blackberries
My mother is picking blackberries from the wild bushes lining the park's sidewalk, plucking each one off the stem with meticulous care. She is still young. We are in the mid-2000s. The sun spills onto her face between the gnarly tree branches around us, blushing her cheeks under the summer heat. "It's cooler here," she says, "perfect for blackberries." I watch as she examines each fruit, knee deep in weeds, making sure to pick only the plump ones, the ones that bruise under the slightest pinch. Her thumb and index finger are turning purple, which she does not notice now but will later become a source of lament when she discovers it on our way back to the car. But of course it will stain, and so will the smear of crimson on the insides of my hands — palms and fingers and all — which I am now cupping together to receive my mother's harvest. She continues to pick, laboriously, passing them down into my seven-year-old hands. She hums a faint tune under her breath – something intimately familiar but just out of memory's reach. When I close my eyes, her hum becomes the breeze whistling through the branches, the soft wind that cools the sweat on my skin. I let it lift me off my feet. "It's cooler here," I hear her voice say again, further away now, somewhere below me on the park sidewalk. "Perfect for blackberries." It is nice. I want to stay. I imagine a cradling halo descending upon us, to keep the three of us untouched — her, the berries, and also me.
As always, though, I find a way to ruin things. In the darkness of my imagination, my mind wanders around the bushes, conjuring thorny branches and needle-like grass, thinking about the overripe berries smashed onto the ground under our feet, a creature waiting in the bushes. Something squirms in my hands.
I open my eyes. The berries are sinking rapidly into the wrinkles of my palms, pooling into a black liquid – ugly, viscous, profane. Guilt washes over me – I'd only looked away for a couple seconds – I want to hide it before my mother sees – before she emerges from the bushes again – and suddenly I am overwhelmed with the urgent desire to bring it to my face and pour it down my throat – to remove the evidence – a hot, thick syrup that I know will dribble down my chin, onto my shirt, in ugly splotches and trails of pinkish blood. I could swallow the berries whole, letting the seeds drop down my throat one by one, straight into the recess of my stomach. They would scorch my intestines. My lips would stain black. I blink.
Nothing has happened. My mother is still humming, her back to my brief dilemma, and so continues the time, time which warps in and over itself. We are on the sidewalk, passing by the bushes again. "Blackberries!" my mother discovers, letting go of my hand. She enters the thicket. "Perfect season for them." She picks berries. I hold them. We are in an eternal June. There are years between us. At some point I am still carrying them, a mountain of berries now obstructing my vision, and my mother drops still another into my pruny hands. It rolls off the peak, falling to the ground just shy of my feet. My mother does not respond, instead turning back to the bushes, her aging profile furrowed in concentration. I wonder if she is trapped. Cursed. "Oh!" she says, suddenly, then turns to put one in my mouth. She watches me chew.
"Is it sweet?" she asks.
And maybe this is where our thousand years began – with one selfish wish. It is that occasional blackberry that does it. Perfectly warm, devilishly sweet, and just a little bit sour — it is in that stupidly happy moment as I open my mouth to let my mother feed me, that I wish the eternity to stay just a little bit longer.