The Kitchen Daughter

by Jael McHenry

  “Just some drawings I did, a long time ago.”

  “Shannon!” calls Amanda’s voice. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here with Aunt Ginny!”

  “Come down!”

  “I’ll watch her,” I shout back, and gesture to Shannon to come over and sit next to me. Maybe because she’s so small, I don’t mind having her in my personal space. She wiggles in next to me and lifts her tiny chin up to see over the page.

  “What’s that one?” asks Shannon, and points.

  The patterns don’t pull me in the way they once did. But the knowledge is still there. Deep down. “These are motifs that Turkish weavers use in their rugs. They each have a meaning.”

  “Like a code?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I like codes. I learned the whole hobo code from a book, like where a cat means the lady of the house is friendly and the curve shape means it’s the house of a bad man.”

  “Same thing,” I say. “This one that looks like an hourglass? It’s called the hair-band.”

  “My hair-bands don’t look like that.”

  “Well, Turkish hair-bands were different, I guess. Anyway, the hair-band meant that the woman who wove the rug was unmarried.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me, but Turkish, and I don’t know how to weave. But yes. Unmarried.”

  She points again. “This one?”

  “The phoenix. They were wishing for rain.”

  “I don’t like rain.”

  “I don’t either, but the farmers need it.”

  “That’s what Mom says when it rains.”

  “Your mom and I both learned it from the same person.”

  “From Grandma Selvaggio.”

  “Yes.” I get ready in case she wants to talk about death again, but instead she points to the evil eye and says, “What’s that?”

  “The evil eye.”

  “Why does someone want evil in their rug?”

  “It’s not really evil. The symbol means they’re glad that God is watching over them. They’re thanking God for keeping an eye on them.”

  “But if it’s God who’s watching them, why is the eye evil?”

  “You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that.”

  Shannon starts turning the pages herself, looking over the symbols. I look down at them too. If I close my eyes I can still see an entire rug, the color and pattern and size, as if it’s in the room with me. But it’s a dead thing. Like the idea of ESP, and the letters written by nuns, the rug patterns are only artifacts. They’re nothing special. Anymore.

  Midnight comes in and leaps up on the bed, and with a happy cry Shannon leaps up after her. While the five-year-old strokes the cat’s fur and sings her an endless, tuneless song, I empty the rest of the box. Once I’ve set everything in piles by what year it’s from, I pull the piles apart and change them. This time I reorder everything by type. The pictures with the pictures, the notebooks with the notebooks. The story is still clear. The early report cards say things like Let’s get Ginny to come out of her shell! and Quite the little reader! The later ones say things like Unusually quiet in class and Fails to participate. However you read it, they say I’m not quite right.

  I take the piles upstairs to my own room and set them out neatly on the floor. Midnight probably won’t mess with them, and if she does, I don’t know what they’re good for anyway. Just for reminding me how screwed up I am.

  I need reassurance, but I make myself wait until Amanda and the girls go to sleep. We have peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for dinner, and Shannon draws me a picture of a fishing cat, and the day passes into night.

  While I’m waiting, I reach into the cupboard for dried pineapple. I added them to the grocery order because I find them reassuring, but they have to be the right kind. Ma started buying the fancy natural low-sulfur version from Trader Joe’s in the past few years. Those are fibrous and taste good for you. These are the ones from my childhood, which just taste good. They are as yellow as lemons, crusted all around with sugar. The inside is as thick and wet as a gumdrop. When I was six I lived on these for weeks. That was during the obsession with round things.

