The Kitchen Daughter

by Jael McHenry

  drinking. But my boyfriend thinks I’m

  So I guess the question is, what I

  consider normal for Americans might

  Yakima, why let him define what’s

  normal? You’re letting him control

  cold day in hell when this girl gets to

  tell me what’s normal for my own son

  I say, “See? Normal means a lot of things to a lot of people. You’re normal. Don’t worry. It’s okay.”

  My hand is lingering at the back of his neck and he puts his hand over it to keep it there, and then brings his mouth down on mine, firmly. His lips are full and warm.

  The first feeling is shock, but then another feeling crashes over it like a wave, blots it out. All my nerves are singing and all my wires are crossed. I am tasting and feeling but nothing that I am tasting or feeling is here. His kisses are honey. His tongue is like a ripe slice of mango, firm and slippery, irresistibly smooth. It’s hard to breathe. A soft, spreading warmth descends from my neck down my body to my toes, spreading out like milk in coffee, rolling in curls and waves and currents. Both of his hands are in my hair now, grasping.

  I want to be closer so I push my body against his.

  He leaps back as if scalded.

  “Oh, God, Ginny,” he moans, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, but it’s too late for that, he’s out the door and down the stairs and the slam of the front door comes so quickly it seems impossible. I kneel on the window seat and look out the window of my parents’ room and see him unlocking his bike from the No Parking sign, moving so quickly he fumbles and drops his helmet onto the sidewalk.

  I work to open the window, I’ve never tried this one before, I fumble with the latch. It rides open with a whoosh of cold air. I call to him from the window, “Wait!”

  He turns and looks up at me and pain is written so clearly across his face it takes what’s left of my breath away.

  Then he throws one leg over the bike and rides off, so quickly the helmet is still rocking back and forth on the sidewalk, unsteady, left behind.

  I would say it was a bad idea, but it was never an idea.

  I never thought about it before it happened. Now that it has happened, though, I can’t stop thinking about it. For that reason and many others, sleeping is out of the question. Cooking too. I can picture the wine bottle sitting on the floor of the kitchen. It can stay there.

  I sit in the window seat and read one of Ma’s southern romance novels. The cover is barely cracked. The woman in the story falls in love with her neighbor, an older man. Her parents disapprove. There are scenes. There is disowning. There is forgiveness, and a tearful reunion. It all sounds unpleasant.

  I am not a fast reader. Midnight curls up on the seat next to me for part of the night. Later she tires of that position and disappears. Before I’ve finished, the sun comes up. When I can see it’s light out I go outside and pick up David’s helmet from the sidewalk. I bring it in and set it on the dining room mantel, next to the picture of Charleston.

  Then I nap a few hours, though the noises of the day wake me up from time to time. A car door, a horn, an alarm. Someone swearing at their lack of quarters. Gossiping nurses, a shriek of laughter. The last time I decide there’s no point in trying anymore. I get up, get dressed, make myself coffee. The coffee is to force me back into alertness, or something close to it. Making myself be awake is always a possibility, in a way making myself be asleep is not.

  The helmet sits on the mantel in the dining room, white and webbed like tripe. I don’t know what to do about it. I can take it over to his apartment, but if he’s not there, that’s pointless. I can’t just set it on his steps and leave it. It hasn’t been that long since I showed up at someone else’s door unwanted, and I’m still reeling from that.

  The bag of groceries is still on the butcher block. Potatoes and red onions and almonds and tangerines. It seems silly now. I felt so proud, like I’d achieved something. People do these things every day, all their lives. When I can do them with no fear, then I’ll have something to be proud of.

  On the kitchen floor is the empty wine bottle. David, poor David. I couldn’t help him get what he needed. The ghost didn’t come. I didn’t keep my promise. Why did he kiss me? Was he just seeking comfort, responding to kindness? I don’t know what he was feeling, but I know what I felt. Some kind of intimacy, some kind of tenderness. At the time it felt like a breakthrough, something I’d never felt before. Connection. Acceptance. And what I feel now, I think it’s guilt. I should have pushed him away before the kiss even happened. But I didn’t. I was selfish.

