“These two are red. I saved them for you, Al-eehn-na,” my grandma calls in her loud lullaby voice, lulling me past the green weeds and scattered tops of fruit. Foreign fruits, ones with fire scales that protrude from their bark and have a bitter aftertaste. They don’t have these at home. My hands reach to where she points and I try to tear the fruit from its leafy harness. Prick. A hundred microscopic blades of the stem swim deep into the skin of my thumb, and I feel their flames eating my skin like piranhas. The pain is like crushed bits of broken glass, sharp stinging at first but now minimal and fading. I turn to my grandma, she only shakes her head, licks her finger and brushes them out. Sharpness is back for a moment-the extra dive of each thorn pushes before it pops out. “Be more careful,” she says through the thin string she holds between her teeth, while she expertly plucks four fruit off of a branch by using another string, wrapping it around the fruit’s stem and suffocating it until it dies off. Twist, lock, pull. Another falls into her basket. I suck my finger, and watch her for a while. The sour heat electrocutes the already bronze skin on my arms, and my grandmother’s garden offers no shaded mercy. “My finger hurts a lot,” I wine. I hate this. She lets me sit down on a plastic yard chair. The only thing that keeps me sane is thought of leaving. Two more days and I will be where I belong. Then school will start and I can fall back into life’s usual line without room for a mere thought of this dreadful place in my head. I rub the space between my eyebrows, but it never quite smoothes. This place is going to give me wrinkles. I can’t help but let my mind wander across the world, giving in to my heart who tugs me home, to my cloud bed, and the salty sea-mist blowing in a round, soft, hum through the car window. I have been robbed. Of my life, of my summer. My grandma turns to me expectantly, and says something slowly, her hands and head motioning toward the fruit. “Nee lai shr-shr.” Your turn. I pretend I didn’t hear her for a second. “Hmm, what? Oh, me!” There was nobody else around. She makes her twist, lock, pull motion in the air and nods me over. She hands me her thin string and her wrinkled hands lay atop my baby skin as they guide me through the motions. Twist, lock, pull, and a fat red spike plops into our basket. The past few days I have lazied around and eaten fruit she handed me, but this was the first fruit that my hands have helped. I let the sound ring- satisfying and full, like the dull thud of stone dropping into water. My grandmother looks up at me, her eyes buried by cheek and cheek buried by teeth from her smile and doesn’t let go of my hands even though the branches around us are barren and our basket is full. Her hands gently squeeze my fingers. Her eyes drown me in pride, not for the fruit, I know, but a concentrated pride of every good moment and achievement I have accomplished over the past year that she wishes she could have seen. I suffocate. I feel her heart throbbing. It feels like a twisting knife. Piranhas, once more, nibble at the skin inside my stomach until suddenly nibbles are stabbing gulps and my body is a pit. When her hands finally release me, my guilt does not. I let them slip into their grasp once again, and hold her there. I love you grandma, I want to say, but I choke. I squeeze her hands back and I know, she knows.