Apricot Press

There’s a full moon and the garden drips. The dead draw near and I’m in the kitchen, thick in the alchemy of cookery. My desire for deeper broths brings me to this: the making of a dark roux. Only utter the words and there’s the harsh bark of the night-frosted fox, her ghost-breath hung above sable earth. I’ll tell you the recipe but not the sorcery: equal parts flour to oil. What you make of it lies in your hands. Three hours of stirring, anchored by the old gas flame, hips swaying, ought to bring them worrying: There must be an easier way! Who has time for this? But there is no short cut. Three hours of stirring and the colour mutes from sunshine yellow to darker hues of a summer rusting, and on into those of the dusky earth to which all must return. Three hours of stirring turns a girl. There’s cadence in the stasis and hypnosis in the rolling while the oil gibbers on, its riddles unanswered. My ghost walks, bringing me quarrels and trials, troubles and half-lies, something wicked and unhinged to fold into the searing annihilation of my roux.

Night deepens.

The myth of it delivers images of New Orleans streets, rain relentless upon casket and car, brass keening in minor keys, the metronome all but flatlining.

The science of it surfaces in amines and sugars, bonded Amadori compounds, ring-bearing molecules pledging aromas, melanoidins dragging the bridal gown of brown over brown.

The peril of it simmers close by me; the fury to shatter glass and boil mercury, to strip flesh from any bone.

More witch than woman now, I turn and coax that power from my hands, keeping it moving as my wooden spoon blackens. I gather courage to edge it past smoking as night-black comets surface and are swallowed. A moment’s inattention and all would be lost: scorched and spoiled. I hold my breath, phantoms of smoke pour upwards before my drying eyes, my face aflame, some madness on me now for the darkest shade that I can conjure.

On I stir.

The stench of oil toasting and nuts roasting sinks into my skin and breathes through my hair, bringing heavy-lidded children to the kitchen, begging: what’s that smell? Unruly, it escapes the house to join the moon-illuminated clouds, scudding down the street with restless leaves, blacker than shadow, darker than lust. Those hereabouts who catch it on the air will shiver, pull their coats closer, undecided if they sense a calling or a warning.

Clairvoyance tells me when, and I obey. I kill the flame but tend the roux. The fever breaks and the heat dissipates and on I stir until all danger of charring has passed.

It squats in a jar, now, confined. It is dark sediment sunk beneath a lake-water gloom. Soon, we will turn it, swirling, into something heavy and good, which we will eat while we wait the dead.

Photo credit: Gaelle Marcel