by Ruth Reichl
My mother’s first encounter was with Claritha, a woman who proudly wore a carrot-red wig. She was so large that her breasts shook every time she moved her head, knocking together. It was impossible to keep your eyes off them. Mom watched the breasts moving beneath the tattered beige Orlon sweater as Claritha told her what a fine daughter she had. Without getting up from the table Claritha shimmied to Washboard’s music and the movement beneath her sweater intensified.
Dad seemed to be enjoying it all, but Mom was not reassured. “Wait until you taste Claritha’s chicken!” I cried. Claritha claimed to make the world’s finest fried chicken and it had taken a lot of beer to extract the entire recipe.
“Let me get this straight,” I’d say, buying her another shell of beer. “You pack the chicken in rock salt as soon as you get it home from the store and leave it like that overnight?”
“That’s right, girl.” She nodded.
“Then you take it out of the salt and put it in a pan of buttermilk?”
“You got to cover that bird completely!” she said.
“And then you flour each piece and leave it to dry?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, as if she were in church.
I did all that, hoping it would be as good as she said. Because I was cooking with an agenda: after dinner Serafina and I planned to ask a favor of my parents. We wanted to borrow their New York apartment for the summer.
They both said yes immediately. If they had known what was coming, they would probably have reconsidered.
CLARITHA’S FRIED CHICKEN
2½- to 3-pound chicken, cut up
Salt
3 cups buttermilk
2 onions, sliced thin
1 cup flour
3 teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1 cup vegetable shortening
¼ cup butter
Put chicken pieces in bowl and cover with salt. Let sit for 2 hours.
Remove chicken from salt, wash well, and put into a bowl with buttermilk and sliced onions. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Place flour, salt, cayenne, and black pepper in paper bag and shake to combine. Drain chicken one piece at a time and put in bag. Shake to coat thoroughly. Place on waxed paper. Repeat until all chicken pieces are coated.
Leave for ½ hour to dry out and come to room temperature.
Melt shortening and butter in large skillet over high heat, add chicken pieces, and cover pan. Lower heat and cook 10 minutes. Turn and cook, uncovered, 8 minutes for breasts, 12 minutes for dark meat.
Test for doneness by piercing thigh; juices should run clear.
Serves 4.
“I forgot the apartment wasn’t air-conditioned,” I apologized in early July. Serafina and I were sitting by the open window hoping for a breeze. Way down Tenth Street and across the river we could see the Maxwell House Coffee sign blinking on and off. “My parents never stay here in the summer.”
“It’s okay,” she said. She put her face up to catch the last rays of the sun and added, “It’s so cold and dark in that bar I feel like I’m walking into a deep-freeze every time I go to work.”
“Lucky you,” I said. “The whole South Bronx feels like an inferno. It’s so hot that the tar sticks to your shoes when you cross the street and every time I see a fistfight I expect to see flames. What made me think I wanted to be a social worker?”
The Community Service Society on Tremont Avenue was the most depressing place I’d ever been. Every morning I’d hop onto the subway feeling young and optimistic. “This is the Bright D train,” the conductor welcomed me as the doors closed. “Next stop, Thirty-fourth Street.” By the time I came back to the subway station all the good feelings had gone up into the thick Bronx air and I felt grubby and filled with despair. “Brighton D train,” intoned the conductor. How could I help any of these people?
My favorite client, Mrs. Forest, was small, pretty, and just my age. But at nineteen she already had three children. Crystal, the oldest, was six. I tried to feel what it must have been like to be pregnant at twelve, but my imagination failed. While I was learning French and finishing high school she was getting married and having children. “When I tol’ my husband I was going to have her”—she nodded toward baby Charisse—“he disappeared. He didn’t even tell his mama good-bye.”
Mrs. Forest still had dreams; she wanted to be a nurse’s aid. Smoothing back an errant strand of straightened hair, she said, “But how am I goin’ to get a job till my girls are all in school?” I wondered if her dream would last five years; trudging through the South Bronx with three kids took its toll. So did watching men bleed to death while you waited to see a doctor. I knew.
