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Stephanie N. Gurley
Dr. Chappel
Southern Lit.
25 November 1997
Catharsis Soup
(Inspired largely by Nathaniel Hawthorne's Earth's Holocaust)
I
That was my first real spring. I left a bad husband a year before, and
I was happy. I was renting a small house and the landlord had encouraged
me to plant a garden when I mentioned it.
One night as I sat on my couch drinking my southern sweet iced tea something
strange occurred to me. I had saved memories that I didn't want to keep.
I had tucked away in old shoe boxes at the top of my hall closet pictures
and scraps from my past. So, I took each box down and put it in my living
room floor. I fumbled through the pictures trying to find some reason that
I ought keep them. I found no reason, just a reflection of my own ignorance.
I grew more angry looking at each picture.
"I'll burn them!" I thought. "I have to burn them!"
After I had rejected the thought of burning them where they lay, I decided
the best place for their cremation was over my freshly cleared garden.
So, the mission had begun and I gathered the pictures and the scraps and
tossed them onto the sandy dirt in my back yard sprinkling lighter fluid
over their false images.
The fire started modestly and it was beautiful under my spring moon glimmering
in my garden. This was not enough, I had to feed it. I felt my soul being
released in the smoke and I needed that feeling more. I pounded through
my back door and grabbed everything that reminded me of him. I grabbed
my tee-shirts that he wore, my books that he read and everything that he
ever gave me and hurled it into the flames. I saw my freed soul rising
into the air as the flames rose. All of my hidden guilt and pain drifted
effortlessly away. I had never been so alive!
I wanted to listen to Pearl Jam and dance naked around my fire. So, I did.
I danced completely naked in the moonlight with the fire shining off of
every inch of my pale body. And, I shamelessly sang along: "o-OH I'm
still ALIVE!"
My Indian spirit tingled about me encircling my coolness, touching the
beads of sweat dripping from my body.
I danced to exhaustion and then I lay down close to my fire and slept until
the sun rose. I twisted to watch it. Laying flat on my back I sacrificed
myself to the sun. He would make my garden grow.
II
Soon, I worked the ashes into the soil along with cow manure. I thought
about how well they suited each other. "Bull shit and my ex-husband,
now there's a perfect marriage." I said. I tilled and hoed and when
the soil was ready I planted the seeds. I planted all the good stuff: Corn,
tomatoes, butter beans, okra, purple hull peas, green beans, all kinds
of peppers, squash, carrots, potatoes, a few spices, and watermelon for
good measure.
Summer came, the heat and the rain. My garden was a never failing delight
to me. Every morning I'd rush out to see the squash blossoms and every
night I'd water just to feel the mud squish between my toes. Every bloom
was a new birth and each fruit a child that I had born. My vegetables were
beautiful. The brightest colors I had ever seen. I often took a tomato
straight off of the vine and bit into it letting the juices drip down my
chin and onto my clothes. (Washing was a small price to pay for that simple
pleasure.) It almost seemed as if I was dreaming sometimes, my senses were
so in tune and my vegetables looked like something in a jolly green giant
ad. It was time that I shared my joy with others.
III.
I gathered enough vegetables for a very large soup in two bushel baskets,
put my favorite watermelon on ice and sat down to call my friends. I pureed
and chopped and peeled and eventually put the soup on to boil. As the aroma
began to fill my house so did my friends. Each of them arrived adding something
distinct to the party just as the vegetables and spices did to the soup.
Some arrived bearing gifts or other party favors, others were just hungry
for free food. I studied all of my friends that night just as I had studied
my vegetables and fruits. They were all so beautiful and the night was
a royal feast. We gathered on the lawn and soaked it all in. We partook
of sins, soup, wine, beer, pot and cornbread to sop it all up. Then, somewhere
around midnight, I laughed, as we all in a drunken stupor sang along to
Pearl Jam:
o-OH I'm still ALIVE!
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