“Why?” I whine.
“This way you’ll always rememba me when I’m dead,'' my mother said, her hands gesturing to the pot of gravy cooking on the stove. I’m only sitting maybe a foot away from the stove, yet she still feels the need to yell when she says “how else will you be able to cook this for your family, if I’m not here to make it for you?”
She’s not dying, although she never fails to remind me and the rest of her children, that she will not always be around and that she could die at any moment. “Okay Momma, show me how to make sauce.” I reply, only we weren’t making sauce. I’m immediately schooled in the difference between sauce and gravy. I didn’t know there was one.
She moves around the kitchen so quickly, I can feel gusts of wind when she walks by. Her signature perfume wafting in the wind and fading into the smell of basil and garlic. She moves skillfully and without fault. She doesn't even have to look when she adds the seasonings.
I lean on the counter and start telling her about my classes. She listens, nodding her head and asking questions. From time to time, she’ll get very heated about something I’ve just said and will put her right hand on the cabinet and the left one on her hip, look at me dead in the eyes and speak her mind. Then, of course, she’ll carry on noding and making simple gestures.
Eventually we get off topic and in the middle of sharing one of her childhood stories with me, she stops abruptly. A look of immediate fright knocks the wind out of her and she makes a noise similar to a person gasping for their last breath of air. Her eyes go wide and then they dart back and forth. She looks around frantically for a moment before stopping in her tracks. She raises her pointer finger and under her breath she states “I forgot to buy breadcrumbs.”
“Damn it!” She says through clenched teeth, before running out of the kitchen muttering something I can't quite comprehend. It's only a couple of ‘thuds’ and ‘bangs’ later, that she reemerges in the kitchen holding a can of breadcrumbs in her hand. Without acknowledging the fact that she just managed to find breadcrumbs in the back of the pantry, she immediately resumes back to telling her story. I don’t question it.
“Help me cut up these vegetables” she says plopping the bag of groceries down in front of me.
“Which ones do you want?”
“All of them.” she says firmly, not looking up from her pot. I look apprehensively at the bag. We’re only a family of six yet she cooks like she’s feeding a small village of very hungry farmers.
“How should I cut them?” I ask.
She scoffs at my question, and then pulls the bag away from me. “Don’t ask to help if you can’t. It’s not helping me, if I have to tell you what to do.”
“I didn’t---” I start to say before cutting myself off. I know there’s no use in trying to fight with her. I’ve learned the hard way to just let her do her own thing and not get in her way. “Just watch me then, maybe you’ll learn for next time” she says. So I let her take over and lean back in my chair.
As she cooks, her subtle humming turns into a full on concert, hips swaying and kitchen utensils waved like a conductor’s baton. I think I recognize the song, until I realize it’s her own rendition of “that pop song by that blonde girl you like.” She’s repeating the same three lines over and over again, yet the lyrics keep changing.
Soon she rushes over to the window and cracks it open. The heat of the kitchen gets to her, and she pulls back her short and wispy blonde hair. She clips it neatly into place, revealing her flushed red cheeks. She rolls up her sleeves and continues on.
As she finishes up in the kitchen, I retreat to the parlor and fall asleep on the couch to the sound of dishes clattering and water running. I can tell when dinner is almost ready because the commotion in the kitchen grows louder, but I sleep through it anyway. It’s around 4:30pm when I hear creaks in the floorboards. I can hear the footsteps trying to shift their weight as quickly and quietly as possible. I begin to feel a looming presence and through my closed eyes and I can tell there’s a person blocking the sun rays that were just beating down on my face. It’s at this point where I believe my father has just walked past the parlor because I hear whisper shouting coming from the person looking down at me.
“Aww” she gushes “look hunny, Emily’s asleep. So be quiet.” Next, I feel the couch cushion sink down and I feel her start to rub my back as she says “rise and shine sweetie.” I rub my eyes and they flutter open, pretending like I wasn't already awakened by her inability to whisper. “Dinner time” she says, quieter now than when I was actually asleep. She then pats my back two times and gets up before I can say anything and goes to the directly to the stairs.
“Dinner!” she shouts up the stairs so loud I actually believe the neighbors can hear it. She then proceeds to flicker the hallway lights in case her shouting wasn’t enough to get the rest of the family’s attention. Once she is sure everyone knows she hurries back to the kitchen. Dinner is served.
