The World in My Kitchen (2 page)

The train slowed down and stopped very near the harbor. The port of Le Havre was large and very busy. There were several ships ready to leave, and ours at the end of the quay was easily the largest one. It was white with blue, red, and white stripes painted on its funnel. We slowly walked the length of the quay.
This is it,
I thought,
once we are on the boat there is no turning around.

Going up the plank, I looked back at the people milling around. Most of the people boarding the boat seemed young. One teenage French girl on the deck was crying. I wanted to go to her and help her, but Jimmy told me we had to follow the porter to our cabin. Our cabin was one floor below the main deck. In it, there were two beds, a closet, a small bathroom, and two armchairs, and a porthole through which we could see the sea. The ship rocked gently, and already I thought I was going to be sick. I quickly took a pill and hoped that the uneasy feeling I had in the middle of my stomach would soon disappear. Back on the main deck, I looked again for the young girl. I did not see her and looked below at the crowd waving their good-byes. There were no shouts and very little confusion. I thought back to when I had left Egypt for France nine years ago. The crowds were shouting, women were crying, and I had felt lonely and sad to leave my Egyptian family for France and an unknown future. Today was very different. I wasn’t scared, just sad. Jimmy’s arms were around my waist; he was kissing my neck and whispering words to reassure me. The ship slowly glided out of the harbor. “Let’s go to the bar and have a drink to celebrate our new life,” he suggested. As I entered the bar, I suddenly knew that I would not make it. I had to be on the deck, or I would be sick. Back upstairs on the deck, I found a chaise lounge, and a young sailor wrapped a blanket around me.

“How do you feel, miss? Would you like a cup of hot broth?”

“Yes, please,” I said faintly, thinking I was soon going to be so sick that I would certainly die before reaching New York.

As I drifted into a sort of waking dream, my thoughts turned to New York.
What will it be like living in New York? How will his family greet me? Would I quickly make friends? Jimmy told me that everyone works in America, will I also work? And what kind of work can I do?
As I dozed off to sleep, I felt better. The boat seemed steadier. Maybe I was wrong.
I will be alright, and the crossing will be fine.

An hour later, I was awakened by the same young sailor bringing me a cup of very hot bouillon and crackers. Jimmy reappeared and insisted we take a walk around the deck. Later, I was back at my chaise until the evening, when once again I tried to go to the dining room. A steaming onion gratinée was placed in front of me. I slowly took a bite. The warm soup with the golden melted cheese and thick slices of transparent onion tasted great and warmed me. I wasn’t feeling too bad and finally ate the soup with gusto. While we ate, Jimmy talked about his relatives. His favorite being his aunt Edie, his mother’s sister. She had never married. She was an executive with Dunhill, and she lived, Jimmy explained, with another sister, Gina, also unmarried. Gina kept house for them.

“Edie is great; she is fun and very intelligent. You will love her, and she will love you.” Naturally, there was also his brother, Murray, with his wife, Naima. They had two young children. I knew Murray. In 1948, he had come to my grandmother’s house in Paris. In 1949, he had met Naima and brought her to our house. But I did not remember her well as they had left for the United States a few months after their wedding.

“My mother lives with them in the summer,” Jimmy said, as if he could read my thoughts. I had been afraid that we would have to live with her. Jimmy’s mother reminded me of my favorite mystery detective, Miss Marple. I thought she looked like her. Her hair was wavy, with curls like tiny sausages at the nape of her neck. She often looked serious and dowdy. I hoped that since we were now going to live in New York, I would get to know her better and we would be friends.

After dinner, I wanted to go back to my chaise lounge, but Jimmy insisted that I try to sleep in the cabin. As I lay in my bed, I tried not to think of the ship’s movement. I closed my eyes while saying to Jimmy that I could not stay in the cabin, that I was afraid I would be sick. I woke up the following morning in bed!

