Kendra Allen - Fruit Punch: A Memoir

JUAN PULLING OUT HIS PENIS is the first time I ever see one. I aint that good at aligning time with memory, so it all happens around the same age in my head. Im no older than six. Usually, Im twelve. Mostly nine. I coulda been four. Iono. Everythings interchangeable. But I know places, and I know we still living on Prichard Lane, which means my parents still live together which mean soon, they wont be. But for now our house is a three-bed/two-bath and I got my own room. The biggest room I ever had to date, prolly cause its the nineties and Texas rent is cheaper than its ever been.

Juans house is to the right of ours and his family dont speak no English so we forced to believe whatever it is he say they saidlike we can come over to see his tree house. I dont know nothing bout actual tree houses existing outside of cartoons, let alone in the middle of Pleasant Grove, but Juan real proud of it cause his daddy built it especially for him. My daddyDollbe building stuff too. But not no home for his kid.

mostly:maybe:

cages, rosters,

walls, borders,

shelves, headgear,

Anyways. Juan nem got a pecan tree I like to stand under. It hang over they wooden fence into our front yard and I plant my feet in the grass with a plastic grocery sack looped between my fingers while Doll shake the neck of its limbs. I capture the nuts outta the blades one by one, same way I snatch dandelions outta the earth. When my bag get too heavy to hold, I go sit on our porchs middle step. We got a nice porch. Not the wraparound kind my mama L.A. been dreaming of since she was a lil girl watching TV with too many families with picket fences, but its nice because its size makes sense.

Doll sit at the top step and hand me one of them metal crackers he took out one of them restaurants we go to when you cracking crab legs open all over the table, but I barely use it. Thats what I got a mouth for. I use my baby teeth to pop the pecan shells perfectly. I learn how to do it so fast I obsess over keeping up with the rhythm. It go: Bite. Crack. Pull apart. Chew. Throw. Eat. Repeat. Sometimes I move too fast and fail

to check the quality

of the shell before I consume it, and that be the worst day ever cause a rotten taste immediately swarms across the insides of my jaw. I let my tongue loose; let it all fall out from the back of my throat and cough; like Im born knowing how to spit things out quick and move on. Pecan shells. Sunflower seeds. People.

L.A. say I act like this because I got a takeover spirit and got a problem with organizing and orchestrating how everybody gotta spend they time in my presence. That I cant handle somebody not liking what I love without shutting down. How it makes me think something is wrong with myself. That I spend too much timespecificallytryna tell her what I dont wanna do when she the parent.

Im not tryna have a takeover spirit on purpose; its just I cant stand people suggesting what it is I need to do in general, let alone with my time. I need room to determine how I wanna do the things Im told. How I wanna go about cleaning my room. How I wanna dress today. I need time to figure out how I can curate the same results in a way thats pleasing to my personality. Something in my brain be telling me to do it slightly differently, slightly wrong, and long, and lonely. To take my time on all tasks asked of me until I get it right. L.A. say not doing what you toldnot listeningcan get you hurt or get you hit. But I been both a lot of times and aint die so I dont think its that big of a deal.

Its prolly why even though L.A. make the best pecan piesI never save her none in my sack. I eat em all and I swipe at my tongue with my fingers once I come across a bad one. I drag whats chewed up along the edge of the concrete step, sit and stare out into the main street at the curb, grab another pecan, hold it up, see if the darkness means sweet or burnt, then start my rhythm back upslowing it down only to check my work. I study it from all angles so I dont get surprised. I dont understand how this keep getting misinterpreted as disrespectful, or disobedient.

Disobedient is L.A.s favorite word to define children. She even write it on a piece of construction paper and pin it up on the living room wall with the rest of the words Im learning to spell like like, space, and leave. Sometimes she even make me use the words in a sentence; like if she lose something in our space, she gone say somebody stole it and if they dont confess right now, they gotta leave. She dramatic like that. She always end up taking em back tho. She real big on not lying and even bigger on forgiveness. L.A. real big on a lot of stuff, but not that good at handling what it means to see folk for who they is. Thats always hard for her. She always talking about how people can change.