Sweeter than Spanish Onions

The moment that Maisey had been to visit her Aunt Hester in Old Guinea, she had been told, rather obliquely, that a plan had been made while she was on her way that she would be the one to make dinner for all of the aunts and uncles the following night. Aunt Hester had been told by Maisey's mother about all of the delightful experiments Maisey had foisted on her household - from braised beef to treacle pudding to stuffed pheasant - and so the aunts and uncles had been primed to expect a taste.

"I hear that your sucking-pig left the house in an uproar," Hester had said while Maisey had barely gotten her trunk through the front door. "I expect it to do the very same here. Tell me, what do you need for the recipe?"

Despite her reeling, Maisey found it in herself to rattle off a few examples: "Sage leaves, butter, Spanish onion, and a pig about four weeks old... Auntie, why are you asking me this? You ought to have the maid do the cooking for such a large party!"

Before Aunt Hester opened her mouth, her strained expression betrayed her - she must have known already that this was a terrible idea. "I've let her off for the weekend. Dear, I want to have your cooking, not the same old things I eat every other day."

Unfortunately, Aunt Hester had not considered that without the help of the maid who went to market every day, neither she nor Maisey knew where in Old Guinea to find ingredients. Back on the countryside, Maisey had a network of trusted butchers and farmers and greengrocers whose input she held to high authority, but here, she became lost both in her heart and on her feet as she scoured the markets of Old Guinea, down cobbled streets and brick homes which were so complicated that she hadn't hardly an idea of how they were held together.

With some luck, Maisey did find a butcher that was, if not of a particular quality, was at least clearly marked. In time, she too found suppliers for butter and stuffing. However, what plagued Maisey most was the finding of a grocer who had all of the vegetables and herbs that she needed. Supposedly, the people of Old Guinea made all sorts of stops when they went to market. The passersby that Maisey inquired about finding onions and sage all told her to go somewhere wildly different. One man even said that his household got their lemon balm on the East side of town, their celery seed on the riverside, and their thyme from someone who only came to an open air market once a week! Maisey wondered how anybody could live this eclectically. She would surely implore Aunt Hester to up her poor maid's pay for how much work she had to endure!

On leaving the second greengrocer who had only white onions, Maisey became destitute. She hiked up her skirt and looked for the sun - though the cloud cover prevented her from properly discerning the time of day - and she told herself that the next greengrocer she found would be her final one, onions or none.

At last, Maisey came upon a dusty-windowed storefront with a sign reading "Pemberton's Grocers" in letters which must have been white when they had been painted but had since turned to gray to match the city's skies. Despite having no optimism for such a gloomy looking place, Maisey held herself to the bargain she had made in her mind, and so she went inside.

There was a young woman manning the store. The birch wood of the counter and shelves was so washed out and pale that it should by all accounts have made that woman's countenance similarly ghostly, but somehow the warmth of her brown cheeks made the wood surrounding her come to life, and so too did the wood enhance her color. She looked at Maisey with eyes white and round, with little red veins that Maisey could trace along the edges.

Maisey became inexplicably nervous as she asked for something as simple as some onions. The woman did not wear gloves; emerging from her black sleeves were long-fingered hands with a seam along the palm separating brown and pink skin. The hands constantly moved; she could stay still no better than Maisey could.

Maisey couldn't hold herself back from asking, when the grocer put a few onions on the counter, "Why come are your hands bare?"

"I like feeling the skin," the woman said with an accent thick and Cockney. "Helps me tell if they're any good."

"These are good onions, then?"

"Only the best for a pretty young lady." The woman smiled for a moment, and her grin was so wide that it made Maisey gape. This must have offended, because the smile quickly dropped. "Sorry. That's something my dad would have said."

"Your dad?"

"Owns the store. Puts me to work here on account of me being an old maid."

"You're hardly old!" Maisey ejaculated. She righted herself before actually asking the woman's age, which would have been terribly crass, and instead asked, "What's your name, old maid?"

