Debbie Davidson, Contributor

Ancel passed the huge mango tree in front of Mama B's house. He didn't know Mama B personally, nor did any of his friends, for that matter. Everyone was afraid of her because she would sit under the tree shelling peas, or peeling potatoes while mumbling to herself. At 2 p.m. every day during the school term, she took up her position there until 5 p.m., when she was sure the children had all gone home for the day.

Truth is, Mama B was tired of children, like Ancel, who stoned her tree relentlessly during the mango season. Some even jumped the wall to gather the fallen fruit.

"Dem children today have no manners," she often mumbled. "Dem keep stoning me tree and taking the mangoes without even asking."

One day Ancel walked by Mama B's house, inhaling the intoxicating aroma of ripe mangoes and imagining biting through the crisp skin of those Number Eleven mangoes to the orange meat inside, while the juice ran down his arms to his elbows. He wanted those mangoes.

Forbidden fruit

With the help of his school friend, Raymond, Ancel devised a plan to get a few of the forbidden fruit. After school, Raymond would create a diversion at the back of the house that would cause Mama B to give up her watch under the mango tree to check out the commotion. Ancel would jump over the wall, pick a few mangoes and make a run for it.

On the appointed day, the two boys disembarked the bus at the corner of Mama B's quiet street.

"Yu ready?" Ancel asked his friend, whom he knew to be timid, yet quick-witted.

"Yeh, mon. Yu have di bag fi di mangoes?" Raymond asked Ancel, whom he knew to be a scatterbrain.

With a big impish grin on his face, Ancel produced a black plastic bag from his back pocket. The duo parted company. Raymond walked to the street running parallel to Mama B's backyard. Ancel stayed on Mama B's street, keeping his distance from her house so that she couldn't see him loitering, but he could see her.

As Ancel aimlessly kicked a few stones on the sidewalk and watched for Mama B to get up, a chorus of barking followed by a high-pitched scream pierced the quiet afternoon. Suddenly the realisation hit him:

"She have dawg." A cold shiver went all through Ancel's body, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

Who would have guessed that a crazy old crow like Mama B would have a yard full of dogs in her back yard? No one ever saw or heard them because they never came around to the front of her house. Mama B got up from her perch to investigate. With the agility afforded him by his long skinny legs, age, and the excitement of it all, Ancel scaled the wall and began filling the scandal bag with the forbidden fruit.

Assortment of dogs

Meanwhile, poor Raymond was about to become an afternoon snack to a motley assortment of dogs. He had climbed the back wall and grabbed hold of a tree limb in an effort to lower himself quietly. The limb broke, however, and gravity pulled him swiftly to the ground where he landed like a coconut on his rear end. In no time the dogs swarmed him, biting at him and ripping his clothes. Mama B appeared from nowhere brandishing a broom and began chasing the dogs away.

When Raymond finally got up, he saw a sea of khaki across the yard, which he quickly recognised was once his pants. His shirt hung in tatters on his thin frame. Somewhere in the scuffle he had lost a shoe.

"You little!" Mama B yelled as she chased the boy around the yard, poking at him with her stick.

"Is Ancel mek me do it!" he shrieked on the top of his lungs.

He spotted the whitewashed door at the side of the house that allowed access to the front and backyard standing ajar. He ran through the gate, a blur of tattered khaki and white briefs, with Mama B in tow.

Meanwhile, Ancel stood transfixed, mouth agape, mango in hand, poised in midair at the drama unfolding before his eyes.

Chased

"Jesus! Run!" cried Raymond.

When Raymond realised that Ancel wasn't moving anytime soon, he grabbed at Ancel to pull him along over the wall. Instead, he grabbed the bag that now bulged with mangoes, tearing the bag and scattering the contents on the ground. In near-perfect synchronicity, the boys made it over the wall.

The old lady chased the boys a good way down the street, but they outran her, laughing at their daring act. As they rounded the corner, however, they ran into two police officers who happened to be patrolling the area on foot.

That afternoon Ancel and Raymond sat in the police station lock-up awaiting their parents' arrival. Mama B, in the meantime, gathered up the mangoes that Ancel had dropped and took them into her kitchen before returning to her seat under the mango tree.