I went barging, even floating, up the green staircase, shouting, "Margerine!" Bits of time elapsed, and I saw that the windows gave way to street sights and shrubbery, soaking the whole room with a bluish color. Margerine flew over, yanked my arm and said "Oh just come on!" and pulled me five flights up unto the rooftop.
We had a little garden. It brimmed over with touches of green, red-orange, purple and yellow plant-life, sparkled by sunrays. We hurried to a lychee plant with plentiful lychee. But Margerine had a flash in her eyes and out of nowhere she uncovered a big, glowing lychee ball, not stained by prickly red skin, but pure and soft. I wanted to hold it suspended next to my torso, to feel its slight glow. But then, Margerine sinks her teeth, horribly piercing the lychee's cold skin. I gasped for air nowhere to be found. I couldn't hold the sight and flew down the white banister.
I stayed at my friend's house for a few days. When I returned, I did not know how to act with Margerine. She was upset, frightened, something grew, eating her up inside. I tried to stroke her face at times, like I used to, but she shrunk from my hands. The only time I'd seen her this distressed was years ago, the day our parents left us, here, alone together in this flat.
I brought her my yellow dress. She always had an eye for my clothing, but this dress was special to us both. We'd been sitting in the park, and a tidy little gentleman came over to us and exclaimed that the yellow in my dress shone just as beautifully as Margerine's hair. The rest of the day we never felt closer, never sweeter to each other; the rest of the world became golden, the trees and the sand trickled over with our joy. So I gave her my yellow dress, to remind her; but when she saw it her skin prickled up and dissolved into a shade of ugly blue. She let it decay there, by her windowsill, never touching the poor fabric. To her, it was a hideous blot. I tried to bring light, but she acted as a void and sucked it all out.
One day, I noticed the dress was no longer there. I trembled slightly, looked around and then I knew. I trotted up the flights and, out of breath, flung open the door. I saw Margerine, frantic, stroking her clumped hair with her wrist, the dress in her hand a shovel in the other.
"What are you doing?" I said, steady as stone.
She stared at me with a slight grimace, but an apparent distress shone through those contracted, pained eyes. She looked retarded. I repeated myself.
"What are you doing, Margerine?"
She dropped the shovel.
She ran away.
Some things taste just so sweet. Some make my lips curl into a grin, involuntarily. The feeling is, as if, your teeth melted into that same gooey texture of your gums, tongue, the roof of your mouth, to form one mass catering only to these delicate tastes. The delight overpowers. But this was my little ecstasy when of nowhere, Grace started flicking the edge of her notepad. She started humming, buzzing, and I want to die. I got up to go to the bathroom.
I was upstairs when Grace started yelling "Margerine!"
I suppressed a groan, and resolved, maybe if I showed her, she would understand. So I took her up, to the garden, and showed her my lychee tree. When I saw it, I myself was stunned by it's beauty, and could not help myself. I took a bite out of a lychee, and the juice washed over my teeth, wet and serene, the stuff trickled down into my whole body until I felt I shone. I thought Grace would respond, comprehend, but instead, after what seemed like hundreds of seconds, she screeched like a mongoose and ran away. I felt horribly, just horribly towards her.
She didn't return for quite a while. Since the flat was mine, I grazed every countertop, corner, square-inch. I ate much fruit, and observed new minute traits of each piece. Peach slices, for instance, look like snapshots of blood flowing to blushing cheeks, the cheeks of all different ladies. The peach I thought to be mine dripped not clear, but reddish juice. I kept the core to later plant.
Grace returned one day, acting queerer than ever. She kept watch of me, and with this I grew quite sour. I did not smile at her, I couldn't. Even when she returned my yellow dress to me, I couldn't smile. I might have mumbled, or done something, but I let the dress just sit there. It soon agitated me. I decided to rid of it—it did not belong here, not anymore. She did not belong here. I dug into my memories, searching for some connection between us, something other than blood and sorrow. We hardly speak, and of nothing anyways. Our only real conversations occurred right after Mom and Dad died, hopeless attempts to understand why, why we should be left to ourselves. Yes, we were happy before, but now the childhood memories feel vague, non-existent, thin as thread. So there is nothing really, nothing at all to hold onto.
So I resolved to take the dress up to my garden and bury it. I rushed up to my garden, grabbed the peach core I'd wanted to plant, and a little shovel. The day was hot and my hair heavy, but the heat suppressed the garden so that it seemed still, very pretty. And then Grace came up. She looked at me for a while, and the longer she stared the more I wanted to pluck her out of the ground and throw her to the streets. This was my home and this was to be my peach tree. But I knew, from her blunt dull eyes that she would not leave. So I had to.
Armine Diana Pilikian is a student at Stanford University.