Member-only story
The Divine Onion
~ Olympian. Victorious. Complete ~
Inspired by Hilliare Belloc’s ‘Onion-eater”
How marvelous onions are!
Especially the purple and pearly white ones. All those moist layers hiding tender hearts, the most delectable part, not bitter or strong, but mellow and sweet and so very vulnerable like newborn babies.
Once, back in the old country, we visited an open air produce market. We drove in air-conditioned luxury, us two soft-soled entitled ladies, to a dusty field along which were crumbling walls slapped with dung patties. And there, under low slung arches of tattered cheesecloth spread the market like an ancient crocodile covered with confetti. As we gingerly stepped out of wicked luxury and lifted hems of our trousers lest some wretched part of that teeming ecology attach itself to us, I found myself wondering why we were there. Surely our produce could be purchased at an upscale grocer’s!
Assailed on all sided by leeches of wet heat, smells of decomposition, mangoes, spices, urine, dead animals and omnipresent musk of bronzed unwashed bodies, I reeled a bit then felt ashamed. As if to compensate, I smiled benovelently at a sweaty ten year-old laboring under a sixty pound load of the most glorious onions I have ever seen. I mean, it was like a mound of snowballs brushed with purple of…