For the next five days, life on the ship assumed a routine. I spent a lot of time on my chaise lounge, took long promenades, drank hot bouillon, and only ate once a day. Jimmy talked about the future. He was happy to be going back home. He talked about our living in New York or Boston. He then made drawings of Manhattan, explaining how Manhattan was divided in two, East and West, in a grid, and that all the streets had numbers. It was all very confusing. I remembered reading a book written by two French journalists about their travels in America. I must have been sixteen when I read it. I was fascinated with the authors’ tales of New York, the Rocky Mountains, California, and ice-cream sundaes.

“I want to try an ice-cream sundae,” I told Jimmy, who looked at me with astonishment.

“But why an ice-cream sundae?”

How could I explain that the vision of a mountain of ice cream topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and a red cherry fascinated me. Could I tell Jimmy that for years America for me was defined by an ice-cream sundae? Never!

On the sixth day the sea got rougher and I refused to go down to the cabin. I slept on my chaise wrapped in blankets. Jimmy woke me up at five. “Get up. We are going to pass the Statue of Liberty. You must see it.” We stood next to each other. Jimmy was hugging me as we passed this extraordinary statue wrapped in fog. The scene was eerie. It seemed to me that the Lady was smiling. She was so tall! Much taller than the one on the bridge, the Pont de L’Alma, over the Seine in Paris. And suddenly there was New York. I had not expected the incredible vision of a mass of skyscrapers, shimmering in the early sunlight. I was in awe. Viewed from the ship, New York looked beautiful. As the ship glided slowly down the Hudson lead by a red tugboat, I saw that there must have been a major snowstorm in New York because the roofs of the buildings we were passing were covered with snow. I thought of Paris, which I had left just a few days ago. The parks there were already full of yellow daffodils and tulips under an intense blue sky. So beautiful!

As the ship anchored, I saw people waving on the quay below. I waved back. I recognized Murray and Anne. Jimmy waved also and smiled to me.

“They are down there. Did you see them?”

It took an hour before we could disembark and gather our belongings. Anne embraced me and then Jimmy. She looked sad. Murray stood near her. He was shorter than Jimmy, I thought, with wavy brown hair. He too looked sad. Jimmy asked what was wrong. Anne blurted out that Edie, Jimmy’s aunt, had died a week ago. They had not wanted him to know for fear of spoiling his last week in Paris. Jimmy cried, he was crushed by the news. I held his hand trying to comfort him. He blurted out to me, “I wanted her to meet you. I wanted her to see who I married…. Oh Colette, this is so terrible.” I felt sorry for Jimmy, but I hadn’t known Edie, and with the excitement of arriving in New York, I quickly forgot about her.

The car was waiting for us near a highway. Our luggage baskets would arrive later. On the way to Murray’s house, no one talked. I looked out of the window and thought that, at the street level, New York was so dirty and ugly. There was so much snow pushed against the edges of the sidewalks. It looked like dirty gray mountains. Where was the beautiful city I had seen from the ship?

We finally arrived at Murray’s apartment house on West Seventy-seventh Street. A doorman in uniform took care of our hand luggage. The apartment house faced a very large brick building surrounded by a garden. “That’s the Museum of Natural History,” Jimmy said. “A great museum; I’ll take you there.”

Naima stood waiting at the door of the apartment where she embraced Jimmy first, then me. She was a tall, handsome woman in her mid-thirties with jet-black hair tied in a bun at the back of her neck; she was wearing a bold colored, loose dress. I would later learn that these dresses were fashionable and made by a Danish designer called Marimekko. Next to her stood a cute little boy. “This is Maxwell; he is three. Say ‘Hi’ to Auntie Colette.” Maxwell looked at me and smiled but said nothing. “Later you’ll meet John; he’s eighteen months, and he is sleeping now. Come, I will show you to your room. We gave you our room. Murray and I will sleep in the maid’s room.”

Immediately we protested, but to no avail. I was too young to understand that this would turn out to be a great mistake; taking their room would later provoke fights and problems. But we were happy to be there, and we settled in their room as we were told. For the next few hours, I explored the apartment. It was as large as my grandmother’s in Paris, with four bedrooms lining a somber corridor. The dining room was old fashioned with a large dining table in the center. Later, I joined Naima there as she was preparing lunch. I heard a baby crying. “Why don’t you go and pick him up,” she said. As I entered his bedroom, John was standing in his crib. Such a lovely baby! I picked him up and kissed him on his neck. In return, I got a gurgling laugh. I knew right away that I was falling in love with him because he looked like Jimmy. I picked him up and took him back to the kitchen. Naima looked flustered, so I asked if I could help. “No thank you. I must feed John and Maxwell; you go back to the living room. Another time maybe.” I was too shy to insist, and so I went back to the living room to join Jimmy. Anne was telling him what had happened to Edie.

