Short Story
I am in the Banana Boat. I was exiled on it. The fate of the boat, and the fate of the bananas, are also my fate.
My name is Eira. I come from a beautiful land that grows bananas. Lots and lots of bananas. Bananas enough to color the horizon and cover the land. Bananas are enough to fill our plates and drive our economy. Bananas birthed our civilization; they allowed us to grow, prosper, and eventually thrive.
Admittedly, we are not all bananas. We have other fruits as well, and fish, and nuts, and we make the silkiest of silks and roll the strongest steel. We have beautiful dance styles and a little bit of textile. The food is nice, though mostly sweet and banana-based, and our language is rather beautiful.
Still, bananas, whether we like it or not, define who we are, and quite appropriately, too. Our economy is seventy percent bananas, and our land is eighty percent banana plantations. Sure, the capital is now an oil-guzzling, car-choked metropolis, and they’re trying to reduce dependence on bananas by subsidizing the IT sector, but bananas are who we are, and who we will be. They have made their way into our culture, into our songs, into our personalities, and even into our governments. They make up the invisible hand that drives our market; they are the makers of bloody wars, and are also the weapon we have used time and time again to win those wars.
I have spent my entire life surrounded by bananas. I was born in a banana farm, the daughter of a medium-ranking officer; I went to school next to another, larger banana plantation; and when I was allowed to play, I got my friends together and we frolicked insatiably through the acres and acres of tall banana trees. It was heaven, and I was seven.
When I was still seven, the adults were amused by my banana stories. They started when I was little. I was told that when I was little, I would cry horribly at bedtime unless my mother sang me a song or told me a story. Much to her delight, for she too loved stories, I soon started making up stories of my own. Silly, happy stories. Stories of little girls running about in banana plantations, playing games, laughing, screaming, and frolicking. They were all from the perspective of bananas.
I was little then, so that was fine.
I don’t remember when exactly I told my mother that the stories weren’t my own, that they had all been told to me previously by the bananas themselves, but I must have said it very casually, since I didn’t find it strange at all.
In the early mornings or in the afternoons after school, I went around the banana plantation, caressing the trees and playing with my friends. Often, I would put my ears close to the trunk of a tree, or to a banana itself, and I would stand there with a wondrous expression on my face as if I was listening to the bananas talk. Often the stories made me laugh, sometimes they made me solemn, while at other times the speech of the bananas made me grim and resolute.
My whimsical habit made my mother laugh at first; she must have thought I was still playing the storytelling game from last night. I noticed, however, that as this habit persisted, my mother grew more watchful of me, more vigilant. She didn’t say anything yet, but she would glance at me more frequently, and increasingly forced me to only play near where she was working.
The other girls thought it was because I might fall and hurt myself, and they laughed at me.
Then one day, as I was hearing the story of a banana from a bunch that had been recently cut, I was yanked up high into the air and brought back ferociously onto the loamy soil. My mother was towering over me, livid, thunderous.
She asked me why I had tears in my eyes. I told her that the banana had been telling me a rather tragic story. I tried to explain that the tree was extremely sad and extremely hurt from being cut so mercilessly. I tried to tell her that this banana had witnessed its very neighbor being ripped away from the neck, and then peeled and stripped and chewed and eaten, and that it was scared. But by then she wasn’t listening to me.
My mother pulled me by the ear, and the pain made me scream and then sob. She dragged me all the way to our house, and then into her room, where she finally threw me onto the bed and locked the door. I was bawling; by then, my ear wasin agony, and my head felt dizzy. Several minutes passed and, little by little, I got hold of myself. My ear still hurt, and the tears flowed heavily, but I wasn’t making those awful sobbing noises anymore (which I hate).
It was about then that the door reopened. Mother was back, and she had brought my father along.
Father, at least, was a bit more sympathetic to my situation. He looked more concerned than angry, and asked me what the matter was. I refused to tell them, my pride was hurt, but he pieced two and two together.
He told my mother to calm down, told her that I was just being childish, foolish, playing games.
Mother wanted to put a stop to my games. She was ready, at that moment, to lock me up. She was about to forbid me from playing in the plantation, from going to school, from tending to the bananas, even from going outside or working in the plantation. She wanted to imprison me in the house and in the company offices. In her moment of rage, she was determined to uproot my entire life and happiness.
I gaped at her from the floor with eyes as wide as our banana farm, and my little heart almost tore itself apart. Thankfully, my father intervened.
That will be too suspicious, he said, What will we tell everyone? Just keep an eye on her, she’ll grow out of it.
But I didn’t grow out of it.
I kept listening to the bananas and they kept talking to me. Telling me stories of all sorts, most joyously happy, some wrenchingly tragic. All told from the perspective of bananas.
My mother did a very good job of keeping an eye on me, but, for some reason, she let me be.
Unfortunately, I kept growing older. At nine, my mother started hiding me from the priest. The priest was a beloved and frequent guest at our little cluster of houses, and whenever he came, my mother made sure, by any means necessary, that I was nowhere in sight of him nor in the sight of bananas. The latter proved to be more difficult. Only one man, millions of bananas.
At ten, I was banned from being around the seniors of the neighborhood.
At eleven, Mom tried to ban me from the plantation again, but by that time, it was too late. To ban me from the plantations then would be an admission of guilt.
At twelve, I was sent to a boarding school near the capital. It was horrendous. It was far away from home, far away from the bananas, from their stories, and far away from my friends. It was dirty, and murky, and full of city noises. Still, it must have been an expensive affair for my parents, and I must say I was touched, even though I despised it thoroughly, that they would go through such financial pains to keep me from being exiled.
At thirteen, I was exiled.
I learned of my great sin in the Banana Boat. I had conjectured much earlier, and the bananas had told me a lot as well. The son of the captain of the ship told me the rest. He is seven, so I trust him. He says he overheard the crew talking about me.
The bananas in the boat talk to me. They didn’t say much earlier when they were green; green is when they are distorted and choked up. The stories the green ones tell are muddled, otherworldly, and I can’t make sense of them. Now, they are sunlight yellow, and speak so freely and simultaneously that I cannot keep up with all of them. There are, of course, a lot of bananas.
The Banana Boat has been sailing for a long time, in Banana Boat terms, and with no land in sight. Bananas ripen quickly; they have to be transported quickly. We have done a marvelous job of breeding the bananas to be longer lasting, but they are still bananas. I hope we arrive soon. The bananas will not be store-ready for long.