Minky Mupha — Vi Khi Nao
Minky Mupha doesn’t enjoy being a fruitcake, but lately, there are too many strawberries, pineapples, plums, cherries, granny smith apples, lychees, and grapes in her. Each day, she feels layered with molasses and its sweetness makes her feel high in a demented way, thus she is quite the fruitcake biologically and psychologically. Most days, she worries about the population of planet earth. How she thinks there are too many people in it just as she thinks there are too many fruits in her. She once turned to her friend, Cob Bocoy, and said fastidiously and quite jokingly, “If we can just annihilate half of the population, just half, not all, but just half, we would be okay as a planet. 3.5 billion people on earth is significantly better than 7!”
Cob wouldn’t just let her have it.
“No, Minky, it wouldn’t be wise if we mass-liquidate 3.5 billion people.”
“Why is that, Cob?”
“Well, Minky. Such annihilation isn’t a problem. I don’t mind 3.5 billions of us, but I fear in such wholesale slaughtering, we would be destroying some important resources.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean those other 3.5 billions that we plan to annihilate—well—one of them may have the resolution to our problem. That’s the definition of self-sabotage.”
“Our problem being that it is over population and starvation.”
“I suppose, you are right. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn’t the right thing to do. I suppose. I suppose.”
Then Minky gets into a fundamentally wrong relationship with another woman named Fruit Cake. Wrong is defined by sugar as in diabetic as in liquid cocaine as in a potentiality for addictive behavior as in abandonment.
“Really,” she tells Fruit Cake, “did your parents have to name you that?”
Fruit Cake replies, “Well, well, I love my name. I can’t help how much I loooooove it!”
Poor Minky who works all her life to avoid the fruitcakeness of her existence ends up with what she doesn’t really want: more fruitcakes. When she walks into Trader Joe’s to buy a city of eggs and flour to bake a city of bread, a grocery shopper, a famished man she fails to ask for a name, turns towards her bare chest and asks very politely, “May I nibble on your strawberries?”
“Which side?” she replies. Meanwhile, Minky thinks: Trader Joe’s always has such excellent samplers for their patrons and there are plenty here so why does he need to turn her into a portable Trader Joe’s too?
“A little of both?” he shyly suggests.
“Sure, go on. Perhaps eating me off will make me less diabetic.”
While he bends his lovely masculine head to take a couple of bites off her studded, strawberried nipples, she turns her gaze to the frozen aisle. Perhaps she ought to buy some frozen salmon and tilapia for tomorrow. To counteract her mawkish existence, she bookmarks her thought with a note when she is at the condiment aisle, she would get two boxes of salt. That should cure her over schmaltzy nature. As she thinks she begins to walk, forgetting that there is already an eater munching on her fruity platter. When his mouth is yanked away from her chest in such a sharp angle, her bitten strawberries drip with crushed velvet juice and it makes her breasts look like they are the Virgin Mary crying blood tears.
“I’m not done nibbling,” he quickly announces.
“I’m sorry. I must go. I have a busy day.” And, then Minky claws her left shoulder to rip out a chunk of her Granny Smith apples and toss them over to her co-patriot shopper and declares, “I hope that will compensate for my abruptness. I do really need to get going. I have a city of flour to bake.” And, then off she goes.
In bed with Fruit Cake later that evening, Minky asks her lover, “Why are you being so distant?”
“I’m afraid you would betray or abandon me.”
“What provokes this fear?”
“Well, you let that customer take two quick bites off you and since they are half-eaten, I don’t even want to take a bite.”
“He was hungry, honey! And, you know, these orbs will grow back tomorrow. You know they do! And, also why did your parents name you Fruit Cake when you are not a fruitcake at all.”
“Without resorting to slangs, but they are nutty.”
“They should have just renamed themselves Fruit Cakes instead of naming you one. You are as human and as psychologically sanitary as they come.”
“Well, I do have some mental health problems.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, I haven’t been taking a great care of myself. I get depressed. I eat too much and I don’t exercise enough. Let’s end this!”
“Right now? Right now?”
Fruit Cake jumps out of their shared bed, gathers her clothes, starts putting her blouse over her head, and even grabs her shoes all at once. An impossibility for an original structure of atoms.
“Don’t you think you are being unreasonable? You can still take care of yourself and be in a relationship.”
“I don’t want to lose myself in you.”
“But where have you lost yourself?”
“I don’t take care of myself and I tend to put the relationship first.”
“But I am so so so good at loving you! I give you all the time in the world. We see each other only once a month. I even open a bakery for you because I know you want to start a small business with it. I am so so so devoted to you. We don’t even need to buy fruits to put on those delicious cakes because I grow them daily with my body. And, tell me, where have I eaten into your time?”
“You haven’t…it’s just I feel I have lost control of my life. And, if I could control this relationship then maybe I can have control over my life once again.”
“So, you think ending it is your way of being proactive?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“Well, you are killing 3.5 billion atoms in you when you decide to leave this beautiful thing that is blooming between us. You are destroying the resources, ME!, that could help you get better. To grow. To be less sad. You know—people accelerate in their performances when they work together to resolve difficult issues, of self, of world. No one should be alone or feel alone in their journey towards greatness!”
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Vi Khi Nao’s work includes poetry, fiction, film, play, and cross-genre collaboration. Her poetry collection, A Bell Curve Is A Pregnant Straight Line, and her short stories collection, The Vegas Dilemma, are out this Summer and Fall 2021 respectively. She was the fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.