The Kitchen Daughter

by Jael McHenry

  I go on, “And I say what I think, and people don’t like that either.”

  “No, they usually don’t.”

  “So Ma always gave me rules, that’s how she dealt with it, and when I follow those rules I’m fine.”

  “Which is why your sister freaks out about a stranger in the kitchen. Because there isn’t a rule for that. And you don’t get out much.”

  “I get out fine,” I say. “I mean, when Ma was alive, I didn’t go out much for things like groceries, because she could always do that. If I did go out, it was almost always uneventful.”

  “Almost always?”

  “One time out of ten, maybe, there was a problem. Like if I went down to the Korean deli. Someone at a parking meter would touch my arm to ask if I had change. Inside the store someone would squeeze past me to get to the ice chest in back. Things like that. Something would set me off. So most times it was nothing, but when it was something, it was awful. So she would go out instead, because it was easier, for both of us.”

  “That sounds tough.”

  “It wasn’t, really. I worked around it. We worked around it. I went to school and everything. Elementary, high school, college.”

  “You graduated?”

  “Almost. One more class. Oral comm. I could get through everything else. I’m very smart. I write very good papers.”

  “I believe it.”

  “But giving speeches is not my strength.”

  “I believe that too. You don’t even look at me.”

  “It’s not you,” I say.

  “I know,” David says. “So what do you have?”

  “Have?”

  “Like a complex? A phobia? A disorder?”

  “A personality,” I say.

  He laughs at that, a soft laugh, a sound that ripples.

  David says, “A personality. I like that. Listen, I gotta go, I’m starting a new job and I don’t want to make a bad impression.” He hooks his thumb toward the street, indicating his waiting bike.

  “What job?”

  “Bike messenger,” he says. “I used to do it before the accident, and Mom’s been hinting strongly that I should get back into it. And then after what your sister said yesterday, I realized, I really can’t just be between things for the rest of my life. I like biking, so, why not? And I’ll like the paycheck. Which reminds me, you forgot to pay me last week.”

  “I did.”

  He says, “And from the look on your face, you were about to forget to pay me this week too.”

  “I did forget.”

  “Well, if you don’t have it, you don’t have it,” he says, strapping his helmet back on. “No big.”

  “No big?”

  “No big deal. I mean, don’t make a habit of it or anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s do this,” he says. “With the new job I’m not sure I’ll be back next week, so I can’t just say I’ll get it then. Can you write me a check?”

  “No, I don’t have a checkbook.” I realize I could go upstairs and get the cash and pay him with that, but he’s already asked the question and I’ve already answered it, so it seems wrong to change the terms now.

  “Can your sister write me a check?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Then why don’t you send it to me? Here’s my address.”

  He bends down and tears the corner off one of the paper grocery bags, then scribbles a few words on it with a pen from his pants pocket. He sets it on the railing for me to take, and I tuck it into my jeans.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  David says, “Wish me luck.”

  “Luck.”

  Because I stand on the porch and watch his bike disappear in the distance, headed toward Broad, I am still standing there when Amanda’s car pulls up, with Amanda and the girls inside. She parks, and I beckon them up the stairs. I’m about to offer to carry their things in when I realize I need to carry the groceries in first. So I do that, and take a moment to put David’s address in a kitchen drawer so I don’t accidentally wash it.

  By the time I get back to the front door Shannon is quietly hauling two little pink suitcases up the steps. One is covered with rainbows, the other with cartoon cats. They thump in near-unison each time she climbs a step. Amanda has hoisted Parker up on one hip and says, “Good morning, Aunt Ginny.”

  Both girls echo, “Good morning, Aunt Ginny!”

  “Good morning,” I say. “Shannon, let me take one of those suitcases, okay?”

  She shakes her head, the dark hair whipping back and forth across her little face. “No, I’m balanced,” she says. “It’s not so hard.”

  “I’ll hold the door open for you then, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Once we’re all inside the house, Amanda sets Parker down, and the little blonde dashes to the back of the house, then back up to the front.

