I cut open a lemon and it doesn't look right

One of the things I really missed when I moved overseas was the wet market. It’s not just fresh produce: it’s cats sleeping among mounds of vegetables; cartons of eggs under hanging bunches of dried fish; vendors who recognise you by name and sneak in more vegetables than you ask for if they like you.

It is the unpredictability which I really appreciate about the wet market. Ironic, since this is what turns people to supermarkets. But knowing that the uncle hacking coconuts open with a cleaver might not be here tomorrow, that the rack of fleecy blankets doesn’t come often, makes my purchases feel… special. Not everyday do you get custard apples, say: knobbly green fruits which, cut open, reveal creamy white flesh. To know that durians, that fruit which Western commentators describe in derisive terms, are seasonal means that this marks the passing of seasons in a tropical climate: when baskets of the fruit appear and the young men sing out durian varieties: MSW, D24, Red Prawn.

Ever since I came back, I’ve been doing my grocery shopping in my local wet market. While the vendors’ faces are all new to me, there’s been one who the others talk about.

She sold produce which might be described as “artisanal”: heirloom tomatoes, the fractal-shaped varieties of broccoli, Western-style salad mixes. This was too avant-garde for the average auntie, though they’re all curious, so sometimes you might see a bunch of middle-aged women gathering around a basket of romanesco broccoli, speculating how one might cook it (the answer is always either stir-fry or deep-fry).

The week I decided to give her stall a try, she was going for a citrus theme. She didn’t even stock the traditional calamansi. She started at the tiny neon key limes, to the legendary St. Stellio limes, to gigantic lemons. They were knobbly like Buddha’s hand citron, but the size of a pomelo.

She spotted me eyeing it, then patted it lovingly. “From Canada,” she remarked.

One of the neighbouring stallholders, who was completely unashamed about eavesdropping, added, “Like you right!”

The young woman shot an irritated glance.

She took my $5 without complaint, handing over a single lemon with the heft of a bowling ball. The aunties muttering behind me were not so convinced that I’d made a good decision. Auntie Mooi, the stallholder next to hers, tutted audibly.

“Five dollars! Waste of money,” she commented in dialect, but I pretended not to understand.

I cut the lemon open that night. The fruit was incredibly dense, and I was initially afraid it would skid away from my knife. The inside was unlike any lemon I’ve ever seen. The flesh swirled in jade-green and yellow stripes. Think one of those old paintings of watermelons, which don’t look anything like their red-fleshed modern equivalent. The pith was silky, yet stiff, and filled the house with the smell of rosewater.

Rosewater?

What does one do with such juiceless fruit? I tried chewing a slice, but it was impossible to bite. The taste, however, was delicate: the vegetal taste of freshly cut grass, then rosewater, yes, but also lemongrass.

I sliced the rest to put into my drinking water, then, satisfied, went to bed.

I woke up with sore feet. Last night, I had been in an anonymous jungle. Running away, I think. Somebody kept calling my name. I wouldn’t turn around, sure that if I did, something unspeakable would happen to me. The timbre of the voice nagged at me: it was wheedling, familial.

I took a swig of water from the jug with lemon slices in it, and it perked me up. I soon forgot about the weird dream, or the small cuts on my feet, or the exercise-ache in my thighs.

The next time I was at the wet market, I went to Auntie Mooi’s stall, as usual, the one next to the mysterious lemon-seller. As I picked through the mushrooms, pretending to decide between a clutch of oyster mushrooms and shimeiji mushrooms, I glanced at the stall beside hers.

Each stall was just a wooden table, to be folded away at the end of the market day. But where there were wilted leaves and bits of cardboard under Auntie Mooi’s stall, hers was clean.

“You looking for that girl?” Auntie Mooi said. I wasn’t as subtle as I thought.

“Yeah.”

“Gone!” She said, with an explanatory wave at the stall space. Then, conspiratorially: “I think no business, that’s why. All those fancy things, we all don’t understand how to cook.”

I smiled, nodded, went home and looked at that jug of water, with its otherworldly fruit slices bobbing within.

It was still as refreshing as ever, even if I had no idea what kind of fruit this was. Googling “weird lemon flesh” and “silky lemon” turned up nothing useful. And it’s not like you can Google wet market stallholders that easily, either, when you don’t know their name.

That week, it rained and rained and rained.

I dreamt of the earth. Sodden earth, soft under my fingers, hiding something. There was something in buried here and I had to dig it up. I had to find it before—

I woke up with dirt under my fingernails and sore knees. I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for.

I’m just glad I wasn’t living with anyone, because I wouldn’t have been able to tell them what was going on.

After a while, I stopped caring about the dreams, because I started having stabbing stomach pains. Those kept me up, so I guess I dreamt less as well. My GP laughed when I insisted that it was linked to the dreams I’d been having, or the lemon. He reassured me that it was a simple stomach upset. From eating too well, or not eating well enough. From stress and lack of sleep. No antacid would shift the pain.

I kept dreaming, and I kept losing weight, until our school reunion. My junior college classmates were all academically accomplished, and some had gone on to become doctors. Most of my classmates took a while to recognise me, but it was the now-doctors that exchanged looks. Finally, one of them, a kindly girl with the gentlest voice, took me to one side and asked what was going on.

“Oh, nothing much. A little bit of gastric problems. I guess I’m getting old, haha!”

She was not amused. “Look, it’s not normal that you’re losing weight like this. Why don’t you come to my clinic if you want, just call and tell them you’re my old classmate.”

I took her advice.

I’ll spare you the details. All you need to know is that they found a mass 5 cm across. The surgeon let me have a look when they took it out. It was knobbly and pale. They sent it to the lab to biopsy it, see what was in this lump.

On my follow-up appointment, the surgeon showed me the photos. Glass-green stripes swirling through masses of short, white, silky hairs. Or, more accurately, pith.