A/N: Yeah, this sort of really happened to me. Don’t laugh!!

Pepper Soup

It’s a beautiful bright day at 1924 Fern Street. Me and James are playing outside in our little yard. We love our yard; it’s the first one we’ve really ever owned. There’s a skinny short-branch tree, some grass, and even a row of bushes in front that you can crawl into and pretend it’s a treehouse to live in for real. The grass on the otherside by the dumpster is prickly, though, so it’s not so much fun playing by there, and we stick inside the bush-wall.

I’m bored and so I look around for something to do, walking around aimlessly. I guess I could read a book, but I don’t want to; and I’m tired of riding my bicycle. I stop to look at the rows of pepper plants by the side of the house. They’re not green anymore, but bright fire-engine red ripe. The Trans who live behind our house grow them and dry them out on a blanket. They only need a few though, so they always give us the extra ones, and then we eat spicy hot stuff for a while. James doesn’t like really spicy food, but I do, especially when Mom makes kimchi jige for supper. That gives me an idea though!

When my brother sees me pulling peppers off the plant he grins. “Put it in here!” he says, pushing an empty plastic container to me. “Okay!” I say. “We need more stuff for the food, though.” He nods and starts helping me get more peppers. Quy, who’s short, bossy, but fun, wanders by and notices us working away. She lives in the room next to us with her mom and dad and a real TV and bunkbed. She’s younger than me, but older than James, so we play together. “What are you doing?” “Making soup, wanna help?” She looks around. “Okay. We could stick flowers in there, too. That can be the vegetables!”

I pull the hose up and twist the faucet handle to fill up the container with ‘soupwater’. We stick our sweaty hands in and stir the water, twirling the floating pepperseeds and pink petals around with our fingers until it looks right.  Maybe we should add something else… I absently rub at my eyes with peppery fingers. They sting and I rub harder, until tears come. Is something in my eyes again? Oww, it really hurts now! I look at Quy who is also swiping at her face, and James who looks bleary. I try to rinse my hands under the hosewater, but I can hardly see now, and it feels like my eyes are on fire. It feels like acid, or maybe poison. I stumble up the stairs and into the house, nearly falling over. I can hear Quy and James behind me, probably tracking mud all over the already grubby carpet.

“MOM!” I shout when I get to our bedroom, and blurt out everything. Mom’s reading a book, but looks up, and she puts a hand on my knee, and asks me to repeat it more slowly for her. So I do. “We were making soup in the plastic pail, with peppers and flowers and stuff, and my eyes started hurting! So did Quy and James’! I washed and everything, but it didn’t help!” Mom laughs, but not in a mean way, just warm. “Haney, you were cutting up peppers? You must have got some in your eyes, and rubbed it until it was in like the pepper-spray the riot police used at Yonsei. I’ll go get some soap...”

And then my mom wipes my eyes with a wet cloth, and does the same for James, and the Trans help Quy’s eyes which are the reddest of everybody’s, and hurt bad. They break off a stubby pale green spike of aloe from the patch of plants in back, and squeeze out the thick gooey sap inside to put on everyone’s eyes. It smells sort of like mint but also a little like grass, and makes my eyes feel relaxed and cool.

Quy’s eyes are all better by the time her parents get home from work, and me and James’ eyes are fine, but all the same we have to promise not to play with the pepper plants. No one minds, though, because we don’t want our eyes to hurt like that again. Next time we’ll use aloe goo for the soup, maybe…