The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue: A Novel

by Barbara O'Neal

  There used to be a sister, a year older than Shannelle, but she died—I’ve gathered it was suicide—and Shannelle doesn’t talk about her much.

  But the other side of Shannelle is the part that intrigues me. She graduated from high school with a straight-A average. She dated her husband Tony from the ninth grade on, and they married the summer after graduation, and she found in his large, loving Hispanic family all the things she’d missed. Her home is like something out of Better Homes and Gardens—cheerful and sweet and warm. Her children are always scrubbed and ready for school on time, and she haunts computer shops for used programs for them.

  And she wants to be a writer. Barely twenty-four, and fierce, with all this baggage, and she’s very devoted to the idea. I privately think she’s going to get her heart broken, but that’s life, isn’t it?

  Today, she’s looking around curiously, and leans over to whisper, “I’ve never been in an all-black church before. It’s kinda cool, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “Why are so many of the women wearing white?”

  “I don’t know. We can ask Jade later.”

  The preacher comes to the pulpit, and the service begins.

  It’s not a funeral, he tells us. It’s a home-going, for a man who deserved the mighty reward he’s earned in this life of toil and trouble. A home-going. Edgar going to be crowned in heaven, welcomed by the armies of angels he served.

  I’m choked up in five minutes, and trying hard not to weep copiously, because the spirit of joy in that church is so palpable and huge and shimmering that it would be insulting to weep.

  Next to me, Shannelle is awash. She doesn’t try to hide it, or try to be anyone she isn’t. She truly loved Edgar, even though she didn’t know him very long. She sat with him, listened to his stories, brought him homemade sugarless brownies and fresh beans from the farmer’s market. She looked up to him, like everyone did.

  I think now that he was something of a fill-in for her own worthless father.

  The preacher goes on, his mighty voice filling the room, and the music swells, and Roberta gets up to put a rose on Edgar’s chest. She does it so gently, with so much love, that I can’t hold back my tears anymore. Shannelle wordlessly hands me a tissue when I soak the few I brought with me.

  And I am an awful person, because the reason I’m crying is not for Edgar, or even Roberta. The tears should be green acid, because that’s how they feel spilling over my cheeks, too hot and bitter. They are tears of savage jealousy, an emotion so raw and ugly that I hate myself for it, for feeling something so shallow and selfish at such a moment. Edgar is dead. Roberta will never, ever hold his hand again. I can see her now, hollowed out the way she’s been the past few days, like he took a big chunk of her with him, and I can see him being laid in the ground, but none of that makes any difference. My heart still boils up those ugly bitter tears.

  Edgar loved her until he died.

  * * *

  By the time we get to the basement of the church—Shannelle and I skip the burial to get everything ready, along with several of the sisters of the church—I’m under control again, but breathless with shame.

  I used to think I was a pretty nice person, and not fakey nice, either. Genuinely and honestly kind, with the best interests of the world in my heart. Giving and faithful and all those other things, a spiritually grounded person. I practiced holistic teachings, and spoke to my goddesses every morning, and Rick had given me stability. Not that I was perfect or anything. Who is?

  But here is what I’ve learned: It’s easy to be nice when everything is fine. Take a few body blows, and the character shows up in a hurry. I am as evil as anyone I’ve ever met. No, not evil—that has levels of interesting that are too flattering. I am petty. Shallow. Jealousy is such a self-centered emotion, and I have taken it to some ugly places. This upsets me, but since I can’t stand meditating right now, it’s going to be a while before I can fix it.

  Shannelle looks pale and keeps rubbing her cheekbone. “Are you all right, honey?” I ask as I hold a bowl for her and she pours in gallons of potato salad.

  “It’s just a toothache. They’re going to pull it tomorrow.”

  “Ow! Can’t they do a root canal or something instead?”

  Her eyes are way too old for her face when she looks at me. “Do you know how much a root canal costs?”

  “You have insurance, don’t you?” Her husband works for the state.

