A Raisin, The Raisin

A Raisin, The Raisin

Spring 1990
An essay by Colleen F. Halley

I dislike raisins. I eat these little black and purple rodents very often though, because it is so hard to find a good granola without them. The splintering oats never seem to bother me as much as these rotting morsels. I don't want to touch them for fear of that disgusting mush of skin over what could be old muscle s or fatty tissue, but I must.

I set them apart from the whole of my granola. They stagnate there, segregated on the table. I can hear her voice now, mother harassing, " You best eat those young lady," just as if I hadn't eaten the soggy green beans at dinner. But they are so much more horrifying. I stare at them, and despise them for the memories they drudge up. Feeling them...feeling grandfather's handshake... You could feel the strain of every feebly aged muscle squirm beneath the sheath cover of rubbery skin -- wrinkled and curved like the dry skin I always get on the tips of my fingers when I ski. I proceed to roll one in my hands, pinching it gently between my thumb and index fingers, like I would a cut, hoping to make it bleed. Gush out the blood; make it run and stain; a brown and sticky stain.

When I pop it in my mouth, I'd bet it shrivels even more, petrified by those big white pillars moving in for the kill. I bite down and smile. As the grate of my teeth tears open the skin covering, I can feel a sweet and disgusting slime ooze out. It introduces to my tongue a thick sugary taste, so sweet sometimes that I mistake it for bitterness. My taste buds tighten and close. The plasma creeps into my cavity and I cringe in pain.

Sometimes you can get one with a pit. Like a pebble lost inside a sock, it wanders aimlessly inside. If you bite down on it, the pit of the raisin grinds like the sand that sneaks into your gum at the beach. You clamp your teeth harder to hear the grating and feel it cracking at your mercy. Those pieces though, could return to gauge and gash marks deep into your gums and scratch its initials into your enamel.

I grind even harder now in trying to return some of the pain. There is a struggle and a fight. I chomp ferociously even though not much more effort is needed to demolish this fruit. I power my muscle to wipe it away into the darkest reaches of my mouth. With one caress of the adam's apple, I swoosh it down saying a final goodbye. The raisin falls an endless flight into the land of the lost.

I have rid myself of this raisin's presence, and yet its shadow still remains to haunt me. I swirl saliva around in an attempt to banish this stale aftertaste from the cavern of my mouth. A minute sheet of skin emerges from between two teeth. I pluck it from my tongue and throw it away. I can still feel the sweet stain left on my teeth and imagine the enamel rotting from the sugary devil. I am finally compelled to get myself a drink, something powerful like Mountain Dew, that with its bubbles and overpowering taste, could finally wipe this raisin's remains from my mouth. It is gone now, until next time I venture forth to eat my raisin-plagued granola.