Scary Movie
Remember the mango trees by my front yard that were hit by Typhoon Ambo? The concrete road in front of my house was like a carpet of mango fruits. Heaps! And they were for harvesting that day.
A mango vendor came last week and wanted to buy them for 6k pesos – for all the fruits they can pick from the three big trees by my front yard’s concrete fence: Pico and carabao varieties. No way, I said to Boben, one of my two gardeners. Would we settle for 8k pesos? We’ll call you, we said. No rush, I told Boben. Someone might come along with a better offer, he said. Precisely!
“Di pa po masyado magulang, konting panahon pa”(not too mature yet; needs a bit longer), my gardener told the buyer. He remembered the time we bought a basket of green mangoes from a neighbor. They took so long to ripen, and when they did, they were already panat (wrinkled) and tasted bland. With that in mind, we decided not to sell until Typhoon Ambo.
“You should have accepted the offer,” friends told me after the typhoon. “Naghangad ng kagitna, isang salop ang nawala,” some were quick to quote a Tagalog saying about greed, where you wanted more and lost much in the process. Oh, never mind, I said. I can always make burong manga (pickled green mangoes). There was enough left hanging in the trees anyway. And shit with the 8k pesos! I’d rather bake mango crumbles every waking moment to feed my family and friends until the pharmacies in town run out of insulin than settle for less money. Better be greedy than sorry? You bet.
I was awakened as early as 7:30 a.m. today by a knock on my bedroom door. My cousin. Ostensibly, the mango dealer was in the neighborhood picking mangoes and saw my other gardener on his way to work. He still wants to buy my mangoes, and he can pick them up today for 6k pesos. Seven, I murmured, still half asleep. I stood up 15 minutes later, headed to the bathroom, and started showering when I heard a knock on the door — my cousin again. It was the mango dealer, she said. He wanted to see me.
“I don’t want to see him,” I yelled. “7k, nothing less!” Or 6k, Ok? I asked myself. I grabbed a towel to wrap around me and hurried down to see the guy. I saw him talking to my other gardener.
“Seven thousand,” I said in a rather harsh tone as I approached him. I saw the stunned expression on the mango dealer’s face. Recovering quickly from the trance, he took his wallet out from his trousers’ pocket, counted 7k peso bills, and handed them to my gardener. And just like that, he left—presumably to tell his pickers they can begin with the picking. I was astonished; I thought he had come to negotiate on the price.
It must have been how I looked to him. No doubt it was. Back in the bathroom, I saw myself in the mirror, face still covered with soap suds. Must have scared the living daylights out of him.
