A Citrus Summer

A personal essay that began as poetry.

When I was 10, my neighbours were selling lemons. There was a small make-shift stall, just trestle tables and a dream, a scribbled sign with lemons barely legible on a single paper sign. I could hardly wait to bounce on up the hill to get some. It was an Australian summer, droplets of sweat dripped down my pale chubby legs, my brown virgin hair would frizz in the humidity, and the steep incline up Currawong Road left me aching for my ventolin inhaler. Mum was asleep on the couch, she didn’t wake to see me leave. I had only one friend, but we played for hours all summer. We were friends a little too young and a lot too soon, but I learned so much. She was always there for me.

She told me that, if I got some organically grown lemons and put the juice from them in my hair, it would bleach and lighten to a perfect blonde. So, I took the lemons home, cut their juicy bellies apart and split them into perfect wedges on my mothers bench top. I ran the wedges along my hair in front of the mirror, my hair now sticky and wet, but I swear I could see the acid working its way through my shit brown hair. My friend told me that, if I wanted tanner skin, I should use coconut oil and go in the sun. I was often compared to the moon with a smirk, you see. White clumps of coconut oil all over the bathroom sink, my clothes and skin, the oil glistening on the thousands of freckles and moles. I went outside to lay in the sun and I laid there all afternoon, sprawled on the grass near the clothesline, my white belly pressed firmly against the ground. My thrifted clothes swayed gently in the breeze above me as I willed the sun to perform. I knew I was more tanned the next day.

My friend told me that, if I wanted my eyes a lighter shade of blue, they needed light therapy, although the real therapy was quite costly, unlike the fifty cent lemons.I decided I would open my eyes towards the sun until they burned, until it was unbearable and inevitably shut them. My drugstore mascara smudged beneath my eyes from sweat and tears. I repeated this ritual a few times, blinking away hot tears in hope I would change. I was sure in my reflection my eyes seemed more blue.

If I lied to myself, I could see my hair getting lighter, my skin getting darker and my eyes brighter. If my mother was a liar, she would have come out to join me, she would have brought a towel and sat with me in the sun, we would have laughed and talked and summer wouldn’t have felt like a pageant anymore. But, my mother isn’t a liar, only I am.

During the final setting sun of January, I heard my name being spat out furiously with other colourful words throughout the house. The lemon juice on the bench top was a serious offence, and my mum’s coldness offered no reprieve on this hot day. She told me to have a shower and clean myself up, we had to go out for dinner. Dinners did not happen often, a housekeeper’s wage could only just cover a nice meal for our small family, a bottle of wine (or two) would have been reluctantly sacrificed to cover the cost.

The table cloths were a dirty white at our local RSL, cutlery not quite polished enough and the war medals displayed half-assed in their old glass cases had seen better days, the endless names of deceased veterans rolling down the walls, the pensioners playing bingo and the hopeless banging buttons on the pokies next to the dining room, made it feel it was not a very summery place. Mum would urge that it’s still a treat. I sat with my arms tightly around me, hoping to become forgotten like the veterans on the wall. One of my mother’s old friends saw us at our table, and they exchanged familiar check-ins.“What are you up to these days?” and behind their eyes it’s always ‘I hope it’s not more than me’. Mum’s friend introduces her daughter, Indigo.She was tan, blonde haired, blue eyed, smiled brightly, and was polite enough. It was the friendliest my mother had been all evening. “She is just beautiful,” she breathed, shaking her head. Beautiful? The word was funny to me, I hadn’t heard it before.I would have to ask my friend later.Indigo’s mother didn’t return the compliment. They just hastily went back to their table and we sat silently at ours. I supposed I received the wish I had asked for earlier.

“Next time, we’ll do it professionally,” my mother said. We were finally spending time together for the summer, crammed up in our rental’s bathroom. Brushes, bowls and bleach all along the basin. The following thought occurred naturally to her this time, unprompted, like a trained dog.“It looks nice and wavy though! Like you’ve been at the beach”. Nice and wavy? Like the beach? My friend told me that I could bleach my hair with a magical thing called box-dye (much more powerful than the lemons). I was the happiest I had been all summer. The sun was shining, my hair was brighter, more curly, my eyes were as bright as the sky and my mother wanted to spend time with me.

I am a liar. I am a liar. I am a liar.

I smelt like a vomited dessert on the RSL floor, and I’m sure if we were to go again,all my mothers friends would laugh at me.Lemons and coconuts were not enough to sweeten, nor brighten my summer.

I was oily, not tan.

My eyes were still a sad blue.

I was yellow, not Indigo.

I at least still had my friend.

That fat square desktop computer was always there for me.