E-Book, Englisch, 360 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-0983-5024-6
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz
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CHAPTER 1
KITCHENS PLAYED A MAJOR PART IN SHAPING WHO I AM. Reader, I know you're impatient to hear me explain, but before you skim to get to the "good parts," I have to take back my history from the journalistic jackals, those slimy germ spreaders. I need you to understand, I lived several lives before I became who I am now, so bear with me, please. The third question you’ll ask is, “How did you wind up in an airport in France?” That should be easy, but it won’t be because it is the wrong place to begin. I have to begin in the United States to reclaim my true beginning. Much of who I am has been distorted. My biography has been called into question, and that I will not accept. My biography is the story I tell the world. Where I choose to place emphasis could be used for many things: seduction, employment, even lying. State and local South Carolina politicians were the first to try to reduce me and my family to shadows. That I will not allow. When I know it is from that hell hole that my family managed to escape. So South Carolina, I speak to you first of my beginning. Nothing of my start was a lie. In fact, my beginning is my truth and it can’t be erased. So, I’m going to begin at the beginning, or as close to the beginning, as I can. Food shaped much of my life. As an adult, I was cursed to write about it. As a child, no matter what was placed in front of me, I had to eat it. The first food I encountered was prepared by my mother, Marian. She was the only girl of eight, born on the kitchen table one Easter in Edgefield, South Carolina. At that point in time, the South wasn’t really part of America. It hadn’t gotten over losing the Civil War. There were strict race codes, and South Carolina in particular wasn’t a place you admitted you were from once you left; wasn’t a place you came back to unless someone died, and when you returned, you always purchased a round-trip ticket and kept it at the ready. At that time, Strom Thurmond was the Congressman from the state, who became a Senator from that state, and if America would have let it happen, he would have been the President from that state. At my mother’s birth, the city of Edgefield wasn’t on the map, so everybody claimed Johnston because it was an actual city with a small railway station. Edgefield was exactly as it is named, the edge of a huge field, where everybody did the same work their great-grandfathers did. Some worked the land, while others watched them work their land. Everybody black dressed in overalls, which was the official uniform until Easter. That day the aisles in church became a fashion runway. One Easter Sunday, there was a terrible rainstorm, and my Grandmother Ethel left church early to start dinner. She was surprisingly thin for a woman nine months pregnant. In fact, in every photo of her when she was pregnant, she had long flowing black hair, a long narrow face with a long nose that just seemed to dangle there, and her stomach looked surprisingly flat. On the day of my mother’s arrival, Grandmother Ethel was in the middle of rolling dough when her water broke. Her husband, my grandfather Ezekial was the minister. He was a mountain of a man, on which all his clothes fit a bit snug. He wore a robe when he was inside the church, and overalls otherwise. His was one of those small, wooden, nameless churches on a dusty back road leading to nowhere. He was a long-winded man of the church who felt under-appreciated. Though big and blustery, no one at that church feared him, so he nailed the windows shut to keep people from stealing the benches for wood in winter. Every Easter, behind his back, the parishioners called him “Endless Ezekial.” He knew everybody came to church on Easter to show off their clothes, so when he took the pulpit, he refused to give it up, even when he was told his wife’s water broke. This day the Lord’s word would be heard. Heavy breathing and blood and the birth of a baby would have to wait. Mid-sermon, a swarm of bees fought their way down the fireplace and couldn’t find a way out. There was panic amongst the parishioners. Thunder rolled! Lighting flickered like someone fiddling with a light switch. The bees buzzed angrily, slamming from wall to wall, but there was no way out. Ezekial hopped down from the pulpit, fought his way through the bees to the one exit and stood sentinel. The bees stung, but he refused to give ground. He continued his sermon, his big hands swinging back and forth jabbing at the air like a philharmonic conductor, and the bees got caught up in the movement of his hands, as though they were an orchestra. Whenever parishioners made a move to go, he pointed and the bees swarmed forcing them back into their seats. A thunderclap! Butterflies