Crazy in the Kitchen (4 page)

THE KNIFE

The knife that my grandmother uses to cut the bread is not a bread knife, not a serrated knife like every well-equipped American
kitchen now has. No. The knife that my grandmother uses to cut the bread is a butcher knife, the kind of knife that figures
in nightmares, in movies like
Psycho.
The same knife, incidentally, that my father will use when I am a teenager, when he threatens to kill me. (Years later, I
bring up the subject of how he grabbed the knife, came at me, how I got away because my grandmother put her body between us.
"I never meant to hurt you," he said. "I was just trying to make myself clear.")

My grandmother would take a gigantic loaf of the bread she had made, and she would pull the knife through the bread towards
the center of her chest where her heart was located, as if she were trying to commit an Italian form of hara-kiri.

"Stop that," my mother would shout, half fearing, half hoping, I think, that this woman, this stepmother who didn't love her,
would pull the knife towards her breast just a fraction of an inch too far, so that after all the screaming, all the threats
of "If I get my hands on you I'll kill you," we would finally have bloodshed in our own kitchen, finally have a real mess
on our hands that would take my mother a very long time to clean.

"Stop that, for Christ's sake!" my mother would shout. She would pull the bread away from my grandmother and often she would
cut herself in the process, not much, but just enough to bleed onto the bread. And my mother would throw the bread down onto
the counter, where it would land upside down (a grave sin, my grandmother said, for bread should only be placed right side
up; to do otherwise was to disrespect the bread; to do otherwise was to invite the forces of evil into your house). And she
would say, "Why can't you cut that goddamned bread like a normal human being?"

My grandmother would bend over the bread that she had made, turn it right side up, and make the sign of the cross over it
and kiss her fingertips, weeping. My grandmother would weep because to her the bread was sacred and to her the only way to
cut the bread was to pull the knife through the bread toward your heart. And perhaps she was weeping, too, for all that she
had lost, for all that she never had, and for all that she didn't have. For the insufferable life she was forced to live.

My mother was afraid of knives, and if she could avoid using one, she did. She'd tear the lettuce instead of slicing it, and
not because she didn't want to destroy the tenderness of the leaves. She'd use kitchen shears to dismember a chicken. She'd
put blunt knives at our places instead of steak knives, even if what we were eating was fibrous and tough.

Some things, though, she couldn't avoid cutting, like onions, like carrots. So when she cut them, she ordered everyone out
of the kitchen.

"Knives are dangerous," she'd say. "You have to stay far away from someone who is using a knife."

Before she went to bed at night, my mother would gather up all the knives in our kitchen, and she would put them away in a
drawer. "This way," she said, "if burglars come into the house in the middle of the night, they'll have to look for them and
we'll hear them. This way," my mother said, "we'll have a fighting chance."

I never believed this burglar bullshit. I always thought the reason my mother put away all the knives was because she was
afraid that one of us might creep down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, take the butcher knife my grandmother used
to cut the bread, climb back up the stairs, and kill the rest of us.

SLICING ONIONS

It was when we moved to the suburbs from Hoboken that my mother abandoned cooking foods that required much preparation and
began cooking things that were cooked already. Although she said she was happy to live in the suburbs, happy to be out of
Hoboken, our new house was an old house that needed a lot of work— stripping old wallpaper, sanding, plastering, painting,
rewiring— all of which was done by my parents because they didn't have the money to hire someone, hardly had the money for
this house, which they bought with a GI mortgage. And so my mother, too exhausted to cook, gave us TV dinners (usually turkey,
Swanson brand, although sometimes we'd have meatloaf) for supper. Canned ravioli or spaghetti (Chef Boyardee). Beef stew (Dinty
Moore). Chow mein (Chun King, with Minute Rice and canned fried noodles on the side). Instant mashed potatoes and canned beef
gravy (this was a meal). Canned chili (with Minute Rice). Canned ham (with Minute Rice). Canned Spam (she gave up on this
one because even my father wouldn't eat it; said he'd seen enough of it for a lifetime while he was in the navy). Frozen pizza
that came in little squares. Often, a canned vegetable accompanied whatever my mother heated up. Peas were her favorite; but
she liked asparagus, green beans, and beets, too. Always, there was a bag of Dugan's bread plopped in the center of the table,
inside its sanitary plastic bag. And when she was making a special effort, there was salad (iceberg lettuce, of course) slathered
with bottled salad dressing (Russian).

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."