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Egg-White Blues
The heady scents of jasmine and fresh herbs layer the summery air, and she recalls how the taste of coriander makes her ill. Patches of sunlight pattern the faded white veranda, not soft and warm, she knows, but dangerous, like shards of yellow glass. She sits in a wobbly wooden chair, gently inclining back and forth. The old slats warp and shift under her weight, which is nevertheless slight. Wrapped in a soft white blanket; she feels stifled as she stares heavy-eyed, not at the golden afternoon but at something only she can see. White, she feels, is the colour of the newly born and the elderly. Innocence, endurance, and grief are all represented by this colourless hue. But for her, white has come to signify much more. Loneliness. Emptiness. Loss. The rocking chair creaks on.
Her spidery fingers work at the curl of paint lifting its head from the arm of her chair. She picks at it, pinching it as it springs back time and time again. It grows longer; a tight roll of paint leaving a tongue of rough brown underneath. She touches a trembling fingertip to the wood, and draws her finger over its bumpy surface. A momentary prick, then a sting! She looks to see the tiny black spear embedded in her skin. She remembers her mother, and how she would carefully wiggle the splinters from her daughter’s chubby hands using a pair of gold tweezers. Her beautiful mother, long gone now. Her sister and father too. She has no husband, no children; not even a fish in a glass prison as a companion. She feels desperately alone.
The rocking chairs rasps, protesting against use. It is very old; it had been given to her grandfather as a birthday gift when he reached retirement. He hadn’t liked it at first, for he was determined to retain his quality of life. He wasn’t an invalid, he protested! But within a short time it became a throne upon which a satisfied man would sit; a hub at the centre of his family. She remembers sitting cross-legged on this very veranda, amongst her cousins, from grown-up Robert down to tiny Hailey, no more than a white bundle of her grandfather’s lap. He was telling stories, and she remembers pitying those who had no family. It is ironic that now it is she who is pitied by others. They walk by her house, strangers mostly, and see her sitting in the old chair, rocking sporadically. They feel for her, she can tell from their faces, but sympathy is a different creature to empathy.
Her reminiscences agitate her, and she chews at the inside of her bottom lip. It’s one of her worst habits, one she could never grow out of. She nips too hard with her teeth, and tastes the bitter tang of iron on her tongue. The rocking chair stills. A deep growing ache at the back of her throat accompanies an unexpected pricking in her eyes. Her chest feels hollow; as though it is about to give way under the enormous pressure of a life full of missed opportunities and sadness. A single hot tear tracks a path down her worn face.
Strangely, she relishes the small discomforts - the blood, the splinter; to feel pain means she is still alive. She bows her head, framing her face with a curtain of silky white hair. She doesn’t bother to push the wispy strands away. Her hair lacks life, growth, definition, and worst of all, colour. White. It is a hateful thing.
The ache within her is unbearable.
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