THE GIRL WHO LIKED PEARS

Years ago I saw her at the local food store, scoping out the pears. She was very small, and looked to be in her early teens. As I reached past her to grab a few for myself, I casually said "you should buy some, they're very good".
Later I saw her at the other check-out stand with two pears of her own in a plastic vegetable bag. It was all she bought.

Occasionally over the next few months I would see her again, usually in the fruit and vegetable department.
She almost always bought pears.
I'm sure she also bought one or two other things, but the pears were a constant.

Once when I passed the bus shelter up the block I could see her sitting down, using both hands to eat a juicy pear.
Guiltily she looked up and noticed me.
I smiled, she smiled. Then she returned to her pear.

A few months later, at the store, I asked her what she liked so much about pears.


"They aren't apples!"


She said this as if it was a revealed truth, with awe in her voice.
She admitted that she had never eaten pears before I told her to buy some.
She was happy that I had encouraged her to take that chance.

We didn't talk much that time.
I would have liked to, but it just isn't a good idea for an adult man to have a long conversation with a teenager, as I assumed her to be.
Especially a pretty teenager.

Several weeks later I ran into her again. More pears. Sometimes you found a pear with a rotten spot inside, she informed me, so you really had to examine each pear carefully. She was serious about this. Pears were very important.
As an afterthought, she mentioned that she often took a pear to SF State in the morning.

Interesting - she looked like a thirteen or fourteen year old, small and slender, no overt curves. University already? So I asked her what she was studying.
Predictably, it was business administration, already in the third year.
Many Chinese-Americans who go to SF State study that, or accounting.

"But I'm also majoring in American Literature - Southern writers!"

She didn't look college-age, didn't particularly sound like it either.
But what do I know? Chinese women often look younger than they are.
Even when they are quite elderly they are often well-preserved, having far fewer wrinkles than the average white woman of the same years, whose face may look like a road map of the Sierras.

I wished her well in her studies, then went into another aisle to finish my shopping.


One time I asked her why all she seemed to purchase was a few pears. Turns out that for most things she went to Stockton Street on the other side of the hill, so many more vegetables, and better prices.
But hardly any pears. Pears she bought here. She loved pears.

I told her about a pear orchard that a friend's father owned in North-Brabant when I was still living there. In April the trees would bloom, delicate little five-petalled white blossoms with a faint fragrance. Singly they don't really make much of an impression on the nose, but thousands of them together, ah, that truly smells like spring! It was ever so pleasant to walk in the shade of the trees and look up, where the morning sunlight gave radiance to the massed white specks. The grass underneath would still be cold and wet, but the warming air would carry the essence down among the trunks. Brabant in spring is beautiful.
After a few weeks the petals would fall, swirling and eddying. The area under the trees would still be cool and shady, because all the leaves had come out.

"But what about the fruit? When do they grow fruit?"

' The fruit is clearly discernible by summer, and ripens by September. Though some fruit is still developing as late as October. No, they don't gather all the fruit, but let some of it simply fall to the ground.
Then they would let the old horse that they didn't have the heart to send to the knackers into the orchard, to graze among the tall grass and nibble pears. '

"How nice that they let the horse retire - it must have enjoyed it's old age!"

' Yes, I think it did. In winter it stayed in the stable, with a nice thick blanket over it to keep it warm. Old horses can get arthritic, you see. My friend and his sister would visit it every day to make sure it was comfortable, and they'd bring it some pears to eat. '

She was absolutely enchanted by the idea that, somewhere in Europe, there was an old grey horse, in the autumn of its years, being cared for and happily munching fruit. The next time she saw me she mentioned the horse. And the time after that.
She hoped it had plenty of pears to eat.

What I never told her was that the horse had been alive twenty years before, it had surely "gone to sleep" a long time past.
I just didn't have the heart to mention it.
The idea of an elderly horse contentedly wandering through a shady orchard is such a happy thought.

One evening, when I saw her at the store again, I mentioned that I would be going back to the Netherlands for a few weeks soon. She told me to make sure to visit the horse and feed it some pears.
I promised I would.

Didn't meet her again for several months.

Then one day in spring, when I got on the bus, she was in one of the seats near the back.
Turns out she had moved out of the area - her parents had finally bought a house, out in the avenues, so she seldom came to the neighborhood anymore. She would be graduating soon, but planned to keep living at home for a while. It was a nice house, and it had a yard.

Her dad had even promised to plant a pear tree for her. She was very much looking forward to that. Yes, she realized it might be a few years before it fruited, but it would be so lovely when it did.
And she would finally find out what pear blossoms smelled like!

I haven't seen her since then.


She still looked too small and slender to be an adult.
It's hard to imagine her all grown up and graduated.

She's almost certainly married by now, probably even has children.

I hope she's told them about the horse, and an orchard in autumn, and sweet ripe pears.



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