There is a bodega on 96th and Lexington that has, against all odds, decent mangoes in late July.
Not Alphonso. Let's not lie to ourselves. Alphonso doesn't survive the journey to a fluorescent-lit shelf next to the lottery tickets. But close enough to make my hand reach out before my brain caught up.
I bought one for four dollars, which is robbery, and I paid it gladly.
The 6 train was doing its usual midday sway, half-empty, that specific downtown light coming through the windows between stations. I held the mango in my tote like it was fragile. Like it was a secret.
Here is the thing about the 6 train and a good mango in July. In Ahmedabad, mango season is a whole personality. My mummy would keep them in a bucket of water to cool, and we'd eat them over the sink, elbows out, no dignity, pure joy. Aam ras with puri on a Sunday. My dada slicing the cheeks with a precision I've never managed.
I ate this one standing up in my kitchen in Yorkville, over the sink, elbows out. And I cried a little. Not sad crying. The other kind. The kind where your body remembers something your calendar forgot.
The 6 train doesn't know it delivered me a small grief. It just kept going to Brooklyn Bridge like always.
This is the part nobody warns you about with New York. You come here for the big shiny life and then a four-dollar mango on the 6 train reaches into your chest and squeezes.
I texted my mom a photo. She replied with three mango emojis and 'eat properly.' Which is the most her sentence to ever exist.
If you're ever on the 6 train in July with a mango in your bag, we are the same person.
Love,