But on holidays and on special occasions— birthdays, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving— my mother spent a lot of time in the kitchen and cooked Italian foods (glory, glory) or one of our favorites. (For his birthday, my father's was liver and bacon, which no one else ate. For mine, it was spaghetti and meatballs. My sister had no favorite food. My sister ate almost nothing at all.) For holidays or special occasions, my mother would make a really good lasagna. Or chicken soup with little meatballs. Or sausage and peppers.
Cooking these special foods, though, flustered and exhausted her, and often she didn't have the energy to eat what she had prepared and she would only pick at what was on her plate. So eating the foods I loved, which I didn't get often, was tainted. For I knew what cooking these foods had cost my mother to prepare, and I knew, too, that no matter how much I pleaded for them, I wouldn't be seeing them for a very long time.
Always, as my mother made these meals, she cried. When I was a girl, my mother would cry every time she sliced an onion, and the foods she made for holidays and special occasions always contained onions. But my mother didn't cry the way everyone cries when slicing an onion, the stinging, unbidden tears annoying the corners of the eyes. No. When my mother sliced an onion, she really cried. Her chest heaved, her head sagged, her eyes bled huge tears onto the scarred Formica countertop where she did her cutting and chopping.
My mother would rub her eyes with the backs of her hands to try to staunch the flow of tears, which only made the crying worse. And she had a lot to cry about— that her mother died when she was a baby; that she was abused by the people who were supposed to be taking care of her after her mother's death; that my stepgrandmother never loved her; that her husband came home from the war an angry man; that her beloved father died when she was a young mother; that I was a difficult, temperamental child who gave her no comfort, who wouldn't do as she asked; that my sister was as prone to depression as she was. Still, the only time I ever saw my mother cry ("having a good cry," she called it) was when she was slicing onions. And because she always sliced onions on holidays and special occasions, I often thought that my mother specialized in dishes containing sliced onions (liver smothered in onions; meatloaf served on a bed of sauteed onions; sausages, peppers, and onions) because making them gave her an opportunity to cry, which she needed, because any day that was out of the ordinary was difficult for my mother. (Any ordinary day was difficult for my mother.)
Not that my mother didn't express emotion when she wasn't slicing onions. She did. But her emotions were always unleashed by what seemed to me ridiculously inconsequential circumstances. A broken cup. A neighbor's casual remark. A relative's impending visit. A stack of folded laundry tumbling over. A leaking faucet. A snowstorm.
My mother's emotions were always extreme and unmodulated. There was rage, not anger. Fury, not ire. Withdrawal, not reflection. Bewilderment, not wonder. Perplexity, not uncertainty. Confusion, not ambivalence. Despair, not discouragement. Despondency, not sadness. Misery, not sorrow. Worry, not concern or solicitude. Obsession, not passion. Terror, not fear.
But unless she was cooking, my mother didn't cry. (Not even years later, when my sister killed herself. On that occasion, my mother didn't cry, she screamed. Just once. But scream isn't the right word. The sound she made was one I had never before, have never heard since— a long, wavering ululation. Then, after, no emotion. Then, a long slow diminishment. Of the psyche, the body. So that in life, she was already joining my sister in death, journeying to a dark underworld of the spirit where she regained her dead daughter but lost her capacity for living. And by the end of her life, my mother couldn't speak, couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't move, couldn't eat. Though whether she couldn't feel, I can't say.)
When I was a child, I didn't like my mother to cry. I worried that her crying would turn into something worse than crying, that she would become depressed again, as she so often did, and become inaccessible to us, inaccessible, it seemed, even to herself. Then, my sister and I would be taken to relatives to be cared for, or not cared for, depending upon which of our relatives were willing or available.
"Sit down," my father would say to my mother when he saw her crying into the food. "What's bothering you?" he would ask.
I'd linger on the threshold of the kitchen until I was chased away, wondering whether I would learn about why my mother was crying, learn something, anything, about her life, about which I knew almost nothing. I knew she'd once worked selling shoes. I knew she was a good writer in high school, wanted to go to college, but couldn't. Knew she hated her stepmother, but I didn't know why. I wanted to learn something that might explain my mother's crying, her inexplicable rages, her strange ways— why she sat in a chair and tore at her fingers for hours, why she rarely ate what was on her plate but picked leftover food off ours and ate it as she was clearing the table, why she never drank her coffee when it was good and hot but absentmindedly forgot it until it was cold. My mother's behavior was a puzzle I couldn't solve.
I did not know then that my mother's mother had died when she was a baby. Did not know that after her mother died, she'd stopped feeding and almost died. ("Failure to thrive," the doctor had called it.) Did not know that the people who cared for her abused her (as a relative who cared for us abused me).
Instead of answering my father's questions about what was bothering her (for she seemed not to know the reasons for her sorrow), my mother would ignore him, sit down at the kitchen table, heave a deep sigh, pick up her cup of cold coffee, and sip it to calm herself. When she was at her worst, she just held her head in her hands until she could resume her work.
"I give up," my father would say, as my mother resisted his attempts to comfort her. And he would leave the room, go down the basement, work on one of his renovation projects.
