NildaTHE KISS WAS FULL OF TONGUE, AND ALL SENSATIONS MINGLED ON the tongue. It felt like a sliver of flesh from a stony green mango, one of many I plucked that summer from my perch on the lowest branch of the tree in our front yard.
My yaya Nilda stripped the skin off with a rusty old peeler and made deep parallel cuts with a knife, the blade making clean, bloodless wounds in the whitish flesh. She sat me down in the kitchen on a warm afternoon, my mouth wet, my hair and body hot and smelling of the sun. She handed me the knife, and I sliced close to the seed, with what force I could muster, so that in one sure stroke the slivers came away and apart, falling like white fingers into the palm of my brown hand. She prepared three kinds of dippings in round bowls: rock salt, sugar steeped in
