by Sadie Zaft
(07/09/08)

The days dragged that summer. They were the last before I was to become a soldier, and the slow anticipation made life painful. My brother was in his second year away. My friends had already left for training. Cursed with a late autumn birthday, I would be the last to depart for my base.

The television was broadcasting recycled images of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's visit to Israel the previous fall. The news came on at nine on Channel One. Until then, there were children's shows, soccer matches, an afternoon comedy-sketch program. These were interrupted by continuous highlights of Sadat's visit, in preparation for the Camp David meeting in America next month. I knew the schedule well: I spent each day in those long months seated on the floor in front of our television set.

On this particular afternoon, with the Maccabi game on in the background, I was working on a mango and waiting for my breasts to grow. I once heard that breasts grow faster in summer; I also heard they grow into the shape of the fruit you eat most. Earlier that morning, I'd stood in front of the mirror and held two mangos to my flat naked chest. The image of robust green breasts made me laugh. But also pleased me.

I was eating the second mango, digging my fingers into the orange flesh and pulling it off its fibrous seed. After I'd tugged and bit and licked the last bit of mango away, I lay back on the floor to let my stomach churn up the fruit and the juices inspire my chest. I pressed my legs hard against the floor, soaking up the cool of the tiles with my thighs. I stuck each of my fingers into my mouth, licking off the stickiness.

The tiles hummed leisurely with the sound of the television. Maccabi Haifa was beating Maccabi Tel Aviv. In the kitchen, my mother was loudly digging through her cabinets for a pan.

"Geystu in shuk?" she yelled toward the living room where I lay. Thirty years out of Poland, and my mother still spoke to all her children in Yiddish. Even I, her youngest and furthest from the exodus, had to contend with a Yiddish name. My parents named me Bluma (Blima in their Polish dialect). I told my friends to call me Perach, 'flower' in Hebrew.

"Yes, Mom, I'll go to the market," I yelled back in Hebrew. "I was just resting."

"Es is do nisht kin mango!" my mother yelled, pointing out that I'd finished the last mango.

I lifted myself off the tiles, made my way toward the kitchen, and took a handful of coins from my mother. I stepped out into the afternoon sunshine.

Shuk Ha'Carmel was the biggest open-air market in Tel Aviv. There was no other place to buy produce unless you were a sabon, a sucker who paid extra to shop in a store. There was no defined marker where Allenby Street truly ended and the shuk began, but the change in climate told you so.

The air inside the shuk carried the smell of produce at every stage of decay -- from just flowered, to death. The spice vendors sent forth a perfume of sumac and cumin that hurled the whole place eastward toward the Levant. The noise in the shuk nearly ground me into the pavement each time I went. Gravely male voices sang out their prices in melodies that alternated from Arabic to Hebrew.

Their marketing was direct. "Hey, lady, lady, come here." "Little cutie, check out these cucumbers. Longer thicker ones you won't find anywhere else." "Adoni, sir, bring mama here to buy her bread. You know it's fresher here."

I grew up walking through the shuk holding my mother's hand. It was only recently that she started letting me go alone. She didn't like the Arabs, she told me, didn't like the Frankim. We were all Israeli, I'd explain to her; we all went to school together. But the olive-skinned neighbors with the throaty Sephardic accents scared her. She wanted to keep our world European and pale. Still, she couldn't give up a bargain. We shopped at the shuk.

We bought our fruit from old Arieh, the Iraqi Jew in the southernmost sunnier part of the shuk. Arieh didn't yell at women like the other vendors, and my mother liked that.

Today, Arieh wasn't there. A younger version of him stood over the wooden cases of fruit. This younger Arieh had overgrown curly dark hair and large wet brown eyes. His cheeks had a flush that could've been pink if his skin weren't so dark already, and looked like burnt sugar instead. He stood like a statue in the sun, dark and stoic, moisture gathered on his upper lip -- which wasn't moving. He was the only silent vendor around.

I put my woven bag down on the ground to free my hands and asked, "Where's Arieh?"

"Sick today," the younger man said.

"Are you his son?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm Giora."

"I'm Perach. I shop here with my mother sometimes."

"I know," said Giora, not budging a muscle in his face. "I've seen you here. You used to be little."

"Yes, we all grow up," I said, not quite sure what else to say. I didn't recall ever seeing this man before. I know I would have remembered him.

Giora ran a coarse hand over his forehead and across his upper lip. He looked at me, waiting. There were people pushing at me from behind, rushing to stands, knocking at my back with their elbows and bags. No one stopped at Giora's fruit stand.

"Can you help me pick out a couple mangos?" I asked him.

Giora nodded. He walked toward my side of the crate, getting so close that my shoulder felt the heat of his forearm. I could smell his tangy mix of sweat and citrus. He held a mango in one hand. "You want to feel it like this," he said, squeezing lightly with the pads of his fingers. He put the fruit down and I picked it up to try to simulate his motion.

"No, like this," he said, taking my wrist and slamming my mango into his palm so we were both holding the same fruit. He cupped the mango lovingly in the whitest part of his hand, massaging it till it rested in the perfect position in his palm. My fingers interlaced with his around the fruit. Giora tightened his hand around the mango, squeezing lightly and rhythmically. Suddenly my breasts pulsed, lurching against the sweaty fabric of my sundress. Giora's fingertips nudged themselves into the webbing of my hand, pressing into my straddled fingers. My nipples pressed further into the moist dress, grating against the salty fibers.

"This one is just ripe," Giora said. "Ready to eat immediately."

He dug his nails into the skin of the fruit. His fingertips, crusted with dried fruit pulp, disappeared between my fingers. Juice squirted into my hand. I gasped audibly, and for the first time Giora looked up to meet my eyes.

"You want to taste," he told me. I nodded.

He dug his fingers deeper until they reached the seed and, with me holding on to the other side, he pried the captured flesh off the mango. It rested in the palm of his hand.

"Taste it," he said, bringing his hand towards my face. I leaned forward obediently and pressed my face into his palm, gnawing at the orange fibers and sucking in the juice. He pushed his hand hard into my face so the fruit was filling my nose. I couldn't breathe, and I looked desperately at Giora through his fingers, but he wouldn't move his hand. He laced his free hand into my hair and held my head still. I chewed ferociously at the flesh in his hand, gnawing and licking it all off as fast as I could, racing to finish.

It may have been seconds or minutes into my breathless feast when Giora pulled his hands away from my hair and face. I looked into his palm, panting, and saw the discarded skin, which I'd successfully stripped bare.

Giora's fingers were coated in juice. I took his dirty hand and stuck a wet finger in my mouth. One by one, I licked his fingers, tasting remnants of my mango mixed with other fruits: Delicate kumquats, robust grapefruits, exotic blood oranges and tangy lemons mingled with the eager ripeness of my mango. I sucked every flavor I could out of Giora's fruit-soaked fingers until his skin was pulpy and pink.

As I took his last finger out of my mouth, I looked at his face. He was pressed hard against the wooden crate, his eyes darting from my face to my chest to my hips and back again.

He grabbed two mangos in his wet hand and offered them to me. "Here," he said, nudging them forward. "You can pay another time."

I took the fruits and put them in my bag. I left Giora at his mango crate and walked back toward my apartment. I jingled the unspent coins in my pocket.

Tomorrow, I would go back and spend them.

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