seethingblue's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- piece one "Would you like some orange juice?" he asks. I thought I would be offered a beer, perhaps iced tea, or even water. "Is there pulp?" I don't look up from the book, the page, the word I have been fixated on for the past five minutes: berdache. I can't drink orange juice unless it has plenty of pulp. I know I am being difficult, averting my eyes when he comes too close and pretending to yawn when my eyes get watery, when I begin to cry. I want to tell him how lonely it feels in the city where even ferns refuse to grow and how I am safe in this moment, in this chair. I don't want to leave again. And at the same time, that is all I want to do. I just want to be home again. He doesn't answer but I hear him pouring the liquid into a glass. He pushes it across the table, sits down across from me, and watches me take a sip. It has no pulp; he has misunderstood. The glass is chipped at the top and the only napkins on the table are soiled with spots of grease. I fumble for one to wipe my mouth. "It's sweet," I say, "it's really good." "Freshly squeezed," he says with no expression. "I thought it would remind you of the orange grove behind the house. Remember?" But you didn't remember, I think to myself, you never heard me or knew me. "What is there to say now?" He looks at the book I am reading. It is a textbook but he doesn't ask which class I am studying for. "I think things have changed a little." I focus on the salt and pepper shakers which are in the shape of black and white milk cows with cartoon expressions on their faces. I know that these are not his, that they are something my mother placed in the middle of the table and like everything else she has left behind, will never be noticed or put away. "I think I won't be coming back for a while." He nods and reaches for my empty glass. I am expecting a confrontation but he only rises from his perch, pads across the kitchen floor and faces the window which has framed the slipping and sliding sun of mid-afternoon, fading into cool layers of fuschia and orange. 17:05 - 23 November, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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