  “Yeah. My portion of the root canal would be four hundred and seventy dollars. The crown is another three hundred.” She scrapes the jug carefully with a spatula. “It’s fifty dollars to have it pulled.” She puts the jug down, picks up another one. “I’m only worried because it’s the third one I’ve lost this year, and pretty soon I’ll be a toothless old hag.” She smiles to lighten the comment.

  See? Some people have real problems. I run my tongue over my whole teeth, all thirty-six of them, and feel even smaller than I did at the funeral. “That sucks, Shannelle.”

  Her smile is more genuine this time. “Yeah, it does. But hey”—she shrugs—“there are worse things than losing teeth, right? I mean, what are dentures for?”

  “Oh, don’t even say that, honey!”

  She puts her hands on the sink. “I never went to a dentist until I was married to Tony. Not even once. That one tried to fix some things, but you go that long without anybody lookin’ in your mouth, and it’s not pretty. I just want to hang on to the front ones, because you can always tell when somebody’s had a cap, and I don’t know how we’d afford one anyway.”

  A woman in her fifties, dressed in a beautiful rayon dress, hands Shannelle a glass with about an inch of something clear in the bottom. “Try this, sugar. Hydrogen peroxide. Swish it around that tooth real good, and then spit it out.” At Shannelle’s dubious expression, she smiles. “Good black medicine.”

  Shannelle winces at the taste, but does as she’s told, spits it out in the sink. “Hmmm,” she says, and more eagerly tries it the second time. “How long does it last?”

  “Not that long, but you can do it as often as you want.”

  “Cool. Thank you.”

  The woman winks. Looking at her teeth, it’s hard to imagine she ever had trouble like this, and she says, “One of my boys had a terrible time with his teeth. Just rotten from the day he was born, I swear. What you want to do, if they keep blowing up on you, is keep some antibiotics around to tide you over till the dentist can get you in. That’s what makes it hurt, the infection.” She pats Shannelle’s arm encouragingly.

  “I’d rather have ten babies than one toothache,” chimes in an old woman. Her name is Sister Eleanor. I know her from her visits to Roberta while Edgar was sick. “Rather lose a toe.”

  Shannelle grins. “Amen.”

  “Come on, girls, let’s get cracking,” says the first woman. “We got a lot to do before they get back here.”

  We carry out the food to tables set along the wall. So much food—steaming bowls of baked beans, green beans, butter beans, bean salad; potato casseroles and potato salad and potato chips; fruit salad with marshmallows and Jell-O salad with coconut; fried chicken wings and barbecue brisket and piles of fluffy white rolls; some of the most beautiful cakes I have ever seen. It’s something I miss about traditional religion.

  The mourners file in, their mood subdued at first. But as the room starts to fill up, the murmurs rise, and after a while, there is much talk. Laughter, which surprises me the first time, but it’s right.

  Roberta sits in one place, and people swirl around her, touching her shoulder, offering condolences. She can’t quite sit up straight, this proper old woman, with her matching shoes and purse and hat, her delicate hankie clutched in her hand. She looks bewildered. Her lipstick has worn off.

  I go to the table and fill a plate with her favorite things—the baked beans, some brisket, a piece of the lemon cake, and carry it over to her. Her children are swollen-eyed and overwhelmed, too, and I see Jade, who looks al
most as bad as Roberta, sitting with her mother.

  A pocket clears around Roberta, and I sit down with her, rubbing her back lightly. “I brought you some food.”

  “That was sweet, baby, but I’m not hungry.”

  “A few bites,” I say, and smile gently because it’s what she said to Edgar.

  Her eyes fill with tears and I start to say, “Oh, I’m sorry, that was the wrong thing—”

  “No, it was just right.” She pulls the paper plate closer, picks up the fork. Stares at it as if it’s a mountain she has to climb.

  “Start with the cake, maybe. It’s so good I had two pieces, but don’t tell anyone.”

  “Sister High makes this cake.” She lifts a little to her lips, puts it in her mouth. “Mmm. Not better than mine.”