  I think about how sad he was, how overwhelmed. How he went so quickly from mood to mood. I always thought other people were more sure of themselves. When I think about Amanda, the way she wants to help me but can’t figure out how to do it, I realize she must be unsure too. David always seemed that way, but now I guess he isn’t. He isn’t acting sure.

  David. I really don’t know what will happen next. But this will all unfold the way it will unfold, whether it’s yesterday or today or tomorrow. If David never speaks to me again, that’s what happens. For someone who didn’t even know him a month ago I find myself caring a lot. I learned the word fatalism at a young age and after I got over the idea that it meant something about death, I grew very attached to it. It’s like realism, but even more so. It’s also on a page with fastidious, and fatback, and father.

  I’ll feel better if I cook. Something that will completely absorb me, push everything else out of my mind.

  Flipping through the recipe cards, I notice the yellow stain on the corner of Ma’s recipe for chicken and dumplings. When I was a kid I loved chicken and dumplings. She would open the can of Golden Mushroom Soup and it made a satisfying splat. The yellow stain reminds me of the yellow aji de gallina, how I was afraid it would ruin the recipes. It failed to bring Elena into the kitchen. David grabbed it out of my hand and threw it at the wall. I never got to taste it.

  There is still plenty of aji amarillo left in the jar, and potatoes from yesterday’s bag. I open the refrigerator to look for the rest. Yes, olives, evaporated milk, chicken, bread, everything I need. David bought extra of everything. I know why. He was trying to be sure.

  It’s always hardest to make something the first time. So much uncertainty, in any unknown recipe. Will the dough come together? How much liquid will the fruit give off? Will the potatoes be cool enough to peel by the time the sauce is thick? That’s part of why the recipe seems to go much more quickly this time, even though it takes just as long, nearly two hours. There are so many things to cook and to peel, to heat and to cool, to stir and tear and shred. I lose myself in it.

  At the end, the aji comes together as it should, its yellows and whites correct, the black olives like punctuation. I lower my nose to the dish and inhale. It smells like creaminess. There’s a slight heat in the yellow pepper, a sweet note, and of course the blooming color.

  I lift my head.

  A blur of brown and white, resolving, and there she is. I see her form come together.

  On the stool sits a beautiful woman, skin the color of buckwheat honey. She wears a thin white hooded sweatshirt, zipped up to the neck, with black yoga pants that end midcalf. On her feet, white slip-on sneakers, almost like Nonna’s Keds. No socks. Her ankles are bare above the lip of the shoe. I look at her face. Around the eyes there are lines and shadows. She looks sadder, and older, than her picture.

  “Hello, Elena,” I say.

  “Who are you?” She clings to the stool as if the floor were ocean. “¿Quien eres?”

  “Please don’t go,” I say. “I’m a friend.”

  “Not my friend.”

  “I’m a friend, I promise. Of David’s. And his mom’s. You know his mom? Gert?”

  “Yes, I know her.”

  “She’s been a friend of my family. For many years.”

  “That doesn’t explain.”

  “I know it
doesn’t,” I say. “But the truth … the truth is kind of hard to start with.”

  “It’s easier if you just say it,” she says.

  Maybe she’s right.

  I tell her, “You’re a ghost.”

  “I know I’m a ghost.” It’s a statement, flat. She says, “I remember. I remember dying.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She says, “And why you? Who are you?”

  I say, “I invoke ghosts by cooking from dead people’s recipes. Your husband asked me to bring you. I made your aji de gallina.”

  Her voice cracks as she says, “I told him I’d love him if he made it. He never made it. I loved him anyway.”

  “Did you?”

  “What a question,” she says, “when I don’t even know you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She says, “So you’re not … with him? You’re his friend?”

  “I try to be,” I say.