  “Yes, please, do that, wear yourself out,” says Amanda, not too loudly.

  Shannon sets the suitcases down at the foot of the stairs and says, “Is this okay?”

  “Yes, sweetheart,” says Amanda.

  Parker barrels at me and flings her arms around my legs and I realize, belatedly, I’m being hugged.

  “Hi, Aunt Ginny!” she says.

  “Hi, Parker.”

  Then she runs off again.

  Shannon says, “Parker loves you, Aunt Ginny. I love you too.” Then, like her sister, she hugs my legs. This time I’m prepared and can analyze it. The leg hug doesn’t bother me. It’s firm and decisive. And they’re so much smaller than me, they’re no kind of threat.

  Amanda says, “Aunt Ginny loves you too, Shan. Why don’t you take your jacket off and put it with your suitcase, please?” Shannon nods and unzips her pink coat.

  Amanda whispers to me, “It confuses them if you don’t say it back.”

  Before I can answer, tiny running footsteps approach. Parker stops in front of us and says, “It’s Grandma’s house! Where’s Grandpa? Where’s Grandma?”

  In the act of hanging her jacket on the coatrack next to the door, Amanda freezes. I see her go from a normal woman in motion to a block of ice in less than a second.

  Shannon is the one who answers. “Remember they told us that Grandma and Grandpa went away. They’re not here anymore. There was an accident and they died.”

  Parker says, “But I wanted to tell Grandma and Grandpa what I want for Christmas!”

  “You can tell me,” I say.

  “I want a puppy!” says Parker.

  “No puppies,” says Amanda, coming to life again. “Not until you’re older. You girls are too young to take care of a dog.”

  Shannon says, “I don’t like dogs. I like cats. I have them on my suitcase. Aunt Ginny, you have a very pretty cat. Where is your cat?”

  “She’s probably upstairs,” I tell her. “Midnight is very shy.”

  “So is Shannon,” says Amanda. “They should get along fine.”

  “Shannon, are you shy?” I ask her.

  She shrugs and says, “Long-haired cats are the prettiest. There are also short-haired cats and they sometimes call them domestic short-hairs. There are also cats without any hair at all.”

  “They’re called Sphynx, right?”

  “Sphynx, yes, that’s right. But most cats have soft fur and that’s why I like them. Hairless cats aren’t pretty.”

  Amanda says, “She has very strong opinions about cats. And not just the domestic kind. You should hear her talk about the fishing cat we saw at the zoo.”

  “It comes from Asia. It’s not white like your cat, Aunt Ginny. It’s gray with black stripes. And bigger.”

  Amanda suggests, “Maybe you should draw Aunt Ginny a picture of a fishing cat later. Then she could see what it looks like. Maybe you girls could both sit in the dining room and color with crayons, how does that sound?”

  The girls agree it sounds fun. The dining room table is broad and solid, and we need to place books on the chairs so the girls aren’t sitting
with their chins at table level. Amanda sets out a coloring book for Parker and a few sheets of blank paper for Shannon.

  “You girls stay put, and if you need anything, you just shout for me, okay?”

  “Okay,” they say in chorus.

  To me, Amanda says, “I’m going to get started on the library.”

  “Okay.” I join her. When she reaches for the boxes of photographs, I have a moment of panic, but then remember I’ve hidden away the pictures of Evangeline. No, they’re not here. They’re safely under the carpet in my closet.

  She sets a box up on Dad’s desk and starts going through the photographs. “Why aren’t these in albums? They’re gorgeous.”

  “I know.”

  She turns a photo over, holds it up in my direction. “Is this one Nonna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gorgeous, gorgeous,” she says, shaking her head. “We’re lucky they’re not damaged, just all tossed around like this. You think they’re all Dad’s?”

  “I think so.”

  “He was … amazing. We can just put these in their own box for now, but I’m probably going to want these. I can scan you copies.”

