By the time I realized it, purple had already invaded my life like a
flood of grape jelly. And it all started with this woman with the curly permed
hair.
It was my habit of getting
into reading the board announcements at the bus stop. Everybody does that.
That’s why they stick them there: to keep you entertained while you wait. This
one advertised a Saturday street food fair. I had nothing to do that weekend
and decided to go.
It was in a vacant lot on
the outskirts of the city. I had a hard time getting to it because I had to
pass through an industrial zone and there were no streets around there, only
fenced corridors between warehouses and factories. Not a house, not a store.
And no one to ask because, being a weekend, the workers were not working. It
was very hot and everything was silent, as if abandoned. But well, finally who
knows how I found the place. It was full of young people and, although it was
advertised as a street food fair, there were more beer stalls than food stalls:
tents with colored tarps and banners and, everywhere, music like an ice cream
cart.
The woman with the purple perm had a stand of violet-painted coconut
cookies. I would have passed her by, but the truth is that everything was so
expensive there, I was starving, and those cookies were the least expensive
thing. I bought a bag of half a dozen and a soda. They were really weird
cookies: they tasted like coconut and smelled like violets. And they were big;
I could have filled up on them, but they were too sweet and I couldn’t eat more
than three. There was nothing else to do there. I felt irritated that I had
gone so far for such a miserable fair. I was tired from walking, and my stomach
began to growl because the cookies contained too much fat.
Everywhere there were tables with
benches where groups of young people drank beer. It smelled of marijuana. Some
girls, perhaps because of the effect of all that, were taking off their clothes
climbing on the tables, to the rhythm of that childish ice cream cart music. I sat
on a truck tire watching them and trying to finish my cookies and soda. I spent
maybe two hours like that, maybe more.
“By sunset, everyone will be dancing
naked,” said a voice behind me. It was the woman with the purple perm.
I just smiled at her.
“You don’t like dancing?”, she asked
me.
“I don't know how to dance
to that music.”
“As you wish. I'm leaving
now.”
“And the cookies?
“I’ve already sold them
all and I don’t have enough dough to make more.”
Certainly, she had taken
off her white apron. She was wearing a yellow dress with green flowers,
revealing the straps of her lilac bra. Purple shoes, purple backpack. From the
zipper of the backpack hung a stuffed penguin.
I watched her walk towards
the exit and, just as I was about to lose sight of her, the idea dawned on me and
I ran to catch up with her.
“Hey, you going to town?”
“Yep. You too?”
“Yes. Can I come with you?
I got lost on my way here and ended up walking a lot.”
“The bus stop is near
here.”
“I must have got off
earlier.”
“Let’s go, then,” she
said, and grabbed my arm like girlfriends did in my grandmother’s day.
On the way we started
talking and then, instead of taking the bus, we went for a walk through the
industrial zone. We laughed when we were startled by a dog, marveled at the
beauty of a rusting structure and, as it began to get dark, considered going
back to the fair and joining in the drunkenness of the young people. The birds
were finishing their day’s work and were returning to the few trees.
“There used to be magpies around
here.”
“Magpies? I don’t remember
seeing any.”
“Because there aren't any
anymore. They left when the factories came.”
I didn’t say anything
else. I didn’t know what to say.
“I grew up around here,”
she continued. “I rode my bike all over this place a thousand times.”
“You had a bicycle? I know
what color it was,” I joked.
The sky had turned purple,
indigo. I lost myself in it, and when I came to, we were already at her house.
Many people say their life
is pink, others see it as gray. Mine had turned purple.
I went to live with her,
in her house with purple walls, full of purple things. And I learned to make
cookies that tasted like coconut and smelled like violet. I got used to going
from fair to fair and making love in the already closed stall, while outside
the night was intoxicated with youth. That was easy. The hard part was facing
the fear that I was going crazy, when I started to see purple spots every time
I closed my eyes. Because then those spots grew, escaped through my eyelids and
ran down my cheeks like crying violets: a copious, unstoppable weeping that
flooded my whole world.
The only thing that calms
me is being in bed with her, having her asleep in my arms and breathing in the
smell of grape shampoo from her curly hair.