and fireflies came swooping down the fireplace and fought for space with the bees like three gangs fighting over territory. Lightning flashed again! This was truly a divine moment, so Ezekial preached two sermons. Exhausted, drenched with sweat, he finally opened the doors, and there were two calves, a dog, three ducks, and a cat waiting to enter. Mindful of the bees, the church members eased out. He gestured and the animals entered, followed by a huge swarm of flies. So, surrounded by animals, he blessed them and then preached a sermon for them. At the close of his sermon, Ezekial named his church, “THE CHURCH OF THE ARK.” Every Easter on cue, the bees, butterflies, fire flies, smelly calves, cicadas, dogs, ducks, cats and flies showed up for a sermon. By now, Ethel’s contractions were well along, but she refused to leave the kitchen. Lying on top of the table, she insisted on overseeing the food preparation, so each dish was brought to her. She tasted the collard greens and yams, took a fork and lifted the skin of the fried chicken, turned the broiled fish over. The rice, string beans, and pies she left to the others. She didn’t think they could mess those up. Finally, the food taken care of, she closed her eyes and shouted, “Lets go, Lord.” She took deep breaths. A sharp contraction and her eyes popped open. Standing over her was a smiling Ezekial, “I see the head. That is our next few years,” he said. Ezekial joined by the church members, panting and exalting her to push, watched as my mother, Marian entered the world covered in flour, butter, and blood. She looked around wide eyed and nervous, as if Grandmother Ethel’s kitchen was not where she wanted to be, too young to know that she would grow up in this kitchen. As a child, and as a woman, my mother asked questions constantly in this room of pots and pans. She could ask all the questions she wanted, but she was not allowed to touch anything. “Use your nose, gal, and watch,” Grandmother Ethel told her repeatedly. My mother was an outsider, a non-participant, an illegal in the kitchen, one of the unwanted. At every point she showed initiative, Grandmother Ethel cut her off and gave her the lecture about who was almighty in the kitchen. So, my mother spent hours in that hot, sweaty room, until she saw it as a prison, gave up on ever participating and lost interest in learning. My mother got out of South Carolina as soon as she was old enough to save money for a ticket. She landed in Washington, D.C. and got a job cleaning offices at the Pentagon. It was in the hallway of the Pentagon, she met my father with the strange last name, Whitehouse. Howard was tall with a large forehead, eyes that danced when he spoke, a soft Jamaican lilt to his voice, a big barrel chest and bowed legs. My mother insisted she saw my father from behind, and fell in love with the powerful sexual mythology wrapped in his bow legs. That never made sense to me. I kept questioning “What about his bow-legs?” But she just looked at me sideways, and my father always smiled, but neither gave me an answer. I pressed, and finally with a wicked smile, my father insisted, it was his dancing eyes. But either way, a week later they were married. Nine months later, I arrived in the kitchen covered in flour, and throughout my childhood, I continued to have it sprinkled on me for good luck, every birthday. The sprinkled flour had more to do with me playing near the kitchen table than some magical world I was living in. As a child, I was propped up on pillows near the table because my body was invaded by poliomyelitis. My father got me shots when he saw a report on the news about how it travels via the blood stream to the central nervous system, where it attacks the motor neurons of a child’s spinal cord. He had sleepless nights wondering if he got me the shots in time. When my muscle groups weakened, and I lost seven to ten pounds a week, my father was inconsolable and wracked with guilt that he had waited too long. After a year, gradually my strength came back and there was no paralysis. After my scare, I played on the kitchen floor while observing my mother cooking. She suspected my interest and encouraged me to spend my time there. My father insisted I get out and, “break da rules some. Be mannish.” But I was hesitant. He expected me to engage with him, other boys, and the wider world, but I stayed in the kitchen, dreaming to the sound of Sarah Vaughn, Etta James, The Soul Stirrers. The kitchen was warm, smelled good and was a good place to dream. The first cook in a child’s life is his mother. At that point disappointment in the kitchen is the equivalent of child abuse. My mother always looked authoritative. She was a spreader like a general planning a battle. She put each ingredient in its own container; every bowl, plate, and pan in the house was enlisted for duty. For a child observing, she looked so sure,...