My job was to be as helpful as I could, to assist clients as they navigated the endless welfare bureaucracy. Like the other students in the summer intern program I was seeing things I had only read about before. There was Ben, a deaf nine-year-old whose parents had not thought to send him to school. We talked about wrestling as I took him through the empty, echoing building so it would be familiar in the fall when he finally started classes. I accompanied a pair of aged sisters with Parkinson’s disease to hospital appointments and a fourteen-year-old girl with no right hand to be fitted for a prosthesis. I liked most of these people and admired their courage.
But Mrs. Williams was the other side of the coin; every time I climbed the five flights to her apartment my most closely-held beliefs were challenged. A large sloppy woman who wore slippers, her stockings rolled just above her ankles, she had eight children by eight different men. They seemed to be struggling to raise themselves with very little help from her. The apartment was so filthy that dirty diapers littered the floor and rats cavorted in the grease in the pans on the stove. I cleared pathways through the debris, made doctor’s appointments for the children, and tried to explain to Mrs. Williams why each pregnancy made her poorer. “But my check gets bigger,” she’d say, shaking her head at my stupidity.
Mrs. Forest, on the other hand, understood the situation perfectly. “No man is every getting in my pants again,” she said. “I don’t want no more children.” She kept her small, bare apartment spotless and her children in line. When she said, “Go get the switch,” they didn’t argue. Sometimes on the subway Crystal and Janisse would talk about whether the belt or the extension cord hurt more, but after a few stops they’d be overcome by sheer excitement and go completely silent. Until I met them they had never left the Bronx, and each excursion to Manhattan was as exciting as a trek through the Himalayas.
“They certainly did love that buildin’,” said Mrs. Forest when I brought them back from the Empire State Building. Manhattan was as exotic to her as it was to her children; I asked if she wanted to come with us when we went to the Statue of Liberty.
She said she would think about it and never mentioned it again. But a week later when I climbed the four dark flights to their apartment the whole family was waiting on the dreary landing.
Mrs. Forest didn’t say much and on the subway she silently hugged the baby. The children were subdued in her presence and as I struggled to make cheerful small talk I began to wish I hadn’t brought her. Then, as we boarded the ferry, her face changed. She stood in front, leaning into the breeze as the boat left the slip. She looked like an exotic figurehead.
“It doesn’t cost a lot,” she said, looking back at the city and then across to the statue. I knew she was thinking of her small, stifling apartment. “It’s so cool and fresh,” she kept repeating. When it was time to get off the boat she clutched the baby and said shyly, “Is it okay if I just keep ridin’?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll take the girls up to the top of the statue.” I wondered whether it would embarrass her if I gave her a handful of nickels. She didn’t give me a chance. “Janisse,” she said sternly, grabbing the five-year-old’s arm, “you remember what I told you? One drop of mustard on that dress and you’ll get a whippin’ when you ge
t home.” And she waded fiercely into the crowd going back to Manhattan.
The line for the statue snaked around the pedestal and the girls fidgeted while we waited. It was hot. When we got inside they insisted on walking all the way to the crown. We followed the crowd winding its way slowly up the narrow metal stairs and when we reached the top, finally, Crystal looked down at the ferries crisscrossing the harbor and asked, “Which one do you think Mama and Charisse are on?” She squinted into the light dappling the water and said, “It looks like they’re riding on diamonds.” We watched the water for a while and then turned and walked down the steep steps. Janisse clutched my legs fearfully the whole way.
At the refreshment stand both girls wanted hot dogs. “Do you want mustard?” I asked Janisse. She nodded solemnly. “You sure?” I persisted. She was. I papered the front of her dress with napkins but she squirmed so much while she was eating that it didn’t help. I was looking despairingly at the golden blob on her green plaid dress when Mrs. Forest found us.
