Lemons are green

"Lemons are green when they grow, bitter and cold like a winters night but when they are yellow they warm the heart like rum." She bit into the yellow peel of a zesty lemon and rolled the mouthful over hre tongue measuring the flavour, "vedi! e zuco come zucchero!" she offered me the bitten fruit but i turned it down not knowing that this habit of my Nona was to be my favourite in later years. The bite of the summer month was a annual occasian where we celebrated the first fruit and my first day in Catanzaro. Oh yes. How could i forget? we made the pie then too.

My name is Marco Umbiano and i was...evacuated...si, evacuated to Catanzaro when my mama and papa died in the plague. Death. Created by a bug...funny,eh? A flea causing so much death, creeping upin the night to kill and infect anyone and everyone most loved in Vienna. Yea, funny. I was eleven when i went to live with Nona Um's, my papas mum. She lived on a small farm in the Italian countryside along a orchard of lemon trees.

"This is where the magic happens," Nona plucked a fruit and aised it to my flaring nostrils, already hungry for the sickly sweet smell of the zest, "now, pick 100, cento, and bring them to the kitchen,si?"
Si.

We were happy on the farm, we had milk and eggs and we sold flowers in the market but our best contribution to our lives was the lemons, freshly picked and washed ready to be squeezed dry for someones lushious lemonade on a sweltering day.

We had our days when Nona's back played up and we had to make do with fewer lemons for market. In those times we drank to luck, rested and i made the pie.

"Si, you got here at last! Quick, quick bring them to the table and peel the zest off, squeeze the juice, si, well done. Now...eh? what you doing? You put the zest in?! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Muovti!"

Nona was old, i know that now, not then, never then. I wanted her to do everything with me, for me. She was always there to listen to me and help. I produced problems for her and she answered them like it was 2+2 we were 'uno,'1. But then Nona felt like she was old and there was no need to be young.

Felt like she was old.

Felt old.

And with that thought she died.

"Marco, you finished sulking? Come, you make the pastry and i'll make the filling...si...good, you make the pastry like its a fairies wing, you sing bad so talk to it like its the queen, the queen likes talk so talk...Talk, it is royalty and you need to respect it...Talk, tell her about life and the orchards cause this pie holds secrets of mine. So when you eat ityou gain knowledge not fat...No no! Ha! Talk to it cause it by far the best listener."

Me, Marco was abandoned in Catanzaro, i was suffering and my remorse took over my actions. I sat still like a statue and glazed over, thoughts only of my life 2 hours before. I stopped talking. Zip it. Lock it. Throw it. But after, my legs brought me up and led me to the orchard, my hands raked in the sweet, sweet lemons and Nonas thought filled my head. i bit into a lemon and savoured the flavour of remembered sunkissed peel and dislodge some skin from my teeth.

I stood in the kitchen peeling the Zest and squeezed the bitter sweet juice into a bowl i then rolled out the dough and compressed the mush till it was soft and pliable. Then i talked. I talked about my life before, my life then and my life to come. America, where jobs were as common as dirt and the pavement was lined with the silver and the clouds coloured gold...or the other way round! But no need, i had lemons and a pie of secrets. A pie, that i would bury with Nona, that would never be resurrected.
Or remade.
Or eaten.
Because it was our pie of secrets and too bitter to be eaten. Because it was Winter. And lemons were green.