  She says, “I didn’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “I didn’t come before. The last time, when you made the aji. I didn’t come, because I didn’t want to.”

  “What?”

  “I was close—I smelled the aji—I could see him—but it was David and a strange woman in a strange place, what was I supposed to think? It was too surprising.”

  “But you came this time.”

  “I was lucky to get a second chance. I didn’t want to wait for a third.”

  She kicks her foot, points her toes. She makes circles on the kitchen floor. We both watch her toes making one circle after another in the same clockwise direction. Around and around. Half hypnotized, both of us.

  “There’s so much you never think about,” she says. “Before you die.”

  “Like?”

  “We were never outside ourselves,” she says. “We should have been. We should have tried.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t even tell you, I’m sorry. I know it in my mind. But I can’t find the words to explain.”

  I hope that she will find some of them, but she goes back to making the circles with her foot again. She carves the air and it heals behind her.

  If I only get the chance to tell her one thing, I want it to be the most important thing.

  “Stay,” I say. “David wants so badly to see you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know exactly where. I’m sorry. If you wait … I didn’t mean to have you come this time. It was an accident.”

  She says, “There are many accidents.”

  I say, “Please stay until I can find him. He misses you.”

  “I miss him too,” she says, “but I think it is too late.”

  She’s right. The smell of the aji is already fainter, already disappearing. She’ll be gone, and soon.

  I say, “But—for David—won’t you tell me anything?”

  “There’s nothing to say, not now,” Elena says. “Too late for some things, too soon for others. I will tell him all myself, eventually.”

  The palest parts of her, the arms, the shoes, go first, but it doesn’t take long before her whole form becomes mist and then nothing. Then the bare stool sits there, empty again.

  I TAKE DAVID’S helmet and walk to his apartment, cursing myself all the way. I’m useless, worse than useless. I can’t bring a ghost when she’s needed, but I can invoke her by accident, and in doing so, give up the one way I could have been useful. I can’t help David, I don’t know why I thought I could. I don’t know why I thought I had the right to touch him. He barely even knows me. I pound on his door but he doesn’t answer. I assume he’s in there, hiding. Staying away. In a sense it’s the smartest thing he can do. The only thing other people can do is hurt you, so, forget it.

  But I can’t. What if he’s not at home because he’s with Gert? Will he tell her what we did? What I did? I don’t want her to not like me anymore. That’s frightening. Did I seduce him? I didn’t mean to, but how would I know? I’ve never been a siren. Not that kind.

  I carry his helmet home under my arm and put it back on the mantel. I look at the picture next to it, the one of the fountain, a vacation picture without the family. The scene is most beautiful without people in it. People just screw things up.

  Forget the whole thing, the world, all the living people, I tell myself, and it has a ring of truth to it. The dead are better, aren’t they? The dead don’t betray or harm. They’ve already done all they can do. I can’t figure out what people mean or who they are or whether they can be trusted, so, forget them. Don’t even try anymore.

  For now at least, forget the living.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hot Chocolate

  My world has turned upside down again and again, which should mean it’s right-side up now, but it isn’t. Everything’s different, everything’s the same. Midnight still basks in the window seat and there are still seven piles of childhood artifacts sitting on the floor of my parents’ room. Neatly spaced at regular intervals. If I were a civilization, unearthed by scientists of the future, what would these artifacts say about me?

  Then I think about Elena, and what she said. We were never outside ourselves. Maybe I should try to get outside myself. Think about someone else for a change. I look down at the piles of paper. Change the question. What would these things say about my parents?

  Sixth grade. A five-page paper on “The Initial European Resistance to and Later Culinary Assimilation of the Tomato.” Was I the one who chose the topic? The grades are okay on the report card but the comments section says things like occasionally disruptive and needs to participate more. Nothing here about anyone but me.

