My Abuelita takes great pride in her garden, in the trees she tends to. They grow tall, bright, and abundant like the family she created. Plump pomegranates overflow in buckets, purple figs swell and hang right above our heads, small limes cluster like tiles in a mosaic of green among verdant leaves, and aromatic guayabas grow by the bowl-full. It’s the guayaba’s smell that always defines my grandparent’s house in my mind, their noxious fragrance hanging in the air between us like a spirit. When we used to gather, the perfume would cling to our clothes, but the family rarely gathers at that house now that the children have grown.
When I encounter the guayabas alone in that house an apparition appears before me, one of us as we sink our teeth in, feasting on the soft green skin, on the fruit inside that’s the same color of our gums which show when we give a toothy smile, yellow seeds shining between our teeth like citrine gems.
We finally come back together again when our Abuelito dies. In each breath between the services, we pluck guayabas from the bowl. We pass them around and bite down. This time no one complains about the stench, this time we breathe it greedily in because we know we’ll have to go our separate ways again. We bite in hopefully, eager to summon that ghost, praying that now it will take on a face of the one we’re missing the most.
Evangeline is a recent graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz. They identify as a non-binary, lesbian, Mexican, and Guatemalan-American writer from Southern California. Their work explores themes of grief, resilience, and self-exploration.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 