If my mother saw me watching her, she waved me away, told me to go play with my sister, told me to get busy, told me to leave her alone, that she would be all right. My mother never wanted me near her when she was crying, just as she never wanted me near her when she was cooking, so I never learned her secrets. Whatever few culinary tricks my mother knew— the secret ingredients in her pumpkin pie, her lasagna, her red sauce— died with her.
But no matter how bad my mother felt, she usually managed to pull herself together to help me do my homework. She'd sit next to me at the kitchen table, helping me sound out words to spell them.
She'd make me write my homework over if it was sloppy. She'd help me with my math, even though she had to count on her fingers. She'd dig some rice, a few beans, out of her cupboard for "product maps" for geography. "You have to make a success of yourself," she'd say. "You have to go to college, become a teacher, do something worthwhile with your life."
When my mother didn't want me near her, I thought her despair was an invincible shield that protected her from me. I thought her depression kept her from responding to my wants and needs, which she could not summon up the energy to satisfy. My presence seemed to add an even greater burden to her already overwhelming measure of sorrow.
"Your mother had a hard life," my father said when, as a raging adolescent, I would tell him that I hated my mother, couldn't stand being in this house, couldn't wait until I was old enough to get married and leave (for in those days, in a family like mine, the only way you left your parents' house was to marry).
"Your mother had a hard life," my father always said. But he told me nothing that could help me understand why. And then he would say, "All your mother wants from you is a little love." I didn't know what love felt like. I hadn't learned the language of love from her, the gesture that might convey the meaning, and I had become convinced that she didn't want my love. Now I know that I held myself aloof because I feared that what my mother needed, I couldn't give her; that trying to figure out what she really wanted would consume me, would take over my life, as it took my sister's.
Yes, my mother had a lot to cry about. And her tears became an ingredient of the food she prepared. I knew that
when I ate her food, I ate those tears and I was afraid that in eating them I would become as unhappy as she was, and as unsatisfied. And this, I didn't want to be.
BREAKING THE DISHES
The people in our house behaved like characters in an opera or a tragedy (Greek, not Shakespearean).
In our house, a dish broken by accident, an oversalted gravy, some spilled oil, a messy floor, an annoying child, a late library book, a dirty dress, a missed curfew was never a problem or a challenge. In our house, everything was a very big deal, an occasion for high drama.
In our house, no one ever went with the flow. There was no flow. There were only dangerous rapids, huge whirlpools, gigantic waterfalls. In our house, you had to be wary, vigilant. To stop paying attention, even for a moment, was dangerous.
In my house, we gesticulated wildly. We shouted. Threatened harm to others ("I'll kill you"), to ourselves ("I may as well kill myself).
We stood chest-to-chest, shouting, so close to one another that we swallowed each other's saliva. We hurled insults like spears ("you no-good motherfucker"; "you son of a bitch"; "you atrocious bastard"). We threw ourselves down onto our beds, pounding our fists at the mattress when we weren't using them on each other. We menaced each other with whatever we had in our hands (pens, rulers, protractors, forks, scissors, knives). We slammed windows shut, pulled shades down, so that no one could hear what was going on in our house, so that none of our neighbors could see us or hear us. We— my father and I, but never my mother or my sister or my grandmother (and this tells you much about the differences among us)— rushed out of rooms, stormed out of the house. We threw things. We broke things. We destroyed things that had been given to us as presents (framed pictures, portable radios, jewelry), things that we loved (teacups, records, books, dishes, knickknacks), things that we had created (a cake, a pie, a sweater, a beaded necklace, the pages of a story).
My parents fought with my grandmother every day. My father threatened to ship my grandmother back to Hoboken, ship her to her relatives on Long Island, ship her back to Italy. Ship her, as if she were a piece of furniture, as if calling a long distance mover to box her up and relocate her to some place far away would solve all our household problems. My mother fought with my grandmother all the time about foolish things. Flour on the floor. Laundry in the bathtub. Candles burning in my grandmother's room around her statue of Jesus Christ taken down from the cross that my mother insisted were a fire hazard. They fought about foolish things because they couldn't fight about what their fights were really about: how my grandmother depended upon my parents, who despised her; how my grandmother never loved my mother; how my mother had been mistreated by her from the start; how my grandfather preferred my mother to her; how my grandfather brought my grandmother from Italy to care for his daughter and in return gave her very little.
My mother rarely fought with me. Instead, she told my father what I'd done (always, in my mind, a minor infraction— a missed curfew, a lost library book, a curt word) and my father would discipline me, always at the supper table.
After my mother served the meal in silence, he would begin: "I heard from your mother that you gave her a hard time, that you didn't do as you were told."
I'd fight back, present my case. He'd perceive this as insubordination and tell me to shut up. But I wouldn't shut up: I'd fight back even more. Then, he'd begin his litany of threats:
"I'll kill you if you don't shut up."
"I gave you life, I can take it away."
"I'll throw you against the wall/out the window/down the stairs if you don't shut up."
"I'll make you wish you were never born."
"I'll knock some sense into you."
"I'll break your head."
"I'll break your legs."
