The Kitchen Daughter

by Jael McHenry

  “That just sounds like a normal kid,” I say, and I word it that way on purpose, and I think of Shannon standing on the bottom step and reaching out for Midnight’s soft, swishing tail.

  “The definition of normal is a lot more expansive than most people think,” she says. “I would never say you’re not normal.”

  “We’re not talking about me,” I say. “We’re talking about a hypothetical five-year-old.”

  “You’re right, you’re right. The hypothetical five-year-old might have an exceptional memory, beyond what’s typical of a child that age. The ability to recite an entire page of a book or a conversation she had three months ago, word for word. And as I said, there’s the avoidance of eye contact, which is common, and often there’s a tone of voice too. A way of speaking that sounds less natural to a neurotypical person, who would describe it as emotionless or robotic.”

  I think about Shannon’s voice. She sounds like a little girl. “And that’s how you know? The tone of voice?”

  “Again, there’s so much variation, it’s hard to say.”

  “If it’s so hard to say, then how do you know? If this hypothetical five-year-old is just a five-year-old like all the others, or something else?” I’m getting nervous now. I tap my fingertips in patterns on the table, one two three four five four three two one two three and so on.

  “Largely, it’s a matter of degree. Most children get deeply interested in certain things, and most of them become attached or averse to certain tastes and textures. But an Aspergian child’s interests are deeper, their aversions are stronger. Here’s another way to look at it. A neurotypical child might refuse to eat white food. An Aspergian child might react with anger when a plate of white food is placed in front of him, and either scream or throw the plate or cover it with something so he doesn’t have to look at it.”

  I notice something. “You keep saying ‘might.’”

  “It’s a spectrum, Ms. Selvaggio,” she says, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward. “It manifests differently in different people. It’s the same spectrum as autism, and some cases are right on the line. The example of white food, let’s keep looking at that. An autistic child is less likely to be able to express that he doesn’t want the white food, he’s more likely to express himself by throwing and pushing the plate. That’s one end of the spectrum. But because Aspergians can express themselves in words, they have more ways to deal with their aversions or indulge their interests. Some of them use their interests to become very successful, actually. There’s a very popular theory in the Aspergian community that Albert Einstein had Asperger’s. But that’s neither here nor there. Aspergians can often find a way to deal with their aversions and interests, either through accommodation or behavioral modification. I generally recommend behavioral modification.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In a sense, you can train yourself out of certain behaviors. Especially if you start young. If you accommodate too much, the person’s behaviors, even the more unusual ones, just become part of the fabric. Like if a child has a tantrum. You can allow them to have tantrums whenever they want, or you can teach them that a tantrum won’t get them the desired goal, and eventually, they’ll stop throwing tantrums.”

  “So I’m like a child?”

  “That’s not what I said, and remember, you said we’re not talking about you.”

  I take a deep breath. And in my mind, a leap. I say, “Okay. Let’s do it. Just for a minute. Let’s talk about me.”

  “Okay. The tantrum example is just that, an example. Tell me about a coping behavior you have. Don’t worry, we’re not putting you in a box with this. Everybody has coping behaviors. I do, your sister does, so does the president of the United States. When you’re uncomfortable or unhappy, how do you cope?”

  “Food.”

  “Eating?”

  “No, I just think about a food. Its flavor and shape, or the different ways you can use it, or the process of cooking something.”

  “Give me an example.”

  I tell her about caramelized onions. How heat transforms. How they go from white and raw and crunchy to soft and melting and sweet. I describe the whole process.

  She says, “That’s great to work with. So you’re uncomfortable, like maybe someone tries to touch your arm? And you don’t like that, so you close your eyes and in your mind you walk through the process of caramelizing onions. Is that what happens?”

  “Yes.”

  “It interrupts the conversation, right? If you’re feeling this way with other people around and you need to soothe yourself with this thought of food, it takes a few minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  “One behavioral modification would be training yourself to get all the benefit of the coping mechanism without going through the whole process. Finding a way to just close your eyes and think ‘caramelized onions’ and be calm. Then you could open your eyes and continue the conversation. The other person wouldn’t even notice.”

  It sounds so reasonable.

  Now’s the time. I brace myself. “So, Doc, do you think I have it?”

  There’s a long, horrible moment when she says nothing and I feel like a skinned side of beef in a meat locker hanging, hanging, hanging.

  “It’s not like that,” says Dr. Stewart. “It’s not like a rash or a broken bone. I can’t just spot it. I’d have to go through some screening questions with you, which I’d be very happy to do, either now or at some other time.” I tense up at the word “screening” but let her continue. “You’re obviously a very intelligent young woman. I’d ask you questions about how you perceive certain things, how you react in certain situations. As I said earlier. This conversation between us is private. Your sister made the appointment, but my allegiance isn’t to your sister. It’s to you. If you want to come back, we can talk about hypotheticals, or we can talk about you, and behaviors that you have that you’d like to change, and some ways that you might modify those behaviors.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It is and it isn’t. Everybody struggles with this stuff, you know. With social discomfort and grief and fitting in. People with syndromes, people with disorders, people with diagnoses and without. People who would be classified as neurotypical. Idiots and geniuses, maids and doctors. Nobody’s got it all figured out.”

