She wasn’t always that way. Wasn’t always so self-sufficient, seemingly confident, self-assured, almost intimidating to engage in any sort of conversation. She didn’t always wear shiny black leather pumps, the ones with stiletto heels, the kind that inspire sexual attention in others as well as insecurity and consternation. Her hair wasn’t always austerely straight, swinging about her head like one single mass in pendulum-like motion. Teasingly brushing the surface of her shoulder, vowing to never languidly blanket them again. Her face wasn’t always so pugnaciously alert, her nose pointing to her next victim, her lips lined in battle formation…
She wasn’t always like that. She used to be someone else. Soft. Ruminative. Detached.
She never befell a piercing trauma, never surrendered her vulnerability to the hands of another, never neglected her heart and what it needed, as opposed to what it desired. It didn’t desire.
She was soft. She was ruminative. She was detached.
But she also didn’t feel. She glided through life like a fly on the edge of a boat. Unaware of the sea below, what it is, and what hides in its belly. Unaware of the boat, where it was, where it is now, and where it’s going. Oblivious to time, oblivious to why. Oblivious to the waves that ferry the boat, set it on a course, and carry it adrift above a small section of a world brewing with life, color, food, death, and secrets.
It wasn’t a tumbling of the boat that made her architectural. Made her definitive. It wasn’t a leak in the bow that deprived her shoulders of the swathe of free-feeling locks. Free to feel. But feel they did not. No. It wasn’t a storm, a wind, or a loss that put her bare feet in those shiny black leather pumps.
‘How much are these oranges?’ she asked the store-keeper.
‘3 per kilo’ he robotically answered, taking no note of her. There was none to be taken.
‘I’d like 3 kilos please, you pick them.’
He glanced up at her merely to determine what kind of picking he should do. Not so ripe, he figured.
The young woman was flat, blank…. she had a head of draping auburn hair, the kind that should be beautiful by definition, but that somehow made him shudder. Her summer dress was neither her size nor was it too big or too small. He wasn’t exactly sure she was in it. And her sandals, some kind of straw or bamboo, he wasn’t sure, but they’re carelessness offended him.
‘There you go miss, that comes to a total of 9’ he said as he handed her the lime-green translucent plastic bag with one hand, and outstretched the other to receive the money at the same time. An exchange sort of manner that assured no escapes.
‘I want you to have one’ she said moments later.
He cocked his head from his busy hands, as if certain he heard something, or someone. He thought she was long gone after he counted the money and placed it securely in his apron’s front pocket.
‘I want you to have one’ she repeated.
‘No thank you miss.’
‘Let’s have on together’ she said to the scruffy man with unkempt greying hair, an old-style sweater, and heaviness under his eyes.
She reached into the bag, and with one merciless move, breached the tough skin of an orange with both her thumbs. Juices rushed down her hands as she handed him half of the orange. Reluctant he was to take it, but take it nonetheless he did. After all, upon close inspection of the young lady, he found her to be… pale… soft, something almost… almost detached about her intrigued him.
‘Thank you miss,’ he said as he licked the last bit of orange nectar from his fingers, ‘that was nice of you, have a nice day.’ And that was that. He wanted nothing more to do with her, her presence was unnecessary, not part of his daily program to which he had not only grown accustomed to, but dependent on for comfort. She didn’t make him uncomfortable per se, but she did occupy a space and time he had no reference for.
And she drifted on. Gaining nothing from that exchange except 3 kilos of oranges less one orange. She felt she didn’t feel. She could feel it. She always did. And she nurtured it like a protective wall of tall trees.
Now, in her painful shiny black leather stiletto pumps, as the narrow front clamps down tightly on her toes, a smile escapes the corner of her mouth. She walks on to the hair salon, brimming with anticipation for the chance to hear the hushed sound of sharp scissors slicing through the ends of her hair.
the snide side 