Passage 6

 Questions26 to 30 are based on the following passage.

   Thereare guavas (番石榴）atthe Shop & Save. I pick one the size of a tennis ball and finger theprickly stem end. It feels familiarly bumpy and firm. The guava is not quiteripe: the skin is still a dark green. I smell it and imagine a pale pinkcenter, the seeds tightly embedded in the flesh.

A ripe guava is yellow, although some varieties have a pink tinge.The skin is thick, firm, and sweet. Its heart is bright pink and almost solidwith seeds. The most delicious part of the guava surrounds the tiny seeds. Ifyou don't  know how to eat a guava, the seeds end up in the crevicesbetween your teeth.

Some years, when the rains have been plentiful and the nights cool,you can bite into a guava and not find many seeds. The guava bushes grow closeto the ground, their branches laden with green then yellow fruit that seem toripe overnight. These guavas are large and juicy, almost seedless, theirroundness enticing you to have one more, just one more, because next year therains may not come.

As children,we didn’t always wait for the fruit to ripen. We raidedthe bushes as soon as the guavas were large enough to bend the branch.

A green guava is sour and hard. You bite into it at its widestpoint, because it，seasier to grasp with your teeth. You grimace, your eyes water，and your cheeks disappear asyour lips purse into a tight O. But you have another and then another, enjoyingthe crunchy sounds, the acid taste, the gritty texture of the unripe center. Atnight, your mother makes you drink castor oil, which she says tastes betterthan a green guava. That’s when you know for sure that you，re a child and she has stoppedbeing one.

I had my last guava the day we left Puerto Rico. It was large andjuicy, almost red in the center, and so fragrant that I didn't want to eat itbecause I would lose the smell. All the way to the airport I scratched at itwith my teeth, making little dents in the skin, chewing small pieces with myfront teeth, so that I could feel the texture against my tongue, the tiny pinkpellets of sweet.

Today，Istand before a stack of dark green guavas，each perfectly round and hard, each $1.59. The one in my hand istempting. It smells faintly of late summer afternoons and hopscotch under themango tree. But this is autumn in New York, and I’m no longer a child. I pushmy cart away，towardthe apples and pears of my adulthood, their nearly seedless ripeness predictableand bittersweet.

 
Plentiful rains and cool nights may mean that guavas____.