Bitter-Bright

by Haein

It was that summer that the dulled girl began to desire oranges.

She ate them greedily, almost gulping down the bright juice, and at night she dreamed of trees, and sour, tangy sunlight. Her mother was amused at first, then uneasy at the girl’s constant, insatiable craving.

“Haven’t you had enough of those?” she asked with some alarm, as her daughter guiltily cracked open the boxy, white refrigerator door.

“Have something to drink, some toast, or something!”

The girl hid two oranges behind her back, laughing a little, clumsily, until her mother turned back to reading the newspaper again.

First she picked one up: round, cool with machine-made luxury, a little wet. Its skin was nubbly, its shape slightly misshapen, imperfect. Blindingly bright-colored on the outside, a bold, fiery-orange orange, but pale and secretively chalky on the skin’s hidden in-side. She sniffed it, caught something faint and spicy, un-citrus.

Ceremoniously, ferociously, she ripped off its peel, keeping it in a snake-like spiral that she discarded at the side. Then she used her nails again, stripping away the strings of whitish plant-matter, sometimes accidentally breaking the fruit’s fragile membrane so that it bled pale, sweet-smelling juice, but her hunger seemingly forgotten in the details of the careful process.

“Ah.” The girl sighed when it was done, with satisfaction. She gently carried the fruit outside, where it glowed like a rounded-off jewel under the hot blue sky, incongruously bright against the thick, healthy greenness of the grass. The girl sat down carelessly, sprawling against a dirty cement wall, as she bit sharp into the orange.

It tasted sweetly acidic. She did not eat it properly in segments, but bit into it childishly, as if it were an apple. Some juices ran down her chin, which she delicately wiped clean with the palm of her hand and then licked like a cat. Her mind was rather blank, the craving momentarily satisfying itself as the pulp stung the inside of her mouth with its sourness, sliding prickly down her throat. She parted cracked, dry lips, pressing them against fruit-flesh in a biting-taste. They bled a little when the orange was finally gone, the soft skin reddened as if unkindly kissed.

The blood was thin, salty; she did not pay it much attention, but absentmindedly touched it with her finger. Her mouth felt dulled with dusty cotton, her eyes blinked against the head-aching brightness of the afternoon sun. When she looked down, she saw that the grass had traced intricate, delicate pressure-patterns against the freckles on her thigh, meaninglessly complex blood-words.

The girl’s leg had fallen asleep. She stumbled, a little, a little sickly, as she went back inside the house to do her homework. To look for another orange.