One night, Yna Santamaria watched a pineapple truck hit Lola Monina, vaulting the old lady to the neighbor’s driveway. It was a very simple incident, consisting mostly of a sizeable white bulk whipping past the screaming Santamaria family at eye level, followed promptly by one sharp tire screech and a De Dios Farms decal—a ring of whole pineapples, like a green-rayed sun—trembling hurriedly away.
Yna’s father ran up to Lola Monina’s motionless mass and, grunting from the rare and sudden bout of physical exertion, lifted it up from the Osorio’s freshly flattened birds of paradise. Yna’s uncle did his part by bellowing one solid obscenity after another into the already empty street, and then griping out loud over pineapple trucks that weren’t supposed to be in gated communities but were thanks to particular families of particular fresh produce empires living in said communities which was a fucking stupid excuse because this fucking place was fucking private and had no need for fucking trucks full of fucking fruit. Yna’s mother did her part by yanking Yna to her chest and holding her tight, placing a hand over her little ten-year-old’s eyes as Yna’s father carried Lola Monina indoors, as if Lola Monina had become a raging, rabid harpy on impact. Continue reading