  “Not even you?”

  “Not even me.”

  “So … it doesn’t actually matter whether I have it at all?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she says. “But you want my personal opinion? It matters a lot less than some people think it does.”

  WHEN I LEAVE Dr. Stewart’s office I have a warm feeling, but when I step outside and the cold hits me things change. She was nice, but she didn’t have to be. Amanda didn’t know she would be. Amanda sent me there blind to be analyzed and found wanting, and I don’t know if I can forgive her for that.

  All the way home I make promises. Ten, twenty, thirty. I will never speak to Amanda again. I will curl up on the kitchen floor and stay there for three weeks. I will take a vow of silence and keep my hands in my pockets so I can’t speak even in signs. I will take a shower for a thousand years. I will dial up some ghost with a grudge and send it like a hellhound against all who have wronged me. Amanda, for suckering me like that. Brennan, for not stopping her. Angelica, who would be happy to help take my house away. Ma, for abandoning me by dying. Dad, the same. I didn’t realize I was angry at my parents until now. And it’s not their fault, but that doesn’t change how I feel. They could still be here. But they’re not. Things would be better if they were.

  By the time I’m home, and the gray sky has begun to drizzle rain over what’s left of our snow, my anger is gone. Drained out. No one really deserves my fury but Amanda.

  I look at the closet, a small, dark refuge, and I think about what Dr. Stewart said. Is it that easy? Just find a way to get the effect without indulging in the behavior? Or is she, like Amanda, just trying to sucker me in? That
happened. People taking advantage of me just because they could. Maybe that’s it. Maybe she’s just pretending to be on my side so she can get me diagnosed and put a word on me.

  If that’s the case, I’ve screwed up something awful. Even the little bit I told her feels like too much. But the words won’t go back in my mouth once spoken. Food can’t be uneaten. A precious few things in this life are reversible.

  Instead of sitting in the closet I go up to my room and stare at the piles of paper. This is who I was as a child. This is what I thought, what I did, how I felt.

  I go over my piles again. Second grade, third grade, fourth, fifth, sixth. Six five four three two.

  One?

  There’s got to be another box.

  I go down to my old room on the second floor and I get down on my knees to look and I stretch my arm into the back of the closet, feeling for an edge.

  Against the back wall I find a suitcase. It’s easy to lift because it’s empty. Behind the suitcase, I see another square corner, and it makes me sit down hard on my heels. The other cardboard box. The other half of my childhood.

  This one is pushed all the way back to the deepest reaches of the closet. It’s been sitting here in the dark for years. It might as well have grown mushrooms.

  One, and everything that came before one. That’s what this box is. Everything, all of it, all the way back to the baby book. If I remember right, my baby book wasn’t particularly well filled out, but at least I had one. Amanda didn’t. But I don’t want to think about Amanda right now.

  I’m tempted to pull the box out and open it right there, but I take it down to my parents’ room instead. It’s the largest room, so I can spread everything out on the floor all together. I bring in all the piles from my room. Two, three, four, five, six. I open the top of the new old box. The ancient masking tape protests, crackles, and gives way.

  As I’m drawing out the first of the papers, I hear what sounds like the noise of the front door. I sit back and wait, listening.

  No feet in the hall, no feet on the steps. Must have been a car door slamming outside. Midnight scratches at a door somewhere, lightly. After that I hear no sounds. I quickly become absorbed in the contents of the box. Then there is nothing but the childhood me that I can think of.

  This one is the opposite of the other. The layers of age run in reverse. So the oldest thing is the one on top. The baby book. The cover is checkered pink and blue, indecisive. I open to the first page, the first entries. My weight and length at birth. The hospital where I was born, Pennsylvania Hospital, Dad’s hospital, just a block away. More pages, more notes. A lock of hair. A picture of me with Grandma Damson, somewhere, smiling. Ma’s handwriting, neat. She’s entered the dates when I first held up my head, first sat up, first rolled over. My first word was da-da. Everything after that, blank.

  I dig down through successive layers. My childhood self moves through the years. Handprints in clay, one of them broken across the weak middle. An ornament I clearly had some help making, red and green foil layered into a star. A coloring book, some pictures colored inside the lines, some not. I have to smile when I see a house with a purple roof and a yellow sky. Even then I had my own ideas.

  A tiny figure made of homemade Play-Doh. There was a flour paste we used to make, I remember that now. Amanda loved the commercial stuff because of the bright colors. I preferred homemade, because it looked more natural. Never mind that my tiny Play-Doh people didn’t look like people and my clumsy Play-Doh horses didn’t look like horses. They were all blobs with more legs and arms than necessary. Dad had always praised them but they were far from accurate. And he always made things out of the Play-Doh too. Models of nerves and hearts and other parts of people. Impossibly detailed. But then he always let me mash them up into my less perfect works.

  Tucked into the corner of the box, flattened and crumbly with age, is one of these tan animals. I don’t know what I thought it was at the time. Right now, it bears a faint, equal resemblance to a dog and a cat and a horse and a lion. I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be a person, because the ears are atop the head instead of on the sides. But this is very early work. I might have made a mistake on anatomy. The perfect understanding of how bodies are constructed, how they come apart and are put back together, I never learned that from Dad or anyone.

