a person while the old memories around her felt more alive than she would ever be.

Jasmine grew up in the town outside this forest, the houses brown, the air clear, and the sunsets as orange as the persimmons she would climb the trees to get. They always tasted better when Jasmine would follow Violet through the back door of her house, Violet’s mother waiting to cut the fruit into slices for the girls to share on a clay plate. Persimmons were like the sunsets in many ways, Jasmine thought as she lay with Violet on the carpet floor with sticky fingers. They were a guarantee, as the sun would fall every night and the tree bore fruit every fall, yet they were both still aspects of life Jasmine thought deserved to be awed at. 

Yes, Violet and Jasmine spent some of their time together during their childhoods in each other’s homes, eating fruit and listening to the record play blast the same old songs, but where they loved to be most was this forest. In the small town they lived in, up in the mountains, the only obligations they had were school and to be home for dinner by 6:30.

Growing up in a small town, everyone knew everyone, and there were people you clicked with as well as people you did not. Violet and Jasmine knew each other since they were babes, and Jasmine truly believed they were made for each other, to be friends forever. They never got bored when together, it was the town they were bored of. 

When they were in high school they entertained themselves with dreams of how they would leave. Violet wanted to become a famous classical actress. She would memorize Shakespearan monologues and wear black turtlenecks in preparation for when she would buy a train ticket to New York City. Jasmine wanted to be a librarian, which was a silly dream, she guessed. Most would find it boring. Violet never said so, though. Jasmine wanted to work in a place of magic in the form of words instead of the crappy little library in their town-which kept more encyclopedias than anything else. Jasmine guessed that meant that she and Violet were the escapist type, living in their own dreamlands. They did get to share those dreamlands with each other, for some period of time.

That explained how they entertained themselves before high school, in the forest as children with grass stains on their plaid skirts. They created all sorts of make believe worlds and games, just for the two of them to share. They fell into silly habits with each other, such as you must carry a dandelion in your pocket before a spelling test and the best way to get rid of the hiccups was to dip your feet in the river and sing some Joni Mitchell lyrics they did not understand. They wove crowns of twigs to make believe they were faeries working for make believe faerie queens.

Ultimately, though, what was at the root of all their playtime, from whether they were six or sixteen, was a belief in each other. They wore matching lockets on top of their beating hearts while coming up with stories of how they would fight monsters side by side or stories of how they would buy those train tickets together. They had their own day that they devoted to each other, sort of similar to a second birthday, as it was calculated to take place halfway between their actual birthdays. 

Perhaps they were codependent, but Jasmine was hesitant of that idea, even when she was so detached from that experience, standing alone in the forest. When Jasmine was younger, she needed Violet to stay tethered to this world, as Violet needed her to do the same, which was technically the definition of codependency, but where does codependency end and love and humanity begin? Each part of Jasmine was a memory of someone else, and not just Violet. Jasmine wore the purse she bought with pocket money her mother gave her to buy nice things for a job interview. Her favorite fruit was persimmons in the first place because her neighbor had a persimmon tree and he let Jasmine take from it. Her favorite song was one her father sang for her each night as a bedtime prayer.

Her connection with Violet was the same as all that, as she was the reason Jasmine put any effort into her classes, as otherwise she would have rather failed and never received her high school degree, just like her parents. And Jasmine was the reason Violet was able to focus on things other than school, as Jasmine gave her her first copy of a play (Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare to be specific-it was a bore, but the only one Jasmine could get her hands on in that small town). And they both were the reason they were able to dream, to be able to be excited for the future.

“By our 25th ‘us day’,” Violet said, smiling with big red lips and a pearl necklace that made her look like a movie star too good for their run down high school. “We will be there, you will be working in a ten story tall library and I will be Madame Lyobov Ranevsky, performing for thousands a night.”

Jasmine raised her eyebrow. “Ten stories seems like overkill. Are there even that many books?”

Violet scoffed, smiling. “They are in multiple languages, obviously. Different prints,” she said. “And even though we will be living in a cute little apartment together, I propose we should still come back here. Perhaps we can eat persimmons and stick our toes in the streams, huh? Just to remind ourselves of our roots?”

“Why would we come back?” Jasmine asked, crossing her legs beneath the school room desk. Jasmine and Violet sat in the back, whispering. “It seems silly, our memories are still there.”

“Old times sake,” Violet said simply. “Plus our parents will likely miss…”

Her eyes caught something ahead of her, making her pause. Jasmine turned to follow her gaze to Dave, a dumb boy who was smiling at Violet. Jasmine rolled her eyes, snapping in front of Violet’s face.

“Hey,” Jasmine said once Violet looked back towards her. “It sounds like a good idea,” she said. “We meet on our 25th ‘us day’ and go to the forest or whatever.”

Violet grinned, sticking out her pinky. “Deal.”

Jasmine met it with her own, but before they could pinky promise Violet pulled back, turning away to search for something in her satchel. 

She hummed, finally pulling out a box of matches. “Got it.” She began to fiddle with the box, not doing a great job of hiding it behind the desk. Luckily the teacher did not seem to care or notice. Jasmine wondered, though, why did she have matches? Was Violet smoking? Jasmine never did, and she had been smelling it on Violet, but she just assumed it was Violet’s parents. Jasmine always imagined that if they did stuff like that, they would do it together. Why would she keep it from her?

“An old charm?” Violet said, a lit match caressed between her fingers. Violet knew what she meant, as this was an old promise from their childhood. They huddled round the match as Violet whispered, “One, two, three…” and they blew it out together, the promise sealed.

And yet, Jasmine was alone in the woods that day. She had come from Boston for this day. When she arrived she went straight to Violet’s parent’s house, yet they said they knew nothing of Violet visiting then. Jasmine somehow was still not discouraged, so she waited in the forest, feeling sillier and sillier as she did, staying alone for hours.

It was silly, she thought. She had not talked to Violet since high school, after they had a falling out right before graduation. They argued about something stupid in relation to Dave, when in reality it had nothing to do with him. Neither of them reached out afterwards, though, even though their parents stayed friends. Jasmine’s parents told her of how Violet was a waitress in Los Angeles, working as extras on sets her different boyfriends got her on to. Violet had probably heard of Jasmine getting her masters degree and working at a library with two floors, but almost one million square feet of endless books.

Well, there Jasmine was. A young woman now, twenty four years old, almost twenty five, and a librarian, just as her and Violet dreamed. She did not live in New York, though, and she did share a cute little apartment with Violet.

She was not alone. She had a collection of friends in Boston and she had family in the small mountain town that she loved with all her heart, but she still felt as though something was ripped out of her. Her and Violet were two seeds, growing with roots entangled together until they grew apart, in separate directions. Violet was still a part of her, though, and Jasmine was still a part of Violet, wherever she was. Even if Violet had forgotten, all their charms and silly habits turned into oblivion, Jasmine was there inside Violet. Forgetting did not mean their connection was gone. But just because Jasmine remembered, did it make it any stronger?

Who knew why Violet did not show? Perhaps she did not forget, but instead just did not care, or she did not treasure her time with Jasmine as much as Jasmine did. Maybe she had a big audition she couldn't miss. Jasmine would understand that. Or, perhaps she believed Jasmine forgot and would never show herself. Jasmine reached out just as much as Violet did since graduation, which was never.