FOOD IS POISON
ELIZA SAYS, “You can’t possibly understand time in the way that I do.”
She’s right, of course.
I can spend my time drawing the special version of the letter “S” that we all know how to draw; the one we drew all over our desks in school; the one with two sets of three parallel lines that you have to join diagonally left to right, then cap off at the top and bottom with triangles.
I could draw it all day in various sizes.
If I wanted to.
Eliza, on the other hand, has six hours of juice remaining. She will pull a morning shift and have one hour—plus a forty-five minute grace period—to find the juice aisle. Because of this, Eliza’s hands move quickly; every movement is precise, necessary. Absolutely no waste.
“My bad,” I tell her.
When you have something others want, when you are in a better position than they are, it is always best to apologize. Say sorry for your good fortune. It makes them feel better, which makes them less likely to hurt you.
I have sixteen weeks’ worth of shifts before I run out of juice. Nobody has a stash like that. Just me. Right now, at this very moment, I am like a God here. In the morning I’ll clock in, put in my login, password, and so on. I’ll put the block in the chamber, load the press, set the parameters and start the cycle. Turn the rectangle shaped block into something more cylindrical. I will do that five times per hour for four hours and then I will take my lunch break.
I will do this even though I do not have to. I will do this even though I am a rich woman.
Rich off juice.
The cleanest shit you can get.
If you perform your tasks to the best of your ability, you will never have to experience the withdrawal. The symptoms set in after you should have already completed your task, with an additional forty-five minutes added for you to make it to the juice aisle.
I will do this because I am responsible. I am a responsible woman.
There are juice aisles on every corner of every block in every neighborhood in the city. I am sure there are more juice aisles outside the city but I have never been.
Additionally, there is the black market for those that are not registered. This involves risk, on account of it being impossible to administer the right dosage without hospital-grade equipment. In most cases, it works fine. There is also the issue of cost. Vouchers are worthless in that world.
Eliza says, “My brother-in-law killed my older sister.”
I load the block, press the button that clamps the two chucks together. “Come again?”
“What I said. She had the diabetes. And she already had a problem with portion control. But she had been working with a nutritionist to get better. Meal planning, all that.”
“OK.” I watch Eliza’s hands, the speed of her movements slowing down almost imperceptibly as she speaks.
“Her husband, my brother-in-law Larry, he’s a real piece of shit. He goes to Granny’s and picks her up four pieces of steak fish, fried hard, salt and pepper, drenched in hot sauce. Endless chicken boxes. White bread, mac and cheese, greens, yams, cabbage, crab balls and saltine crackers, fried shrimp, hush puppies, all that. Cheesecake whenever she asks for it. Brisket, fried chicken, pasta, salad, potato salad, pigs feet and fried liver. That’s what he brings her.”
“That sounds good as I don’t know what.”
“Nah, girl!” Eliza loads a block. “Just listen. Next time I call her she sounds terrible. She tells me that she has to get one of her legs amputated. The whole leg! Peripheral artery disease is what they call it. Good for nothing Larry, that’s what I call it.”
The chamber snaps open as the wheel finishes its final cycle. I remove the block, which is no longer a block, but a three inch long cylinder, about the same length and thickness of a yellow highlighter.
“So a couple months go by and my sister gets better. But bitch-ass Larry, he keeps feeding her that poison. You know food is poison, right?
Eliza’s chamber opens slightly after mine. She really needs to hurry up. “Oh yeah?” I raise one eyebrow.
“It can be.” Eliza removes her block, which is no longer a block.
I have so much juice left.
“So it’s hibachi with the unagi and the extra eel sauce, cheese zombies—you ever had a cheese zombie, man? they’re from the Bay Area—and fettuccini Alfredo, with so much cream, I mean that shit is like, all cream. And listen, I tried telling her, that man, he’s no good, trying to poison you and take your little house. But she don’t listen. Talking about, ‘he loves me, he wants me to be happy, he gets me the food I ask him for, because he cares about me being comfortable. You just mad because you ain’t got no man’ and now my sister is dead.”
I’m ready to clock out. I shut off the power and turn on the emergency backup system. “That’s awful.”
Eliza still has many more blocks left. “Yep,” she says.
“You better hurry up.”
Eliza smirks at me. “I’m gonna kick tomorrow. I’m done with this shit, man.”
“Alright.”
She sucks her teeth. “Seriously, I am.”
I take my laptop off sleep mode and enter my login and password and clock out and turn off my laptop and leave the factory.
Standing in the juice aisle and fuck am I thirsty. I get in the line and wait in the queue which is what people from London call a line. This is a piece of information that I share with people to let them know I am interesting and sometimes I even tell them that I’ve been to London and they ask me ‘what part?’ and I make up names of places that don’t exist, but the person I am telling this to has never left the city either, so they don’t know the difference, and my secret is safe with me.
It’s my turn in the queue so I swipe my card for three liters and get busy.
Eliza said: “You can’t possibly understand time in the way that I do.
She is right, and this is because I don’t fear time like she does. I have enough juice to last me through a bad day or an injury or a sick day, perhaps even a sick week. I don’t have to move fast. I can choose to. I can walk if I want to.
Can you imagine that?
I unscrew my port cap and set it on the hopefully-clean surface of the juice tank. This exposes my port and point of entry.
Oh God! Yes!
The longing is crazy, how my stomach starts to churn as I plug in the hopefully-clean cannula and get to work.
The juice goes inside me and I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care . . .
I have nothing to be sorry for.
I have no one to apologize to.
I have never used food to kill anybody. The only thing I have to do is sink into my seat in the juice aisle and become one with the leatherette.
Where I live I can hear the ocean.
High up in my apartment I can hear the whoosh and the whish. I love Eliza, don’t get me wrong. I love all of my sisters and I feel a great sadness to know of her suffering but I am not the cause of it. If I choose to draw the special “S” over and over again while listening to the ocean, then that is my right. The juice runs through me. It fizzles and it pops like snow on a TV screen, making its way through my system.
Eliza says that I’m silly (since the ocean dried up years ago) and that pretending the whooshing and whishing sounds are ocean waves (when they are really the sounds of the nearby anaerobic digesters) is naive and childish.
I don’t blame her. Eliza couldn’t possibly understand time in the way that I do.