Indigenes of Rio Hondo often referred to me as the poorest, ragged girl, but I could barely fight anyone over it or prove them wrong in any pragmatic way because, literally, I was poor.
My poor father died when I was six. Mother said he died mysteriously, but whenever she mentioned that I often understood her empathy, after she must have elaborated, he died out of the depression of poverty. With nothing to fall back on, we relocated to our grandpa's house to perch with him. Not that he was richer, but he was poorer. Daily we clung to the jaw of hunger and want, since the meager vegetable garden he groomed could barely sprout enough produce, let alone make it to the market.
Grandpa died and opened the door of intense lack for us as we looked forward to joining him soon. Inheriting a poorly grooved vegetable garden and a fragile, roofless, thatched, cane house, we waited for the hands of death to pay us homage soon.
It didn't stop us from going to the market anyway. While others sold their vegetables and smiled home with big pockets of coins, mom and I wailed inwardly and returned home the same way we came. Every day we came to the market not to sell vegetables but to enjoy just the trill that hung over the market.
Soon mom became sick. With no penny for her diagnosis, I could only describe her sickness in my own little way. Please, I entreat your sympathy! And don't call me names! Now listen while I describe her sickness in this maxim; 'everyday she grew bigger.'
I almost thought her sickness was related to the dawn of every day because she swelled by the day, so whenever I went on my knees to pray, I often prayed she didn't see the next day.
Mom stayed back home and waited for the hands of death to clamp her away while I went to the market to sell the less patronized vegetables in Rio Hondo.
"Please, could you patronize me? I haven't sold even a bunch since this summer!" I wailed at a customer, who almost gave me the cold shoulders.
"Go to hell with your poison!" the customer beamed.
"Eat your poison, Melissa!" Another snapped and rolled her eyes.
"It is as poor as you are!" the other emphasized.
And I bowed my head in shame and scorn, not until I heard a lad echo into my hearing.
"I need vegetables for my dog!"
I sprang to my feet like a cat. "I am available!" I gasped; that would be my first customer in six months.
"Give them to me free of charge for my dog," the lad protested, peering down at a puppy that meandered between his legs. It was a midget mastiff.
"Go to hell, you lad!" I barked, and the dog started off barking back at me for yelling at the lad.
"A coin and I can have it all" the lad said, his offer.
"Get away!" I stamped my feet on the ground and gestured at him to leave, as my voice sounded from my enteric anger.
The boy fled with his puppy.
I sat back in my peril and wept like a kid. Mom would have no food and water again today, yet she grew bigger. Never in my life had I seen such irony. What could be the name of that sickness?
While in the cloud of my thought, I slept off; a deep sleep that was synonymous to death.
Hours dragged by as I slept off. If my receptors were right, I could hear the noise, yelling and murmuring of a mob; as though they were about to lynch someone; it sounded closer now, and I could tell it was happening around me. The reawakening of my miserable life brought me back to consciousness and I woke up, rubbed my eyes from the haze of slumber, only to behold an uncountable mob around me, armed with whips and logs, ranting and chanting. I looked around; I could not see my vegetables. They were gone. The ranting and yelling of the angry mob couldn't let me comprehend vividly.
"Where is my vegetable?" I cried, stroking my hair confusedly for answers.
"What way of sleep befell you that you didn't notice Brian munching all your vegetables!" a voice among the crowd echoed angrily.
"Brian?" I queried, "Who is Brian…?" my wailing voice died off slowly.
I gazed around me and then on the ground, Io and behold, there he was; all naked, unruffled, with saliva smeared around his mouth, and the last half-eaten leaf stuck between his cute, pink lips, and his arms and feet tightly bound with fetters. And an innocent, dashing, chiseled face laughing and waiting to be lynched by the mob. He was so cute to behold despite losing his sanity.
"Where is my vegetable?" I whined at the top of my voice and combed my menacing stare around in search of it.
"The billionaire's mad son!!" a voice started off with the chant and others picked on it and chanted harder. "The billionaire's mad son! The billionaire's mad son!
A whip! A whip! A whip!
While they flogged him, he flinched in tolerable pain yet laughed and seemed unscathed as though they were wasting their energy.
They disciplined him until two luxuriously dressed ladies whom I perceived to be maids pushed through the crowd and spoke in his favor.
"Enough!" one of the maids, the chubby one beamed "We have been in search of him all over Rio Hondo."
One of the maids wailed at the top of her voice. "He escaped from Fanny's villa!"
"What did he do?" Another asked anxiously.
"Can't you see he has masticated all the vegetables of poor Melissa while she was carelessly asleep," a man among the mob elucidated.
"Enough! Steady on!" the maid pleaded with the mob, "How much is the worth of the vegetable?" she asked yet further.
"A hundred coins!" a voice replied from the crowd.
"I will give you two hundred," the maid sounded. As soon as she took out a bag of coins, the angry crowd snatched them from her, scrambled over it and fled.
"My vegetable! My vegetable! What becomes of me? Eh, maid! Maid!" I cried and called on.
But it was too late. Hastily they dragged Brian into the Lamborghini that was packed elegantly by the corner and zoomed off.
I fell on the ground, pressed my face between my knees and wailed on. I was left with nothing to sustain my dying mother. What a cruel world!
I am Melissa Brant, a skinny, tall, auburn-haired, Caucasian and the poorest vegetable seller in Rio Hondo!