Looking for my mammee (apple)

I’d been excited to see that the publication year was 2004, the same year I bought it. In my hand I had held the most up to date English in print. Impressively it contained the word “lime” with the Trini meaning and when the pages were cracked open they released the highly intoxicating, slightly nauseating scent of wood pulp and glue.

Just to divert a bit, when I had first come up here and was unpacking my suitcase a friend of mine watched me lovingly remove my dictionary from my laptop case. “A Dictionary!?” she had exclaimed, the observation was also a question. “You brought up a Dictionary!? You could have brought at least two extra pairs of shoes or a jeans in that bag instead!” The world, I realise, is divided among many lines, one of which are people who can’t sleep unless they know the meaning of a word they’ve just read and those that can. Quite easily.

But back to what I was saying, I was looking up the meaning of the word mammaliferous last week when I noticed, on the same page, the same column actually, were the words mamaguy and mammee apple. It goes without saying — but I’ll say it anyway — that I was suitably impressed by their inclusion in THE Oxford Dictionary, that longstanding and indefatigable authority of what constitutes acceptable English. I read the explanation of mamaguy, curious as to how well the good folks that made up the editorial team of the Oxford concise English dictionary handled the nuances of the meaning of a word like that. I certainly already knew what mamaguy meant. It is impossible for any Trinidadian female to reach adulthood and not know what it means.

But in reading the meaning of “mammee apple” it occurred to me I had no way of knowing for certain if the meaning, set down by a group of foreigners, many of whom, I’d bet money — not much, but money nonetheless — had never seen a mammee apple, whether or not their ascribed meaning was correct. The dictionary described it as a red fruit with sweet yellow flesh. And I sat puzzled. “Isn’t it supposed to be a green fruit with sweet white flesh?” I flipped through my collective memories, like pages in an old, slightly battered paperback, hoping for one that would appear, hitherto forgotten but now recollected and able to verify or negate this description. And none came. The best I could come up with was the idea that a mammee apple was a somewhat squat teardrop shaped fruit, a sort of bastard, wizened, misshapen soursop. Well, maybe that’s not the most appetising description but you know what I mean.

But the dictionary said otherwise. And I found myself wondering, what if the dictionary is right and I am wrong? How terrible is it for a group of strangers to know and explain a part of my world better than myself? The distressing thing is, I have no problems recalling what an apple, a grape, a pear or a plum looks like. But over the image of a mammee apple I flounder. And hear that name, the sticky sweetness it conveys.

It conjures up images of August vacations spent gorging oneself with all the things that would require a “good purge” before one went back to school. And to find that I don’t really know what it is, me with holidays spent in Toco and Tobago and a mother and aunts who grew up in and traversed almost every plantation in Santa Cruz.

If I were back home now, where would I go to find a mammee apple, to confirm or disprove my description? If I suddenly had a desire to eat a Calabash mango, where would I find one? What about fat pork; mammee sapote; a ripe cashew; a bag of guavas, worms and all; some cerise, some donks or even a barbadine self?

Maybe when we see a rapper eating a gru gru bef or an actress promoting a soursop drink then we’ll realise that what we have is just as good and in some ways, even better. Until then, could somebody tell me who’s right? Me or the Oxford people?

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