How to Cook Your Daughter (3 page)

He carried my exhausted sister and me out of the van and into a darkness deeper than any I had experienced. The house was a huge black box in the night. I heard trees rustling, the call of an owl, and a low noise that sounded like running water. I held Mine close as my father carried me toward the house. In the morning, I woke up and fell in love with Fifty-five Red Mill Road.

My mother and father had bought the house soon after they arrived in America. They became instantly enamored of the rural townships of Hunterton County, where they had rented a small summer place in 1966. Perhaps it reminded them of England: lush, green, and with a relatively long history. Or maybe it was just because it was cheap.

My mother had been desperate to get Kathy and me out of New York for the summer. She looked in the
New York Times
for the least expensive summer rental available. That meant we wouldn't be heading to the Hamptons or the Cape but rather to unfashionable New Jersey. While exploring one day, my parents came upon the house on Red Mill Road. They scrounged together just enough money and bought it, renting it out during our years in L.A. Now we had returned, mainly because we were broke. Los Angeles had
proved to be a place with a lot of talk and very few paychecks. My dad had retreated to the East Coast to try his luck writing for anything
but
television. And there the house stood, as if knowing we'd be back.

It had been there for more than two hundred years, surrounded by trees and fields, along a narrow country road that had once been even less—a cart path. By American standards, the house was ancient. And though it was neither large nor ornate, it was the sort of place that deserved respect. After all, it had been built by a blacksmith who dragged each of its hundreds of stones from the stream that ran a few yards from the front porch and from the fields that lay around it. The walls he constructed were so thick that from the outside, the house seemed much larger than it actually was. A covered porch ran along the front, and a small garden was nestled between it and a white picket fence.

Originally there were four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs. Later, a kitchen—built not of stone but of wood—had been tacked to the side. And a bathroom was added upstairs. The living room had a low-beamed ceiling; small, paned eighteenth-century windows; and a large fireplace. Next door was a parlor of sorts that we called “the study.” On either side of the old parts of the house were two sets of thin, winding staircases. Even then I knew they were incredibly dangerous. But that didn't stop Kathy and me from racing up and down them almost immediately. We'd start at the top step, then thump, thump, thump—down step by step, on our bottoms and collapse in a giggling heap onto the hard wooden floor of the living room.

Kathy and I were to have one of the upstairs rooms as our bedroom. It had two windows: one that overlooked the back lawn and another that gave us a view over the road and into the maple and oak
trees that hid the stream. We could see the back of the small house—a blacksmith's forge—that stood across from us. For the moment it was empty. Its owner, my father's former partner Nick Ullett, was still in Los Angeles. Our room was decorated with pale blue wallpaper that had soft, red roses—the most beautiful pattern I had ever seen. A door separated my parents' room from ours. The simple layout of the house hadn't included hallways, but there was a small landing where one of the staircases ended. Then there was another door that, if opened, revealed the dark stairs that led to the mysteries of the attic, a place I feared to explore.

At the side of the house stood the wooden barn, sagging and blackened by age. At sunset, the bats that slept in the rafters all day left to prowl for food. My father made his office there, in a spartan upstairs corner. Whenever he worked there, I would run down the stone path that led from the house to the barn, open the creaky wooden door to his office and tip-toe up the stairs. Then I'd just sit and stare as he wrote. I loved to watch his hands.

He had bulky knuckles but long fingers that were far more nimble than they looked. I adored the way they flew over his typewriter, the keys tapping out a soundtrack to the words that appeared on the thin, yellowish paper. Then the music would stop, and there would be only the typewriter's patient buzz as it waited for my father's fingers to play again. In those moments, he would look out of the window above his desk, across the road, over the stream, and up into the field that lay on the other side of the river bank. He would puff long on the thin brown cigar that dangled from his mouth, dropping ash onto the floor. He seemed a world away, staring off into the field, deadly serious as he searched for a decent joke. His fingers would leave the typewriter and begin tapping on the wooden desk. First the thumb. Then the index
finger. Then the pointer. Then the ring finger. And finally the pinky. Rat tat tat tat TAT. Rat tat tat tat TAT.

