Tea / Nora Carrier

Tea

Nora Carrier

It is cold in this house and I wish to be warm. It’s rounding two and my roommates are sleeping –– we debated this, staying up, and I know we will not get results but part of me wants to be awake, to see. It is cold and I am sitting on this leather couch alone, my eyes glued to cable news. I hate cable news. I wrap the big white blanket around my head and my arms –– the blanket Renee got me, Renee my 60-year-old Trump-supporting cousin, Renee who’s worried about abortion and the destruction of ‘our way of life’, Renee who does not know I am gay. But the blanket is warm. I want nothing more in the world right now than to feel truly warm. I want nothing more than for Bella to be here –– Bella in Pennsylvania, Bella in Allegheny County, a registered Democrat who voted by mail, CNN says she is important. I want nothing more than for her to be here, to feel the warmth of her head against my chest, her arms around my waist, my lips on her warm, warm forehead. She is sleeping. I cocoon myself in the blanket, anything to simulate human contact. We are out of herbal tea, and it is too late for caffeine or too much sugar. My hands are cold. I scurry to the kitchen and fill a pot with water. As it heats, I grab a lemon and ginger! Ginger is warm. I slice the lemon with a dull utility knife. Juice spills in a tiny cut on my cuticle. It stings. I pick out the seeds of the lemon with a fork, tossing them in the sink. I squeeze the juice into the water, start peeling the ginger with a spoon. The ginger is old. It is partially rotted. I scoop out the greyed strands of ginger at the center, hoping to

salvage the rest. I start to mince the ginger. The smell prickles my senses, and I tire of cutting, driving the knife into the root. I settle for roughly chopped. I am too impatient for a dull knife, for rotted ginger, for impartial results. I scrape the quarter-inch pieces off of the cutting board and drop them into the pot. The water bubbles, the ginger floats. What is the count now? I peer into the living room at the television. 220-213. This mixture needs sweetness, I think. I grab an apple; it is unwashed, waxy. I cut out the core, careful of my fingers. The last time Bella was here, she sliced the tip of her thumb off on this very counter, this very cutting board. We were cutting onions for butternut squash soup, my mother’s recipe, when I watched the blade miss its target by a quarter of an inch, leaving a scrap of skin and droplets of blood on the countertop. She ran the wound under water, then wrapped it in a wad of paper towels and sat on the floor, her hands above her head, just waiting for the blood to stop. I slice the apple as thin as I care to, again growing weary of the repetitive motion. I add the slices to the water. The mixture boils. It is a dull almost-pink. The steam warms my hands. What time is it? 2:13? 2:20? I pour the mixture into a french press. Droplets spill on the stove and hiss as they evaporate.

I wait.