In a kind of bizarre unison, Liza, Lillian, and I make faces at the idea of eating wet, soggy cornmeal—the image of cows chewing mush cud is now burned into my brain—and everyone laughs.
“Don’t worry, girls.” Chef Antonio beams at us. “You will be surprised at just how delicious a lowly mush can be when in the right hands. All over the world people transform it into something marvelous. The Romanians have sadza, the Brazilians angu—everybody loves it in some form or other!”
“Now, Theresa, since you mentioned earlier that you grew up with Italian cooking, our first recipe should be a piece of cake—or, I should say, a piece of polenta—for you.”
Great. Since my mom’s track record isn’t terribly impressive when it comes to simple tasks like boiling water for pasta, I’m pretty sure that the fact that a dish is Italian won’t give her any sort of culinary advantage. But I go along with her idea that she’s the “head chef” and I’m the “sous chef,” handing her ingredients the way E.R. nurses hand surgeons scalpels and clamps on hospital shows.
To her credit, my mom doesn’t burn the polenta. Unfortunately, that’s only because it takes her so long to get the lumps out. You have to whisk the cornmeal into the boiling water delicately, slowly, evenly to avoid creating balls of the stuff. My mom pretty much dumps it in. So we have both little hard pellets that might break your teeth and larger marble-size ones that explode with a cough-inducing puff of powder. Not so tasty to eat that, I’m sure. But she doesn’t burn it, since the rest of the class has moved on to the next recipe before we have a chance to put ours in the oven.
The next item is Mexican corn on the cob with butter, lime, and Cotija cheese—the kind we line up to buy at the food carts surrounding the old soccer field across from the city pool. This she burns. Actually, it’s more like she incinerates it.
Our final recipe of the day is corn bread—one of my dad’s firehouse specials. Dad’s corn bread is even more famous in our family than his waffles. It also happens to be one of the recipes that I’ve been making with him since I was little. I’ve never tried, but I could probably make Dad’s corn bread from memory. My mom knows this, of course. Even though the two of us don’t have the kind of partner ESP like Liza and I do, without saying a word, we switch positions so that now she’s the sous chef and I’m in charge.
Despite the fact that my mom nearly mixed up the measurements for sugar and salt, then splashed the buttermilk everywhere, our corn bread comes out pretty good. It’s not Dad-quality, but it’s definitely edible, which is more than I can say for the dishes Mom attempted. Chef Antonio is working his way around the room, tasting everyone’s bread and giving out compliments and pointers. When he reaches us, his eyes light up at the sight of our perfectly golden, fully cooked corn bread.
“You see, Theresa,” he says, putting his arm around my mom’s shoulders (if Liza weren’t focusing on her corn bread, she’d be really jealous!), “the third time is a charm. Just look at this gorgeous creation. I knew you could do it—you should be proud!”
Poor Mom. Chef Antonio has moved along to Errol and Henry before we have the chance to set him straight. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m sure my mom’s cooking “challenges” will reveal themselves again next week—over and over again.
CHAPTER 15
Lillian
Going to school with your mother is definitely weird, even if it is cooking school. Mama has never been shy about her (very) extensive knowledge of food, but who knew she’d be like one of those kids who always raises a hand aggressively or blurts out the answer without giving anyone else a chance? It’s like she just wants to show off how much she knows about every little thing. So embarrassing.
At least she didn’t turn every recipe into a disaster, like Frankie’s mom. But I think I might have preferred that to how competitive she was—with me—and how she insisted on doing everything perfectly. By the look on Frankie’s face at the end of class, I’m guessing she would have rather been partners with my mother than hers. I’m beginning to discover that those two have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why Frankie’s still not even half as nice to me as Liza. I can tell she’s trying, but mostly because Liza’s always giving her looks or nudges to remind her that we’re all a team.
Right now we’re in the computer lab at school. We’re supposed to be writing up our project proposal for Mr. McEnroe, but we got preoccupied looking at the video I shot of Saturday’s class. I mostly focused on Chef Antonio explaining the history of corn and demonstrating how to do the tricky parts of the recipes, but I also got some good action shots of Liza, Frankie, and their moms.
