Primordial Soup Page 5

  As long as the three of them were having martinis, she hadn’t really cared but now it was time for dinner to be served.

  “Oh, they’re taking a look at the new house, they’re not doing any harm,” answered Sharon.

  A new house in Florida means one in mid-construction. It is common practice for neighbours to tour these whenever there aren’t any workers around, count the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, calculate the ratio. People generally know which state up north the owners will come from, but nothing more about them besides the real estate agency that made the sale. During the two to three odd months it takes to build the new house, the future inhabitants are subject to debate. Anyone having a chimney or a high dome ceiling installed is made fun of and probably will never fit in. A built-in bar makes potential friends. A sunken living room is taboo, since most Wachovi citizens are past their prime. After a few drinks, their hips break easily. When the owners finally move in, and shortly thereafter offer their new neighbours a tour of their house, they do not realize that the oohing and aahing imposters know their house better than they do, and were the first to use their loo.

  My mother commenced the tour of her lawn. Whether Sharon and Joseph wanted it or not, they were about to get a review of every plant, tree, bud and sprout. The avocado tree, as by now everyone alive must have known, started as a pip a few years back. My mother had stuck toothpicks in it, submerged it in a cup of water and roots had sprung. The resulting lanky tree, heavy with free avocadoes, was once a brown orb, no bigger than a golf ball.

  “You do de crabs, now, de barbecue, it’s a’kay,” ordered my mother as soon as she noticed me jump off the boat and land on my hands and knees on the gravel.

  She was about to show Sharon and Joseph her pride and joy, a three inch high banyan tree, plucked from the famous original at the Edison Winter Home. My mother thought one day it would give her shade and liked the idea of its roots being long enough to drink from Mr. Walter’s yard instead of hers.

  “Why me?” I appealed.

  “B’cause already I slave all day. You, where you dis’pear all day, you?”

  Sharon and Joseph could not stop themselves from smiling. Actually, Joseph had lit the barbecue, fetched the crabs and made the martinis. Sharon had brought over the potato salad, the devilled eggs and the dessert, the only sure way to have gotten any around our place, other than dried fruit. And I had set the table, which on top of my daily chores, exceeded by far hers, namely shaving her legs and painting her toenails coral pink.

  “I mean, I don’t know how,” I argued, not wanting to know, either.

  “Look! It so easy!” my mother hammered, “You jus’ take an’ … ”

  She lifted a crab up by its weaker claw and in her impatience, broke it off while thrusting it onto its back on the red-hot grill. The six hairy legs jerked spasmodically, somewhat like an overturned beetle propels its legs against thin air.

  The flames rose up around the crab. With its remaining claw, it struggled to grab onto something to pull itself away from the pain and managed to take hold of my mother’s tongs. The jointed legs agitated in a frenzy to escape when my mother squeezed the tongs this time tightly across the armoured torso, holding it securely in place over the highest flame, until the creature started to scream. I didn’t know crabs had voices. Though not loud, the cry was pathetic and shrill and sent a shiver through me.

  “You see?” my mother casually asked before leaving me there with the rest of the bucket’s contents.

  This one was already undergoing the transformation from life to food. Only a last leg slowly jerked its goodbye.

  With the tongs, I peered into the bucket. I felt like a giant crab myself, about to pinch the next victim. The crabs’ mouths were vertical, champing nothing and spitting water like a suite of tiny panels. Their tiny eyes were propped up and leaned back and forth, begging for mercy. That was it. I grabbed hold of the plastic bucket, ran panting down to the canal and threw them back in.

  “How you gettin’ ’long, Kate?” my mother inquired from the air-conditioning compressor.

  The tour was coming to an end as she showed her latest aloe plant that looked like a cross between a cactus and octopus tentacle. If one broke the tip off, the extracts were said to be beneficial for healing burns. The other children had returned and were standing around me, sunburnt and mosquito bitten.

  “Go and wash your hands,” Sharon ordered the children.

  My mother intercepted them.

  “You don’ need to go ’cross de whole house. Dip in de swimmin’ pool! Jus’ dip, dat’s ’nough.”