I remained quiet on the floor nearby, trying to roll my fingers the same way. But my fingers were too small, too light, and my barely audible taps lacked authority, style.

When he was finished writing for the day, Daddy turned off his typewriter, stood from his desk, and held out his hand. The veins shone greenish-blue against the pale whiteness of his skin. They seemed like huge, protruding pipes just under his flesh. When I looked closely, I thought I could see his blood pumping through them. I would take his hand and run my little fingers over the back of it, exploring the bumpy map. Then we would go down the office stairs together and out into the night.

The two of us walked in the fields or the woods around the house, exploring fallen trees, stopping to spy quietly on deer or rabbits. He'd tell me stories about the spirits that lived in the woods. I'd hold his hand tightly, reassured by those bumps on the back. They proved he was alive. They proved he was my dad. And as long as he was with me, nothing horrible could happen—to me or to him.

I loved our new house, but I still wonder what it thought of us. We weren't of the same world, what with our beat up VW and California clothes. What did it think of my parents, of their 1970s intellectual attitudes? I wonder if it took one look at my family and wished for the old days of long dresses and dark suits, the formality, the clear line between child and adult. In my family, it was hard to tell who exactly were the grownups. But, of course, the house took us in, silent, solid, ancient—sheltering a young family that, unlike it, was anything but stable.

Kathy and I spent what was left of the summer of 1971 exploring
the fields, picking black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne's lace, running over the little bridge, jumping into the deeper parts of a stream; that was our greatest joy. We played mermaids and lounged on the rocks. We tried to fish with our hands and trekked up the river, jumping from stone to stone and discovering interesting mosses and funny bugs.

And at night, when we were exhausted and Daddy hadn't gone to New York to work, he would create the most incredible bedtime stories.

“All right girls, what will it be tonight?” he would ask.

“
The Adventures of Sergeant Teddy!
” I'd yell.

“
Elizabeth Big Foot!
” Kathy would scream.

“No,
Five Foot Six
,
Five Foot Six!
” Kathy and I would finally agree.

We both liked
The Adventures of Sergeant Teddy
, the sadistic sheriff of the toy room who tied up the Barbies and jailed the other teddy bears. We loved the stories about
Elizabeth Big Foot
—a young girl with an enormous foot that always got stuck in the bus. But
Five Foot Six
was our favorite.
Five Foot Six
was an eight-year-old boy who got his name from his unusual height. His parents treated him terribly. At dinner, they tied each strand of his spaghetti together and made him slurp it all at once. They tricked him into jumping into the swimming pool that they'd frozen solid. Or they blindfold him and told him they were taking him somewhere special for his birthday; instead, they made him sit for three hours in the car parked in the garage.

“Are we there yet, Dad? Are we there yet?” he'd ask, over and over again.

“Not yet, Five Foot Six,” his father (
my
father) would answer.

They were dark, dark stories—modern-day Grimm's fairy tales. But Kathy and I loved them. We'd roll around our beds giggling and laughing at every word until my father's voice gave out.

For much of that first summer, Kathy and I felt as though we be-
longed in that house. Life seemed quieter there than it had in Los Angeles. And no, the house didn't shake. But then came fall—and school. That was where I first noticed how different we were, where I realized that the Hendras stood out like graffiti scribbled over a billboard ad for Wonder Bread.

Lebanon Township School (or Lebanon Township Jail, as it came to be called by those sentenced to attend class there) was a long, white, one-story building with a grassy playground. Inside it had been painted Board of Education green, and in each room—or, at least it seemed like each room—a portrait of President Richard Nixon looked down upon us. I think Spiro Agnew was there too—at least in spirit.

