The Grapes that I Consume

Everyone has a New Year’s tradition. Kiss the one you’re with. Have a glass of champagne. Go to Times Square and watch the ball drop while covered up in parkas and snow hats. For me, it was grapes. Green grapes in a margarita glass. Surrounded by family members who weren’t mine. Holding the hands of a soon to be natural disaster.

I fell deep in the cluttered room of an unordinary household. The room was filled with matching black furniture with a large flat screen that hovered above us, watching our every move. A painted on tree on the right side of the wall that had all the pictures of his nieces and nephews. I tried not to look at it because his mother would nudge me and say, “Are you getting any ideas?” A typical evening of Latin booze mixed with laughter, Puerto Rican dishes, and crying babies wanting their cribs. Everything felt ordinary when looking out at it. But I was kind of in a bubble of shock and the seclusion. Trying to figure out if I could do this for the next 70 years. I chuckled at the thought of forever. It was like I already knew the end of the unsolicited fairytale.

11:58pm had finally came. I was still holding the glass full of the chilled grapes staring back at me. The television was flashing colors like a painting on acid. I looked to his grandmother and she let her broken-up English find its way to me like it was an unspoken rule.

“You eat the grapes. Tell if sour or sweet. The more sweet, good year. The more sour, bad.” There was this sip of annoyance in her voice as she turned away from me and whispered negrita stupida. I quivered in the corner, my glass steadying itself.

The ball dropped without me noticing. I cannot tell a lie, I snuck four drinks from the bar and my vision was blurring on the edges. But I do remember seeing all the couples in the living room. Eating the first grape and pressing their lips together like it was normal. I looked at my grapes and then at him, who was cheering at the taste of sweet sweet success. Then, like an afterthought, and with a muffled “Oh,” I was kissed on the cheek. Simple, cute — didn’t resemble any sort of foundation of love. Didn’t look like a relationship. That was the point.

He got up and left me for a while, sulking with the grapes. I was scared and confused. This was silly. There was no way that a piece of fruit could decide your fate for 365 days of your life. The alcohol was swimming and squirming, creating an unintentional sadness that I was not trying to convey. My emotions were fight or flight. I took the plunge. I consumed the first grape. I closed my eyes gently trying to think of what a ripe grape tasted like.

For Grape One, I wince. Then for Grape Two, and again for Grape Three. At this point, my throat was becoming numb. I quickly ate the grapes that were filled with poison of the future. Every unworthy mistake, every dark cloud of despair.

I am the grapes that I consume. A ball of unwanted hatred.