There is a man who sells fruit outside the 125th Street station where the 2 train spits me out every morning, and I have decided he is the reason I am okay.
He does not know my name. But he knows I want the mangoes, always the mangoes, and by now he starts bagging them before I open my mouth.
The mango man at 125th has these small yellow ones, the ataulfo kind, and they are not Alphonso — nothing here is Alphonso — but on a good day, if I close my eyes on the platform, they are close enough.
My mother used to cut mangoes into a grid and turn the skin inside out so the cubes stood up like little buildings. I ate them over the kitchen sink in Ahmedabad, elbows dripping, and nobody told me to be neat.
Here I eat them walking down Lenox Avenue, trying not to ruin my shirt, mostly failing.
This week the mango man gave me an extra one for free. He just said, "For you, it's hot," and waved me off before I could argue. I got on the 2 train holding two mangoes and had to blink very hard for a second.
It is a strange thing, being twenty-four and homesick and having your whole heart wobbled by a fruit vendor in Harlem. But that is New York. The city is enormous and indifferent and then, without warning, one man remembers what you like.
Harlem in August smells like sun on hot pavement and somebody's incense and, for me, mangoes. I will take it.
The mango man at 125th will never read this. But if you pass a fruit cart tomorrow, buy something. Let someone remember your face.
Love,