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Strawberry
Cordial
by Sharmagne Leland - St John
I was reading a story that Susan Stallings-Dobson wrote
about her sadness during her childhood at finding spiders
trapped or marooned in an empty, cold, white porcelain
sink. I have always felt akin to Grandmother spider and
set her free whenever I have come upon her. This story
takes me whistling back to my own childhood and evokes
memories of my own long, brown, slender arms up to the
elbows in hot soapy suds as I had the arduous and hated
task of washing the dishes. I remember singing "Peg
O' My Heart" and "My Wild Irish Rose" on
those hot, sultry summer evenings while my sister dried
the plates and cups and bowls and sang harmony. There was
nothing more distressing to me than to be trapped, a tiny
prisoner in the enormous kitchen on Olive Drive where we
lived in an old converted church, wearing an oversized
apron doubled over and tied at the waist, washing or
drying dishes when the only place on earth I wanted to
be, longed to be, was outside with my best friend Lark
Nixon playing "Kick The Can" with the other
neighbourhood children in the mounting dusk of a summer
evening. Only too soon summer would end and it would be
time to return to school. Darkness would fall earlier and
I would be too busy with homework to be able to play
outside in the autumn evenings. It was one such evening
when I discovered the bottle of strawberry cordial up in
the cupboard above the ironing board closet. It was my
turn to dry that night. My sister having washed the
dishes very quickly and sadistically rinsed them in cold
water so they would be harder to dry was already out in
the avocado orchards behind the house with the other
children calling out "Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free"
in her high staccato voice. But there I was with a
mountain of dishes to dry and put away. I was feeling
increasingly sorry for myself when I climbed up onto a
metal kitchen chair to put away a heavy white, green and
pink dogwood patterned platter and discovered a little
bit of heaven in a brown bottle. I took the bottle down,
unscrewed the black plastic cap and smelled it to see if
I recognised the scent of the pinky coloured liquid,
swirling inside the bottle. It held a sweet familiar
scent but I couldn't quite place it, so being a somewhat
adventurous child I took a small sip and like Alice
entered a world I had never known nor dreamed of. It
wasn't an unpleasant taste but I still couldn't quite
place it. So I took another sip and then another. I knew
it was some sort of fruit but what was that other stingy
sort of taste? The one that made me feel funny when I
inhaled? I couldn't quite put my finger on it so I placed
the bottle back up in what I instinctively knew was its
hiding place. I went back to drying the dishes but that
sweet sticky taste haunted me as it lingered somewhere
around the roof of my mouth. So after a few minutes I
climbed on those spindly, scrawny, wobbly legs back up
that red and white metal stepping stool chair and took
another tiny sip from that brown slender necked bottle. I
believe it was then that I first invented the "game
of rewards," which I still use to this day to get
chores done around my house. For every 10 dishes I dried
I got to climb up those red metal steps and take a wee
rewarding sip from the brown bottle with the black
plastic screw on cap. Nowadays for every 20 pieces of
clothing I put away I get to go on line, or make a phone
call, or play a half hour of my favourite video game. But
in those days it was strawberry cordial. I began to hate
the days when it was my turn to wash the dishes but I
would dawdle long enough scouring out the sink with Babbo
or Dutch Cleanser until my sister had hung up her ill
fitting apron and the embroidered linen dish towel that
one or the other of us had been forced to painstakingly
"sew" the day of the week onto and had gone
outside to join the other children in the summer twilight
as they played their childish games. One night I
discovered that I had sampled more than half of the
bottle and I knew I would get caught so I began to refill
the bottle a little at a time with watered down cranberry
juice. Boy did that ever taste good! Finally I had the
bottle back up to the level it was when I started so I
never was discovered imbibing but I always wondered what
my elderly, widowed Aunt Mary thought when she was
offered strawberry cordial and served watered down
cranberry juice instead. Ollie Ollie Oxen Free! Hiccup!
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