  Once it is fully dark and everyone is fully asleep, I go into my parents’ room. I almost convince myself I don’t need it, but I do. I go to the Normal Book one more time. Everything in the box tells me I’m not normal. Everything in the Normal Book tells me I am. Evidence on one side, evidence on the other.

  can tell you your situation is unusual,

  but can’t say it’s not normal to wonder

  tells me monogamy isn’t normal for

  men and so I owe it to him to make

  normally I wouldn’t even care what she

  does, but as a bridesmaid I’m finding

  my normal weight is down around 130

  but my wife thinks that’s too thin, so I

  father alleycatting around his nursing

  home? Is that normal? And what should

  not normal to go thousands of dollars

  into debt for clothes that don’t even fit

  thinks it’s normal to be friends with his

  ex-girlfriends and I just can’t help

  to settle down like a normal guy but

  what they don’t know is my roommate

  Amanda’s voice whispers, “What are you doing up?”

  She’s standing in the middle of the room, maybe five feet away. Startled, I echo, “What are you doing up?”

  I’m sitting on the window seat to catch the light from the lamppost outside. From my perch I can see clearly the fireplace, with the geraniums out of their usual spot, and I hope Amanda won’t notice.

  She says, “I thought I heard a noise.”

  “Just me.”

  “This house is a noisy house,” she says. “That’s how I thought all houses were until I moved in with Brennan. Our place in L.A. was new construction and all you ever heard was the highway.”

  “It’s not how all houses are?”

  “You’ll love our place,” she says. “Silent at night like you’re in deep space or something.”

  “I don’t think I’d love that.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “But I don’t want to get used to it,” I say. “Are you sure you want me to move in with you?”

  “Well, I don’t really see a better option,” she says, walking over to me. I fold the book closed and place it on my lap, hoping the black of the book will blend in with the black of my pajamas, and go unnoticed in the dim light.

  “But I want to stay here.”

  “I don’t see how that could work.” When she whispers, her voice reminds me even more of orange juice. “You’re alone here. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m fine alone.”

  “We’ve talked about this. I don’t think it’s safe.”

  “And I think you’re wrong.”

  “Oh, Ginny. We’re all the family you have left, you know.”

  “I want my own family,” I say. “Not yours.”

  “My family is your family,” she says. “Mom and Dad. That family. And we should be sticking together. Don’t you think that’s what they’d want?”

  “What about what I want?”

  “I don’t think you’ve thought it through. This is what I meant before. There’s more to it than you think. Do you want to pay the utilities? Shovel the snow? Change the lightbulbs? What if the hot water heater broke? You wouldn’t even know what to do. Forget the everyday stuff, even. What if someone broke in and you were by yourself?”

  I must have some kind of stricken look on my face because she says, “Okay, okay. Listen. The middle of the night is a lousy time to make a decision about anything major. Just think about it. Okay?”

  “But …” I begin. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to live in her house with her family. If I had my own house and my own family I’d prefer that, but lacking my own life, I’d at least like to not intrud
e on hers. She says she wants me there, but I can’t quite believe that. If I were her, I wouldn’t.

  “But what?”

  And it comes to me. But … nothing.

  There’s no real reason to stay here, is there? The house is just a house. The people who matter most aren’t in it. I can’t keep the house anyway if Amanda won’t cooperate. I tell myself I’m fine on my own, but am I? No friends to fall back on, no relationships, no support. Left to my own devices, I have no devices.

  “Good night, Amanda,” is all I can say, and she wishes me good night and leaves, and I’m hit so hard by the knowledge that I could be wrong, I almost forget to be relieved that she didn’t ask me about the book.

  I put the Normal Book, with the letter still inside its cover, back up inside the chimney, and slide the red geraniums back into place. I have enough presence of mind to do that. But as soon as it’s done I let the strain hit me, and then I crawl into the closet and tuck my hands into Ma’s bedroom slippers, gently stroking my cheeks with the marabou tops, letting the world recede away and feeling nothing but the soft feathers against my cheeks and the walls of the closet supporting my back. Dark. Support. Feathers. My world gets very small and comfortable, and I savor it, knowing it will have to open up tomorrow to be large and bright and uncomfortable again.

