Contains Antioxidants

I remember when I pour the hot water over my hand around nine o’clock. Flesh puckers into chicken skin, and I have to sit in the sticky chair of an emergency clinic’s waiting room for the rest of the night. A nurse argues with an Amish family, breathlessly trying to convince them that the doctor’s machines and bagged liquid will save their daughter’s life. This is going to be a while, the receptionist tells me, peeking from behind her bifocals.

Now, nearly ten years later, I sit at the dining room table, pink sunlight spilling on the stained wood, waiting for the stainless-steel kettle’s whistle. Already steam is puffing from the spout’s small hole as the liquid grows hot, but I never pour water into a mug until it comes to a complete and messy boil.

My cat plods down the stairs, stretches, and winds her tortoise shell body against my leg. I reach down to touch her, and she nips at my hand. I call her a bitch and continue flipping through a collection of Scott Cairn’s poetry. I read about a dune and a moon’s blue light bleeding over red sand. No one the poet encounters believes that the hoofed mammals live in the desert, but Scott watches his moose howl to the moon with round, furry mouths. The cat swats at my leg, nose scrunched and ears pressed against her head. I kick her away, and the kettle whistles.

I push back my chair. Its legs sigh against the black and white checkered floor. Kit Kat, back arched and tiptoeing sideways across the linoleum, continues swatting at my ankles as I cross the kitchen. I can’t help but laugh at her ridiculous pose, puffed up to the girth of a rhinoceros in her mind, but about the size of a squishy bug in mine. I jump and land hard in front of her, dishes and cookie jars rattling on top of the refrigerator. She leaps, fur standing on end, and slides away into the basement.

Clouds cover the sinking sun as I pass the sink window. Looking past a wooden angel kneeling next to an olive dish and the brown leaves of a hydroponic plant, I watch snow clouds roll in thick from Lake Ontario. The snow-laden trees turn inky black as shadows creep over an already aging day, their prickly branches like twisted arthritic hands in the cold. I click a knob on the stove from HIGH to OFF and pour hot water over the tea bag. Even though I’m afraid of the burbling, fizzling, spitting water that sputters from the spout as I tip it over the cup, I keep my left arm tucked safely by my side. Clear liquid grows dark as the bag swells and drowns. Cupping my hands around the warm, yellow mug, I carry it to the table and resume my pondering.

Tea is supposed to cure cancer. I mean, it’s supposed to prevent cancer, but sometimes I wish it cured. The bitter drink is the blood of western tea leaves, thick with antioxidants and blessings from the monks. I drink it every day, sometimes three times a day, but never not at all. I wonder what would’ve happened if my stepmother drank it all her life instead of spending most of it parched and parked in front of the television with beer and pretzels. Last year she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She’s fine now, recovering well as far as we know, but sometimes I still wish I could pour warm tea all over her body. I wish tea would flood the world and cover everything that I love, everything I don’t.

I tip my head close to the mug. Steam fogs the lenses of my glasses, and I inhale, chest rising until it won’t rise any more. The warm dampness fills my lungs. Already I can taste the bitterness of soaked leaves. When it cools and is safe to swallow, the liquid slides into my throat, past a malfunctioning thyroid gland, and down into my belly where it settles like hands over an aching wound. Kit Kat saunters into the room like nothing happened.

Stapled to the end of a white string trailing from the folded bag of coagulated leaves, a paper tag is printed with the evening’s inspirational quote. Unlike Salada tea, which makes a poor attempt at humor, Yogi’s messages are profound, and I stash them in a little white drawer beneath a mirror. I am beautiful, I am bountiful, I am blissful stacked on top of Compassion has no limit. Kindness has no enemy. I save one Salada tag. It says that Real intelligence is like a river; the deeper it is, the less noise it makes. I slurp down the last bit of tea and stare out the sliding glass door.

Dad’s going in for a colonoscopy. Doctors poke at my mother’s lumpy uterus and suck her blood into plastic cylinders. My stepmother’s still waiting to find out if the radiation treatment was successful or if there’s nothing else they can do. Snow floats down, thick flakes covering the brown lumps and footprints scattered throughout the yard, and a silver spoon clinks against glass. The tea’s inside me, swimming in my veins. Kit Kat curls around my legs, lets me touch her. Scott Cairn’s book lay silent on the table. And as I reach for the teabag’s paper tab, I notice that the snow is glowing blue, blazing like a light into darkness.