“Hey, there’s my polenta!” Liza yells, pointing at the screen but being careful not to touch it because our digital media teacher, Mr. Russo, makes you clean every single monitor in the room if he catches you even accidentally touching one. “Looking good, right? And tasty, too!”
“I’ll bet,” Frankie grumbles. She’s already fast-forwarded through the shots of her mom stirring and stirring—technically, we were “whisking”—their lumpy pot of polenta. Her mom looks more like she is literally attacking the cornmeal than preparing it. On the screen we can see her go whack, whack, whack. Apparently, they never made it past the “mush” stage.
I didn’t shoot much of Mama and me working on our recipes, mostly because it was hard to hold the camera and add ingredients at the same time. The few shots I did get make me cringe. In every one my mother is showing me how to “properly” sprinkle herbs or pour batter into a baking dish—or even spread butter on corn! I’m starting to wonder if asking her to sign up for the class was a mistake. She was ready to quit as soon as she found out the other moms were taking it too, but I’d dared her to take the class and she’d accepted. And MeiYin Wong never walks away from a challenge.
“Those two are all over each other,” Liza says as we watch the couple she calls “the Newlyweds” taste their corn bread. They actually feed each other little bites like it’s wedding cake and they’re the bride and groom all over again. “I hope I’m that happy when I get married.”
They do look happy. My parents never show that kind of affection for each other. Their lives are completely intertwined and I can’t imagine one of them existing without the other (what would my father eat? who would my mother talk to about the superiority of Chinese everything?), but I can’t remember ever seeing them kiss on the lips (ew!) or even hold hands.
Frankie points to something in the corner of the screen behind the Newlyweds, and Liza and I lean in to get a closer look. “There’s Chef’s son,” she says. “Javier, right? Total cuteness.”
In the frame Javier is not just tiny but also blurry, and Liza leans in even closer. “Really? Headphone Boy? I barely even noticed him, what with Cole throwing a hissy fit and then Angelica doing her fairy godmother thing.”
I don’t say anything, but I definitely noticed Javier. He has the same thick curls and deep brown eyes as his dad, and—the one time I caught him doing it—a really sweet smile. Sometimes when Chef Antonio was giving us instructions or my mother was going on about why her methods are “better” than his, I kept the camera focused on the action and let my eyes wander over to the little table in the corner of the studio where Javier was hunched over his notebook.
“What about you, Lillian?” Frankie asks. “What did you think of Javier?”
“Um . . .” I shrug, trying to look natural. “He seemed okay.”
Frankie narrows her eyes and then turns to Liza. “She’s blushing! I think Lillian has a crush on Javier!”
Liza shoots her a look. “Frankie.”
“No, I don’t!” I insist, probably too strongly. “I didn’t even talk to him.”
“Hmm.” Frankie looks unconvinced. “We’ll have to fix that next week.”
“No, really,” I plead. “Please don’t.” But it’s kind of nice to have Frankie teasing me about something . . . maybe she’s starting to warm up to me?
“Hey, Frankie,” Liza says, directing our at
tention back to the screen, “check out your corn bread!” In my head I thank her for changing the subject.
The next shot is of Chef Antonio congratulating Frankie and her mom on their drama-free final recipe. Mrs. Caputo has a fine dusting of cornmeal throughout her hair, and her apron is covered with streaks of char. She’s smiling at the chef, but her heart clearly isn’t in it.
“You made that, didn’t you, Franks?” asks Liza. “Your dad and the rest of Engine Company Nine would be proud.”
“Should I put corn bread on our list of foods we’ll include in our project for the museum?” I ask, doing my best to make sure the conversation stays on food and project planning and doesn’t veer back to boys.
Frankie’s eyes start to roll, but she controls herself with great effort. “Sorry, Lillian, but how is corn bread an example of a food that was brought to America by immigrants? It was the Native Americans who taught the European settlers how to make it, remember?”
