Bergamot
Bergamot. A scent that has sat in my memory,
nameless, for over two decades – until now. I’d
yet musky, leafy green but citrus-white. Yes,
I remember now: those samplers of beauty
products which, at age eight, had seemed like
a key to the gateway of adulthood. The one, in
particular, that I washed my hair with once, and
then saved for years until it had all but dried up,
because that smell was just too good to waste
on a few days of perfumed hair... I remember
with bright colours giving a generation of children
guidance on how to care for the environment, on
animal rights, even on business ethics.
I pour the just-boiled water over the tea leaves,
and picture again those summer days in the
playground with its grass dried almost to hay,
where on sports day I discovered the power of
my arm in a tennis ball-throwing competition, my
aptitude for catching during the rounders match,
and where my dreams of becoming a baseball
legend germinated; the entire weekends we’d
spend on roller skates as if these wheeled boots
were merely an extension of our own bodies and
nothing like a fall, grazed palms, cut knees, and
tears.
I sigh, blow on my tea. It’s rare that I look back
with such fondness. I inhale the bergamot; blame
it; then, with a twinge of compassion towards my
younger self, thank it. I take a tester sip, and to
my surprise discover it’s already at a temperature
cool enough to drink. I must’ve been reminiscing
for longer than I thought.
That summer had turned to autumn eventually,
and with it, the return to school, a new collection
of textbooks, and a trip to the region’s nuclear
power station. On a day grey with endless drizzle,
we were led up and down caged staircases, shown
switchboards and emergency stop buttons, and
ushered into a large metal room that acted as a
bunker in case ‘things went wrong’. I gathered
message to those already in my collection.
We took a walk out onto the headland to get
battered by the wind, and I looked across the
sea, wondering what could be out there for me,
knowing I didn’t want to end up there, at least.
My teacup sits cold in my hand. The leaves,
swollen with water, cling to the bottom, arranged
in some pattern, some code. I peer into the cup,
try to empty my mind. I focus, desperate now to
read what the tea leaves want to tell me about my
future, but suddenly my eyes are leaking, and the
leaves blur, and I see nothing.
Written by Cheryl Whittaker