Saying Good-bye To The Onions

You’ve told me not to hold dinner, you’re going to be late. But I hate eating alone. And, I’m actually not all that hungry. I’m just as happy to wait, everything ready for your return. Finally, you burst into the kitchen, grab me up into your arms before I can put a flame under the soup again. Your laughter vibrates through my whole body.

"Ha! I was right. He invited me over to close the deal. I’ve sold all the rest of the crop!"

It’s the onions, of course. If you weren’t squeezing the breath out of me, I might ask, How much? But I don’t need to, you’re so happy and high it’s clear you got your price. And then you laugh again, and tell me, "A fucking fortune, is what it is! A quarter of a million—well, almost that much. It’s an amazing amount to take out of five hectares. Amazing!"

You set me down, still holding me by the shoulders.

"Congratulations," I smile. It’s your sense of scoring so big that holds some meaning for me. I don’t, honestly, have a very clear idea of how much money this is, what has to come out of it, how far it will go in the coming seasons.

You’re too excited to think about food. You’ve already had a drink on the closing. You pour two glasses of wine for us now, swallow a mouthful of yours before I can make a toast, then look around for the evening paper. I know you’ll want to sit with it at the table for awhile, unwind a bit. I stand behind you, bending to kiss your temple, then slowly begin to knead your tense shoulders.

But I’m thinking about those onions. They’ve been with us so many months, they’re practically a fixture, 350,000 kilos in an enormous storage crib at the very end of the barn. We’ve climbed up there quite a few times since the harvest, walking along the dusty, drying crop, working out just how much money we were tromping underfoot that particular day, wondering how long the price would keep going up and up and up. We’ve had some good laughs together, looking down at these golden onions as if they were gold itself.

Golden onions: I suddenly feel an urge to see them, and at once.

Silly, really, the sense that I might well miss them. I don’t usually mind your teasing me about such sentiments. But I don’t mention onions as I kiss your other cheek, smooth back your hair. "Back in a minute," I say quietly, as I step around the table, out the kitchen door, through the mud room, entering the barn directly, not even stopping to slip into my clogs. I switch on the overhead lights to the left and make my way around stored machinery and tools to the onions.

I climb onto the new potato planter, and from there, vault the side of the holding bin. The onions are so nicely dried, so crisp, the skins crackle as I step over them, a peculiar, not unpleasant sensation against the soles of my bare feet. Although the layers and layers have settled and resettled so that the top is nearly level, there remain small hills and valleys, and I choose the highest little peak on which to perch, overlooking the captive crop, like a minor queen her tiny realm. "I’m sitting on top of the world," I sing under my breath. I’m sitting on a quarter of a million, anyhow. That is amazing. Though in a way not more amazing than the thought of the several millions of onions involved. I don’t know: I just feel good—no, great—sitting up here, that’s all.

I fall backward, open my arms and legs wide, as when one makes angels in the snow. Why not angels in the onions? I guess I am getting a bit giddy. Sillier still. It’s a good moment for you to make your entrance. I don’t think I expected you to come looking for me—don’t think I thought about it at all. But it makes me happy to hear your footsteps, your voice calling out.

"What the hell are you doing up there?"

It’s full of laughter and light, your voice, and echoes nicely in the dim, dust-filled air of the barn. I smile, but don’t sit up, or raise my head, or even open my eyes.

"I’m saying good-bye to the onions, is what."

"O ja? And how do you go about doing that?"

"Come on up and I’ll show you."

In fact, I don’t have the first clue myself what I might mean by saying good-bye. Or how it’s done. But I know now that’s why I’m here. And why you are as well. In any case, I’m sure I’ll need your assistance, whatever may happen from hereon...

I hear you quickly clamber onto the onions, crunching straight across them to stand over me.

"All right. Here I am."

"Good." I open my eyes, bite my lower lip to keep from grinning back at you. I want you to appreciate the solemnity of this occasion.

"The first thing is the thanking of the onions," I say, "for bringing you such good fortune this spring."

"Why should I thank the onions?" you ask. "I planted them, I tended them through thick and thin, I harvested them in sun and rain, I took beautiful care of them all through the miserable winter—they should thank me," you scoff.

Benighted akkerbouwer bravado.

"I’ll thank them for you, then. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your luck running out next season."

"Oh? Fine. Whatever you like."

"Thank you, sweet and wonderful onions," I say in a ceremonial, carrying voice. "You’re the best. We love you. Don’t we love them?" I prompt.

"Oh yes, we do love them..." you concede.

A sudden inspiration. "I love them so much, I want to get closer to them. In fact..."

I sit up, pulling my sweater over my head, throwing it aside before lying down again.