“Oh yeah, right,” I say, ignoring the attitude and trying to stay positive. She may not like me very much, but I’m determined to figure Frankie out. Winning her over and becoming real friends with her and Liza would be even better than getting an A+ on our project. I decide to make it my personal challenge, and, like my mom, I refuse to back down.
CHAPTER 16
Liza
My mom is a hotshot editor for a parenting magazine, so I’m used to her coming home from work stressed out at the end of the day. But when Mom walks in the door, shoves Cole in my arms, goes straight to her room, and slams the door without even taking off her jacket, it means she’s having a really bad day. And today is one of those.
Luckily, Cole is completely oblivious to my mom’s moods. As soon as I’m holding him, he starts pulling my hair over my eyes and trying to play peekaboo while I stumble around blindly, hoping not to topple over and send us both crashing into the glass coffee table. My mom, the parenting magazine editor, has been meaning to “babyproof” our home since Cole started crawling a year and a half ago. It’s one of many things she “means” to do but hasn’t gotten around to yet.
“Hey, quit it!” I yell, which sends my brother into convulsions of wild cackling, making it even harder to keep us upright.
Unzipping Cole’s sweatshirt is like peeling a banana that keeps slipping out of your hand, but I eventually manage to pin him to the couch and wrestle it off. Frankie and I made a deal that we’d get into exercising this year, but we haven’t officially gotten started. I wonder if chasing a two-year-old all over our apartment for twenty minutes counts as a workout. I think about Frankie at home with her brothers and realize that she probably won’t be impressed.
The one thing that calms my brother down every time is watching Elmo on my mom’s phone. I show him the phone so he knows what’s coming and am able to settle him into his high chair without breaking another sweat. While Cole sings along with Elmo, I poke around our nearly empty freezer for something to make him for dinner. We’re out of hot dogs, so I heat up some frost-covered chicken nuggets in the microwave (they’re organic, but they actually taste as good as the fast-food kind). I hope those reports you sometimes hear about microwaved food not being safe to eat aren’t true, because I can’t remember the last time Cole ate anything hot that was cooked any other way. There are no clean sippy cups in sight, so I pour some milk into a coffee mug and tell Cole he’s going to drink like a big boy tonight. He looks at me, nodding, all excited cuteness.
By the time my mom comes out of her room, there’s ketchup on her phone and a smashed mug on the floor. I should have looked harder for a sippy cup. She stands in the doorway watching me sweep up the broken pieces and shaking her head. The part of the mug that says #1 MOM is still intact, so I hand it to her, which makes her laugh. “You keep it,” she says, pressing it into my hand. “You earned it tonight.”
Cole wails when Mom grabs her sticky phone out of his even stickier hands and hollers even louder as she wipes ketchup and grease off his face with one of our scratchier kitchen towels. “You said it, mister,” she tells him in a voice that says she feels like screaming bloody murder too, and then she scoops him out of the chair and heads to the bathroom.
I check the fridge in case there are any leftovers still around, even though I know we finished off the last crumbs yesterday. Believe it or not, it’s been four days since we’ve ordered in for dinner. After cooking class on Saturday, we went to the food co-op and filled up our cart with “real” groceries—as in, things that don’t come in a box in the freezer section—which my mom actually cooked. On Saturday night she sautéed chicken with mushrooms—one of her old favorites—and poured it over our polenta. Mmmmm. And on Sunday she made a huge pot of chili—spicy but not too spicy—that we’ve been eating with the corn bread every night since.
It looks like it’s back to the menu drawer for us tonight, though. I dig around for the one from the ramen place on Smith Street while my mom finishes up Cole’s bath. When she’s in a mood, Mom craves comfort food, and there’s nothing more comforting than a big bowl of noodles in steaming, salty broth. Until a few months ago I didn’t know there was more to ramen than the kind that comes in a plastic wrapper and costs a quarter at the corner deli. But the place we order from is a whole restaurant devoted to ramen, where the noodles are handmade and the soup is topped with crunchy vegetables and smoky bits of pork or chicken. My mom gets hers with an egg cracked on top, which sizzles and turns milky white when it touches the broth. I prefer mine without the egg but with an extra square of toasted seaweed on the side. Ramen like that costs a lot more than a quarter, but it’s worth it—especially if it makes my mom smile after the kind of day she must have had today.