"I'll break your hands so you'll never be able to eat a decent meal again."
He'd work himself up into a frenzy. Get up from his place at the table. Come at me.
I'd throw whatever I could get my hands on— a knife, a fork, a dish, a glass filled with milk or water. Our table was always set with mismatched plates, with odds and ends, because we were always breaking glasses, smashing dishes to the floor. I'd claw at my father, draw blood, run away, out the door, down the block, to a neighbor's house, to the library. My body and my spirit bore the scars of his rage. But sometimes, when it all got to be too much, instead of fighting, I fainted. Collapsed on the floor. Disappeared.
My parents rarely fought with my sister, though they carped at her: "Clean your room"; "Change your clothes"; "Do your homework"; "Stop biting your nails"; "Stop sitting there; do something productive"; "Go outside and play." Whatever my parents said to my sister, she never fought back. She gave them no trouble. Made no demands. Never raised her voice to argue, to contradict. She tried to make everyone get along, or she sulked, or she tried to pretend that everything that went on in our house was normal, that what was happening wasn't happening.
But often she withdrew. Sat on the bed we shared and stared at the wall; sat in a chair on our back porch, silent, twirling her hair, for hours.
The cost to my sister of being the "good child" was death. In our household, it was fight back or die. Being the child my parents hated was better than being the child they loved. My parents' love erased my sister, erased who she was, who she might have been.
When I was a little girl and I played with my dolls, I made them cry. I reprimanded them, yelled at them, hit them, punished them. I shoved their faces into mattresses to stop their crying, rubbed their cheeks against brick walls to show them who was boss. And I never pretended I was feeding them.
I didn't understand the way my friends played with dolls. All that shoving of little plastic nipples into tiny fake mouths, all that dressing and undressing, burping and diapering, all that trundling dolls around in tiny baby carriages, all that huggy, kissy, googoo nonsense. I didn't let my dolls think the world was one big lovefest. I taught my dolls what the world was like.
When I was a teenager, and the fighting in our house was at its worst, my mother clipped something called "A Kitchen Prayer" from a women's magazine. She backed it, framed it, hung it up in the kitchen over the counter where she organized our meals.
"Dear God," it read, "teach me to worship you each day in the kitchen as I go about my work. With each meal that I make, I will remember that my work is a form of worship, that cutting and chopping the food that I prepare for my loving family can bring me ever closer to You.
"Bless this food, Dear Lord. Bless this family. Keep them from harm so that they may live in your love and in your care.
"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
"Amen."
HOME EC
My father tells me that when I am about four, just after he comes home from the war, we are sitting at the kitchen table in Hoboken, and I decide I don't like what my mother's made us for supper.
Before my father's return, my mother or one of my grandparents would have gotten me some bread and jam. Now, things are different. Now, when I don't like what my mother has cooked, my father says, "Eat what's put in front of you."
I climb out of my chair, go to the icebox, pull out some chopped meat, some margarine (there's no butter because of the war). Grab a pan and a spoon from the cupboard. Push my chair over to the stove. I shape a tiny hamburger. Turn on the burner. Start to cook.
My parents laugh. Tonight they've had some wine. They're happy their little family is together. The war is over. My father's safe. At other meals they've told me to eat my mother's cooking. But tonight they think that what I'm doing is adorable.
My father gets the camera. Focuses. Shoots a picture of me cooking.
"She'll be a good cook someday. Make somebody a good wife," he says to my mother, smiling.
My father and I haven't had our first big fight. The one that starts when he tries to take me to the park so we can get reacquainted. That starts because I want to dilly-dally as I did when I went with my mother during t
he war. That starts because I want to jump on and off every stoop we encounter. That starts because I won't soldier on to the park so we can have a good time.
Halfway there, I want to return home for a glass of water. A snack. To pee. To see my mother. To see my grandparents. Anything to get away from this man who carries me when I balk at walking, who insists that we do what he wants, not what I want.
We haven't yet had the fight that starts because he knows I'm not happy he's home, that I don't want him here, that I want my mother all to myself again. My father hasn't yet concluded that I am spoiled, selfish, incorrigible, ungrateful.
After my father takes his picture of me at the stove, he stops my cooking. Takes away the pan, the spoon. Takes away my hamburger. I'm too little, he says. It's dangerous.
He carries me back to the table. Pushes my supper towards me. "Children are supposed to eat what's put in front of them without complaining," he says. "And aren't we lucky we have all this good food?"
The kitchen is my mother's. But after we move to Ridgefield, when my grandmother moves in with us, she needs to cook, for she will not eat my mother's food.
My mother regards this as an attempted coup, a potential usurpation. (But what else was my grandmother to do? Go hungry?)
My mother retaliates by refusing to give my mother any space in her cupboards, in her refrigerator, in her pantry. So my grandmother lines up her pots and pans on the stairs going down into the basement. Shops every day and leaves her leftovers on her window ledge in winter, in the coal cellar in summer. Stores her beans, her olive oil, her orecchiette, which catch the sauce like little pools of sorrow, in her clothes closet. All this proves to my mother that my grandmother is crazy.
Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family Page 4
