Red Cherries and Mottled Beans

Her skin was the color of sand after a rain storm and as smooth as a shell. On that morning her finger tips were as if they had been dipped in red wine. It was the season for cherries and how she loved cherries. She popped them in her tiny mouth and spit the pits out into her hands all afternoon. And now the bread would be kneed with her juice stained hands, lending a new and subtle sweetness to the dough. Her children wouldn’t notice and either would The Tempest.

                The Tempest, or as he as more commonly known, her husband, would be home from the sea this afternoon and she wanted to make something special. So that morning she went down to the wharf to pick up the usual amounts of lemons and flour and yeast. But she also bought a pound of almonds and several handfuls of dark cherries. It took all her will power to not eat the while of them on her way back up the dusty streets and spit the pits into ditches and side streets alike. She would pray to the ruby red god who looked after all fruits with a pitted center that they would grow and she could have cherries rain on her every time she made her way to the early simmer market.

                She allowed herself only three of the nearly black spheres on her way home. The first one she ate right away. Its tight skin split so easy with the closing of her jaws. The savored the release of sweet and mildly tart juice. With her tongue she muscled the flesh away from the stone, the seed. Once cleared of every fiber she-- with as much femininity as she could muster--- spit the pit into her palm and tucked it into a fold in her sari.

                This fold she created specifically for seeds and pit of fruits she loved. Countless cherry pits found their way into the pocket. Beans that were mottled with purples, blues and grays once filled the secret space. She found them at a market as she traveled west, the basket was spilling over with these beauties and she vowed to plant them in whatever garden she would call home. When she reached the sea side village on the Mediterranean and married the tempest, she buried the seeds and tended them with as much care as she could.

The spade shaped leaved climbed all the way up a ladder leaning against the house and bunched like a great crown on the eves. She was still learning the language of these people and there for named them in her native Sanskrit: sahasrara, one thousand one thousand. The vines gave off hundreds of beautiful purple and white flowers in the early heat of summer and the pods the extended form them were long and slender. They were plan green and were deceiving. Who would have thought that such a common and simple looking plant would yield thousands of pearl like beans with such colors?  When the rains subside and the dry season is upon them, the green selves shrink back and cling to the seeds within, like a string of beads that lives. Finally when the time is right, the seams open up and one thousand beans tumble to the ground below. They were prefect in their dented ovular shape, swirled and splotched with purples and navies, and whites.

In time, the children would help her collect them into clay vessels. In the coarse of things, they would get board to collecting them into bowls and find them perfect for throwing at one another. Intercepting a flying troop of mottled projectiles, she scolds them gently and reminds them that this is their dinner and is not meant to be thrown around. They would cease for the day but come the next and the day after that, they would see them fit for pelting each other again. But she knows this and will, in her best attempts, make their lives happy and nondestructive, especially when it comes to the garden and their meals.

But when the cherries fall from they’re boughs daily, the beans are just several leaves and two tendrils wrapped around the legs of the ladder.