Coconut Cookies

 

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.