  “No. And Rick would shoot anybody who said so.”

  “How is that husband of yours?”

  I want to correct her, but the timing is wrong. “Fine.”

  “Jade said he came by when she was there.”

  “He comes by all the time.”

  She takes a big forkful of the cake and levels her gaze at me. “Why do you reckon that is?”

  Why are we talking about this now? I’m embarrassed, but she is eating. “I don’t know,” I say. “Habit, I guess.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t really want that other woman, child. You ever think about that?”

  I blink. Quickly. “Oh, I’d say he does.”

  “ ‘Let no man put asunder what God hath joined together,’ ” she quotes.

  “Roberta, I didn’t leave him. He left me.”

  She digs into the beans, the cake now a faint smear of frosting left in the corner. “You threw him out.”

  For ages, she’s been wanting to lecture me like this, but I wouldn’t let her. I walked away. I blocked her. Changed the subject. And my pettiness rises up again, screaming like a four-year-old having a tantrum: It’s not fair!

  “What else was I supposed to do? He’s been sleeping with her for a year.” A year. God. It echoes around inside of me. “What kind of man does that to two women?”

  “One who’s lost.”

  I am spared the need to answer by a big, heavyset man in an oily-looking suit who lowers his girth and takes Roberta’s hand. I take the chance to flee. Which is just more evidence of my small-minded selfishness—I can’t even sit still for a lecture from a brand-new widow who obviously needs to deliver it?

  But her words sliced my soul to the quick, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to bleed to death if the pain is any way to judge. I duck into the bathroom and slam the door closed and sit on the toilet, breathing, until it gets better.

  It takes a while.

  The bathroom has been redone with cheap wood-look paneling, and someone keeps it very, very clean. It smells like disinfectant. The toilet is low and my knees are jutting up from the high heels, and I’m clutching my ringless fingers together so tightly that you can’t even see the freckles anymore, trying not to cry because it’ll ruin my makeup. I’m freezing, even in my jacket.

  I hate this. I miss my husband so much I can’t even breathe, and all I’m supposed to do is just get on with things, be a grown-up. I don’t want to. I want to stand up on top of a building and scream about it. I want to slice my body, chop off all my hair, something to show how much it hurts.

  I put my head in my hands, press on the bridge of my nose. I’m so sick of living in this cold, gray place, numb or in pain, bewildered and furious and lost. It’s been almost four months and I don’t want to live here anymore.

  Stop resisting. The thought steals in, quiet and reasonable. Stop resisting. Feel it. Embrace it.

  A polite knock sounds on the door. “One minute,” I call, and flush the toilet I didn’t use, wash my hands by rote. Something in me eases. I raise my head, look at myself in the mirror, at the blue shadows that have lived beneath my eyes for months now, at the too-high ridge of collarbone that shows how little I’ve been eating.

  Maybe what I need to do is have a funeral for my marriage. A funeral and a wake. Annie isn’t home tonight, and my emotions are in an uproar anyway. For the first time all day, I can take a breath without wanting to scream.

  I open the door, apologize softly, go back into the main room. For a minute, I stand there, looking around. Jade and Shannelle and Shannelle’s husband, Tony, are in a corner, talking. I hope it’s about boxing. Roberta is covered with a trio of sisters. I pause by each of them, offer my condolences one more time, head out.

  The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

  AUGUSTINE (354–430)

  12

  TRUDY

  It’s cold and getting dark by the time I get home, carrying a large chilled bottle of pinot grigio under my arm. In the kitchen, I put it on the counter, kick off my shoes, check the voice mail. There are seven messages. A lot for me these days.