I order our food and hear the froggy night-light switch on in Cole’s room right after I hang up the phone. My mom comes into the living room wearing her sweatpants and carrying a big stack of magazines in her arms. She plops the pile onto the coffee table. Each issue has a rainbow of sticky tabs poking out from the top, bottom, and sides. It’s sort of funny—“ironic,” my dad would say—that my mom works at a parenting magazine that’s all about “family time,” creativity, and doing stuff together, but she’s never had time to do things like make holiday crafts with us or hand-paint borders in our rooms or even put together a proper baby album. That’s pretty much what the whole magazine is about. She tries hard to not bring work home with her at night, but I know from experience that all those stickies mean there’s a big issue coming up, and we’ll probably be seeing even less of her than usual.
“Holiday double issue closes a week from Friday,” she says, flipping through the magazine on top of the pile. “And the bigwigs at the publishing company just asked us to change our entire editorial plan.”
“Ugh,” I say, looking through the stack of old holiday issues for the one that includes a picture of me as a baby, popping out of a green polka-dot box with big red bows tied in my pigtails. Apparently, it took a full hour to get me to smile for the camera, which is why that was my first, last, and only photo shoot.
“Ugh is right. Looks like I’ll be working all weekend, which means I’m going to have to miss our cooking class on Saturday. Good thing I have Cammy booked to watch Cole. And she better not be sick this time around.”
“What?” I plop the magazines back down on the stack. “But you can’t miss the cooking class, Mom. There are only six and you promised!”
My mom puts down her magazine and takes my hand, giving it a little squeeze. “I know I did, Liza, and I’m sorry. Believe me, I’d much rather be cooking with you than thinking up ‘Fifteen Things to Do with Leftover Christmas Cookies’ and ‘How to Make Your Own Hanukkah/Kwanzaa Candle Crayons,’ but I have no choice. A deadline’s a deadline.”
“It’s only two hours,” I plead, unable to control the whine in my voice. “You’ll need to take a break sometime, won’t you?”
“Two hours is a long break, Lize. Plus the time it takes to walk to and from the cooking studio. I’ll do m
y very best to be there for the next one, sweetheart, but this week you’re just going to have to triple up with Frankie and Theresa or Lillian and her mom. It’ll be fun. It’s just slicing and dicing, anyway. You don’t really need me.
“Think of it this way”—she takes my chin in her hand—“I’m sure Theresa would appreciate all the help she can get.”
I make a weak attempt at smiling and am relieved when the doorbell rings and my mom gets up to pay for our food. While she’s in the kitchen pouring our soup into bowls, I take a thick black Sharpie marker out of her pen cup and draw mustaches on the “cover moms” on every magazine in the pile. Immature? Maybe. It’s not like I’m messing up anything important; the magazines are all old issues that have already been published. But my mom keeps her work things neat and orderly, so she’ll definitely be annoyed.
Just like me.
CHAPTER 17
Frankie
This is so not going the way I wanted. Mr. Mac has let us have the end of class to work on our projects. If our proposals are accepted, we can move on to actual work. If not, he’ll circulate and help. Much as I would have loved his one-on-one help, our proposal was awesome. His word, not mine. Written in big red letters across the top of our paper: Awesome!
Sigh.
Now we have to transform the awesome idea into awesome reality, and I am not liking the prospects for that. Liza and me, we’re a dream team. We work well together, we work hard, and we usually agree on what to do. And we always have awesome results.
Today, though, Liza is down and not helping at all, because her mom is bailing on this week’s class. No surprise there. I’m actually surprised her mom made it to a single class, but I don’t say that. I know she’s bummed—I get it—but the real point of the cooking class is to help us devastate this assignment, not bond with our mothers. And, anyway, right now we have to make a “blueprint,” as Mr. Mac says. A blueprint for our project.
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