A Girl Called Sidney

by Courtney Yasmineh

  There was a white enamel teapot that sat on the stove back burner. When the dining room was open, Margaret spent all her time facing that stove. Looking right at it. Constantly moving pans around, flipping things on the griddle, stirring pots of soup. I was instructed to fill the teapot with water before dining room service began and to turn it on and heat up water for tea if anyone requested it.

  One evening early on in my apprenticeship under Margaret the cook, someone wanted tea so I ran into the kitchen and turned the gas flame on under the kettle. The dining room was very busy and I was the only server on duty.

  I was running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room helping the guests when I suddenly remembered the tea.

  I went back to the stove and saw the kettle spewing black smoke, the flame under it still burning. No steam was coming from the spout. All the water had boiled away and the once bright-white enameled kettle had turned black.

  I gasped.

  Margaret was standing there observing my reaction and it was obvious that she had watched the kettle and seen what was happening. With one of Margaret’s oven mitts I took the now blackened kettle and refilled it with water from the sink. I put it on high and ran out to tell the customer the tea was still coming and that I was sorry it was taking so long.

  I came back and set up the cup and saucer and the individual teapot for the water. I brought the tray, filled the little pot and grabbed an assortment of tea bags. The customer finally got his tea and I forgot about the whole thing.

  The dining room was busy and I was kept running all evening.

  Eventually things quieted down and we were getting ready to close the kitchen. Margaret said, “Sidney, you’re going to have to make time to scrub my teapot white again. I don’t want my teapot looking like that.”

  “Sure Margaret, of course. I’ll do it as soon as I finish the dishes.”

  I carried in the dining room dishes and went through the usual process, scraping, stacking the washer trays, dragging them through, stacking the clean hot dishes on the shelves on the other side.

  I was ready to go home and Margaret had thrown her vinegar on the griddle, which steamed up and gave a feeling of finality to the day’s work. “Sidney, I hope you aren’t planning on leaving without getting my kettle cleaned up.”

  “Oh gosh Margaret I forgot. Can I do it tomorrow? I can do it after I peel the potatoes. I don’t have anything else to do then.”

  “I don’t want to start my day out looking at that thing all black like that, no thank you. You can stay now and get it over with.”

  I was upset, but I thought “fine, I’ll just do it really fast and go.”

  I started with the steel wool scrubbing pad. The black on the white enamel didn’t budge. It looked like it would wipe right off. I scrubbed harder. It didn’t look any different. My heart sank. Good old Margaret was watching over my shoulder.

  “Not as easy as it looks, huh?”

  “No. Am I using the right thing? Is there a better way?”

  “You’re using the right thing, but you aren’t using any elbow grease. Elbow grease is the key ingredient.”

  “You mean just scrub harder?”

  “Yep.”

  So I scrubbed as hard as I could for about thirty seconds and I could see some white starting to show through the black. This was going to take forever.

  “Margaret, how much did this kettle cost? Do they have them in town? I can just buy you a new one. I’ll give you the money from my paycheck.”

  “That’s an easy answer isn’t it? That’s the lazy city slicker answer to everything. Throw it away and get a new one. Well, I don’t want a new one. I want my white kettle and I want it back to looking clean and white. The only way you’re gonna learn not to forget something on the stove is to clean that kettle until it’s gleaming white. You’ve forgotten the kettle before you know. Do you realize that?”

  “No. I don’t remember ever leaving it on before.”

  “No, of course not. That’s because I’ve been covering for you. You’ve been running around sometimes like a chicken with its head cut off and I knew you weren’t going to remember so I’d just shut it off for you.”

  “Oh. Thank you. I didn’t know.”

  “Well, the time comes when you can’t rely on everyone around you to cover up for your mistakes. The time comes when you have to take full responsibility.”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “I’m going home now. When that kettle is good as new, all you have to do is turn off this light and pull the back kitchen door shut tight on your way out. Good night, Sidney.”

  “Good night, Margaret.”

  I stayed and cleaned it.

  The kettle was white when she came in the next morning.

  Margaret smiled at me when I came in and I smiled too.

  MOM GOES BACK TO CHICAGO

  My mother’s lawyer, the rough-rider, was insistent that my mom should go back to Chicago and stake her claim. I had no intention of going with her. I felt like I had left the celadon hell-house for this knotty pine sunny heaven. Preston felt even more strongly that he and Dad had made some kind of permanent break and that we’d seen the last of our father forever.

  One morning Jay came over and I was surprised to see him. He brought my mother an eight-track tape of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album. He wanted her to hear the song “Like a Rolling Stone.”

  My mom had an eight-track player sitting on a table next to the stone fireplace and she and my brother had been listening to some tapes; my mom had the Bee Gees and the Kingston Trio, my brother had The Doors and Uriah Heep. I didn’t know where those things had come from, I didn’t have any recorded music of my own. When I left Chicago I left behind my few cassette tapes: Cat Stevens, The Moody Blues, the first Rod Stewart album. Jay showing up with Bob Dylan recordings was a revelation to me. I had never understood who Bob Dylan was. I’d heard “Lay, Lady, Lay” on the radio in Chicago, but I didn’t love that song and I didn’t connect the voice from that recording with the voice from songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which I never liked much either.

