"Hey Mom, can you cut up that mango?"
Kaylee's request comes from behind a load-bearing wall that would be long gone if it wasn't load-bearing. So do the frantic clicks of a mouse and the pitter-patter of arrow keys which come from the computer game she's almost lost in. Her mother sighs and takes some of the weight off her back by placing two firm hands on the kitchen counter. She looks around at the dishes left dirty - dishes from a lunch she had made, by the way. And she looks further around to see the mango she earned the money to go and take time out of her day to buy at the market, and how it is flush with the carmine of ripeness, especially where it is tucked up to the corner made from one part bread box and one part backsplash.
She smiles to herself - something wry - before pushing off into a tortoise's ballerina turn and across the sea. Around the island and then to the tropics on the other side. Mangoes and spices dash the place, heat still emanates from the stovetop nearby. She grabs the mango she was looking at - the ripest one, fingernails puncturing its wrinkled ruby skin, and next to it a paring knife she also brings into her possession before embarking on the return trip.
Back at the cutting board, she restrains her urge to push the teetering towers of plates and utensils aside, and rather moves them one-by-one to the stainless sink. She doesn't bother washing her hands afterward, she just goes at the fruit. Choking up on the hilt she brushes its curves with the flat of the blade, cooing. When she finally wrenches it around so it pierces the flesh, she hisses. Meat oozes from the wounds, and a smile oozes from her lips. She slices slowly, savoring each passing cut. The wedges dropping to the cutting board and just splattering enough so they look like dismembered guts - skins peeling off and leaving their arched backs vulnerable. She draws a plate from a cabinet and sets it down, and transfers the guts across in big gushing handfuls, then she takes the dish up, and walks out of the countertop maze, and around that load-bearing wall, taking only a quick look at the computer screen as she slides the snack onto the desk and toward her daughter, "Here you go, dear."
