Suzanne
The Smell of Clementines and Smoke
Article by Emma Langas, art by Alex Wollinka
My nails were too short to pierce through the vibrant orange skin of the clementine. Jill, my brother’s girlfriend at the time, peeled them for me. She claimed she loved the smell and the way the scent would stick to her throughout the day. She handed me the clementine piece by piece, and I ate each slice in one bite, juice bursting in my mouth and washing over my teeth. When I was younger, the juice was the only part of the clementine I savored. My dad would share his fruit with me, and I would suck the slices until they lay limp in my hand, a shell of what they used to be, a tangerine cadaver. In fourth grade, I attempted to eat a clementine whole, leaving no crescent moon outlines behind, and promptly threw up before going to school. The odor stuck to my sweatshirt the whole day, haunting me like a heartbeat under floorboards. The scent still takes me back to the bathroom, so Jill would wear the scent for me and I would eat the slices.
Jill gave me my first cigarette my junior year of high school as if it were a slice of fruit. I despised the taste. I stopped until college, but the smoke stuck to me throughout each day in the meantime. I held the cigarette standing in my brother Will’s footsteps, the place where he formed his scar which matches my mosquito bite markings I can’t seem to quit picking. When we were younger, Will and I believed our matching birthmarks were signs we were truly related. Earlier that day, I was gifted my family’s history in the form of letters shoved haphazardly into a manila folder. When I returned to my room in the retreat center, I found several letters from various family members divulging secrets from years past to present. I unearthed words stuck in office walls and locked bedroom doors. Words which were muffled, but not unheard. It seemed so cliche to retroactively hear the trauma running through my family, clinging to us all like smoke. I spent the rest of the retreat filling in the gaps in the stories my relatives told me in the letters; piecing together a history of my home I felt entirely removed from. The gift proved Will and I were more similar than I thought, that our birthmarks gave way to scars as we grew into ourselves. I learned your lungs are the least of your worries. I understood what types of people peel oranges.
When you’re the youngest child, everyone believes you exist in a shell, protected from the outside world. In reality, you are the shell which surrounds your family and desperately tries to keep it together. The molten core burns, and everyone believes so furiously you will be the one to escape the fire, but instead you light up, and you harden, and you crack. I saw the lit end of the cigarette Jill gave me glowing bright orange and I imagined sinking my fingers in and peeling it all away, unraveling paper by paper, seeing the words my family wrote spelled out like a will and testament. I wanted to watch the letters burn just as I did, a wildfire built by jumping from tree to tree. I thought the letters gave me closure. I didn't understand why closure felt so hot, like a burning fist stuck in my chest. I know now the letters did not give me closure, but instead taught me how to resent.
I learned how to resent when my friend said I reminded him of the song “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen. When he told me, I could feel his compliment washing over my teeth and settling in my lower belly. I dreamed of being the protagonist of the song; a free-spirited woman with a perfect body who feeds you love as easily as she feeds you tea and oranges. My friends laughed at his cluelessness, saying he most likely thought of Cohen’s description of Suzanne as “half-crazy” and forgot the connotation of the rest of the song. I saw Suzanne escape out of my reach like smoke, spreading with the wind until she became one with the sky. Around me, but unattainable. A shell. I will never be Suzanne because I peel my nails instead of the pith of orange rinds, and the only remains of slices I have are the crescent shaped divots in my palm. Day by day, I look among the garbage, and the flowers, and all I find are the carcasses of clementines, juice gone, and I burn.
I learned how to resent when I sat around a campfire and found every sentence interrupted by smoke stinging my eyes. No matter where I moved, it followed, stalking me like I was prey. My eyes watered in an attempt to extinguish themselves but the smoke came in waves, giving me no time to recover. Everyone else was safe, and the next day, when it rained, my clothes were the only ones that reeked of wood. Sometimes I imagine myself as the campfire, scorching people too hard and staying with them far too long. I went to my first party in high school with Jill and I spent the night talking to a boy who made me hope I could be more than I was, that we could be more than we were. A week later, he told me in a letter that he was too drunk to remember our conversation. I constantly fear I expect too much, and so I never smell like oranges, and I always leave like smoke.
I learned to resent when I read my family’s letters in isolation and silence. The manila folder appeared not as a gift, as it was meant to be, but as a case file. I pick up new clues every couple years, like when I found a letter my Dad hid in my dorm when I moved in freshman year, or when my brother stealthily slid me an envelope on his wedding day. They believe putting emotions in writing solidifies them, and makes them true. I despise writing my feelings towards someone; it seems derivative and evasive. Holding the letters reminds me of how easily the words can be taken away. The only times my brother has told me he loves me have been through print, and I could only feel uncomfortable reading the words. The words danced around the page so impersonally they seemed to mock me.
I find myself thinking about the day I received the manila folder constantly. I wonder where I would be without it, if I would resemble Suzanne more. Last week I went into the produce aisle and I bought a clementine. The cashier urged me to buy more. I told him I would if my first one was ripe. As I punctured the skin of the fruit with my recently grown out nails, I watched the juice spill in transparent rivulets down my hand. I remembered Will and I are more similar than I thought. The clementine tasted bitter and I did not buy another, but the smell stuck to me for the rest of the day.