  Everyone was sitting around the picnic table of our patio when I brought the silver dome on a platter. My mother straightened her back and lifted her chin an inch; she presided at the head of the table; on backless bench to her right, sat Joseph, Sharon, Rosa and Lucy Minsky; on the bench to her left, Tommy and Timmy Tatta, Cecilia, and the empty space for me. Tommy was busy mashing his baked potato and Timmy was picking the skin of a broken sun blister off his shoulder. Sharon and Joseph smiled at me so sweetly, that it was like a magnetic force that made the corners of my mouth yield upwards, too.

  “What is it?” asked Lucy.

  “Not the Easter bunny again, I hope,” I heard Rosa whisper under Sharon’s loud, “Shh!”

  Sharon opened her paper napkin which my mother had cut in two; it fell apart into two squares so thin, the ceiling fan, even at the lowest speed, forced her to cross her legs to hold them in place.

  “Wha’ you waitin’ for?!”

  When my mother’s juices began to flow, she could become aggressive. I should have crawled under my bed, but instead I lifted the dome. One burnt stone crab lay on its back upon the silver platter.

  “Where are de ot’hers?!”

  “Home …” was all I managed to pronounce. I hadn’t a drop of saliva left in my mouth.

  “You! Where, home?! De kitchen?” She stood up. “Do you hear me?!”

  If I did, I couldn’t any more because I had just received a smack on my ear hard enough to make it ring. Lucy and Rosa lowered their heads on the table and began to cry, not because there was nothing to eat, but because I had been hit. Cecilia used to cry, too, but she was used to it by now. Their sobs gave me courage and I found myself screaming at the top of my voice, “Home in the canal!” several times on end.

  This somehow calmed my mother who sat back down and let her arms hang limply off her lawn chair, as though her jewelry had really been stolen, for once. Sharon hadn’t spoken yet but looked back and forth as though she were watching a table tennis match with equal sympathy for both Chinese players. Joseph kept his eyes down on his baked potato, and poked holes in the aluminum paper.

  “It doesn’t matter, Olga, ah, poor thing, I know how she feels, the little darling …”

  I could tell Sharon’s words had no effect whatsoever in softening my mother. Human kindness to her was equivalent to stupidity. When volunteers came to the door to collect, my mother was already in mid-calculation: she took a walk around the block anyway, so if she could earn a few dollars a night in doing so … It is very painful for me to admit that my mother helped herself to the handsomest bills in the American Cancer Society and Multiple Sclerosis cans she toted around. Some community members put their bills in envelopes. These were opened with the steam of a consommé de homard or beef broth, one dollar put in their place, and closed. My mother said the organizations were crooks and only ten percent made it to the sick or handicapped. Like the food chain, she felt somewhere along the line, she deserved her piece of the pie.

  “Should I order a pizza?” Joseph asked.

  The “yeahs” of youth were forceful, though I dared not join in. I looked down at the pebble-stone floor, which even in the worst of circumstances reminded me of some sticky treat.

  “Such beaut’ful crab an’ we are goin’ to eat ar’ficial, manmade pizza!” “Man-made”, was the worst insult my mother could verbalize. With it, I received a series of pinches
on my neck, face, stomach and thighs, hard enough to make me scream. There was no flotilla of crabs around to defend me. That’s when Lucy sought refuge in her father’s frail, fair arms and begged to be taken back home.

  Cecilia’s chin dimpled, which it always did when she tried not to cry.

  “No!” protested Rosa, “If we go, she’ll kill her!”

  Her father apparently agreed, for he proposed to take all of us out to the Red Lobster, where my mother could taste the “Loving Couple”, a thick, juicy filet mignon snuggling up to a lobster tail. His description was persuasive. To my relief, my mother accepted the invitation. I knew I would not be allowed to go, yet sensed that standing by Sharon and Joseph Minsky’s van before my mother ordered me into the pantry closet would reduce my sentence, especially if I wailed audibly on my way in.

  Really, I didn’t care as much as they thought. I wasn’t hungry, for I’d swallowed enough of my snot and tears. Pantry closet time in my mother’s absence was based on the honour system, as though she had given us the right example in valuing such things. I went to the pantry closet for a stepladder, and brought Stag Head down from the wall. I placed him on the glass table, balancing him on his wooden plaque.

