TODAY I WILL HANG MYSELF in the backyard. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of this. Every day I do something and this is what I have scheduled for today. Yesterday I ate a peach. I hadn’t had a peach in years, I don’t think, since I was a child. The night before I remembered that my mother would bring home peaches from the grocer whenever they were in season. So I put on my trousers, found a clean shirt buried under some newspapers, and walked to the grocer where I picked out the peach I thought looked best. I remembered to squeeze the peaches as I was trying to decide which one to purchase. I remembered that peaches could be too hard or soft and that neither was a good idea. My mother is the one who taught me how to pick out peaches this way. She said that someday she wouldn’t be around to take care of me and my brothers and sisters and someone needed to know how to pick out peaches. This never did happen, though. Mother was always around to take care of us and I think she still is today. What I mean is I think she is still around, not that she is still taking care of us. At this point she probably can’t even take care of herself. I imagine she’d have to be close to a hundred years old now. I haven’t seen nor heard from her in years. I tried not to think about my mother or who might be taking care of her as I was picking out my peach. There wasn’t anyone around when I was testing the peaches and for this I was grateful. I don’t like to see anyone touching the fruit and I’m sure they feel the same about me. The peach I eventually did pick out seemed to have the perfect texture and tone. I was both pleased and confident as I walked to the cashier. After paying for the peach I took it home so I could rinse it properly. My mother taught us how to rinse a peach under cold water. She said we should never rub a peach on our shirt because it would bruise. She said we could clean an apple that way, but not a peach. This didn’t matter to me because I never cared for apples. My mother would bring apples home from the grocer, but I refused to eat them. I told her I found apples to be disagreeable. This always upset my mother, whenever I said something like this. She said I didn’t make any sense, that I was an idiot like my father. I didn’t know what this meant exactly, if he didn’t care for apples, either. My mother was often upset and my brothers and sisters and I always had to be careful whenever she was around, which was all the time. Mother never left us unattended. She didn’t trust us. I don’t blame her. I didn’t trust us, either. I considered saving the peach for dinner but decided to eat it right after the rinsing. The first bite held great promise, as my teeth broke the skin and penetrated the inner fruit. As I started to chew, however, I realized that the peach looked better than it tasted. I tried another bite, thinking perhaps it might get better as I kept going. It didn’t. I felt cheated, as anyone might imagine. I felt as though I had let myself down, that I’d let my mother down, that I should’ve known better. I’m not saying this is the reason I’m going to hang myself in the backyard today, of course. I’ve been planning to hang myself for a while now. Countless others have done likewise and I’m no different, not by any measure.
