growing fruit.

on days playing from dawn to dusk, on long sidewalks observing the sun descend and our shadows elongate.

banana slugs radiantly a lit below our cheap flashlights, gasping after sunset, ochre shades smattered with burnt sienna.

persistent hours in the library, consuming whole books in a day, hunched over, ‘how a girl grows because you’re not allowed in sexed’.

repetitive sundrenched days in the pool, yet never learning how to swim, cold freezies numbing our mouths blue, swarthy brown backs at home time.

every board game and bed time story sponsored by, “i have to work”, “don’t open the door” and “being an immigrant doesn’t pay”.

but she always asked if we were hungry, just not for what. the table forever adorned with stainless steel bowls of okanagan fruit.

grating my teeth behind the bollywood video rental, i’m no madhuri and this is not an adoring story song and dance number.

my brother educates me, “all the pain girls feel is their period”, he’s seven and watches me and my sister all day, he must be right. 

i hesitantly let the rainers stain my shorts, a surreptitious interaction,  i heave them repeatedly in the garbage. i grow to despise the teenager across the street.

we watch horror movies all day, we know all the time slots as we snack on wild blueberries, parental ratings weren’t made for us. i’m no longer terrified even when awake at night.

i’d see her for a moment running b/w jobs, a stranger in our own house, bowls of overflowing sweet watermelon perfected in bc sun.

some days, we’d try to cook on our own, crispy scrambled eggs, thinking the shells were chicken feet, disturbed at the thought we’d keep crunching, filling our bellies with roaming hens to feed the wolves.

over soaking lentils, satisfying bellies on glossy mail order cookbooks of risottos and roasts, we read cookbooks every day, biting fresh bartlett pear juice dripping down our chins.

sometimes the male counterpart, even more foreign would arrive with suitcases of musty souvenirs, avoiding reading us books in an alien language.

spending pd days in school, watching the caterpillars cocooning, eavesdropping on parent-teacher interviews, unsure what to say why we came to school that day.

i knew when i came home, there would be a bowl of fresh market apricots waiting to greet me in apology. 

living in perpetual segregation, each bite suffocated and smothered tears under shades of violet plums, indigo berries and blush nectarines.

i only now see the bountiful joy of food as the bridge my mother created, affectionate in the only way permissible.

the simplicity of a warm hug and i love you, lost yet liberated in each cold bite of cantaloupe, handful of berries, and stone fruits.

yet, i remained deficient, what i lacked, she reflected previous. each moment of warmth taken from me, taken previously from her, as child and as mother. 

she’s right, ‘being an immigrant doesn’t pay well’, but it built us with resilience and strength, just drowning in survival, and spirit to endure.

days spent free from tired routine filled with creative play, each temporary bite, forcing us work together and rely on each other with an unparallel fierceness of wild wolves. 

every day hungering for adventure, a story, an experience, an exciting moment, as the grizzly sun would paint the flowers gold and we’d wander howling till our lungs were sore and close to collapse. famished for an adult connection.

each night, dreaming of swimming as orcas in the vast pacific ocean, where mom and babe remain in a simply braided existence to the ocean waves, the job - sole protection and nurturance.   

always a table full of fruit, beautiful yet imperfect, familiar, and each bite a longing presence.

Amritha York (she/her/ they/them) is a Torontonian queer, Indian, RN, new mother and womxn. Amritha writes from her own life experiences of traumas, loss, poverty, and race and the resiliency in overcoming these. She hopes to push how we use storytelling out of stuffy exclusivity into generationally healing words of comfort.