"I'm Pattie."

"So you're Pattie Pemberton, then?" Maisey smiled, and so too did Pattie, though Pattie seemed to fight her own upturned lips. The pink cuffs of Pattie's ears turned maroon, another color which complemented her birch surroundings.

Maisey offered her own name in the sweetest voice she could muster, hoping to diffuse the tension. All Pattie said in response was "What else d'you want?"

At once, Maisey realized her own rude staring. She bashfully rattled off the rest of her list for Pattie. At least her onions had been secured.

Except, there was something different about the onions, now that she was looking at them and not Pattie's hands. They were small and dark; a real batch of Spanish onions would have matched the pale birch counter almost perfectly.

"Excuse me, madam." Maisey struggled to bring up her voice. "These are yellow onions. Do you have Spanish ones?"

Pattie dropped a paper sack full of herbs and aromatics next to the onions. She looked at Maisey with a frown and asked, "What's the difference?"

"These onions aren't as sweet." Maisey pushed them back towards Pattie, who scrutinized them.

For a long time, Pattie said nothing, and Maisey worried that she'd done something horribly wrong by speaking so bluntly. She had not spoken like this to any of the other grocers today, but for some reason, she as un-tensing with Pattie, as if she were with an old friend. Perhaps it was just culture shock from the city; she had never expected to see a woman - let alone a colored one - manning a store!

Out of the blue, Pattie asked with her eyes down as if addressing the onions themselves, "What are you making?"

"Sucking-pig?"

Pattie cried out in recognition, and she began rifling through the shop's drawers and shelves with newfound energy. Maisey worried that Pattie might be hurrying too much, and she worried doubly so when Pattie climbed upon a ladder to reach a stash of deep blue berries on the very top shelves. When Pattie landed back in front of Maisey, it caused a startle that made Maisey's heels leave the floor.

"What's all this?" Maisey begged.

"Do you do a plum sauce or a currant jam with your pig?" Pattie brandished a purple bauble in each hand. "I've done both ways, but I think currant is best."

"Oh," said Maisey, "I won't need any of either, thanks."

"Sure you do. Promise I'm not upselling. It's on the house - for a pretty lady."

Maisey flustered. "I mean, I'm not doing a sauce."

Pattie became suddenly still. "What?"

"I don't do a sauce with my pig."

"You have to do a sauce."

"Why?"

"It's how my dad does it." Pattie started to raise her voice: "It isn't hard or nothing, just a little reduction; I could make some in the back right now..."

"A sauce would ruin it!" Maisey found herself puffing up to match Pattie.

"Ruin it? Blimey, you've got no clue what you're talking about."

"Nor you," Maisey scoffed.

"You've got the wrong onions, don't you? A sauce would fix the sweetness."

"The onions aren't that different."

"Oh, aren't they?"

Maisey swore that her face was ablaze. "The flavor of the pig ought to stand on its own!"

"I seem to recall you caring a lot about the onions!"

All of a sudden, the shop's door opened, and its jingling bell startled the girls so that the newcoming customer might as well have thrown a stone through the window. Maisey caught her breath - all the while wondering why she'd gotten so worked up in the first place - and gathered her groceries, onions and all, to bring home.

With a rather dishonest "Thank you," Maisey stormed out, leaving her few pence payment on the counter next to Patties plums and currants.

Long after Pemberton's Grocer was out of sight, Maisey could not let Pattie Pemberton go from her mind. Each time Maisey came to a break in conversation with her aunts, or when she talked of the plans for supper tomorrow, it was as though a stone was upturned in her head to reveal Pattie underneath. It became especially a problem when Maisey was busy with preparing her meal. Once or twice, Maisey might have almost taken her own knuckle with her chopping knife.

As she stoked her fire and buttered her pig, Maisey resolved to herself, "I'll show her, that foolish, vicious grocer woman. Not one person tonight will want for a damned sauce."

When Aunt Hester checked on Maisey's progress and heard this, she worried, "Maisey, love, who is this woman you're so concerned with?"

