There is a mango in my tote bag and it is leaking.
I bought it at the little Indian grocer near 28th Street, the one with the crates stacked out front like an apology. Alphonso, the sticker said. Twelve dollars for four. Robbery. I paid it anyway because that is what homesickness costs in this city.
So now I am on the 6 train at 77th Street, and the mango has gone soft in the July heat, and there is a small orange stain blooming through my canvas bag like a secret I can't keep.
Back home in Ahmedabad, mango season meant my mother spreading newspaper on the kitchen floor and all of us sitting cross-legged, sucking the seed clean, sticky to the elbows, nobody caring. Here I eat mine standing over a sink in a Harlem apartment, careful, contained, apologizing to the fruit for the smallness of it all.
The man across from me on the 6 train is watching my bag drip. He doesn't say anything. This is the great mercy of the New York subway — everyone lets you fall apart quietly.
I got off at 96th and walked the last bit because I couldn't take the smell of ripe mango and stranger sweat together anymore. Summer in this city is a full-body experience whether you asked for it or not.
When I got upstairs I ate the mango immediately, over the sink, sticky to the elbows for the first time in months. And for exactly ninety seconds I was seven years old again on a newspaper floor.
Twelve dollars. Cheapest flight home I've ever taken.
Eat the mango over the sink. Nobody's watching. Or if they are, they're being kind about it.
Love,