  IN THE MORNING we pack and sort, sort and pack, with me dragging my metaphorical feet every step of the way. We work on the books in the library, and it goes very slowly, because the girls help. They pull books out from the lowest shelves and try to read the titles to us, which is a comedy. Shannon can get most of them right. Parker’s about fifty-fifty. On the medical textbooks even Amanda is lost, with words in their titles like hematoma and esophageal, and I’m the one with a slight edge from listening to Dad’s bedtime stories over the years. Dad’s bedtime stories included words like phalange. Phalange was on a page with pharmaceutical and pharmacology, but the page was in one of these medical dictionaries, not the regular one. I spot Parker tugging on a wide, heavy book that may actually be the same book I learned it from. She tugs and tugs, and when it comes free from the shelf, she tips right over. Luckily her sister breaks her fall, and everything is laughter instead of tears. I’m starting to think life at Amanda’s might not be so bad after all. I’m not fully convinced, but I’m thinking.

  Late in the morning, Amanda says to me, “We need to think about L-U-N-C-H. In a little bit, maybe thirty minutes down the road.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, I wrote you that check for groceries, didn’t I? We’ve got plenty of things that aren’t peanut butter and jelly in the house.”

  “I like peanut butter and jelly!” says Parker. “I like raspberry! I like grape!”

  Amanda says to her, in the bubblier, softer version of her usual voice, “Yes, we all do, honey, but sometimes it’s nice to have a change. Don’t you think it would be nice if your aunt Ginny would cook us a lunch?”

  “Yeah!” says Parker. I am starting to learn that she sounds enthusiastic about nearly everything.

  “Sure, I could come up with something,” I say. “I’ll see what there is.”

  In the kitchen I start to work, setting out a pot, gathering ingredients. I poke around in the refrigerator and the cabinets. A small pile of things grows on the counter. Onion, spices, butternut squash.

  “How about soup?” I call out to Amanda.

  “Soup? Sure.”

  I have a recipe marked in one of my cookbooks for butternut squash soup. Since the recipe is in a book, I think it’s safe for not calling ghosts, but just in case, I’ll change a few things as I go. The flavors aren’t what intrigue me anyway. It’s the technique. Usually for steaming squash you peel it first. The peel can be tough, so you leave it on if you’re roasting the squash whole or in halves, and then you scoop the soft flesh out, but when the squash is cut into chunks for steaming, usually the peel is removed. This recipe is different, which is why I want to try it. I want to know if it makes a difference, or if this person just wrote this recipe this way because that’s the way he or she had always seen it done.

  I set to the task. I trim the squash and separate the slender part from the fat bulb.

  “Hey, do you need any help?” says Amanda. “Parker’s so tired she fell asleep on the floor, and Shannon found your cat again, so they’re good for a half hour.”

  I usually don’t cook with help. Either Ma cooked or I did. We didn’t mix much.

  Amanda says, “If you don’t, that’s okay, but it’d be great if you’d teach me something. I know how to make about six different things, and one of them is blue-box mac and cheese, so you could help me expand my horizons.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Take that pot to the sink and put in maybe an inch of water?”

  “Done and done,” she says. She also follows my directions to put in the steamer basket, turn up the burner, and put the lid on.

  For the squash, I’ve already done the hard part, so I tell Amanda about it in gestures instead of demonstration, and then guide her through the process of cutting the whole squash into planks, then cubes. Her knife technique is clumsy, but effective. She could be more precise if she didn’t move so fast. I know it’s not polite to tell her so. Midnight wanders in to find out what we’re doing, but when I drop a tidbit of squash on the floor for her to taste, she is unimpressed.

  Once the squash has steamed through, I dump it into a larger bowl. And then my sister and I try to peel hot squash. We burn our fingertips on every single one. Pick up, drop, pick up, catch the peel with a fingernail, try to balance the cube to touch as little skin as possible, tug, drop, blow on fingers. Repeat. Make occasional noises of dismay.