Hester surely regretted asking, because Maisey went off like a shot about that presumptuous woman and her plums and her colored hands and her insisting on what Maisey do with her own supper! and how maybe this was just the way grocers were in the city, because no one back home would have imposed to this degree.

When Maisey's ire came to a pause, Aunt Hester announced her meagre dissent: "You've got the pig started, haven't you? Why don't you come visit with the family some?"

"I've got to watch it, make sure it doesn't burn. Why can't Uncle Roscoe or Aunt Minnie come and visit with me in the kitchen?"

"Well." Aunt Hester clucked and tilted her wrinkled head. "It is a little stuffy in here, isn't it?"

"I'll visit with them when supper's ready, then."

When supper came close to being finished, though, and Maisey became ensconced with the crisping, sweet skin of her pig, she had a thought, and that thought carried her out into the streets of Old Guinea, where she reminded herself that though the sun was down and the lamps were lit, the shops weren't all closed yet.

A package of parchment and twin warmed Maisey under her coat. Most of the pig and accompanying vegetables were in tact, kept warm in the kitchen under a chafing dish for her family to help themselves from should any of them think to come and check when suppertime comes around. All that Maisey had taken was an especially tender piece of the pig's flank and a perfect helping of vegetables, broth, and herbs - just enough for one person, or perhaps for two people to share. Pattie was just bringing down the gates on the shop's yellow windows when Maisey arrived with her package held like an offering at the altar.

Broth and fat pooled in the parchment when it was unwrapped on the grocery counter. Pattie, with those bare fingers of hers, pulled a tender strip from the helping of pig. Something about those two kinds of flesh coming to touch seemed perfect in Maisey's heart.

Pattie chewed and chewed, her big eyes looking up in thought, and it was all Maisey could do to keep from pouncing upon her to pry those thoughts out of her head. The world came to a halt when, at length, Pattie lowered her head, thudded a fist on the counter, and muttered. "Dammit."

"No?" Maisey whispered, preparing herself to attack Pattie's lack of taste.

Pattie shook her head. "I think I've wasted my time."

"How do you mean?"

Pattie turned to pull from one of the grocer drawers a jar filled with a thick, berry-colored jam. As she set the jar on the counter, Pattie would not look in Maisey's direction.

"You made this?" Maisey asked.

Pattie sighed, "You were right, though. You didn't need it."

Maisey wagged a finger in Pattie's direction. "Clearly, we can't trust your judgement, now can we? I'll have to see for myself."

After peeing a piece from the pig flank, Maisey dabbed it in some of Pattie's jam and sampled. In this case, the pig's sweetness did not become overwhelmed with the currant jam's own sweetness - instead, the tastes deepened one another until they were hardly sweet anymore but savory, salty, spicy. It made Maisey's mouth water.

"Come home with me." Maisey did not think before she spoke; her own words made her heart hammer. "My country grocers can't compare to you - though we will need to teach you the difference between yellow and Spanish onions."

When Maisey offered her hands, Pattie took them, and Maisey marveled at how the slick fat and butter from the pig spread between their fingers.

"I can't leave the city," Pattie admitted. "I can't leave my dad, not if I'm not married."

"Then marry me."

Pattie laughed.

Maisey took a long breath and said, "I'll stay in the city with my aunt, then. I need to be near you, Pattie."

They both smiled and grew close to one another, until Maisey could smell a faint cloud of herbs and garlic coming from Pattie's braided hair. If she could find the fragrance of the countryside here, then Maisey could make herself at home in Old Guinea just fine.

"It can't be that good, can it?" Pattie pulled away suddenly, plucking a piece of pig and running it through her jam.

"It's better than anything," Maisey insisted while Pattie thoughtfully chewed and chewed yet again. It took forever, but Maisey could watch her muse over a bite of food til the end of time.

At last, Pattie drew her brows together into a V and said, "Might be better without, actually."

Maisey scoffed and cried, "You truly have no taste, do you?"