  This “Like a Rolling Stone” song really resonated with me. Dylan’s singing was intense and sincere. The music was freewheeling. Mostly it was the colorful words, and I could see that my brother, my mom, and Jay thought it should be my mom’s anthem. I agreed but somewhere in my heart it was mine too.

  I walked into the cabin from my morning work and there they all were, huddled around the tape player. When they got to “Like a Rolling Stone” they got really animated. Jay knew all the words and yelled out the ones he thought were relevant to my mom’s situation. Preston was jumping and dancing around. My mom was clapping along and dancing from foot to foot. I saw the breadth of Bob Dylan’s words and got a glimpse of what was happening to us. I cried as I sang along and so did my mother and Preston. Jay was with us in solidarity. We were all alone together at the top of the world.

  Soon after, my mother boarded the bus bound for Duluth and then for Chicago. She had only a small overnight bag with her that she could easily carry. Her plan was to stay with our Aunt Evelyn the first night, then go to the house the next day. The lawyer said it was urgent at this point. He thought my dad or maybe even the bank had put the house on the market. Either it had gone into foreclosure or maybe our dad was trying to sell it fast and get out while we were all away. Mom promised to call us from Aunt Evelyn’s apartment.

  In the meantime, Dad called the cabin, usually late at night. He called one night very late soon after Mom had left. I was so exhausted from work, I stumbled out into the living room and answered before I could think to strategize about not answering. He immediately started asking me a million angry questions. I wasn’t sure how to answer any of them. He was swearing, telling me I was crazy to be up there with my mother, didn’t I understand what she was trying to do, to ruin him? To divorce him and marry that bastard, Seymour Hoffman? I hadn’t seen Seymour Hoffman nor did anyone mention him
so I kept telling Dad that he must be wrong. He was shouting, “You’re a fool! She’s using you! You don’t think she actually gives a shit what happens to you, do you?”

  All I could answer was, “Dad, honestly it doesn’t seem like you do either. None of you do. I have a job. I’m doing what I need to do. I have to go to bed. I have to work at six o’clock in the morning. Goodbye. I’m hanging up.”

  He called back the minute I hung up. “Dad, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to just stand here and listen to you scream a bunch of mean stuff at me, goodbye.”

  I hung up and he called again. I answered. He was screaming at me, calling me names. I decided to fight fire with fire. I started screaming back, calling him an asshole and anything else I could think of and as I screamed I wondered whether I was acting or whether I had truly lost my temper, or my mind. It was like fake it ‘til you make it. I didn’t want to call him those names and everything I was saying felt sick and bad coming out of my mouth, but I felt like I had to try shocking him out of calling because I didn’t want the phone to keep ringing and I didn’t want him to keep screaming at me. I yelled some more mean things and slammed the phone down in its cradle. The phone rang again immediately. It rang and rang. There was no answering machine, no way to get it to stop. I picked it up and shut it down again. It started right up again ringing. I walked to my bedroom door as it rang, not stopping, and back out to the living room one more time, wondering how Preston could sleep through this, and I took the receiver off and stuck it in my grandmother’s old sewing basket next to the dining table. After a minute or so it started making a loud buzzing alarm that was meant to notify you that your phone was off the hook. I left the receiver in the sewing basket, thinking that the alarm would eventually stop and I’d be able to sleep.

  I had finally fallen back to sleep in my narrow pink bed when I heard a siren. I couldn’t remember ever hearing one come down our road.

  To my horror, the car with the flashing lights and siren came flying into our driveway. From my bedroom window I saw it turn and plunge down into our front grass, driving right up to our cabin windows, siren still blasting, headlights glaring into the cabin windows.

  Preston was stumbling around in his room. I grabbed a sweatshirt. I was shaking all over.

  The beam of a blinding spotlight was blazing from the car, searching our house’s interior. A man’s voice came over a megaphone. “If you are armed, come out with your hands up.”

  Preston and I both stumbled in the blinding light onto the kitchen porch and walked slowly toward the lights with our hands up.

  The light shut off and only the headlights of the car showed the police officer and his squad car. There was a second officer in the driver’s seat.

  “You kids the only ones here?”

  Preston spoke, “Yes officer. What’s the problem? We didn’t call the police. We were both sleeping. There’s nothing wrong here.”

  “Well, a man named Donald Duncan has called us with an emergency report from Chicago. Do you know that person?”

  “Yes, that’s our father.”

  “Mr. Duncan called us tonight around one a.m. saying he tried to get a hold of his family by phone but that there’s been no answer and that the phone line is out of order as of late this evening.”

  Preston didn’t know, so I said, “It’s not out of order, Officer.”

  “I’m going to come in and take a look around, kids.”

  The officer, with his gun out and pointed in front of him, walked up to the porch and said, “You kids come on in here with me and we’ll just have a look around.” He motioned to the other guy in the car who got out and started looking around the cabin with a flashlight and a gun.

  Preston and I stood in the living room and watched the policeman poke around. “Where’s the phone?”

