(based on The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros)
By James McCurley IV
Whenever we walked to the intersection of Raymond and Mango Street, Tariel Pritchard was sitting on her old lawn chair, watching the traffic go by. She didn’t seem to do much other than that. Just sat from dawn till dusk. Even when it rained, I’d see her, with a poncho pulled over her head, shivering in the cold as she watched the road.
One day, when she looked like she was sleeping, Rachel bet a quarter that I couldn’t touch her without waking her up. A free quarter was too good to miss. I crept up the lawn, quiet as a shadow, reaching out one shaky hand to touch her. For a second, I hesitated, looking down at her. I noticed her disheveled clothing, her hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. I noticed her wrinkled skin, as though she’d dried out like a raisin from all this time sitting in the sun. Her left hand was bunched up around a photograph, but I couldn’t see of what. Then, as I reached forward, my hand trembling, like a tree branch in the wind, she looked up and stared at me.
Ms. Tariel took it in for a second, me caught in the act, my hand outstretched, my friends behind me, frozen like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. And then she laughed. It was a nice laugh, loud and clear and pretty, like the sound of Gil’s music box. And she smiled, wide and toothy. She didn’t look quite as old when she smiled. She kept on laughing and smiling, and I felt myself relaxing, her warm mirth melting my icy fear.
Can I help you, she said, with evident amusement. I’m just waiting out here for my son, and she holds up the wrinkled photograph, a young man with dark hair and green eyes, and with a smile just as nice as his mother’s. He promised to come visit me, she murmured, turning away from us and looking back at the street.
We went back to our playing after that. But I always snuck glances at her. I wondered when her son would come, when his car would pull into her driveway, when he would finally fulfill his promise. But I never saw him. Every day, Ms. Tariel came out and sat on the lawn, eagerly, expectantly, in her unwashed clothes and unkempt hair. And every day she walked back inside, with a frown and a murmur that maybe he’d come tomorrow and something had obviously come up that day, and he couldn’t make it.
One day, she wasn’t on the lawn. Mr. Benny says she had a bad heart and died from it in the night, but I didn’t believe that. I knew it was the waiting that killed her. Waiting until she wilted, like Edna’s flower boxes that wither away in the hot sun.