Anita said I was her onion-friend. |
Onion Skin Anita said I was her onion-friend, and I was puzzled by that. Of all the things she could have said this was unexpected. We were in my kitchen, the one with the chocolate-milkshake coloured walls, and she’d said it, without much contemplation, like it made perfect sense, like it were known. There are layers, she explained when my expression begged for more, and I listened as I stirred the teabags in the pot. The loveliness of the tea as it rolled reddish-brown fog into the boiled water almost numbed me as she spoke. So pretty, I was thinking, the most beautiful colour I’ve seen. If one peels enough, she continued, they’ll eventually get to the heart of you, but you’ll not give that heart to just anyone. One must take time to peel. I thought about that, and how I’d once peeled an onion and studied the epidermis, marvelling at the small white misshapen pickets, like microscopic fences made to keep everything behind it pretty, and everything beyond it, out. All the onion seemed to do was bring a tear or two, stinging my eyes, making everything uncomfortably pink. The scent overpowered, bordered on unsavoury, not unlike the putrescent sweat of an unclean stranger on the subway. I also thought about how there had been no heart in the centre of that onion. No heart at all. It’s been years now since I’ve seen her, my friend Anita, and the friendship ended for reasons that once seemed material, but now are strangely forgotten. The chocolate-coloured kitchen is now painted pearl white but I don’t live there anymore. I think of her, mostly when I make tea, watching the gorgeous russet haze whirl in my favourite painted mug. I think about what she said, that I was her onion-friend, and how that had felt vaguely like mockery, though now I see she didn‘t intend it to be. Tonight, under this filmy, flimsy sheath, I still don’t know what beats underneath. |