This one’s definitely fiction. Or is it?
The Mother always buys tangerines for The Daughter even though The Daughter has told The Mother countless times that she does not like tangerines, does not like the peeling and the little white shavings and the sticky, stingy feeling of citrus under her fingernails. She doesn’t see the point of all that labor for a few segments of juice.
And yet The Mother continues to buy the tangerines. She asks The Daughter every Saturday morning if she has “Any requests from the grocery store?” and when The Daughter says “No,” The Mother brings home the tangerines in their neon mesh bag anyway, tells The Daughter she got tangerines, tells her tangerines are good for her when The Daughter reminds The Mother, once again, that she does not like them.
The tangerines remind The Mother of her childhood, of course, because her mother never bought tangerines. She’s not sure she even knew what they were until she had children of her own and saw the commercials with the happy toddlers sucking on segments like grotesque smiles. When she was The Daughter’s age she ate whatever the maid was cooking that day. They were the only family on the street that had a maid. Not because they were rich but because they were busy, her parents that is, with work. There were no tangerines, only what was on the stove, usually something like grits with sugar or chicken liver and onions. She once told The Daughter that she ate liver and onions when she was her age and The Daughter laughed louder than The Mother had ever heard her laugh before, which she loved.
That’s how the house burned down. Her parents were at work and the maid left the pot on the stove and lay down to rest for a moment, just a moment, but moments can get away from you, and this one did get away from the maid. Juanita was her name. She was making the liver and onions and then it all went up in flames. Luckily the parents were at work as usual, their daughter down the street playing Capture the Flag with the other kids. She never told her parents that she saw the smoke over the rooves of the other houses but didn’t go back until they were done with Capture the Flag, and when she did, she thought she saw someone running away. They never did see Juanita again. The day the house burned down was the day Juanita disappeared.
The Mother suspects The Daughter throws away the tangerines she puts in her lunchbox every day. Or maybe she gives them away to her friends. Maybe she really does like the tangerines but just keeps up the pretense of not liking them to amuse herself; to assert her independence in what little way she can. It makes no difference to The Mother. She just wants The Daughter to have what she didn’t. Was anything ever so simple?
The thing she most wants for The Daughter, though, is not tangerines, or maids, or Mothers. The thing she wants for her is fire. She wants to tell The Daughter about fire and how to wield it. She wants to tell her how to disappear.
“Mom, you okay?” She hears from behind her. She realizes she’s been standing at the kitchen sink for she doesn’t know how long. The water is running.
“Yes! Gosh, I was miles away,” The Mother says to The Daughter, sticking her hands under the hot water to wake herself up. “I got tangerines at the grocery store, they’re in the fridge. Do you want one? They’re really very good for you.”