This morning I needed to find an old journal of mine from 1999 for some writing I'm working on. So I got into a box of old stuff I keep in my closet, and in the box, along with the journal, I found a wad of paper towels with tape wrapped around it. As I was holding it, NJ looked over at me and said, "What is that?" I didn't know, I told her. But as I inspected it more closely I saw my own handwriting, executed with a sharpie.
 |
| My block letters said "PAWPAW." What could it mean, I wondered? And then... |
 |
| I looked still more closely and saw more block letters, faded, as if obscured by the dust of the crypt. They said, "PERSIMMONS." |
What could this mean? It was my own handwriting, but I didn't remember making this ball of paper towels and labeling it. And what would I have meant in suggesting that there were actual pawpaws and persimmons inside? That would be very strange indeed...Maybe I simply meant that I had stored some pawpaw and persimmon seeds inside? That must be it, I thought. But still I wondered why I wouldn't have used the sharpie to also write the word "SEEDS" in block letters.
 |
| So I ran and got some scissors, determined to excavate, determined to cut and unravel these strata of paper towels, these mummy bandages that concealed a mystery content. |
 |
| Before I proceeded I malingered, and took another picture, having a sense that whatever it was that I was poised to unleash... |
 |
| ...may well change everything. |
 |
To my surprise and delighted terror, from the bandages emerged a pawpaw zombie,
an undead Asimina tribola! |
 |
| I searched my memories, wondering what version of my past self would have prepared such a macabre gift for my present self. It would have been at least eight years ago that this pawpaw was prematurely picked and then refused to ripen. And then I would have kept it on the counter for months, watching it dry out and turn deep purple with blue-white highlights. And then, though I don't remember it, I would have wrapped it in paper towels and taped it up and labeled it with a sharpie and placed it with my journals? |
But wait. As I took the rock-hard zombie between my thumb and forefinger, contemplating its undead status, I caught a whiff. And it smelled precisely like you would imagine it would smell, emerging as it did from its pawpaw crypt: like deepest caramel. (If you know pawpaws, you know that as they become overripe [or just ripe enough, according to your preference] they caramelize.) I didn't remember my act of interred the undead pawpaw, but when I smelled it, I did remember that I had many years ago held this very pawpaw to my nose and smelled its caramel waftings. (It's evening now, but the smell of undead pawpaw still clings to my fingers, even after several handwashings and applications of hand sanitizer over the course of the day.)
I continued unraveling the bandages and found...
 |
| ...six persimmons, also (shudder) zombies! But these ones didn't smell. |
 |
| You can't see it in the picture, and I didn't want to stick around to take a video, but after I had awoken them all, they started walking toward me, a zombie pawpaw (and undead persimmon) apocalypse, slouching empty-eyed and menacingly toward us all, driving us from our suburban home and into--not that, it's too predictable!--a decaying urban environment of crumbling reinforced concrete and broken glass. |
And so, huddled with my family in the burnt-out shell of a moldering building in a post-apocalyptic industrial park, I've written this blog post, my heart droning all the while like a clenching and unclenching metal machine, as we hope against hope that the zombies will find others--not us!--to caramelize.
