Mandarin Dream

On tiptoes on the second to top rung of the wooden ladder pushed up against the tree trunk with the twist of wire in a sweating palm reaching stretching reaching checking every piece of fruit, rejecting those too small, plucking those that fit neat through the hooped wire, dropping them into the canvas basket clung around my neck. Flies all over my mouth. Burn all over my bare flesh. Am I allowed to pick the hard half green ones if they fit? Forgot to ask. Look at the other pickers, can’t see through the prism of mean. Size, twist, pick, drop, size, reject, size, reject, size, reject, size, twist, pick, drop, size, reject reject reject reject. Earn what you pick. Pick what you ken. Someone singing Waltzing Matilda in a German accent nine feet up. Canvas strap too tight chaffing around my neck. Basket not even a quarter full already. Baby blue seersucker shorts gapping at my behind. Ruined. Picker’s crack. Someone yelling shut up shut up bloody oath mate, you’re murdering it! nine feet up. German Matilda waltzing a stutter. Swabbing the sweat off my cheeks with my red cotton bandana looped around my wrist. Flies in amongst my teeth.Turn to watch the others skipping up and down their ladders with their full baskets and their grubby cricket hats and their long sleeves and their long pants marching to the central crates emptying their baskets trotting back, how are they doing that, so fast, what’s wrong with me? Inhale the leaves with their sweet oily citrus scent. Red tractor gulping down diesel, farting out reek. Twenty of us, maybe. Fifteen on the ladders, two overseeing the crates in the centre of the row, two in the tractor, foreman smoking a roll-up under his squalid Akubra hat. Young Israeli on the next tree but one given up, spreadeagled on his back in the dirt, laughing and pointing at the boiled sun, shirt rolled up to his armpits, livid purple scar trekking between nipples burnt. They’re all too small my mandarins, they’ve given me the weakest tree. Bastards. Earth head earth spinning, trees turning to sky turning to dust turning to orange to not enough money. 

Foreman shouting something about lunch. Climbing down, steady now steady. Leant up against the trunk in the jumbled shade eating peanut butter and jam on curled up bread.  And flying ants. Gulping sweet lemon squash from a glass milk bottle. 

Later, he soothes me, the German man, lie still little cat, he whispers, fingers pressing in on my blushing shoulders, his head tucked low beneath the upper bunk. $25 for 12 hours work. Not a tenth of what the Vietnam vets earn. I don’t even know his name. Aloe vera bubbling and spitting as he smears it over my my brazed neck and calves. Blood rushing to my face hanging off the bed staring at the squeezed out Aloe leaves scattered about the wooden floor with pull twists and metal bottle tops and two silver empty condom wrappers. Nobody said you don’t use the sizer to actually size the mandarins, it’s just a guide, now I know.

The fastest pickers are the Vietnam vets, his mate on the stool across from the bunks says. Take a leaf out of their book.

On my belly and his hand stretching into where it shouldn’t and I want to say no, no but no words come and and his bare left toes toy with an empty Aloe leaf lift release lift release.

You’d be better off in the packing shed, sweetheart, the mate on the stool says. Orchard’s for the big girls.

His heavy hand reaching, sizing, twisting, picking.

Their body hair grows through their jeans, what with them never taking them off, not even in the sea, them Vietnam vets, the mate on the stool says.

How do I get in the packing shed, I ask the floor, pushing my belly down through the mattress, pushing me away from him.

Girl on the upper bunk leans over, dangles her arm, strokes his hair, chipped blue nail varnish, tattoo of a tiger on her palm. 

Gotta prove yourself, she says. 

He sits up, bangs his head on the upper bunk, rubs his scalp.

Fuck this, he says, climbing the ladder up to her. Stuck to his sole the Aloe leaf, a prism of clean.