"What I really want is to feel their skin against my skin."

"You’re crazy," you say.

I don’t say anything.

"So? Feel good?"

"Mmmmm..."

But your eyes are on my breasts.

Another thought.

"Have you ever fantasized fucking me in the onions?"

You let out a sharp little laugh.

"You must be kidding!"

"I’m not."

"Sorry, I can’t say I have. You?"

"Not until this moment. But wouldn’t it be a lovely way to say good-bye to these babies?"

"I don’t think your backside would find it so lovely. The skins are like parchment paper, sharp, scratchy. And the dust is miserable."

"I don’t know," I say softly. "Let’s see." And I undo my belt, my zipper, push my jeans past my hips, all the way down around my ankles. I move my ass against the onions, making a little nest for myself. "It’s...interesting. You might say...stimulating."

"Is that so?"

I lie back once more, draw my feet toward me so that my knees are bent and fall slightly open. I put my hand between my legs.

"I’m already wet," I say. "So you see, it doesn’t seem to matter how dried-out and dirty the onions are."

You suddenly have nothing to say. You’re watching my hand stirring lazily between my parted thighs.

I sigh loudly. "Am I going to have to say good-bye to them all by myself after all?..."

"Huh! No," you laugh. "But since you’ve started without me...would you mind...a few minutes more...?"

I laugh too. "You know I love to watch you watch me."

"Thank you. It’s nice."

"It is. Only...don’t be long, love," I say.

"No."

It’s gone so quiet I can hear the wind over the roof, and the rustle of the crop beneath me as I slide two fingers of my right hand back and forth across my slick sex. My left hand moves to that breast, fingers lightly teasing the nipple, then pinching it sharply in a sort of counterpoint to the slow, steady cuntstroking.

You sink to your knees before me, your face grave with the intensity of your study. From time to time your eyes move to meet mine (which are always on your face) and then you smile, somehow still seriously, before losing yourself in my self-pleasuring again. After quite a few minutes of watching, you reach out one hand, touch the tip of one finger to the opening I’ve neglected, circling it round and round, before gently pushing inside, beginning a rhythmic in-and-out to match my private pleasure rhythm. Your eyes search my face and your smile broadens to see the difference you’ve made with nothing but a single finger. I’m suddenly so close to the edge I’m panting and I say "Stop, stop for a second"—and we both stop, and I breathe slowly and deeply, drawing everything, all that sensation up through my whole body to the top of my head and then I start again, only a little harder, faster, left hand pulling the lips taut now, right index finger pressing and pressing the small, hard button; and you follow suit, fucking me with two fingers, or maybe three, and this time it’s only a minute till I come to that same place and stop, stop, for another half-dozen long, slow breaths, but before I begin once more (because I intend to come all the way), I tell you that I’m going to want you your cock inside me when I do and I pull at the waistband of your jeans because I want you to be ready, see?

and you laugh, and undo them, pushing the fabric just past your hips, still kneeling in front of me. Your sex is standing ready, but you press the palm of your right hand against my cunt to skim that cream, then wrap your wet hand around your cock, pulling on it gently, almost absently, watching my fingers moving faster faster faster around and over my clit and you smile and start whispering to me, things I can scarcely hear or decipher, but which I understand mean Come, come, baby, come now and I say Yes, yes I will and open my legs wider, wanting you in me inside me NOW coming so strong, going so far down into it after holding back three times I don’t remember how you got there, so deep, deep within me, moving, moving without for a moment leaving the inside of me.

I’m still shuddering, small aftershocks for minutes at a time, and so open, wet, warm, it’s hard to tell where we begin and end. "Good?" you ask, as always; it’s not a question, though I nearly always answer by asking again, "‘Good?’ What do you think?"

"How is it against your tender parts, though, the onions? Is it hurting by now?"

"See for yourself, " I say, laughing, and with a quick shift of my hip, I throw you over and beneath me, without missing a beat, without disengaging.

"Good?" I tease. "Not so bad, is it?" I add, sitting straight up, drawing you still deeper into me, then holding very still for just a moment, your cock my hostage as I survey this sweet little kingdom for the last time. Queen of the onions indeed. I move my hips against you, moving deliberately, not roughly but not too delicately. Your eyes close, the way they do, your head tipped slightly backward, your mouth open in the dreamy half-smile I see when, say, I’m about to fuck you to the finish.

Because it’s time for you to say good-bye to the onions, my darling onion king. Not long now, I can tell by the flush of your skin, the set of your jaw. And that good-bye smile. Good-bye, good-bye! When you come, your cry is so loud the dog begins to bark on the far side of the barn.