From the first day my mother dropped Kathy and me off, I couldn't escape how odd we were. The other mothers wore neat Carol Brady haircuts, pink lipstick, and polyester pant suits. My mother had long, straight hair and a makeup-free face and wore a T-shirt and jeans. Worse was that her British accent stood out, and she didn't drive a station wagon. I sensed I was in for trouble.

“Have a good time.” Mom kissed me good-bye. I didn't want to let her go.

I trudged into my new classroom, never so aware of my shaggy white-blond hair, crossed right eye, and pigeon-toed feet. At the door was my teacher, Miss Mole. That wasn't her name, of course, but it should've been, given the enormous black mole she had on her chin. It had a long hair growing from it, even blacker than the mole itself. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't take my eyes off it. Its hideousness fascinated me.
Did Miss Mole know it was there?
I wondered.
Didn't she have a mirror? Come on, pull it out!
I watched it sway gently as she ordered us to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

At noon, the bell rang, and we grabbed our lunch boxes and filed into the cafeteria. Except I didn't have a lunch box, the most stylish fashion accessory for the elementary school student of 1971. I had nothing that bore the logo of
Bonanza
. No aluminum relief of Hoss or Little Joe, ever-so-slightly raised and painted on the front of the box. Not even
The Jetsons
! Just a crumpled brown paper bag from under our sink. Even before the days of community recycling, my parents were bag conservationists. I sat down at one of the tables. Some kids next to me were talking about one of the teachers.

“You know, Mr. Reposo, at wood shop, he ties you up in the closet if you're bad.”

“I heard he once got a saw and cut a kid's finger off.”

“No, he didn't cut it off. He grabbed a drill and just drilled a hole right through it.”

I hoped that first graders didn't have to take wood shop.

I pulled my cheese sandwich from the bag. My mom's homemade bread came out in strange shapes with big holes in it. The thick-cut wedges of English cheddar cheese my dad brought back from New York fell through them and onto the table as I tried to take my first bite. I glanced at the kids around me; their bread was pure white, every slice exactly the same. And no holes! Their cheese was sliced thin, perfectly square, bright orange, and soft. Their carrots were sliced, peeled, and packed in the plastic wrap my parents refused to buy. They even had paper napkins—forbidden in our house. “Every napkin is a tree, Jessie,” my father had told me. But at that moment, I didn't care about trees or preservatives. I just wanted a lunch that looked like everyone else's. I wanted my mother to wear a polyester-pants suit. I wanted even a sliver of plastic wrap.

Pouting, I gathered what was left of my lunch and threw it in one
of the huge green trash cans that rimmed the cafeteria. I trailed out to the playground, which was crammed with shouting kids, and sought refuge behind the swing set.

“Hey, little girl! Stay in the playground! Do
not
go out of the marked playground area. Got it?”
Who was this girl with the bright yellow band across her chest and waist?

“Okay.”

I turned and fled into the crowd, making myself small on one of the benches. A kid my own age sat next to me.

“Did that safety yell at you?” she asked.

“A what?”

“A safety. They're just big kids that get to boss us around on the yard.”

“Oh,” I said.

The bell rang, and we headed back to Miss Mole.

That night at dinner, Kathy and I told my parents about school. Daddy became livid when he learned that we were saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

“You girls are not even
American
for fuck's sake. (Actually, I was, but Kathy had been born in England). I don't want my children pledging allegiance to
any
flag, especially not the American one,” he told us. “I don't want you girls involved in any of that nationalistic crap. What a fucking country!”

He would write a note to the principal of Lebanon Township School, he promised, insisting that Kathy and I not say the pledge. All I could think of was Miss Mole telling the class to stand up, hands over hearts, her mole hair waving as she spoke. “Everybody
except
Jessica Hendra.” I imagined her sharp voice as she said my name, her scowl, and the looks on the other kids' faces as they stared at the com
mie hunched over her desk. “We knew by her lunch she was weird,” they'd whisper.

But Daddy was even more outraged about the safety who kept me away from the swing set. “Hitler Youth,” he called her, not that Kathy and I had any idea what a Hitler Youth was.