Kerry Neville
The Last Peach
The world is about to end and I worry about my saggy, crepey skin, the way it hangs loose and fast when I push back into downward dog. I stare at my legs as if they are not mine but my grandmother’s (eight years dead).
“I grow old…I grow old…I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled,” said T.S. Eliot, who also wondered—
Do I dare eat a peach? Sink my teeth into the fuzzy warm flesh? The sticky juice dripping from my lips, down my chin, then neck–hell, why not onto my naked breasts, too (Still Life with Fruit) which are, for mortality’s record, sagging. Age and wear and tear. Two children nursed for a collective four years. Tug suck tug suck tug suck. I never felt so useful, so productive, so necessary. My body the peach, the source of nourishment. Their lips latched around my nipples. Renaissance Madonna.
But what if it is the last peach hanging from the last green branch of the last peach tree in Georgia? Warmer winters mean fewer “chill hours”—necessary dormant restorative time if the tree is to bear fruit.
Do I dare eat that peach the way I eat peaches now, carelessly? Just last week I sank my teeth into the tawny skin, splitting it open. Bland mush. Tossed in the garbage. Out of season. What did I expect?
What do I expect? Strawberries in January, blueberries in February, and plums in March. What I want when I want it. Thank you very much Super Maxi Giant Jumbo Kroger.
My daughter says the world will burn in her lifetime.
My son says that we are past the point of no return.
Thank you very much, Late-stage Capitalism.
Here, I say to my children, and hand them each a ripe peach to assuage their fears. Sweet and juicy and out of season.
Here, I say to my children, and hand them each a tin cup of milk (not my milk but oat milk because almond milk contributes to climate change because cow’s milk contributes to climate change). Drink this, I say, in memory of me.
But where are you going? my daughter asks.
You aren’t leaving? my son asks.
Many many years ago, when my depression and anorexia ruled my brain and body (Do I dare eat a peach? Then? Never, not even one bite, not even one lick of the sweet juice, life itself.), I was in and out of the hospital, leaving and returning and leaving and returning. I believed that my world was ending. No, I believed I should end my world.
Now? I stay but know, by my body’s rickety, wrinkly deterioration—It is! Happening! No need to gloss over the facts in false reassurance!—One day I will leave this world and my children will stay—and—
Kerry Neville is the author of two collections of stories, Necessary Lies and Remember to Forget Me. Her essays and stories have been named Notables in the Best American series. In 2018, she was a Fulbright Fellow at University of Limerick, where she was Visiting Faculty in the MA in Creative Writing Program. She is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the MFA and Undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Georgia College and State University.