by Rick Bragg
“Need wood,” she grunted, and James and William, who had looked on with great curiosity, fled to the woodpile and came staggering back with enough wood to light the lower Appalachians.
“Now get out from underfoot, you little sons of bitches,” she said without turning around, “afore I stomp a mudhole in the both of you.” The boys stood in disbelief till she took a swing at them with one wide orthopedic shoe. They fled again, this time to the edge of the wood. They were utterly unafraid of their momma, and not afraid enough, perhaps, of their daddy, but they knew peril when they saw it stomp in.
Their daddy had seemed only mightily amused, and had said, “How do,” and “Thank you for comin’,” and moved to the front porch, pre-emptively, to have some snuff and wonder what he did in life to be blessed with one more girl. Juanita toddled off to hide—under one of the beds, they think.
Inside, the fire roaring, the big woman thin-sliced potatoes and layered them in a deep dish with chunks of butter and cheese, poured on fresh milk, and put it in to bake. Then she went to work on the meat.
She tore up pieces of white bread, what she called “light bread,” and kneaded the soft bread into the ground beef, seasoning as she went with the finely diced onion, green pepper, a little salt, just a little canned tomato paste, and a heavy dose of black pepper, using a recipe that had become popular during the Depression because it stretched a single pound of beef to more than two pounds, yet only enriched the flavor of it.
Edna, having lost interest in just one more newborn baby, had handed the child off to her momma and watched every move the big woman made. She was only eight years old, but could already cook a complete meal all by herself, and she knew greatness in a kitchen when she saw it up close.
“It’s the bread that makes it,” the big woman said, talking without taking her eyes off the food. “It makes it smooth, and creamy. Meat loaf ain’t supposed to have big hunks of meat in it, ’cause it gets rubbery, but work the bread in till it’s all the same amount of smooth, and the bread soaks up all that good stuff.”
She formed a round loaf and eased it into Ava’s biggest iron skillet, spread a thin, barely there layer of tomato sauce over the crown, so it would crust a little bit, and put it on to bake. She added a dash of salt and pepper and a third of a stick of butter to the sweet peas, and put them on to simmer, slowly, on the back of the stove. People thought because a thing came from a can it needed little or no seasoning; people, she believed, were for the large part leaping dumbasses.
“Got to have somethin’ green with meat loaf, and fresh peas and green beans ain’t in season,” she said. The gardens were plowed, and some things were planted, but this was the bleak season for fresh vegetables. It might as well be the middle of winter, with ice hanging on the trees, for all they could pick now.
The big woman talked and talked, and Edna stood rooted to the floor.
Her momma talked about food, too, about all she had learned from the mean ol’ man who once lived in their house, but not with a passion like this. This was the big woman’s religion.
This was the woman she had heard about, the kin from Georgia that her own people had lost touch with, as they moved from house to house over on the Alabama side while Charlie chased work and fled landlords. This was the cook, the woman all the other good blue-collar cooks spoke of without spite or jealousy, because she brought her gifts to them in the worst and best times, in times of need and celebration, reaching into her own pocket to buy the ingredients. It was said that she could bake a coconut cake on a hot flat rock, and her fried chicken was so light and crisp it could lift off the plate and fly. Edna, who was practical, half believed the cake story, but not that fried chickens could take wing.
In an hour it was done; meat loaf, scalloped potatoes, sweet peas, and hot cornbread muffins. The big woman called the family in to eat, and took a plate to Ava, and fed her like she was a child.
She herself did not eat, not yet. She returned to the kitchen and, in an iron skillet, layered brown sugar, butter, canned sliced pineapple, and a yellow cake batter she made from scratch, in record time. When it was done, she took a heavy ceramic plate, clapped it over the top of the skillet, flipped it over in one easy motion, and set it on the table with a clatter. The golden pineapple and brown-sugar glaze seemed to glow. A good pineapple upside-down cake will do that, like it has a light in it. Look when you do a good one, and see if it doesn’t.
“Serve it while it’s warm,” she rumbled, and left the rest of it in Edna’s hands. The big woman also knew a good cook when she saw one.
She returned to the bedroom and took the baby from Ava’s arms.
“Has anybody toted her around the house?” she asked. It is custom here, with a newborn, that when a baby is toted around the house for the first time the child will inherit some of the character and spirit and strength from the kin who carry them around the house.
Ava said yes, the child’s father had, but it didn’t count if it was the daddy. They would be pleased if the big woman would honor them by doing so.
They believed in this. For a lifetime, as long as anyone was left who remembered, this custom would be an explanation, an excuse, for the child’s behavior. If someone was stingy, or mean, or kind, or just knew how to grow a good garden, the old people would say, Well, of course the child was that way, ’cause ol’ so-and-so carried her around the house, and you know how they were. In a family of loggers, you wanted the best man with an ax or a file. In a family of carpenters, you wanted someone with a good eye on a level. In a family of cooks, you wanted her.
The woman carried the child in one big arm like a kitten, and, as is custom, spoke to her while they made their journey.
“Do you know what she said to you?” I asked my mother, thinking she might have mentioned it when she was older.
She shook her head.