  I continue making piles. First grade, kindergarten, preschool, younger. The box slowly empties out.

  The last thing in the box is a square of folded paper. Badly wrinkled, squished by the weight of all these years. I try to unfold it without damaging it as best as I can.

  Dad’s handwriting. I recognize it because it’s the only handwriting familiar to me that’s even less legible than mine. Tailless As that look like Os, strange half-cursive Fs that too closely resemble Ps.

  Dad’s handwriting.

  Familiar, powerful words. Flour. Water. Cream of tartar. Salt. Oil.

  A recipe.

  Something that was his. Something I’d forgotten. That homemade Play-Doh recipe. Whether he made it up himself, whether he copied it out of a book, I have no idea. And it wasn’t in the kitchen because it hasn’t been needed there for nearly twenty years. So it went to the back of the closet, with the memories.

  It may not be food, but it’s a recipe. Something of his I can make.

  He might come.

  I can hardly breathe.

  Carefully, I lay the recipe aside. I step back from it. I’ve never held anything more precious. Really, I don’t trust myself to hold it at all.

  I have to think about this. Something I wanted so much and now it’s here, and I don’t know what to do.

  Who can I talk to? Not Amanda, not right now. Angelica’s phone number is on the refrigerator but since Amanda’s cut me off she’s worse than useless. The list of people I actually know is a very short list. I think of David, but I don’t have a phone number for him, only the address in the kitchen drawer I sent the check to, and I think the only thing he knows about my dad is the evidence of his own healed palm, impeccably stitched.

  But Gert. Gert knows more. I’ll ask Gert what she thinks. I can’t tell her the whole truth of it, but I can ask her about my dad, and maybe that will help me figure out what to do. She knows him. Knew him. She can advise me. Someone needs to. Once I do it, it can’t be undone.

  I call her.

  “Gert?”

  Her familiar voice says, “Yes, it is Gert.”

  “It’s Ginny.”

  “Ginny! I was just wanting to call you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. Well, I had hoped you would help me cook some more again.”

  “Oh,” I say, remembering the family sitting shiva for their dead relative. It feels like a year ago. It was the day before yesterday. “For the burial committee?”

  “Not quite the same. No one is dead.”

  “Good.”

  “It is still a sadness, though. I can explain more when I see you. Will you come to the temple now?”

  “Now, okay.”

  “Do you know the way?”

  “Yes, I know the way. I’ll call if I get lost.”

  I mean to leave right away but it takes me more than half an hour. First I can’t even get out of the hallway. Every time the recipe is out of my sight I have to turn back to look at it again. Each time I see it I’m reassured, but when I look away I worry that I’ve misunderstood it, that I’m somehow mistaken. But it’s still there. It’s still something my dad wrote that I can cook.

  I want to see him.

  This is the way.

  So then I stare at the recipe for a while trying to decide if I should take it with me. I get downstairs with it but then decide folding it is a bad idea. It’s weak and might crumble away, losing a letter somewhere important. I don’t want to just leave it sitting out so I look for somewhere to hide it. I don’t want to slide it up into the chimney with the other things I’m hiding there, nor slide it under the mattress with the envelopes of cash, because it�
��s so fragile. I open the top drawer of the bureau where I left Ma’s Bible, but the Bible isn’t there. Amanda must have put it in a box. I don’t know anywhere that’s safe. In the end I tuck it into the back of a cookbook, the same one Nonna’s recipe fell out of, Tuscan Treasures. I put it on the top shelf and close the doors over it.

  When all this is done I walk to the temple. I remember the turns. Right, left, right. When I see Gert I can ask her advice.

  I walk through the large darkened worship room. I don’t know what it’s called. In the church they called the room like this a sanctuary, which I always liked. Sanctuary is on a page with sanitize and Santa Claus. As I approach the kitchen, I walk into waves of smells. I’m late.

  Gert says, “Come in, I was beginning to worry about you.”

  The red-haired woman is there, and another woman too. They only glance at me, then go back to their work. Chicken broth is bubbling on the stove. I smell raw flour, beef, thyme.

  Gert explains, “Remember I said death is not the only cause for grieving. This family has a five-year-old daughter. She is having bone marrow transplant, and keem … keem …”

  The red-haired woman says, “Chemotherapy,” and then goes back to shaping small balls of dough.

  “So they have no time to cook. But they must eat. So we help them.”

  The women are working mostly from memory, but I see a scrap of paper here and there. I can’t be completely sure they’re not recipes. I don’t know if it’s possible to invoke a ghost anywhere other than my own kitchen, but I see no reason to chance it. So I help the others. I cut garlic in slivers, onions in half-moons. Chop shallots. Make carrots into coins. I slice scallions straight across and on the diagonal. I’m distracted, wondering when and how to catch Gert’s attention so I can ask her advice. Slicing too fast, I cut off one of my fingernails but manage to catch it and drop it down the drain before anyone notices. It would have been a disaster otherwise. Once sliced, a fingernail and a scallion are not easy to tell apart at a glance.