  Preston said, “It’s usually on the table, but … ”

  I watched as the officer traced the cord from the wall to the phone base on the dining table bench. Then he followed the curling cord from the bench to Grandma’s sewing basket and pulled out the receiver.

  He looked from Preston to me.

  “The phone don’t work too good like that,” he said, the receiver in his hand, a wry smile on his face.

  I just stood there.

  Preston just stood there.

  He put the receiver back on the cradle on its base.

  “Let’s see if we can get through the rest of the night without any more calls from Chicago. How does that sound?”

  I was relieved.

  He turned to leave, had his gun back in its holster.

  At the kitchen door he turned. The other officer was right behind him on our porch.

  “Are you kids up here alone?”

  Preston quickly answered, “No we aren’t. Our mom is up here with us. She went back to Chicago for just a few days and she’ll be back later this week.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-one. My sister’s seventeen.”

  “Okay, well you kids be careful and stay out of trouble, ya hear?”

  “Yes Sir. Thank you, Officer. Sorry for your trouble, Officer.”

  After they left, Preston who had slumped down in one of the two upholstered chairs in the living room said, “Holy shit, that was bad. What the fuck is up with Dad? What was that brilliant thing you had going with the phone? What was that supposed to do? That guy’s face was pretty funny. ‘Oh, I see, the phone receiver’s hidden in a sewing basket.’ What the fuck? Sid, have you lost your mind, what were you doing with that?”

  “I put it in there because Dad was freaking out and he kept calling and I have to work at six and I told him not to call any more and he just didn’t listen. Then I took it off the hook but the alarm thing went off and it kept buzzing so I stuck it in there.”

  “Funny. Next time just take the jack out of the wall. Just undo the phone completely.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll show you. Here.” He walked over and unplugged the phone from the wall jack. “See? Just do that. Then there’s no phone at all. Okay? I’m hitting the sack.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Good night. That was scary.”

  Over the next few days Dad didn’t stop calling and he insisted we return the Volare. I didn’t really care any more. I didn’t want to drive it anyway because Dad said he had cut the insurance. One day we received a letter from a lawyer saying that the Volare was to be turned in at the Hibbing Airport by a certain date. Preston and I read through to the bottom. The car was to be surrendered tomorrow. We were pretty shocked but I told myself I didn’t care.

  Preston was upset. “Fuck Dad and fuck his ugly rental car. Piece of shit. Fuck Dad and fuck his fucking Volare.”

  “Preston, what do we care? Who cares? We don’t need his stupid car. We’re doing great.”

  “Sid, we’re doing great for like another month. Then what? I have one more year of college. How am I going to finish now? And what are you going to do, stay here? Do you realize what this place will be like by October? This is the fucking tundra line. It’ll be snow up to your eyeballs by November and it’s the coldest place in the entire goddamn fucking country. The Coldest Place. You don’t even have a winter coat. This place is not insulated. You haven’t even graduated from high school yet. We are fucked. Dad has fucked us over for leaving. But what were we supposed to do? Stay with him and get the shit kicked out of us? We had no choice! We’re his kids and he’s fucked us over! Why is he being like this? I was trying to help him. We were going to turn it around. I know Dad really wanted to save his business and save the house and everything and drive up here and bring Mom back, but obviously that isn’t what happened by the way he’s acting. You know he wanted Mom to sign some papers last winter? Do you know about that?”

  “Know about that? Oh my God, that’s all I heard about every night. They came in my room every night trying to make me the referee. They are the worst parents in the world. I hate them both.
I really don’t give a shit about either one of them. I hope they kill each other when Mom gets down there. I’d rather be an orphan.”

  “We pretty much are orphans. Have you taken a good look at our situation lately? Those papers were Dad trying to use the money from equity in the house to infuse the business with cash so he could make some new investments and make a bunch of money and bail us all out.”

  “That sounds like gambling in Las Vegas to me. That’s what Mom said too.”

  “He was trying to save his business and save his marriage and save his family, his house, everything. That’s all Dad ever wanted. He only wanted Mom and he wanted to give her everything she wanted.”

  Preston started to cry. “But the stupid asshole. He fucked it all up. And now he’s fucking us over.”

  We were out in front of the cabin near the road. I still had the letter about the car in my hand. Preston sat down in the tall grass and put his hands over his face.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Dad’s a jerk. Mom said he should just give up on having his own business and go back to working for EF Hutton.”

  “Shut up, Sidney.”

  I went down to the cabin and thought about how to get the car to the airport in Hibbing by tomorrow. I called Jay’s house. I got lucky and he answered.

  “This is weird, but I have to take the Volare to the Hibbing airport by tomorrow to get sent back to Chicago. Can you meet me there and give me a ride back?”

  Jay was nice and sensible as usual. “Yeah, well, no problem but I’d have to do it tonight.”

  “Okay, well it says it can be dropped at the Hibbing Airport any time and that the keys get dropped to the twenty-four-hour desk clerk. So any time is fine.”

  “Okay, I’ll come at seven tonight to your place and you can follow me.”

  “That’s great cuz I have no idea where the airport is.”