But she would not be surprised, she said, if the big woman had looked down at her and growled, “Well, look at you, you little SB.”
• • •
Meat Loaf
(small portion, for 4 to 6)
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
6 to 8 slices white bread
1½ pounds ground beef, the cheaper and fattier the better
1 large white onion
1 green bell pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon minced garlic or garlic powder
1 pinch chili powder (no more)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon lard or bacon grease
HOW TO COOK IT
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
First tear the white bread into pieces, each slice into about four pieces, to make it easier to work into the ground beef. In a large bowl, use your hands to work the pieces of soft bread thoroughly into the ground beef, until it is hard to tell them apart.
Then add the onion, pepper, dry spices, and 1 tablespoon of the tomato paste, and work them in thoroughly. Form a round loaf, and place in an uncovered cast-iron skillet that has been greased with lard, bacon grease, or a little cooking oil. Spread the remaining tablespoon of the tomato paste over the top.
Bake for at least 1 hour. The top should be crispy.
Scalloped Potatoes
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
2 medium-sized sweet onions
1 small, tender green onion, with blade
1 tablespoon bacon grease, or more if needed
½ to 1 stick butter
5 medium white or red potatoes
1 cup mild American cheese
¼ cup sharp cheddar cheese
2 to 3 tablespoons flour
¾ cup whole milk, or more if needed
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
HOW TO COOK IT
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Thinly slice—as thin as you can—the sweet onions.
Thinly slice the green onion.
In a tablespoon of bacon grease, sauté the sweet and green onions in a skillet until the sweet onions go clear and the green onions wilt. Set aside.
“This is about as fancy as I get,” my mother said.
Lightly grease with butter or cooking oil a medium-sized baking dish, about 9 by 13 inches.
If you use butter, use about half the stick.
Peel the potatoes and slice thinly, no more than ¼ inch, thinner if possible.
Spread a layer of potatoes on the bottom of the baking dish, then, using a spatula, spoon a thin layer of sweet onion and green onion. Then add a second layer of potatoes, and a second very thin layer of the onions. It does not have to be uniform or perfect; it tastes a little better, it seems, if there is some chaos, making little pockets of molten cheese, creamy and crispy. You’ll see.
Cover, and set aside.
Shred the American cheese. If it’s good cheese and not gummy, it will shred nicely.
Shred the cheddar, but keep it separate for now.
In a skillet, make a blond roux by melting the rest of the stick of butter—a thimble-sized daub of bacon grease melting with the butter will not hurt this process—and stirring in the flour, until it begins to brown. This is not a gumbo roux and does not need to be browned very much at all. Stir in the milk and the mild American cheese, and as it melts, stir in the salt, pepper, and cayenne. You can add more milk, if it seems gunky. You want a consistency like that of a good cream soup. But the truth is, it won’t hurt if it’s a little thin; it will thicken in the oven. Some people, who like a hotter cheese sauce, will give a good shake or two of hot sauce, but she disdains this, because it can give the creamy taste that whang that the powdered cayenne does not.
As soon as it is good and creamy, pour the sauce over the potatoes and onions. You can give the baking dish a good shake or three to make sure the sauce oozes into the potatoes and onions. Then sprinkle the top with the shredded sharp cheddar.
Bake on a middle rack, covered, for about 40 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbling, the onions are tender, and the potatoes come apart when poked with a fork. Then uncover and cook another 10 minutes or so, until the cheddar on top begins to brown and crisp, and your tongue begins to slap you in the head. Be very, very careful taking this from the oven and serving. It is lava. That said, it is okay to eat a small plate of it, after it cools, just to test it, before suppertime. It might not be good.
NOTE Some people, as a bit of a shortcut, will boil the potatoes for a few minutes first, before slicing and arranging them in the pan, and for scalloped potatoes without onion that may be a good idea, but it upsets the chemistry of my mother’s recipe, since the onions will still need to be cooked longer in the oven. If you are a Philistine and do not like onions, just leave them out, and you will have classic potatoes au gratin, or scalloped potatoes, which is still pretty damn good, too.
Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
1¹⁄³ cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
¹⁄³ cup lard or shortening
1 egg
¾ cup whole milk
1 stick butter
½ cup brown sugar
9 to 12 slices canned pineapple (save the juice)
½ small can crushed pineapple (juice and all)
9 maraschino cherries
HOW TO COOK IT
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, white sugar, lard or shortening, egg, milk, and ¼ stick of the butter. Mix, however you like, into a smooth batter. My mother believes in using a large spoon, like she is angry at the ingredients. Set aside.
Grease a 9-inch cake pan with the remaining butter, being generous with the butter in the pan’s bottom. Dust the butter with the brown sugar, and line the bottom of the pan with slices of pineapple. Then take the crushed pineapple in your fingers and spread it lightly across the sliced pineapple, allowing it to fill in the gaps. The problem with pineapple upside-down cake is, it doesn’t have enough pineapple, and all you taste is butter and brown sugar. To be sure, take a few tablespoons of the juice from the can and drizzle it on, which will also help sweeten the recipe.