  I’m only half listening, because I notice the picture in her hand is different from the others. It’s black-and-white. The wall, the collar, the face. Evangeline.

  In this one she is looking straight at the camera, and it feels like her eyes are boring into mine, which I don’t like. I have to look away, even though she isn’t real. As if I didn’t want to look away, thinking of her ghost in my kitchen, howling in a ruined voice, crying out to understand something I couldn’t explain to her: why people can be cruel.

  I hid them, but I missed one.

  Amanda looks at it and says, “Who’s this?”

  I realize it doesn’t mean to her what it means to me. Of course it doesn’t. So maybe this is a good thing. Her memory isn’t as good as mine in general, but she’s better at faces.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t look familiar to you?”

  “Not at all. Was it just this one? She’s not in any others?” Amanda begins pawing through the box.

  “No,” I say, which is technically the truth. None of the other photos in the box is of Evangeline. The other twenty-eight upstairs are her, but down here, it’s just the one.

  “Well, I don’t recognize her. There’s not a lot to go on. They’re a little grainy, so maybe ten years old? Fifteen? Dad always had a great camera, so they could be older. Definitely not digital. Definitely film. It’s so hard to tell with black-and-white. She doesn’t look familiar to you either?”

  “No, not at all. I mean, maybe. I thought maybe she could have been a nurse at the hospital?” The lie comes easily. I have information I shouldn’t have, so I find a way to pretend I came by it honestly.

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” she says, handing it back to me. “Dad never took me to the hospital, so I didn’t get to know anyone there.”

  She pulls a picture of the four of us out of the box. Ma then her then me then Dad. The whole family, together.

  In a soft voice, Amanda says, “I don’t think he liked me very much.”

  I say firmly, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I always felt like I came in second.” She covers up the half of the photo with her and Ma in it, leaving just Dad and his other daughter, me.

  I’ve never heard her say this before. I tell her, “Don’t feel like that.”

  “You should know as well as anyone, you can tell someone how to feel, but it doesn’t make them feel that way.” She drops both photos back in the box, puts the lid on, and pushes down gently on each corner in turn.

  “You’re right.”

  “Anyway. No, I don’t know who that woman is, or why we have a picture of her. Dad probably didn’t even take it. It was probably just mixed in with our stuff, like the developer was doing ours and someone else’s and put this one in the wrong pile.”

  It amazes me how logical she sounds. I know what she says isn’t right, but it sounds so much like it could be. Maybe Ma was right, at least about one thing. Maybe my cross is that I’m gullible. Gullible is on a page with gull, of course, and guidance, and gyre.

  “Anything else?” asks Amanda, setting the black box of photographs on Dad’s desk, not back where it belongs, but not in the pile of things taken care of. “We should get back to work.”

  “Oh. Yes. Can you write a check for groceries?”

  “For next week?”

  “No, this is for the ones that already came.”

  “What would you do without me?” She sees my mouth opening and hastens to add, “Don’t answer that. Just write it yourself and bring it to me to sign. My checkbook’s in my purse, in the kitchen. See how the girls are doing while you’re down there.”

  Shannon and Parker are coloring quietly, and don’t even look up as I go by. When I bring Amanda the checkbook I tell her so.

  “Thank heaven for little girls,” she says. “If they were boys I’d be a basket case. My friend Lily has two boys. They’re always falling off things or spitting in her hair or peeing out windows. It’s crazy.”

  “That does sound crazy!”

  “But what can you do,” she says, leaning over Dad’s desk to sign the check. “Kids are kids. They have their own personalities. Like Shannon and Parker. They’re so different. They have the same genes, but they’re night and day. Shannon’s so quiet, and Parker’s just so outgoing. Thank goodness I don’t have two like Parker, I guess. Two Shannons, okay, but two Parkers, no thanks. But I’m happiest with exactly what I’ve got, of course. Listen to me babble, I’m sorry. Believe me, you wouldn’t want kids. They make you a fool.”

