Raspberry Tarts And Coconut Cleavers

• Maya Lee, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2021

You can hear the rhythmic chop of a meat cleaver. That’s how you know it’s harvesting season. The time when the sun smiles too wide and the humidity clings to your skin like a too tight top. When city folk flock to coastal towns to get sunburnt and dehydrated. When the streets are full of foot- traffic, and the roads no better. But despite all the downsides, it makes you good money.
You unlock your corner- side bakery as the sun crawls into dawn. You preheat the ovens and make your way to the pantry, the sound of the meat cleaver ticking down to opening hours.
The first week is slow. It always is. The cold breeze still blows the night kisses, and is always gone by morning. The sun still slow to wake and the ocean gives chilly bites. But day by day, the town wakes up and the world surrounding it follows. Shops repaint and rebrand, the boardwalks checked and reinforced, last season's missing persons posters cleared and replaced with notices for community events. Only the meat cleaver keeps the same ticking rhythm day in and day out.
By the fourth week, people mill around the sandy bay with ice-creams painting their fingers green, pink and brown. Kids play in the shallow bay, splashing in the water and jumping over waves. Locals pass by the corner- side bakery to buy bread, and tourists pop in to buy a treat that’s not ice-cream. The ticking of the meat cleaver ignored by the people, too busy deciding where to go for lunch.
By the sixth week, missing posters cover a third of the notice boards. Everyone’s eyes glaze over it because there’s a midnight concert and they need to know where it’ll be. The meat cleaver doesn’t play at night despite it’s rhythm.
It’s the eighth week, heat is choking any breathing organism, the only reprieve is the ocean or the air- conditioned shops and restaurants. And now, there are more missing people than events. You unlock your corner- side bakery, sweat stains your clothes. You preheat your ovens and walk into the pantry and slip into the room behind it. A young girl lays desolate on the ground, her missing poster went up yesterday. The smiling face of the girl who doesn’t know she’s dead caught in the missing poster starkly different to the girl who’s eyes stare in shock above her, as though she’s stunned by the mere existence of a ceiling. You measure her proportions, her weight, and assess her blood type. You know the perfect treat for her. The meat cleaver ticks on, the smell of freshly cut coconuts caught on the breeze.