by Rosanne Griffeth

(Another Mule alum from the past decade. Roseanne’s a Mule favorite.)

In June, I stand over the sink, alone, my bitten fingers stinging with
peach juice. The fuzz itches, but I think of winter and fruit out of
season. The later peaches, the Albertas, those are the best for eating
out of hand. But these small ones, flesh clinging to pits like lovers,
are best for pies. The summers of my life smell of peaches, lazy
sweetness lying wet on the tongue.

I remember eavesdropping on my grandmother and her sisters. They crowd
together in my grandmother’s bedroom giggling and silly. Great-aunt
Emmy Jo drives from Florida with a box of mangoes and oranges from her
grove. Baby Dear travels from Tennessee stopping in Spartanburg for
bushels of peaches. Aunt Nell lives across town, so four of the seven
sisters, my personal Pleiades, meet–their visits garnished with
fruit.

They wash their hands in the bathroom, always chattering. I am very
small and sitting on my grandmother’s rice bed with the nobbly white
bedspread that leaves dimples on my skin. My chubby legs, still so
short I need a step stool to climb on the bed. I wonder if she has any
rock candy in her dresser–she always did. I think about peaches and
wonder if my grandfather will whittle monkeys from the peach pits for
me. I look at my smooth, little girl hands, chubby and ripe—too small
to pare and cut—sticky with peach juice.

The ghosts of my aunts guide my fingers under cool water to ease the
stinging. They whisper of pies and cobblers and marmalades—
reminiscences of summer in mid-winter.

My hands are no longer small and ripe, but when I inhale the scent of
peaches, for a moment, I am five.