Sirena All Night Long

You know when you are so tired that you start talking to yourself driving down a dark road out in the middle of the desert? Well, that’s what I am doing right now and that must mean that I am either nuts or just flat out exhausted. I squinted up through the wind shield at a clear black sky with a billion pin points of stars interrupting the darkness and a bright full moon lighting up the road, the sands and the creepy spots and groupings of brush.

Way up ahead was the dull glow of something that I was wishing to be a cafe or restaurant or something, house, barn, gas station, whatever. I needed to rest a minute and did not like the loneness feeling of the desert. I could just pull over but that glow way up there is getting bigger so its not a what do you call it, mirage, yeah, why am I thinking about a mirage. It is a gas station or restaurant out here in nowhere.

I must have walked into Sirena’s because I was in there looking at people looking at me. I didn’t remember parking the car. Oops, I should have stopped hours ago and just got a nap. I checked my pocket for my car keys, but they were in my other hand. I am tired.

A big woman rushed to me and pulled me into a hug that threw me into her buxom.

‘Boiy, you looks just like yo’ papa, damn, forgive me Jesus, but what a wonder we have here… Sit down, boiy, you looks like you need food… You looks like you need a bed, too. She was feeling my rib cage and shoulders and hips and buttocks, ‘Nobody feeding you? You ain’t hitched and ain’t got no gal I can see that. Well, we gots some fine ones here out back and you know what they say about desert girls and watah… it only takes a drop ta get them looking fo some cum, ha ha ha ha.’ She was enjoying my visit and I was still trying to get a grip. ‘I’s Sirena an’ gots ta say I want to do you up good, boiyo.’

‘Sorry, you know my… I mean what is the name of the man you think is my father?’

‘Hunh? Sit down, boiy.’ She was guiding me by my arm and placing me in an armed high back white rattan chair at a small table. ‘Now, what you want to eat, we gots rice and peas of course, an today at this time we gots a new pot of oxtail with plenty of heat and okra, surrounded with greens and green bean. We gots pig tail soup, fried lizard, Ol’ Mule, Corned Beef an’ sautéed Rattler an Gopher on a spit all that with collard greens, rice and white bean. We gots white bread an scuddling spider mash with rice and peas and salads. We gots fresh thick scrub deer soup with rice and peas.’

‘Rattler?’

‘Diamond Back. We ain’t got no Tortoise. Theys against the law. Endangered, nobody eats Tortoise who is civilized anyhow.’

I closed my mouth, then opened it again, ‘I would like to try the deer soup, never had it before.’

‘You never had no deer soup? Damn, forgive me Lord, bout time for you to regain yo’ blood, boiy. How long you been away?’

‘I have never been here before. I don’t even know where here is. Just stopped after driving straight through two days.’

She looked at me with surprise in her eyebrows. ’Yo mama didn’t want you to be here?’

‘My mama, mother, never mentioned anything about being in any desert before. Actually, what is the nearest town?’ I wondered if he was my father and if my mother knew more than she had said before she died.

She scratched her head and looked around, ‘Skinny, what’s the nearest town, nearest here?’

Skinny, grizzled man with juices running down the side of his whiskery mouth, ’Glaymis, ‘bout sixty, seve’ty mile, I reckon.’

The man sitting next to him looked up from his fork. He had a faded baseball cap with wirey hair sticking out from the sides. ‘Seventy-two mile up.’

Skinny smiled sparkling white teeth. His hair was greased down plastering the roundness of his head. ‘There, Grover knows all that stuff.’

The smells of the place were sensual to the point that demanded one to bite the air. I didn’t care where I was any more. I was slightly fogged in a mixture of mixtures in this enclosed space where those five or six who were seated had had enough of my intrusion and resumed munching, crunching and slurping. A platform turning fan circulated its addition of strong and weak bouquets. It made me sad not to be immediately eating.

Sirena appreciated my confusion and with another Damn, forgive me Lord, she gently pulled me up again and guided me to the kitchen… and Jesus Christ.

Black pots bubbled on a blackened six burner commercial stove watched over by the moving eyes from a picture of the Christ. He was pale, sad and had long brown clean hippy hair. A typical radiating aura softly blessed us from behind his head. A radio preacher was telling forcefully a congregation who gave amens about the sins of something in a deep baritone with alto piercing emotions.