She was radiant. “I could do it all day,” she said. “We went back and forth four times. So cool and pretty.”
“It was pretty from the top too, Mama,” said Crystal shyly. “And we could see your boat. You looked so tiny.” She held up her fingers, demonstrating.
I hated the idea of going back to the Bronx and I tried to think of some other cool and pretty place to take them. For a brief moment I considered the Metropolitan Museum, but when I thought about Mrs. Forest toting the baby through those vast halls the picture didn’t seem right. Crystal and Janisse would be bored; they’d get fussy and she would get embarrassed and then angry. So I didn’t say anything and we all got back on the ferry. I watched Mrs. Forest as she stood, her hair swept back by the wind and the sun on her deep ebony face. I wished I had a camera so she could see herself.
She laughed as we herded the children off the ferry and the sound was young and easy. I had never heard her laugh before. We stopped at the Good Humor man and then sat down on a green park bench to eat. After she had licked all the toasted almonds from the ice-cream bar, she slowly fed a Dixie cup of vanilla ice cream to the baby with a sensual, hypnotic motion. She was so absorbed that she didn’t notice when Janisse’s ice cream started dripping down her arm. I quickly herded the girls to the water fountain, where I did my best to clean them up. Mrs. Forest was still busy with the baby and she didn’t seem to notice we were gone.
The subways weren’t air-conditioned; it was hot and airless in the car. I could feel my dress start sticking to the seat. At Fifty-ninth street the train filled up and the people who stood over us were dripping sweat. By the time we reached the Bronx the good feelings were all gone. Coming up from underground, Mrs. Forest jabbed a finger into the mustard spot on Janisse’s dress and said, “You know what I told you.” Janisse erupted into tears.
Her lament accompanied us through the stinking, trash-strewn streets. “Maybe we could take another trip together,” I said brightly, feeling like the Avon lady. I could see that, to the Forests, the cool water already seemed like some faraway dream. Desperate to bring it back I suddenly said, “I have a friend I’d really like you to meet.”
Mac was coming through town on his way to the Newport Jazz Festival, but I don’t know what I expected him to do. I just had a vague feeling that it would be good for Mrs. Forest to meet him. He might give her some hope. She was still so young.
“Maybe,” she said vaguely. She handed the baby to Crystal and sent the children up the stairs. “You get that switch, hear?” she called to Janisse. She turned to me. “We’ll talk about more trips and your friend when you come next week,” she said dismissively. “I got laundry to do.” And she followed the children.
“You’ll really like her,” I promised Mac the following week. He and Serafina were stretched out on my parents’ living-room floor smoking marijuana and listening to Quiet Nights. I was lying on the turquoise sofa, so stoned I was finding patterns in the abstract painting on the wall. Mac looked dubious but I knew he’d come if I really wanted him to.
“The kids are great,” I urged. “We can take them to Central Park and then on on the carousel. Maybe the zoo too. Please come.”
Mac rolled over on his back and looked at the ceiling. “It sounds to me,” he said reasonably, “as if we ought to go back on the ferry. You said that really turned her on.”
He was probably right. “Maybe we could go on the ferry and then to Chinatown. I bet they’d like dim sum.” I imagined the Forests in one of the cramped booths in the tiny Nom Wah Tea Parlor, and the picture seemed all right to me. “There’s a place we used to go when I was little where they just bring plates of food around on a tray and you pick what you want. When you’re done, they count up the plates to figure out your bill. You should see the giant fried shrimp; they’re the size of drumsticks!”
“I’d like some of those right now,” said Serafina.
“I don’t know,” said Mac reasonably. “Isn’t that woman going to be embarrassed watching you pay for her and her kids?”
I saw instantly that he was right.
“I’m hungry,” said Serafina. “Let’s go get some of those shrimp.”
