2023 Short Story & Essay Contest: Honorable Mention, Adult Essay Contest
The insurance company asks for proof of damage. They accept photos and descriptions. I offer them everything:
The roof is missing shingles, but is still structurally a roof. The pool has debris at the bottom, and will likely end up stained, but the pool was only ever for the kids anyhow, and no one swims in the winter. Probably the hardest picture to look at are the ones of the mango trees. The branches are all gone, and all that’s left are trunks with stubs, smooth at the top from where they have been sawed off. I had to look twice to even recognize the barely there mango trees.
I see what we still have left, but Mom sees what she’s lost. She’s lost a lot in her lifetime—her country when she immigrated here, her husband a few years ago—so maybe this is just how she’s been trained to see.
I want to send photos of the day the foundation was poured on our house. Dad’s smile could not have been wider. Mom and Dad spent years working at least two jobs to afford the land and the house. If they could plant trees, they could feed themselves, and then we’d be OK.
In that house I hosted my very first birthday parties. I made up a game called “find the pennies,” and for years afterward, we found pennies all over the house. I didn’t know enough to be embarrassed; I thought that my creativity could make up for what we didn’t have financially.
But no magical thinking will bring back the mango trees, not immediately, not for a very long time.
Will the insurance company pay for the time Mom spent driving home after standing in line for hours at the grocery store, only to be told they ran out of ice? Mom stopped her car on the way home to check on a woman she recognized from morning walks. The woman’s house was fine, and her solar panels meant that she never lost power. She asked Mom how she was doing, and Mom told her all that she lost.
She took Mom in, let her charge her phone. She gave Mom ice. She sent her husband to the house, and he dragged the heavy trash cans full of shingles and branches to the curb. He filled Mom’s car with gas. He—this man that my Mom just met—did for her what I imagine Dad would have done if he were still here. He did what I wished the insurance company would do.
Now Mom has time to worry about things other than the house.
“Mom, what do you need all this ice for?” I ask her, knowing that she is eating sardines because the grocery stores have run out of fresh food.
“The dried mango. So many bags of dried mango,” she responds.
The trees are gone, maybe, but Mom still has bags of mango from last year’s harvest, and she is never letting them go.