  The first is from Annie. “Hi, Mom. Hope you’re not feeling too sad after the funeral, and I’m thinking about you, okay? The weather is not great up in Denver, and we almost didn’t go to the concert, but Travis’s dad said he’d pay for a hotel room if that’s okay with you. I have my cell phone with me, but I won’t be able to hear it inside, so, like, you can call and leave a message if you want and I will call and leave a message when we get out, so you know I’m safe. I hope this is okay. You always say you want me to be safe first, and I had no way to ask you ahead of time.” I’m grinning to myself before it’s finished, knowing she’s nervous and sweating her brazenness. “Oh,” she adds after a pause. “I really hope you’re not too sad tonight. Maybe we can go out to dinner someplace cool later this week. My treat.”

  I’m chuckling when I push the number seven to erase the message. I do intend to take her up on that dinner out.

  The next message is from my job—there was a plumbing disaster and I don’t have to come in on Thursday or Friday while they clean up the mess.

  Number three is from Rick, midafternoon. “Hey, kid. Just calling to see how the funeral was, how you’re doing. Call me.”

  Number four is from my son Colin, the one in school at Berkeley.

  Now, mothers don’t have favorites, and that’s absolutely true, but this middle boy has always been the most like me, and I miss him terribly. He’s in his junior year of college—majoring in literature and Romance languages. Rick doesn’t get it—he figures any kid with such a brain oughta be studying engineering or something practical like that—but I know I infected him with poetry when he was tiny so I’d have someone to talk to, and it’s worked out very well.

  Until he grew up, the rat. Last summer, he spent six weeks in Italy—something I ached for painfully when I was a starving student. Few things in my life have made me as happy as writing the check for that trip for him. It came out of a fund I’ve kept for twenty-some years, supposedly for my own travel.

  Everyone told me I’d miss him less as time went by, but it doesn’t seem to be true. Probably just more evidence of my neurotic resistance to change, like being unable to let go of my marriage—hell, I even hated when the longtime neighbors moved—but the truth is, there isn’t anyone else like him. I’ve already started counting the days until Christmas break—six weeks away.

  “Hey, Mom,” he says in his rich, deep voice. Rick’s father’s voice. “I saw a movie with some friends that I think you’d like a lot—Quills. It’s just your kind of tragedy, and it blew me away. I’ll write you an e-mail, or you can call me tomorrow. I don’t have class until noon. Love ya.”

  The next one is from Rick. “Yeah, it’s me. Guess you’re still with Roberta.”

  And Rick again: “Hey, kid. Hope you’re doing okay after the funeral. Call me if you want to talk. I’ll be here. Damn, he was a great old man.”

  Number seven, too, is from Rick. No wonder I can’t get over him. “Last time, I promise. I was just thinking about Ed some more, kind of have been all day. I was thinking about all the times we went fishing with the boys and ho
w he said you could hear God in the wind on the water, and how great he cooked catfish. Give me a call if you want.”

  I hang up the phone and eye the bottle of wine. Condensation makes it look like a television commercial. If I call him now, I can set up my boundaries a little, so I can get safely drunk and grieve the end of this relationship all by myself.

  Or I can take the phone off the hook and do it without talking to him at all. Yeah. That’s the ticket. I go upstairs to change into some sweats and socks and a heavy sweater a friend brought me from Ireland. On the way back down the stairs it occurs to me that he might very well come by if I don’t call him, so I punch in the numbers. He answers on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Rick,” I say, sticking the corkscrew into the top of the wine. “Got your messages.”

  “How’s Roberta?”

  “She’s all right. I worry that she might be one of those old people who dies in six months, though.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Are you okay?”

  “Tired. Sad. But I’m okay. You?”

  “I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard.” His voice scratches a little, and in my mind’s eye, I can see the wiggling of his mustache that goes along with that need to repress his strong emotions. “But I’ve been thinking about him all day.”

  “You probably should have gone to the funeral.”

  “I know.” The words are heavy with regret. “I just—” He clears his throat. “—had a hard time thinking about another one, you know?”

  “I figured that might be it. I’m sorry, Rick. You’ve lost a lot of important people the past couple of years.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was thinking about Joe today. About his funeral and the bikes all shining in the sun.” Tears are lurking in my throat, but I swallow a sip of wine and they recede.