Peculiar Girl and an Orange Birthday

Stay wanted an orange cake for her birthday. She wanted it to be bright as the sun and sweet on her tongue. Oranges were common in the area, growing in groves in abundance on the other side of town. Stay’s mother didn’t often bring oranges home, she was keen on red fruit: strawberries ranging from blood red to lip pink to sun-kissed peach, raspberries in small bundles to be munched on in one day, watermelons cut in slices, red apples with shiny skin, cherries with their pits to be spit in competition; Stay and her mother giggling as the grass became littered with cherry seeds, secret hopes of them growing played like a song in their minds.

Stay begged her mother weeks prior to her birthday for an Orange cake. It started with simple suggestions of how fun orange would be, her mother would suggest pink strawberries or apple pie. After a week Stay’s mother shook her head with a small smile as Stay talked about the skin of the oranges making funny faces on the cake, whole slices of orange within the cake, the possibility of tarts and orange pancakes for breakfast.

Stay, at eight years old, woke up on her birthday to find oranges heaped in woven baskets and piled in pulled out desk drawers. They covered the chairs and sat in bowls covering every flat surface higher than the floor. Orange peels filled the kitchen sink and fell scattered on the kitchen's tiled floor. The floor slick with juice and rinds, Stay’s feet crinkled as she walked, her skin sticking, wanting to stay attached to the sweet coating.

Orange cream, chocolate covered orange segments, candied pecan rolls and caramelized orange rinds, orange butter and orange banana bread. Orange frosting on a frozen orange cake, hollowed half oranges filled with mousse, a bowl of rising yeast, no doubt filled with oranges, cinnamon sticks soaking in thick orange syrup and oranges in the freezer, peeled and unpeeled, as popsicles and fused in ice. Oranges soaked in jars of various liquids full of spices, oranges sliced, diced, whole and squished.

The smell overpowered stay, a waking dream as the world around her turned into the color, smell and taste of orange. Stay's eyes watered, Orange. She could smell the tangy color as she hurried, blind, to find her mother outside making orange jam, oranges piled beside her waiting to become some new delightful creation.

The warm air of the summer morning steamed over the dew speckled ground, the orange sun rose in the sky, a happy birthday lighting its way into Stay’s heart. Stay dances, her mother laughed as she continued to peel oranges, tossing the rinds into a boiling pot over a crackling fire, the segments being set aside to slowly simmer in another pot. The scent was intoxicating. Stay plucked a segment from the pot and plopped it in her mouth, the warm juices flowed down her throat, thick and tangy it puckered her cheeks. She grabbed a segment of rind from her mother’s hand and stuck it in her mouth, sucking out the morsels of juice and giving her mother an orange smile.

Stay’s orange birthday was the best birthday she ever had, it lasted for weeks, remnants of orange constantly being found and the smell lingering until this very day. The smell of her home would forever be wood, smoke, and oranges.

© Ash Huntley