One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street (14 page)

And just enough time for the mysterious stranger to lean against the front seat of his green car, parked at the corner of the street for the best sunset view, and open his birthday gift.

Peel it, actually.

“Tastes just as I remember it,” he said to himself. Mostly sweet, but tart, like happiness and sadness mixed together.

he deep quiet of the Los Angeles night drowned out the sirens, the shouts, the thudding of helicopters, and the whoosh of cars driving by. On that particular night on Orange Street, the stillness was so loud it was like a whisper in your ear. You leaned way, way out the window and drank in the cool desert air, wondering what woke you up. The orange tree, its fruit lit by the moon, caught your eye. And then, your ear.

am the oldest living resident on Orange Street. I, alone, the Valencia, know everything about this street. A blue stone, a dug-up jar, a “ghost,” an orange cone—these are bits and pieces of someone's story I could tell.

And if I could speak, I would tell you mine.

From the city of Valencia, Spain, hundreds of years ago, Spanish seafaring explorers brought my ancestral seeds to the New World. Columbus, Ponce de León, de Soto, they all loved the fruit of Valencia! Orange groves sprang up in the Caribbean and the Florida wilderness, and soon, around the missions of California. The
other
California gold, that's what my orange ancestors were called.

And once, long ago, before the malls were built and the freeways crisscrossed the area, I was one of six hundred Valencias standing in Mr. Stott's orange grove. Orange blossoms fluttered in the wind, like big sweet snowflakes. When the fruit ripened, you could smell it fifty miles away.

I am a Valencia. That means my fruit has a seed or two. All right, sometimes three or four, or more.

I remember hearing Mr. Stott complain, “My customers are much too busy to spit seeds—there's talk of a miracle orange, no seeds at all!”

We Valencias shivered at those words. Would those strange seedless orange trees replace us? We reminded one another that our fruit was the most delicious of all, seeds or no seeds.

That was the year the Santa Ana winds blew down from the hills, hotter and drier than ever.

“My water bills are sky-high!” complained old man Stott.

We shivered again. Would less thirsty crops, like avocados, say, or strawberries or crape myrtle trees replace us?

Then came a drought and things got worse! Aphids crawled among our drooping leaves. We suffered disease. Winter winds whipped through our branches, which
nicked the fruit. We were frostbitten. Oranges withered and dropped.

“I've had it!” said Mr. Stott, who dreamed of wearing a tall hat to cover his bald spot, and fancy suits and shiny shoes, instead of overalls and boots.

Over the years, one by one, he began to rip out the Valencias, chopping the wood for cordwood, replacing the trees with a new crop. As a tribute to my fallen brethren, Mr. Stott named this street Orange. I say its true name is Street of Blossoms, Gone Forever.

And what was that new crop? Houses! A grove of houses. And, eventually, a fire station, a warehouse, a McDonald's, a strip mall, a school . . . I am the only orange tree remaining, saved by old man Stott's young neighbor, Ethel Finneymaker, who lived across the street.

“Mr. Stott, please, please, please let this tree live!” young Ethel had pleaded. She and her friend Gertrude liked to climb to my topmost branch and hang upside down from their bony knees.

When old man Stott died, Mrs. Stott sold this last little plot, which has had fourteen tenants and three owners over the years.

If I could speak, I would tell you everything. When I sense danger, I can only hope. Yet, truly, I am so grateful for the time, for all the moments of my long and fruitful life. I spend my daylight hours watching and counting and remembering:

Five marriage proposals under my branches. Two yeses, three nos.

One backyard wedding, another rained out.

Fifty-eight babies cooing beneath me.

Seventeen small graves scattered nearby: cats, a macaw, a puppy, turtles, and assorted fish.

Two hundred and fifty-three barbecues.

Nine lightning bolts that just missed me.

Two hundred and one balls that didn't.

Three fires on the property.

One thousand gallons of morning juice.

Two runaway girls whispering in sleeping bags.

Nine broken arms, three broken legs, five sprained wrists, seventy-three bruises.

And the countless poems and drawings I've inspired.

And the earthquake tremors (only one causing branches to crack).

And the morning sunrises, some more amazing than others.

And all the crawling, buzzing, pecking, swooping, chattering beings I've sheltered.

As the night air cools, I stop counting. Instead I think about all your stories buried deep in the clay soil, nourishing my tough, old roots.

arry and Pug were brothers, but if you happened to see them together on Orange Street in 1967, you wouldn't even think they were related. Not that they really hung out together. Larry could finish his homework in thirty minutes flat, which gave him plenty of time to race out the door and play ball with his friends. He was good at that.

His little brother, Pug, was mostly good at collecting rocks, drawing, and dreaming. Pug had a turned-up nose, so everyone called him Pug. “Slow” was something else that they called Pug, and “strange,” too. (No one would use those names in front of Larry, of course, or they would have been punched out.)

Pug had an icy-blue stone, which he'd found on the beach in Santa Monica, and he was always taking it out of his pocket, holding it up to the sun. He said it brought him good luck because it was heart-shaped.

“It doesn't even look like a heart,” Larry said.

But Pug said, “It only looks like a heart to the person who finds it. That's what makes it special.”

The way Larry figured it, it was as if a giant hand threw a bunch of their parents' genes up into the air. When the genes landed, some of those genes became Larry, and some became Pug. It was all luck, and Pug's stone wasn't helping him much. Larry knew he'd gotten the better deal.

Larry was tall and speedy like his mom, Marisa. Pug got her red hair, except his mother's was long enough to sit on. But you hardly ever found Marisa just sitting around. She did everything speedily, including her cooking and cleaning. Sometimes the boys would come home from school and find her on her hands and knees, using orange halves to wash the kitchen floor, rocking back and forth with the beat from the kitchen radio, or her own singing. (Like Larry, her favorite group was The Beatles; her favorite song was “Santa Maria” because that was her hometown.) Only the nice, clean smell remained when the stickiness was
washed off. She baked pies with tender crusts, and cakes with frosted pictures on top because she loved to draw, like Pug. She made lots of ambrosia, Larry's and Pug's favorite dessert—ambrosia made of oranges, coconut, and sugar, all layered together in a sugary glop. Everyone said it was the best around—even Ethel Finneymaker across the street, who gave Marisa Tilley the recipe. That's because Marisa used the sweetest oranges from the highest branches of the backyard tree, which, believe it or not, she could reach, with the help of her long fruit pole—except for one big orange at the very top.