We walked down Fifth Avenue, arms linked, underneath the Washington Square Memorial Arch and through Little Italy, where shirtless men played bocce in the streets. We were happy to be together in New York with no responsibilities and a whole weekend stretching before us. Somewhere south of Houston and north of Canal the smell of garlic wafting through the streets overcame us and we knew that we were too stoned, and too hungry, to wait for Chinatown.
“Let’s go to Luna,” said Serafina, as we passed beneath the narrow restaurant’s sign, a slice of neon moon. We took a seat at one of the long communal tables and ordered glasses of the cheap red wine that they poured out of jugs. It tasted like a mixture of raspberry pop and vinegar and I knew from experience that I would have a headache in an hour. But I drank it anyway, and we gobbled down baskets of bread and plates of spaghetti with meat sauce.
“New York!” said Mac, wonderingly, and I remembered that it was his first visit. And so, trying to be good hosts, Serafina and I took him to Max’s Kansas City for drinks so he could see the people from Andy Warhol’s Factory preening, and then to Bradley’s to listen to jazz. “What a city!” said Mac as we wandered home.
The elevator man looked annoyed and sleepy when we rang the front-door bell. It was almost four and my head was starting to hurt; I was feeling the wine and the wine and the wine I’d been drinking all evening.
We pulled out the convertible sofa in the living room and threw a few sheets on it for Mac. In my old bedroom Serafina and I fell into our beds. We slept past noon.
That day we finally made it all the way to Chinatown. Afterward we went on the Staten Island Ferry to cool off.
“No wonder that woman—what’s her name?—likes the ferry so much,” said Mac, watching the city retreat behind us.
“Mrs. Forest,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a great deal for a nickel.”
“So maybe we should take them on the ferry and then take them back to the house?” I asked.
Mac sighed. “I’m sure you’re not supposed to take clients to your house,” he said.
“I don’t care,” I said. “It’s not as if my parents have a fancy apartment or anything.”
Mac just stared at me, exasperated.
“Count me out,” said Serafina. “I’ll be at work.”
All evening we considered what to do with the Forests. We discussed it between John Hammond’s sets at the Café Wha? and while the three of us consumed an entire watermelon in Washington Square Park. We talked about it while we danced at a disco called Arthur. Then Serafina picked up one of the Andy Warhol Superstars and the conversation changed.
“That guy,” I said darkly, “I don’t trust him. He seems like he’s a hustler with something to hide.”
“We’re all hustlers, and we all have something to hid
e,” said Mac. “I think we should take your friend on the ferry and for a picnic in the park.” He shook his head and added, “I hope you don’t get in trouble. I don’t know why I agreed to this.”
And I wasn’t quite sure why I had asked. Especially in those first awkward moments when I picked the family up in the Bronx and told Mrs. Forest that my friend was meeting us at the ferry terminal. She made some remark and I realized that she assumed that the friend was female and white. Short of coming out and saying so, I didn’t know how to tell her otherwise, so when Mac came up to us, carrying the big shopping bag that contained our lunch, she was caught completely off guard.
But Mac was rarely at a loss with people; he knew just what to do. He leaned over Charisse and said, “Hey, that’s a beautiful baby,” and then made some joke about not trusting me to hold her. Before long they were trading geneologies; it turned out they had roots in Georgia towns a couple of miles apart.
“At this rate you are going to find out that you are cousins,” I said.
“Probly,” Mrs. Forest replied. She was softer around Mac, which made the girls relax too. They all seemed happy. Mac, who rarely talked about himself, started telling Mrs. Forest about his mother and how he came to be at the University of Michigan in the first place.
“I got there because I was lucky,” he said.
“I started out unlucky,” said Mrs. Forest. She was matter-of-fact, not bitter. “I was pregnant before I was grown.”
“But you don’t have to stay unlucky,” said Mac.
We were riding, back and forth, back and forth. Mrs. Forest seemed willing to do that all day, but having examined every inch of the boat the girls were getting restless. “When we goin’ to get off?” asked Crystal on our sixth round trip.
Mac grinned down at her. “You getting hungry?” he asked.
She nodded.