  Fifth grade. Quarterly reports on my performance. The grades dance. In the first quarter I get a D in Earth Science. The next quarter Earth Science is up to an A, but English has fallen to a D, and Social Studies to a C. Then English takes the A, and Social Studies the D, and Earth Science back down to a C again. It’s almost like music. I remember Ma showing me flash cards on all these subjects. I hadn’t remembered each one took turns.

  Fourth grade. A unicorn notebook, pink. The names of nuns who wrote letters repeated in varying orders down the left-hand margin. Only the left. Class notes alternate with excerpts that even now I know are from Heloise’s letters to Abelard. It’s a jarring effect now. At the time I’m sure I could read it easily.

  Third grade. Precise, repetitive drawings of fruits from every angle. The delicate spotting at the base of a ripening Anjou pear. Shading to emphasize the round fullness of a muskmelon. A note from the teacher: Goal for the summer—let’s try to expand Ginny’s focus! Needs to make more progress next year to keep up, and if she’d work as hard on math as she does on her drawings … And then it trails off.

  Second grade. Those Turkish rug patterns. Some in margins. Some taking up an entire page. The page-size ones even have a perfectly regular border of knotted fringe drawn at the bottom and top. Declining grades on the report card. A note from the teacher: Ginny failed to turn in a completed assignment, please acknowledge you have received this notification. Signed by Dad in his scrawl. Another note, same message, different date. Signed neatly, Caroline Damson Selvaggio. After that the grades nudge upward again.

  First grade. A picture of the whole class, all thirty of us. Mrs. Mitchell in the middle. I remember her, she was my favorite. I’m nearly hidden in the picture, tucked half behind the boy to my right and half behind the girl to my left. Only one of my eyes is visible and it’s looking down. My grades are all Satisfactory. There is a thank-you note from Mrs. Mitchell thanking my mother for the Christmas cookies.

  Kindergarten. A drawing of a family. Curly-haired Ma holding baby Amanda, whose face is colored in pure red. Dad is wearing scrubs and a surgical mask. Two words in an adult hand: Where’s Ginny? Rows and rows of perfectly formed capital and lowercase As on an exercise sheet intended for the whole alphabet. Come in for a conference written on the first report card, and grades are bet
ter on the second.

  Preschool and before. Crayon drawings and practice pages covered with Gs and Vs. The teacher’s note says, Let’s get Ginny to come out of her shell! Needs to share more with the other children. The drawings of the house with the purple roof and yellow sky. The broken handprint.

  The baby book, where it all started. I flip through every page, even the blank ones, this time. A scrap of newsprint falls to the floor. What’s on the page itself is nonsense. Part of an article on lumber prices, one of those legal ads announcing an auction. I turn the scrap over. What’s important is what’s gone. This side is an advice column, with a small rectangle missing. Just about two lines. Maybe I wasn’t the one who cut the first bit of newspaper for the Normal Book after all.

  Now it’s clear. I sit back on my heels.

  Ma had to work hard, so hard, to keep me unlabeled. It would have been so much easier to let someone else tell her what to do with me. To accept help, to accept the suggestion that I be moved down a grade, or into a special class. Instead she went back to each teacher, insisting I could get by with a little help. I know Ma. I’m sure she charmed them. I’m sure every teacher thought Oh, no when she came in but by the time she left was thinking, Caroline’s right, maybe I am a little too hard on Ginny. She’s just a little shy is all.

  And that was just the dealing with other people. She also had to deal with me. And I was difficult. I didn’t want to be protected, and I made it hard on her. But she chose her battles. She protected me, maybe too much, but she didn’t let me retreat from the world completely. And no matter which way she leaned, protecting me or pushing me, I fought her every step of the way. I was mad because she wouldn’t let me stay in my room by myself. I was mad because she made me go back to school, again and again, after every failure. She gave me what I needed. The evidence is stacked up here on the bedroom floor. And Dad loved me, but he wasn’t the one who helped me get by. He was just a person too, with flaws, not the hero I made him out to be.

  It took their ghosts to do it, but now I think I understand who my parents were. And who I am.