The first time I ever tasted anything hot, it was with my body, not with my mouth. I was eating my favorite fruit at the time, or else I might not have made the connection between pain and heat, between pleasure and betrayal.
It was February, and I could not have been more than three. I was wearing my bedraggled snow jacket, surely a hand-me-down, and in colors and patterns--of blue and grey fleur de lis, I seem to remember--designed not to show the dirt. The fake fur that edged the hood was flat, pilled, and clumpy. Although it was February, it was balmy, one of those rare days in winter when Nature teases you with the promise of Spring, only to turn around next day and blast everything with a wind icy as arctic tundra. Of course, at the time I had youth’s inability to visualize the future, so I did not anticipate the inevitable. I was standing outside on the front stoop, sticky and hot in my jacket, and had undone the zipper, to the extent that my three year old hands were able.
I was eating a naval orange. I wish it were still a favorite, but, alas, the panoply of choice has made my taste more sophisticated and now I have to take supplements in order to replicate the benefits of the orange. I was thrilled by the light resistance my teeth encountered, biting into the membrane, so quickly followed by the machine gun bursts of sweet-sweet-sweet-tart, as the sacs of flavor yielded to the pressure of the bite.
Suddenly, I felt a sharp hot pain in my chest. It started out in one, tiny place, and then radiated out. I yelped, and grabbed the troubled spot, but that seemed to instigate a brand new tiny stab wound with the same spreading heat.
My mother came running out of the house, still holding the rag with which she’d been wiping out the fireplace. “Why are you crying?” she asked, more annoyed by the interruption that my self-dramatizing ways inevitably caused, than concerned about my present predicament.
“I hurt! I hurt!” I yelled, pointing to my half undone zipper. My mother dropped the rag, and pulled the zipper all the way to half mast, and a bee straggled out. “You’ve got bees in your jacket,” my mother said. “They’re going to keep on stinging you unless you take it off.”
The bees, like everything else, had been awakened by the false promise of Spring. Apparently, upon arising, they’d sensed the sugary nectar emanating from my snack, and come flying over. How they’d then managed to trap themselves in my snow suit is not entirely clear.
Several dead bees fell out of snow jacket when my Mom removed it. I wasn’t allergic to bees, so the pain didn’t last too long, but the shock of having been assaulted in the midst of such a pleasurable experience stayed with me.
Six months later my Mom and Dad and I sit down at the expandable maple dining table. The menu is one that I’ve happily anticipated. It’s mashed potatoes, and sausages, from the German butchers. I love the German butcher. When I go to his store with my Mom, he always hands me a slice of homemade bologna, or maybe a tiny cocktail frank. It’s all good, soft and salty and sweet in the mouth, pliant yet chewy between the teeth, tasting like a clean pig, so pink. This day my father has gone to the butcher’s on his way home from work, so I’ve missed out on my porky treat, and look forward even more to the dinner.
I look at my plate; the white fluffy potatoes, with just enough lumpeness to assert their freshness, the plump, brown glistening sausages on the side. My mother has cut the sausage for me, just as she’d been responsible for peeling the orange. I pick up one of the coins of sausage with my fingers and pop it into my mouth. Fire stabs the tip of my tongue and quickly spreads to the roof of my mouth. I scream.
My Dad stands up quickly. He is still wearing his suit and tie, and he looks weary, tense, and alarmed. “What’s wrong with her?” he asks my Mom.
My mom, who has just tasted the food on her own plate, also stands. “What did you buy?” she asks my Dad, a look of disgust on her face.
“What?” he is bewildered. And I am still screaming. The after burn gets worse as I breathe in and out, I feel like it will never go away.
My mom walks purposefully into the kitchen. Returning, she says, “Drink this,” handing me a glass of water. I do, and it seems like cool relief for a few seconds, but then the pain comes back. “Keep drinking,” Mom commands. She looks accusingly at my Dad.
“What?” he asks, guilty, and clueless.
“You bought the HOT,” she says. “You bought the hot sausage. I always buy the sweet.”
“I didn’t know,” says my Dad.
“She’s never had the hot,” says my Mom, and my Dad crumples under the burden of parental guilt. “Oh, honey, I am sooo sorry,” he says, hugging me tightly.
And I cry and cry, no longer sure if I am crying because of my burning mouth, or because of the rush of feelings that overwhelm me—that my father could betray me so thoughtlessly, and at the same time, love me so thoroughly.
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