Pineapple Street

by Jenny Jackson

The children had been trying to climb up the twenty-foot slide, all five of them in a line, boosting one another in a rare show of cooperation. Poppy was the ringleader, bossing the other children in her tiny, shrill voice, sounding more seagull than human, and Darley wondered briefly if it was wrong to hate the sound of a child’s voice.

The afternoon was warm, and she smelled the ocean. The river was just on the other side of the trees, and Darley could hear the ferries blowing their mournful horns, could hear birdsong, and felt sweet contentment. There were days in New York when she was desperate to escape, desperate for the beach, for a garden, for a glassy lake, but then there were days like today when the leafy park felt perfect, when she wondered how she could ever contemplate any other life.

Sasha laughed and laughed. Together they made a list of cartoon mascots by fuckability. Sasha felt Tony the Tiger was the clear winner. He just exuded cis-male hotness with his big puffy chest and boundless enthusiasm. The Sun-Maid raisin lady was obviously also a babe, rosy-cheeked, wearing a peasant blouse and a bonnet. The Cheetos Cheetah would be a fun date, but they agreed he’d try to leave his sunglasses on during sex. The Jolly Green Giant was maybe even hotter than Tony the Tiger, but Sasha worried he would be a terrible boyfriend, spending all his time in the gym. He was ripped. “Oh, so you’re more into the Pillsbury Doughboy?” Cord asked. “More to love?” “No, the Pillsbury Doughboy is too white. Not sexy!” “Colonel Sanders?” “Ugh, no! Also too white, plus the goatee!” “The Quaker Oats guy?” “Stop! All the human mascots are old men! Why do guys get the hot ones?” “Like who?” “Miss Chiquita?” Sasha countered.

The more Sasha thought about it, the angrier she felt. She was stuck in a lose-lose situation, a member of a family in which she had no voice, she had no vote, where doors were closed and envelopes remained sealed and money was a string that tied them all together and kept them bound and gagged. To Sasha it suddenly made sense that the Stockton family had settled in the fruit street neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights all those years ago, that they wanted to live in homes protected by a historical preservation society: they didn’t actually want to change, they wanted to stay exactly as they were.