“She had breast cancer but refused to see a doctor until it was too late.”

“What do you mean she refused to see a doctor? Why didn’t you drag her there?” There was silence. I realized that Jimmy was angry, Anne upset. I had to do something. How crushing to arrive in a new country and be faced with such horrible news. I was worried about Jimmy. I looked at him, went closer, and squeezed his hand with a smile. We shared a glance and I knew we would be fine.

That night as we sat down to dinner, Naima brought to the table a roast. It was enormous; I had never seen anything like it. Jimmy told me it was a rib roast prepared in our honor. “Very American,” he said with a smile.

A thick slice was placed on my plate alongside a very large, unpeeled potato. “Baked potato,” Naima explained, “also very American.” I looked at Jimmy to see how I was supposed to eat it.

“Split in two; add some butter.”

The potato was fluffy, hot, and tasted like the best mashed potato I had ever had. The skin was crisp, and Naima told me I could eat it, too. I discovered that the crackling skin was even more delicious. The slice of beef was bright pink and tender. I took a bite of the brown crackling fat with a piece of meat. I thought that I would have loved to suck on the bone, but no one seemed to do it, so it was with regret that I left it on my plate. To this day, a rib roast is still my favorite meat, but I always suck the bone clean! Next to the meat was a vegetable I never saw before. It looked like a small tree and tasted somewhat like cabbage. I thought it was good, but lacked some garlic or spices. “What is it?” I asked. “Broccoli,” Anne explained. “Do you like it?” I didn’t really know what to say since I realized that she had prepared it. For my taste, it was too bland. “Strange,” I answered, and everyone laughed.

Murray served a very good French wine and told me that in a few years California would produce wines as good as the French. I thought it unlikely at the time, but he was right. Years later, as a food writer, I would go to wine auctions in California and taste wine as good, and sometimes better, than the French.

There was no bread on the table, and I missed it, especially when Naima brought in the salad. The salad was iceburg lettuce, the same type of salad that the American army wives bought at the PX in Germany, served with some strange dressing that they called “French.” However, Naima’s dressing was much better. She was, I thought, a very good cook. I looked around the table at the family. I didn’t as yet understand the relationship between Naima, Murray, and Anne. There seemed to be tension, but I did not know why. I felt slightly nervous and unsettled, maybe even a bit scared. I looked at Jimmy. He smiled encouragingly, and I felt better. Everyone was looking at me, expecting something.
But what?
I thought I should do something. Picking up my wine glass, I made a toast to the family and said that the meal was great and that I was so pleased to be here.

The next morning I found my mother-in-law in the kitchen preparing breakfast. Maxwell and John were both there. She was making oatmeal. She offered me some, but I could barely eat in the morning and asked for just a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Jimmy had left to see some friends and get reacquainted with the city. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. I did not want to unpack since I hoped to find an apartment of our own soon. I asked Naima if I could help her. She suggested I take John for a walk in the park’s playground. Maxwell would be dropped off at a play school. Central Park, I had learned the night before, was the large park near the apartment house. Would I get lost? I was slightly afraid, but thought Naima would explain where the playground was.

While Naima dressed John, I talked to Anne about her plans for the day. “This afternoon, after lunch, I have to visit Gina; she is very sad and upset,” she said.

“Can I come with you?”

“No, some other day; she’s not ready to meet you.”

I left her and wandered again through the apartment. Murray, who was a financial writer for
The New York Times,
had already left for work. John was dressed and ready to be taken outside. Naima drew me a plan of the neighborhood and told me where the playground was. “He can play in the sandbox,” she explained. “He likes the swings. Be careful as you cross streets and don’t get lost.”