Breakfast Over the Atlantic
The tray table is too high for me, my legs dangle and the seat belt I had so proudly closed with that clang-snap sound is so tight around my waist that my hands barely reach the miracles from above. One half of a grapefruit, yellow segments in a bright yellow dimpled rind bowl, pale petals of pulp in translucent white pith holders radiating out from a bright red maraschino cherry, stem curling in surprise. Scrambled eggs, a yellow scoop, convex, with a green spring of parsley, in a comma, pausing. A white plastic cup with black tea. A white plastic cup with cola. Plastic cutlery on a white paper napkin. A packet of salt. A packet of pepper. Four packets of white sugar. The woman sitting next to me with the window seat tears open a sugar and pours it into her coffee. She does the same thing with her grapefruit and then starts to eat her eggs, chews them, stops and then adds salt and pepper. The plastic knife and fork in her hands seem to know what to do. I put one sugar on my grapefruit, one on my eggs, one in my tea and one in the cola. I put all the salt and all the pepper on the eggs. I pick up my fork and start to eat my eggs, speckled now, salty, sweet and peppery in my mouth. The woman is frowning at me and says something but I don't understand English so I start to cry, softly, just tears. As I cry, I force myself to eat and drink everything in front of me, the bright taste of sugar, sharp stings of pepper and the overwhelming flavor of salt. The grapefruit, coated with sugar sinking into the flesh, so hard to eat with a knife and fork but so very very sweet, that bright taste like the hard daylight from the window. I finish with the cherry, leaving the stem, more a question now. Tea now so sweet, if cooling, so easy to swallow that taste, that pure sweetness. Cola even sweeter, so I finish it before I finish the eggs, that are so so salty, they cut my mouth, but I spear them and swallow without tasting and then I finish the tea. I leave the parsley next to the cherry stem, closing the quote. Everything is empty now but I am still crying. I want the sweetness to win over the salt. Salt on my face, though. I keep tasting too much salt. There just wasn't enough sugar.