Putting Up Peaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Dee Dee Risher

into my house. ”

“What do you mean?” I sense a shift in the cop ’ s voice. I realize I’d better pull the threads of middle class respectability together quickly. I stand up, haltingly, with some imbalance and fuzziness, but I stand.

“This is my house. I left it. I’ m being foreclosed on. Today. In about 45 minutes, it won ’t be my house, since it’ s going to sheriff’ s sale. But I just wanted to look around one last time. ” I feel something in my eye. I hope it’ s dirt, and not tears. I pull out my driver ’ s license, showing him both the old address and the little slip of paper from PennDOT showing my new address. He glances at them, hands them back to me, and stares at me.

“Is there someone in that house?”

“Why do you ask?”

“We ’ ve been having a problem with people moving into foreclosed houses. Bandos, they ’ re called. Short for abandoned. ” I didn ’t realize I was part of a trend.

“Is there someone in that house?” he asks again. “Is that how you got hurt?”

I think for a moment. No, that’ s not true. It’ s not really thinking. It’ s synapses reacting, firing madly and off-key.

“No. Nobody ’ s in there. ”

“Then how come there ’ s two cars in the driveway?”

“I don ’t know. I really don ’t. But there ’ s nobody in there. ”

“Well, if you say there ’ s nobody in there, and it’ s not going to be your house soon, I guess I’ll leave you here. ” Pause. “You sure I should go?”

“You can go. I’ m okay. I just—well, I just got sick, looking at my old place, and I sort of passed out. I hit my head and passed out. I’ m okay, though. You can go. ”

And he does.

And I stay until he leaves. Then I get in my car and drive to the courthouse.

I walk through the metal detectors, and then over to the old, ceremonial courtroom where they hold the sheriff’ s sales. I’d been here before, as my bank’ s rep, telling the attorney how much to bid, how high to go. Now I just take up space in the back row, all scratched and bleeding and beat up. I wait for my house to go on the block. The bank bids its costs. Nobody else says a word. The sheriff bangs the gavel.

I don ’t know what comes next.

Putting Up Peaches

Dee Dee Risher

We sit at the kitchen table, conversation as random as the peaches we choose from the bushel basket. Order does not matter— all will empty out in the end. Our histories are grafted.

This summer alchemy we learned in the bone of our childhood: the fruit already garnered from glossy leaves and blue sky, aligned on weathered, paint-cracked sills to wait the ripe of now— yesterday too soon, tomorrow too late.

We handle the soft flesh gently, stripping ruby skins to gold, honey-streaming, summer-soft words, recounting piecemeal what may this year be said. Our hands busy, there is always somewhere to look when bruises rise and the sweet juice at our wrists is salted with tears. These intimacies are as healed as ever they will be. We do not offer one another condolences— we are that honest.

Knives in strong, firm hands, we bend to our work and the telling which this December will gleam gold and secret on the pantry shelf.

Dee Dee Risher is a writer and editor living in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. For several years she was an editor of The Other Side, an independent progressive Christian magazine. She is originally from South Carolina.

As an attorney practicing consumer bankruptcy law in Lancaster, PA, Mitchell Sommers may be one of the few people in America to benefit from the economic policies of George Bush. Mitchell received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his law degree from Penn State Dickinson School of Law. He has had op-eds published in numerous Pennsylvania newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has had short stories published in Ellipsis and PHASE. He is currently fiction/nonfiction editor of Tatanacho, an online literary journal, and is working on a novel. He can be reached at sommersesq@aol.com.