Grapefruit Soup
LLast night I made grapefruit soup. Grapefruit was all we had so Chunsoon bartered them for veggies to go in our broth. This was not too different from begging when presenting wrinkly grapefruit to plump old couples who are watching satellite tv in their Aerolites. The old people in their RVs took pity on ol’ three percent (there is a reason she went instead of me) and gave her cabbage, carrots, and tomatoes. Voila, grapefruit soup, you know, like stone soup.
Tonight we are in a hotel room in Wallace, Idaho. The whole town is on the national register of historic places. I believe it too. I think there are some old families here in Wallace and they all look like they want to eat us. I mean, they look like a bunch of cannibals. We are outlanders and they are all giving each other silent signals while eyeing our calves. I know I’ll be the first to go. When we don’t come back from this trip, don’t look for our frozen bodies in Alaska, look in the Wallace Hometown Foods meatlocker. I once read a book about a town that saved a lot of money on groceries by eating people from other towns. They liked to get women so they could rape them first. One woman had the foresight to swallow her gag- the cannibals ended up raping a corpse. I suppose that’s one way, sister. Speaking of gagging…
I took a bath tonight, safe in the knowledge that Chunsoon was making me veggie rice stirfry with our campstove on the little motel table. I sat down at the table, warm and clean and not too sad –I had a bit of an appetite. I could smell the garlic from the bathroom. As Chunsoon put the oatmeal carrot soup down in front of me, I started to tear up. She got confused.
“Don’t worry honey, we won’t eat the burned parts,” she told me.
“How could you burn it with all this water?”
“I don’t know how to cook quinoa.”
We both ate a few bites before Chunsoon started saying something about “the thought that counts” and asking if I thought there were any homeless people in Wallace. “No,” I told her, “Cannibalism is a good way to clean up your streets.” Chunsoon always wants to know if there are any homeless people or dogs or little anarchist boys in tight black t-shirts wading through dumpsters to whom we can give our food. Our meals have become a time of examining, questioning, and a bit of snobby commentary instead of about eating, and this weighs heavily on her conscience. I no longer have a conscience and everyone who has ever wronged me will pay. Tonight, she stared at the gummy soup for a while before she walked it over to the trash can. She held it above the can and then started screeching and bouncing and jabbing the pot towards me. “AAAh! You do it! I can’t! OH NO!” She had the same reaction earlier when she cleaned a dead bug off of my windshield with her eyes closed. I should have thrown the soup away for her.
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