  “I want kids,” I say.

  “Don’t go getting any ideas,” she says. “That’s the last thing I need right now, you getting yourself pregnant.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I tell my sister. “I’d get married first.”

  “You’re not seeing anyone, are you?”

  “No.” I don’t remind her it’s a stupid expression. Who don’t we see?

  “Have anyone in mind?”

  “No.” I’ve always wanted a husband and kids, but haven’t really visualized the steps between here and there. It always seemed like there was plenty of time.

  “Well, you know, I shouldn’t laugh. My friend Lorna, she came to my wedding with one guy, and she asked me to be in her wedding six months later, and it was a totally different guy she was marrying. And Angelica, she got proposed to by a guy while they were both jumping out of a plane, you know, skydiving? On their second date! People do weird stuff. Not that I think you should do that.”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “Marriage isn’t a cakewalk. And kids are no picnic,” she says, tearing the check off and setting it on the corner of the desk for me to take. “Don’t fool yourself.”

  I slip it into my pocket. “I don’t fool myself.”

  “No, I guess you don’t. I’m sorry I get freaked out. I just don’t want anything to happen to you. Mom was so worried that something would.”

  “And nothing has,” I say.

  “Not yet,” she says. “But how will we make sure that nothing does?”

  I ask her, “Has anything bad ever happened to you?”

  “Lots of times.”

  “Then how can you expect to keep me safe? Bad things happen to everybody.”

  Amanda says, “That doesn’t help me feel better, you know.”

  I’m at a loss.

  She says, “Listen, before the girls get sick of coloring I want to get this whole shelf packed up.” Her gesture covers the entire west wall, rows of textbooks and reference books and histories stretching up toward the ceiling. “You can help me, or you can go through the stuff in your room instead.”

  “My room?”

  “Your old room,” she says. “I went through a bunch of stuff in my old room, and there was plenty of it, so maybe you should go through yours too.”

 
If I go through my room, she won’t, so I’m happy to go along with her suggestion.

  Before I go upstairs I take a look in my parents’ room, to make sure Amanda hasn’t been poking around the fireplace. The red geraniums in the rectangular pot are exactly where I left them, undisturbed. When I look in the closet, I notice the shoes are gone, so I find the box labeled SHOES in the stack against the wall. The two pairs of shoes I care about are on top. I put them back in their places again. Maybe this time she won’t notice. If I need to crawl into this closet, which I hope I don’t, but if I really need to, I want the shoes to be there.

  Down the hall, staring into a different closet, I pull out an unlabeled, plain brown cardboard box. Old dried tape fails to stick it together at the edges. It reminds me of the one I found in Amanda’s room and labeled AMANDA KIDHOOD. And when I open it, it’s my own childhood that’s inside.

  I sit down, leaning against a wall painted Chardonnay, and start pulling things out, putting them in piles. Pictures and notebooks, report cards and folders. Years and years of school. Years and years of Ginny.

  I work down through the successive layers: second grade, third grade, fourth. Pictures of my tiny self, years ago, mixed in with my creations. Second grade, heavy bangs and a round face, an unreasonable shirt of red and white and navy stripes. Third grade, the year I wore nothing but black and white and gray, in various combinations.

  I brace myself and reach for one of the notebooks. It’s just like I remember.

  I sketched in the margins, but nothing like what Amanda had in her notebooks. No cartoons of the teacher, no hearts or last names. Even if I didn’t know from the squared-off Magic Markered number 2 on the cover that this is my second-grade notebook, the doodles clearly tell me exactly where I was.

  “Aunt Ginny,” says a small voice, “is your cat up here with you?”

  I look up. Shannon.

  “I’m not sure exactly where she is,” I tell her.

  “Is she okay, though?”

  “I’m sure she’s okay.”

  “What’s that?” She points at the notebook, which I’ve opened. The pages are covered with patterns. Clear evidence I was in my Turkish rug phase.