She lifted a lid and sweetly fragrant steam rose up to Christ bringing a cringe of excitement to my jaw muscles and appetite. Sirena was smiling brightly exacting love toward my appreciation of her work. She put down the lid before I looked in and moved a side step to lift another black heavy lid. Steam rose and I was at breakfast in the mountains. I nodded and put my hand on her shoulder looking into this pot to see a beige clouded broth with smooth chunks of a thick dark white meat trying to float in vibrations of secret tastes.

‘You know’d dis is the one fer ya, boiy.’ She was looking into her magic potion and called it, ‘Scrub Deer Soup.’

I didn’t care what it was called, I just wanted it dished up. ‘Yes, please’, is all I could manage to come up with.

She smiled an even brighter smile and softly pushed me out of the kitchen, and Christ followed me with approval.

When the Scrub Deer Soup appeared it was on a bed of white rice with a stiff macaroni ball to the side of an immense bowl. She left, as I looked at all that food, to return quickly with utensils wrapped in a paper towel and a heaping bowl of kidney beans. Everything was steaming and the only bouquet in the restaurant was now on my table. A pitcher of water, five slices of white bread on a small plate and a clean glass completed her service, so she moved to lean against the kitchen doorpost and watch me. I started eating with a fork and spoon in each hand and ate and ate and ate…

Time went by and I was sweating. There were flies in the little restaurant that seemed to be watching me eat. They sat or stood there in front of me on the table and shifted a bit to whichever plate or bowl I was attacking. They were not irritating flies and were very patient. I hadn’t noticed any flies when I came in but could not think about it now. I could only see that I was coming to the end of the meal and did not want that to happen but did not want to slow down tasting delicious oddities and feeling textures unknown and smelling of wonder and health. I had been full about half way through the meal but as the last of the rice with brown juices were sopped up with the last corner of crust from the white bread, I looked around greedily to see if anything was left on anybody else’s plates. I caught myself before leaning over to snatch a torn piece of bread with sauce on it from the next table. The three other people left in the restaurant were intent on their dishes so I could have gotten it but I felt that was going a bit far. I don’t remember seeing anybody leave.

I felt Sirena’s busoms on my back before I knew she was there though her powder, tangy perfume and body smells cut through the delicious bouquets of this place. I thought as I put my hands on her arms that were around my neck, god, would I like to work here all day long.

‘You can eat, boiyo.’

‘It was the best meal I ever had, Miss Sirena.’

‘Boiy, I been married four times and outbedded all dem, so I sho ain’t no Miss. You just call me Sirena.’ She squeezed me strongly, almost strangling me, then let go. I secretly liked the feel of her round, firm breasts but was embarrassed thinking such lewd thoughts about a wonderful, much older woman. Then I started thinking, why am I thinking an older woman doesn’t look at a younger man that way and why am I looking at an older woman like I shouldn’t see her as a woman? Especially one who can give such love through cooking to me.

‘Now, you be good, like yo’ pappa… God, he was a good lay, dat man. He know’d what a woman likes. But, dem days past on now and I jus’ got tha memories to keep me happy.’

I was a bit confused, thinking that maybe I had said what I was thinking out loud while listening to the exploits of a man who could very well have been my father. I frowned and smiled at the same time.

‘Now dis foist meal I am a-treating you on your coming back. It so sad you ain’t been here ta grow up though. That’s a shame, boiy. A young man should always have the community around him to show him da ways of the sands and the ways of God, the most merciful. It da way it should be.’

She took a clean, white and very small handkerchief out from between her bosoms and dabbed at actual tears coming down her cheeks and up to the inner corners of her elliptical eyes. It smelled of talcum powder.

‘You should have been raised with your brothers and sisters here, boiy. It make me so so damn, forgive me Lord, sad, it do.’ She was shaking her head now and the tears were flowing with strong sobs of her shoulders.

My what? I should have been raised with who? Strange stuff.

I stood up, trying to re-taste the food I had just eaten, and comfort her by embracing her large body with my arms and patting her on the back, ever mindful of the hard breasts against my chest and the sobbing of her stomach moulding to my organ. I moved a bit back and moved around as the crying started to stop, lightly picking up the piece of bread on the forgotten plate. I leaned forward past her shoulder and stuffed it in my mouth. It tasted wonderful.