2 Written by Melanny Cowley

    “Jenn-a-fur! Marg-a-rit! Jess-ie! Get up. We’re pickin’ apples.” Nana squeezed the bicycle horn again. I felt Maggie roll away from me on the double bed. As soon as I felt her body heat leave, I knew I was the target, and I tried to move, but I was half crippled in my sleep. Nana’s fingers locked quickly around my ankles.“I don’t know why you two share a bed,” she said, “There are three beds in here.” Then she pulled, and I screamed, throwing my arms out to break the fall. I landed hard on the bottom of my tailbone. “George Gilbert says we can have all the apples we can carry. He isn’t pickin’ any more. But we gotta get over there this morning.”  Jesse was already dressed. I limped over to the dresser and pulled off my pajamas, scrambled for some clean clothes, fighting Maggie over a Cabbage Patch T-shirt. “Hurry up!” Nana said, and she blew the bicycle horn once more, “You’ve got two minutes to get in the car!”
    Maggie wouldn’t give up the T-shirt and I eventually found a yellow blouse with a ketchup stain on the hem. We ran out of the house with our shoes in our arms.
The Gilbert farm sat three miles from our place, and just two miles from town. The trees were spaced evenly, the ground covered with thistle and the mush of rotting fruit. The ground squished as we walked acrossed. The Gilberts had three gray speckled ranch dogs that we loved to play with because we didn’t have dogs. Nana was stern with us when we tried to pet them. “No playing. We’re picking apples.”
    Jesse and I climbed the branches, picking from on high while Nana and Maggie stood on the ground and picked the low apples. We settled a basket in the V of the branches between us. The fruit was bruised and yellow, and typically soft, but Nana wanted them, so we were picking them.
Jesse dropped one with a clumsy hand. I watched it fall. “You almost hit Nana,” I said.
    Nana was hunched over, sorting the bed of apples that had fallen on the ground. She would pick one up, turning it in her hands like a magic eight ball until she found a wormhole, then tossing it aside. She didn’t seem to have noticed the fallen apple. Jesse picked another apple and dangled it in the air with a slight grip of suspense, and smiled at me. I felt my eyelids widen as I bit a smirk and looked down. He opened his fingers, and it fell to the other side of her. Again, she didn’t look up. We couldn’t help but giggle. Jesse dropped a few more. Maggie craned her neck upwards and gave us a gangly, tooth-snared smile. 
    Jesse became braver, wound up his arm, and the apples began to splatter. Nana looked about, waking from hibernation. “You,” she said, bringing her head up. The last apple hit square on her forehead. The apple bounced off as quickly as it had hit, and Nana’s eyes rolled back into her head, apple guts smeared across her forehead, a single apple seed stuck directly between her eyes like the one Hindu lady in town with the painted red dot. “It wasn’t me!” Maggie said, instinctively backing away, “I was down here.” That was Maggie. Always laying low on the radar, always looking out for number one. 
    I thought Nana might fall down, or maybe even die. But her eyeballs flipped back into place. We watched the Incredible Hulk turn green and invincible. She was up the tree catlike, dragging Jesse down by one foot, his shirt rolling up, exposing his bare back as it tore on the rough bark on his way down. “OWW! OWW!” Jesse’s pubescent voice squealed like a caught piglet. Blood beaded in the flakes of his short, blond hair. Nana grabbed a tree branch, holding him with one arm, hitting him with the other. In the chest, in the head, in the neck. A goose egg, red and purple, a round horn, rose on her forehead. She hollered and wailed until George Gilbert came running, and dragged her away from Jesse by her arms.
    “You have to stop or you’re gonna kill him,” he said.
    “Damn boy hit me on purpose,” Nana muttered, but she seemed much calmer. 
    “They give me nothing but trouble sometimes,” she said to George. “I didn’t have these kids. I inherited them. And look how they treat me.” She pointed to her head.
    “Well, why don’t you go home and put ice on it? I’ll load these apples for you,” George said.
    “Thank you George,” Nana said, “I just know you understand how hard it is for me, raising three kids at my age.” That night, when I touched a cool rag to Jesse’s scratches, he said he was glad Nana had beat him today.
    “I bet George Gilbert calls the law,” he said, “And the police will show up and take us away from her.” For the rest of the evening, Jesse and I sat on the sofa by the window in the front room and pulled the curtains back every minute or so.
    “What do you all keep looking out the window for?” Nana asked us, “There’s nobody out there.” And she was right.

Posted on November 7th, 2008 in Fiction