  At first, Stag Head was unused to a vertical position, and even nauseous, which I suppose after so many years of looking only straight ahead across our dining room, should be expected, though this did strike me as odd for he no longer had a stomach. I put his plaque against my face and gave him a run across the house, imagining my father was chasing us with a gun. It was great fun.

  Out of breath, I squatted down and held Stag Head’s neck between my knobbly knees. I stroked the hairs on his head and neck, at least down to where it had been severed. I cupped my hands over the plastic bulbs someone had exchanged for his eyes, lifting them as though they were his own eyelids. The spirit of life regained him, as did his affection for me.

  When Stag Head recovered his place on the unchanging wall, I entered the closet and closed the door. Only in the darkness, can one hear one’s own breathing. Only in darkness, does one strain the eyes for light. I did, until the darkness moved, like a thousand flies. Closing my lids and opening them made no difference. Blackness lives, dances, too, like anyone knows who has long observed it.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Mamà! Mótina! Mótina! Stop! Can we please have a Christmas tree?!” begged Cecilia, tapping my mother’s knee insistently as though this would make the car stop.

  “You a’ready had one in de school. How many you need?”

  Cecilia needed a pair of blunt scissors with which to make four-leaf clover looking snowflakes and that was about how much our mother was going to invest in anyone’s commercialized American Christmas for that year.

  “One for at home just once in our lives! Please!”

  “You a’ready had one, you don’ remember?”

  My mother kept a mental list of all that was already done once in anyone’s lifetime. Repetition to her was superfluous; it was even more abominable; it was a waste.

  “No!” wailed Cecilia, who never lied.

  Cecilia had been too young. I still remembered our mother in her shaggy fur coat, Cecilia and I used to pretend we were brown bears in it, and an axe, chopping down a pine tree in New Hampshire and dragging it back to the car on the outskirts of a highway. Its tip swished in the snow like a dragon tail. I distinctly recall this detail because I was worried that the trail would scare away the forest fighters. I was commissioned to walk ahead, and warn them if I saw anybody coming, because the forest, our mother warned us, was full of criminals.

  “Well, me, I remember. De needles, dey fall an’ make a mess. Dey block my vacuum cleaner, de sac is a’ways full. De wood, wha’ we do wit’ it after? We have no chimney in Flor’da!” What she seemed to be getting at was, “No.”

  Cecilia sobbed, stating that we never got to have anything. For a split second, I saw my mother’s eyes in the rear-view mirror guiltily staring ahead, and not quite at the road. She took Cecilia more seriously than she did me. Cecilia was easier to please.

  As soon as we got home, my mother slid open the linen closet and stamped her foot.

  “Here! An’ don’ bother me no more!”

  She tossed Cecilia and I a Christmas tree about eight inches high. It was actually a napkin-holder someone at church had given to her, that she had been saving as a gift for someone else. It was composed of two side by side flat wooden Christmas trees, painted picnic table green. The inside, where napkins were supposed to stand, was bare unvarnished pine wood, with visible knots to vouch for the once outstretched branches. Cecilia beamed with joy.

  “You. Wha’ you say?” my mother threatened me.

  I was regularly starting to have what she called, “dat look o’er my face”.

  “Thank you very much, Mommy,” I recited, feeling the look accentuating.

  Cecilia and I hesitated where to place it. The dinner table elevated our tree to an appropriate height, but on it, it really looked like a napkin-holder. My mother’s record player was out of the question, it might scratch. The floor was problematic; it accentuated the puny size, and gave one the impression the napkin-holder had fallen off the table. Anyone walking by would pick it up and put it back on the table. I finally suggested “Fool’s Stool”, which I sensed I had outgrown. Cecilia positioned our Christmas tree on top of it. I wound my bathrobe around the base. I knew no needles would fall, but it made the composition look fuller. My mother took a picture.

