The pale lady
removes something from her bag, something that clinks against her nails, and places
it on the countertop.
A green-tinted
jam jar holding a yellow round brick. The faded label on the front reads, in
hastily scribed cursive, Jaggery.
The old woman
picks it up and turns it around in her hands, inspecting it as a miser inspects
his gold. The pale-eyed lady seems on edge as the silence stretches on,
punctuated by the clock ticking in the corner.
“Yes, very hard
to find sugar from palm sap,” the shopkeeper decrees.
The lady’s
shoulders sag in relief, tension in them vanishing, dissipating in the air like
smoke.
Text by Lucie MacAulay
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