  “Why do we have to do it like this again?” asks Amanda.

  “This is my first time peeling it this way, and I think it’ll be the last,” I say. “But let’s see how it tastes.”

  When the pile of little inch-square peels and inch-cube squash are separated, we stare at the cubes of softened, naked, orange squash. Amanda’s fingertips look as sore as mine feel.

  “Okay,” I say. “Now the easy part.”

  I guide Amanda through the process of heating a combination of milk and chicken broth, turning down the heat just as it reaches a boil. Drop in the cubes of squash and lower the stick blender in. Pulse gently. I veer away from the printed recipe, just to be sure, and toast my paprika and cumin in a pan before stirring them into the soup. We cook it for a while to thicken.

  Amanda says, “Almost done?”

  “Almost done.” It feels satisfying.

  “Let me go get the girls,” she says.

  Bubbles in thick liquids always amuse me. I could watch them for hours, and have. This one doesn’t quite have the explosive bloop of polenta, but it’s much more than just a typical simmer.

  A few minutes later Amanda returns, with a yawning Parker and a scowling Shannon.

  “This one didn’t want to leave Midnight.”

  Shannon says, “I’m not hungry anyway.”

  “You’ll be hungry when you smell this,” I say.

  Amanda says, “Ugh, all that cat hair, go wash your hands first, Shan,” and the girl trounces off.

  We put the books on the chairs at the dining room table again so the girls can sit at the right level. Once this is done, I ladle the soup into four bowls and place them on the table, one for each of us. Amanda pours milk into four glasses, two short and two tall. I set a squeeze bottle of sriracha at the center of the table.

  Everyone makes pleased noises while they eat their soup. I squeeze sriracha into my bowlful until the top of the soup is more red than orange. It burns my lips in a pleasant, warming way. Amanda tries a dab of it and makes a face, and after tasting the heat, she won’t let the girls try it.

  A ringing phone sounds, and Amanda says, “Brennan’s on a plane, so that must be Angelica. Wait, no. That’s not even my ring.”

  “Must be me,” I say, and reach over to find my phone on the mantel. I don’t recog
nize the number. “Hello?”

  “Ginny, it is Gert,” says the familiar voice, all sweet dark poppy seeds.

  “Gert! Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing wrong.”

  “Because it’s not Thursday.”

  “No. Today I am calling for a different reason. I am calling as friend, asking favor.”

  “Yes?”

  She says, “I need a good cook, and you are the best. Can I come get you? I will explain.”

  How can I refuse? Gert needs my help. No one ever needs my help.

  I say, “Okay. Do I need anything?”

  “Only yourself.”

  She tells me she’ll come to pick me up in fifteen minutes, and I tell her I’ll be ready. When I hang up, Shannon is eating quietly and Parker is dripping soup off her spoon onto the table, but Amanda is sitting with her arms crossed, waiting for me.

  “What was that?” asks Amanda.

  “I need to go help Gert with something.”

  “With what?”

  “I don’t know. Something cooking related.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need to learn to ask follow-up questions,” grumbles Amanda. “What if I needed you?”

  “You don’t, not right now,” I say. “You’ve got the girls to help.”

  “Well, be back before dark, okay?”

  “Okay.” I’m used to that caveat. It’s exactly the same as Ma’s.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hard-boiled Eggs

  I stand in front of the house, and though I expected Gert to pull up in a car, I see her approaching on foot. I don’t recognize her at first because her hair isn’t in its ponytail. Instead, when she turns to check the traffic before crossing the street, I notice it is coiled into a spiral at the back of her neck, in a neat, braided bun. It makes me think of Ma’s caramel cinnamon buns, hot from the oven, melting and fragrant with the smell of butterscotch.

  Gert touches my forehead and says, “Thank you for joining me. This way.” With quick strides she turns right at the base of the stairs, heading back toward Ninth. I hasten to catch up. We turn southward.