Читать книгу Jagua, A Journey Into Body Art from the Amazon - Carine Jr. Fabius - Страница 4

THE YELLOW RUBBER GLOVES ARE ON and my splattered apron safeguards my clothes. Spatula in hand, I stand over the noisy whirring of a XXX-size KitchenAid mixer filled with a shiny, viscous black goop when my husband shouts from across the room, “Don’t breathe on that!”

“I’m not breathing!” I say.

I step away from the mixer and feel a squishing sensation underneath my foot.

“Oh no! Do you think you could ever one day wipe up a spill when it happens?” I ask. “Now I’m going to have it all over my foot. Look, it splashed up on my leg too.”

He ignores these comments. He’s too busy pouring jet-black jagua fruit juice from a plastic gallon jug through a funnel and into a sieve in order to make sure any remaining sediment doesn’t make its way into the mix. At the bottom of the jug, it’s all sediment. With a black plastic spoon he pushes the thick stuff through the strainer so that he can gather every last drop of this rare, precious liquid that we like to call “black gold.” In the process, some of the juice splashes on his chin. No matter the precautions, we always end up looking like we work in the semi-permanent ink business, which, come to think of it, we kinda do. A few minutes later, I pull off my gloves and stare in horror. My hands have turned completely black.

“How did this happen again?” I say. “How did it do that? Thank God jagua doesn’t stain the nails!”

Wait a minute, haven’t I done this before? Feels like a déjà-vu. Is that the tinkling sound of the opening music to The Twilight Zone I’m hearing...?

A pot full of brown mud sits simmering atop my oven burner as I race around the kitchen, wet dishrag in hand, working desperately to get the fine film of green powder that has worked its way onto every surface it can find in the room. While one bright orange-stained hand feverishly wipes at the brown spot that refuses to lift off the blond wood table, the other hand, whose nails have not escaped the reddish tint, reaches for ground cloves. I debate in my mind for the hundredth time whether eucalyptus oil would be a better choice. The scent of eucalyptus snakes it way up my nostrils and I take a moment to breathe it in and clear my nasal passages.

“Don’t forget to keep stirring the pot!” my husband shouts from across the room. He has been standing over the sink for an hour, pouring the green powder through a fine mesh wire sieve, and is the one responsible for the stuff finding its way into our throats, hair and, I’m sure by now, our pores.

“Should I pour the coffee in now?” I shout back, vowing silently to withhold all snarky remarks about his chaotic ways, “Or did we decide to go with black tea? Oh, and what about the okra?”

“Okra?” he says, “Aren’t we using indigo?”

“What does indigo have to do with okra?” I say with disbelief in my voice. “Okra is for the consistency, indigo is for the color!”

He ignores the commonsense element of my question and parries with, “Let’s go with the walnut hull extract.”

“Hell, this glop is looking kind of thick to me right now...think we need to add water?”

Yep, that was us in 1997. Back then, the concoction brewing on the burner was a paste, with the henna plant at its base, that stained the skin a deep reddish brown. Fast forward to 2009 and nothing has changed—except the color scheme. I should be used to this by now.