Pit

I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

Eating a mango pit, imagining its rough fibre on my tongue is enough to make me pee in fear. But I have to because I want to impress this boy from the poor side of town.

His mother is what is euphemistically referred to as a “cultural dancer” who works in Japan, his Dad is a married Japanese auto executive who doesn’t want to acknowledge him because it would cost a pretty penny to pay for his upkeep.

His mom was in Japan that summer. I met him through the boys in the neighborhood that I play basketball with in the afternoons. Some of them were his schoolmates.

My Dad brought home sweet mangoes that he buys from an export firm where we supply T-shirts manufactured in our factory. Yuji (that’s the boy’s name) thought it abominable to leave out the pit in the consumption of the mango.

So I will eat the pit of my mango, even if it kills me. I was serious, I put on my game face. He was equally serious, like he was watching to see if I would pass a test.

I took a bite. It was horrible. I spit out the flesh into the kitchen sink.

Yuji was holding a glass of water. He got some from the fridge for me. My twelve year old heart skipped a beat.

“Your friends told me you don’t eat mango pits. Don’t ever do anything to please anyone again, no matter how much you like them,” he said, his fourteen year old face sombre.

That’s what I tell our three kids now, twenty years later.