Dandelion Wine

1
It was some kind of holiday and I was at Auntie Nanie's house. Stasia and I were at the doorway saying bye to Nana and Nanie while they went to go pick up some relatives. Nana took a huge bunch of grapes from the bowl beside the door as she left. When they were gone, Stasia got all excited about showing me things around the house. Behind the shelf beside the door, hidden under some leaves of a plant was a big bowl of pureed red bell pepper. Stasia said Nanie loved it so much she kept it hidden. There were also giant bell peppers beneath the shelves, red, orange and yellow ones. Stasia was cutting them open looking for something, and every slice she made I'd pull open a little bit to peer inside. Soon the halves of all the peppers began falling to the sides and she said, "What did you do?!" Closing them shut didn't work so we rotated them on their sides.

As were were hurrying to get the place back in order before Auntie came back, someone came to the door. Stasia answered it while I was kneeling below one of the coffee tables rearranging a carpet. I turned around and saw it was two nicely-dressed young men with a little greyhound puppy. I quickly finished what I was doing and ran over to see her (the dog). I realized the men were salesmen and they were going door to door trying to sell this cheap-looking jewelry. One of them said something about living comfortably around this neighborhood with his husband, gesturing to the other who stood a few paces behind. As he said this he took my hand and wrapped a thin gold chain around a wart on my finger, pointing at it and describing the different styles of jewelry they had. I got uncomfortable and pulled my hand away. I felt like the cute dog and the mentioning of the fact they were gay were only ploys to try to convince us they were liberal, well-intentioned people.