Mulberry Tree

      

 

​    The sheet was over my head and for a minute I forgot everything.  There was only that smell, the smell of mulberry—“tut” we called it. White, small, well, not completely white, but very, very pale yellow.  Some were green, not yet ripe. Some were so ripe that they were mushy, about to fall apart.  Mushy to the point where after they fell from the tree and traveled through the air to hit the sheet over my head, and over the heads of the other kids on the street lucky enough to have made under the sheet that day, they would go splat. Splat, like bird droppings. Only, they weren’t bird droppings, they were instead mulberries dropping from a mulberry  tree onto a giant flat canvas sheet held on all sides by neighbors while somebody shook the tree above the sheet.

 

​     Generally, I didn’t find out about such things until were almost over, but that day I happened to be the first to get under the sheet.  This is what you did.  Just stand under it and feel the mulberries drop on your head.  The sound of the dissolution muffled by the canvas sheet over your head.  Generally, you couldn’t’ see the other kids next to you ‘cause your eyes were nearly blinded by the pale yellow light all around you.  You saw the light muffled by the sheet, just as you felt the sweet wetnessof the mulberry splatting on top of your head, muffled by the canvas sheet.  They rained down, down you your head and you were happy, so happy ‘cause all you had to do was just stand there, and all these sweetnesses just came splat on your head.  All these sweet things you’d desired for so long and couldn’t’get to, were raining down you you.  You stood there, with your head up, eyes open, unable to see anything but pale yellow, yet feeling the sticky soft sweetness all over you.  Anticipation.