Finally, place a maraschino cherry, a whole one, in the center ring of each pineapple slice. We think this is a little silly, to be honest, but…well, people just expect things.
Pour the batter over the pineapple. Bake from 50 minutes to an hour. Let it cool about 15 to 20 minutes, and carefully flip it over on a large plate.
“It’s a whole lot better if you eat it while it’s still warm.”
In summer, it is delicious cold, from the refrigerator.
Except for my aunt Jo’s peanut-butter cake, it is my all-time favorite dessert.
* * *
• • •
They believed a lot of things then. They believed some old women could breathe the pain out of you if you got burned. They believed that if you washed clothes on Thanksgiving it would bring sorrow, and if you had cramps in your feet you should place your shoes upside down under your bed. They believed that a bird in the house, or a night bird’s call, was bad luck. These beliefs fade in time, but my mother still won’t sweep the floor on New Year’s because it is believed to be fatal, it will sweep someone’s life away. I still find my shoes upside down under my bed in the guest room every now and then. But of all those beliefs, the one that has endured the longest is the one about the newborn, and the house, and the slow walk around it. “And I guess,” my mother said, “it explains ever’thing.”
You do not grow up to be just like the person who carried you around the house. You take one thing from them, like the cooking, or maybe two.
“I did cuss some,” she said, “back before I found the Lord.”
· 11 ·
SIS
Sis’s Chicken and Dressing
Ava
I LIFTED the heavy iron skillet from the oven with a scorched, ancient washcloth she uses as a pot holder, retrieved a steel spoon from the time of San Juan Hill, and pressed it into the golden-brown surface of the still-sizzling, steaming chicken with cornbread dressing. The crust of the dressing, covered in a glorious sheen of chicken fat, made a crisp, snapping sound, like good crème brûlée. The underneath was moist, creamy, and as smooth as pudding, seasoned with onion, celery, sage, and that rich, buttery chicken broth. The cornmeal mixture was thick, with big pieces of tender leg and thigh meat, the delicious skin left on, because white meat, and especially skinless breast meat, has all the flavor and consistency of an old shoe tongue. The dressing was too hot to taste, really, but some things are just worth a little bit of scorch and pain. People love the cliché, the one about food that melts in your mouth; I wonder how many truly know it?
“Where does this come from?” I asked her, but I guess what I really meant was, Who?
“Let me think a minute,” she said, from atop a giant leather easy chair. She is a tall woman, but looks like a tossed-down doll in that massive chair; it is too soft, she gripes, and for the first time in her life she naps in the middle of the day. But she disdains spindly rocking chairs the way she abhors bifocals, probiotics, and most physicians. Such things are for old people, she believes. She took off her glasses to remember, put them back on, then pulled them off again. Finally, she closed her eyes altogether. Ah yes. There…
“Well, hon,” she said, “it goes back to that time Sis shot her husband in the teeth.”
I knew then that this would take some time.
“Where were the teeth at the time?” I asked, in some weak hope they were resting on a shelf, or on the bedside table in a water glass.
“Well, hon, they were in his mouth,” my mother said.
My tiny aunt Juanita, who likes to visit on Sundays so they can walk off down the distant past together the same way they lived it, arm in arm, nodded with more gleeful enthusiasm than seemed appropriate for an eighty-two-year-old child of God. She weighs eighty pounds, her body is brittle and
frail, and her steps, in her too-big house shoes, are timid, tiny. But her mind is a razor.
“Shot ’em right out of his head,” Juanita chirped.
“False teeth?” I asked, still hopeful.
Both old women shook their heads this time, in concert. My mother looked sad, as she always does when she tells a tale of woe; my aunt was beside herself with glee.
“They was real,” said Aunt Juanita. “They was attached to his head.”
“Did it kill him?” I asked.
“No,” my mother said.
“They was real big teeth,” my aunt Juanita explained. “This big,” she said, and held her thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. In some other families, that might have been a matter for some incredulity. In mine, it was just one more truth that had welled up from a bottomless pool.
“But what,” I asked, “does that have to do with chicken and dressing?”
They looked at me like I was simple in the head.
“Because it goes back to Sis, and Sis was one of the best cooks who ever lived,” my mother said.
My aunt Juanita nodded, reverently, as if my mother had quoted Billy Graham.
“Who ever lived,” she echoed.
“Start at the beginning,” I said, a thing I would regret.
• • •
1941
“I wasn’t yet five, the first time I seen her…well, the first time I can remember it. I remember, ’cause it was the first time I ever went to town.” It was well into fall but still warm, because she was barefoot, in a dress cut from a bleached feed sack. Her mother had sewn a ruffle on it, to make it pretty.
She remembers looking at herself in the mirror then, and thinking she looked a little odd. Her hair was as straight and white as corn silk, and cut so short her daddy nicknamed her Pooh Boy, after the little boy in A. A. Milne’s drawings, who did, in truth, bear an uncanny resemblance to her. They did not know Pooh was the bear in the story, not the boy, because she could not yet read and neither could he, but they enjoyed the pictures quite a bit. She was a Depression baby, so pale and thin that in old black-and-white photographs she seemed almost translucent, like you could look right through her if you held her to the light.