“It’s like pesting, sounds to me.”
“Similar.”
“What’s your name?”
“You can call me grandpa.”
“No, I can’t. I already have two grandpas, one here and one on Long Island. So I’d better call you something else, like your name for instance.”
“Okay, how about Mr. Cassandra?”
“Is that your really truly name?”
“Close enough. It’s my spiritual name. Everyone has many names. They come and go like the tides. On Mondays, I am called Harold.”
Annamay was beginning to feel uneasy, so she put her sneakers back on. At this signal both dogs stood up and Newf shook his head back and forth, sending spit flying several yards in each direction.
“See?” the man said. “My system even works on kids and dogs.”
The avocado grove had two seasons. In winter the Fuertes ripened, with their shiny smooth skin still green. In summer it was the Hass variety with rough black skin and fruit that spread like butter. Annamay couldn’t understand why people laughed when her father referred to the place as half Hass ranch, and when she repeated it at school the teacher bit her lower lip as though she were trying to prevent it from smiling.
Summer brought the most visitors, not only because the fruit was more luscious but because there were more hitchhikers along the freeway linking San Diego to San Francisco. The hitchhikers were often hungry and they came to pick up windfalls from the ground or even pluck the fruit right off the trees. Annamay never served avocados when she entertained because she thought they tasted like the face cream her mother kept on her dressing table.
One of the hitchhikers, a girl, must have shared Annamay’s opinion for she seemed much more interested in the palace than in the fruit. While the man with her filled his backpack and pockets, the girl walked around the palace smiling, touching. Annamay had learned about babies at school and from her cousin Dru and so she knew there was a baby growing inside the girl, who kept saying, “Oh wow, look at this, Phil. Real electric lights and an honest-to-God barbecue pit. I wonder if some child actually lives here.”
“No,” Phil said. “It’s probably a playhouse for some spoiled brat.”
Annamay stepped out the door and announced in a regal manner that she was not a spoiled brat but a princess.
“No kidding,” the man said. He was pale and very thin, probably from some dread disease Chizzy would know about. But he had a nice smile and a heart tattooed on his forearm. “So where’s your crown?”
“Princesses don’t wear crowns except on festive occasions.”
“This is festive enough for me. I’m eating.”
The girl laughed and said, “Don’t tease her, Phil. She’s a doll, simply a doll.”
In the light of Marietta’s missing hair and Luella Lu’s glued eye and tooth-marked limbs this was a dubious compliment. But the girl’s tone had been admiring and Annamay blushed modestly. “No, I’m not.”
“Hey, do you mind if we take some of your avocados?” “You already did.”
“Oh, so you’re a smart one too. All right, do you mind if we take some more?”
“I don’t mind—”
“Gee, thanks a heap.”
“—but Chizzy does. Because of the root rot.”
This warning might have had little effect on the young couple if Chizzy hadn’t suddenly appeared on cue. She came rushing around the side of the lath house carrying a hoe and screaming blue murder. Chizzy’s voice sent birds fluttering out of trees and cats slinking away from gopher holes and the young couple tearing off down the hill. The girl fell at the bottom and cried out and the young man had to pick her up and carry her across the creek. He wasn’t very big to begin with and he staggered under the load of a backpack filled with avocados and woman filled with child.
“Chizzy, are we rich?”
“Richer than some, not as rich as others.”
“Why don’t we let people come and eat the avocados?” “Because.”
“I hate becauses.”
“Becauses are necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Chizzy said, looking pleased with herself.
Then she explained for about the fiftieth time about root rot and how strangers coming into the grove might carry the fungus on their shoes and all the trees would sicken and die.
“Could the girl give root rot to her baby?”
“Yes, and to you too, if you don’t stop talking to strangers. Where are the dogs? They’re supposed to be protecting you.”
“I commanded them to chase the garbage man.”
Chizzy wiped her face with her apron and made an exasperated little noise that sounded like a towhee in the underbrush. “Oh, I’ll be glad when summer’s over and you’re back in school. All this worrying and scurrying after you is too much for a woman my age.”
“How old are you?”
“Older than some and not as old as others.”
The dogs returned, doubly smug because they had obeyed a royal command and at the same time rid the neighborhood of a scoundrel who stole garbage.
“What did I tell you about talking to strangers?”
“The same as always.”
“Why, I even made up that poem. Took me the better part of two nights and I bet you don’t even remember it.”
“I do so.”
“All right then, recite it, word for word.”
It was a very bad poem with unpredictable rhythms and rhymes but Chizzy was extremely proud of it and loved to hear it recited.
Annamay recited the poem, making only two mistakes, while Chizzy listened, her eyes moist with pride. She dabbed them with a corner of her apron.
“It’s not much of a poem,” she said deprecatingly. “But it packs a wallop. Nobody who hears it will ever forget it.” Then she recited the final lines in a deep doomsday voice:
“What if I have a broken leg and can’t run away because of the heavy cast?”
“You don’t have a broken leg.”
“Or maybe a sprained ankle.”
She didn’t have a broken leg or sprained ankle, she didn’t run away, there was no stranger.
Annamay’s favorite visitor was Benjamin York. Perhaps because he had designed the palace to begin with, he played the royal game to the hilt. Calling himself the Duke of York, he always bowed deeply when he entered the palace to give the princess a token of affection from her loyal subjects. He often stayed for afternoon tea or a rousing game of old maid or snakes and ladders. His losses at these games were so frequent that eventually Annamay became suspicious.
“You’re cheating, Benjie.”
“Cheating, Your Highness? Now why would anyone cheat to lose? People cheat to win.”
“Not you.”
“Forsooth, I am deeply humiliated by the accusation and I feel I deserve an apology.”
“Oh bull.”
“You mustn’t say that.”
“My cousin Dru says it all the time.”
“Your cousin Dru hears it all the time. You don’t.”
“Well, I can’t see what’s the matter with it. It’s just like saying oh dog or oh cat.”
“Then say oh dog or oh cat.”
“I prefer bull. It sounds lighter to me.”