  We didn’t have a manger, but annually, our mother let us have things from the kitchen to make one. Jesus, like every year, was an almond wrapped in exactly one square of pink toilet paper. Mary was the whitish, bottom part of a stick of celery, the only thing we could find that looked like a flowing gown. Joseph was a small carrot. Three cauliflower heads were the sheep. That was all we were allowed to have, besides a cutting board on which to arrange them. Cecilia requested some broccoli for the landscape, but my mother dryly replied that there were no trees in Jerusalem.

  Jesus was all that had survived by midnight mass. Mary, Joseph and the three sheep were sliced into a Caesar’s salad when they had begun to wilt. At first I screamed, but my mother assured me this would not hurt their resurrection. As I ate them, I wondered if things eaten by me would resurrect with me, as part of me, or if eaten things would resurrect directly out of me,

  I rubbed my eyes sleepily. The church bell, a recent donation of the Knights of Columbus, tolled midnight. Cecilia was sound asleep at my mother’s side, despite the organ that seemed to pump a strange, spiritual life into St. Andrew’s cement vaulted veins. In a corner, a statue of the Virgin Mary offered her breast to Jesus, a happy, healthy baby. Jesus as an adult was unrecognizable; He was sickly looking, emaciated, unhappy; I felt weak looking at Him as He bled and bled on the cross. Mankind must stop sinning or Jesus would soon be eaten away. As it was, His ribs had nearly broken out of the skin of His torso; there were more tendons on His arms and legs than meat; His feet were so bony, one could discern every detail of their skeletal structure; and yet the blood continued to drip, and mankind continued to eat Him, though anyone would have to admit, He was far from appetizing.

  The priest’s voice roused the congregation. In oneness, it stood and was seated, bowed and lifted its head, sang Hallelujah and Hosanna, breathed Amen. Only an occasional cough or infectious snort broke the charm, reminding us we still had our feet on the earth.

  The priest preached, “See, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”

  To my dismay, an image invaded my mind, an horrific image of Jesus, lamb, roasting upon a rotating cross. The lamb’s skin was evenly crispy; juice and melted fat fell freely from the small, pitiful body … I closed my eyes to make it disappear.

  The priest preached, “Keep your senses, be watchful. Your adversary, the Devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour someone.”

  I knew it was time to eat Jesus, for the baskets were being pass
ed down the rows. Mass was more like a self-service cafeteria where one pays then eats, than a restaurant where one eats then pays. My mother put in a nickel for me, and a dime for her. She wasn’t about to pay for Cecilia, who was sleeping. My mother, I noticed, was always friendlier with her neighbours before the Eucharist, when they would shake her hand and say, “Peace be with you,” than when they passed her the basket.

  The priest held a wafer out to me: “The body of Christ.”

  I saw myself as a composite creature of the Middle Ages. My mouth was open like a young bird’s, my tongue flat as a cow’s, and my teeth as buck as a rabbit’s. As the wafer laid on my tongue, I tried not to think that Christ’s entire body was in my mouth, compressed to a bite-size portion for my own salvation.

  With my tongue, I tried moving Him from left to right but He stuck to the roof of my mouth and though I knew it was bad manners, I had to use a finger to get Him down. However I attempted to encourage myself, I could not bring myself to chew Him. My saliva rose and eventually softened Him, until He was like a tiny mouthful of dough, which I swallowed. If I am completely honest, I must admit that I was glad to be rid of Him; He was far from the most delectable thing I’d been forced to eat. I concentrated on my body to see if I felt a difference now that He was in me, becoming an integral part of me. I know this will sound strange, but it felt as if the dough began to rise, to expand until He filled me, stretched me out. My skin tingled everywhere and I was filled with a sensation of well-being I had never known before. Organ music and voices of all ages mixed. Christ was in me. I could feel Him, it was like love growing. It was rapture.

  A bit of stray Eucharist found itself trapped within the crevice of my molar. With my tongue, I nudged it out, wondering if it weren’t by chance the finger or some other small leftover from Our Saviour, when an amazing thing happened. Where for so many years the idea of eating flesh had accumulated into a mountain of revulsion, this last thought suddenly pushed my revulsion to such an extreme that it was like toiling up one side of the mountain before tumbling down the other side. I was unprepared. I had only seen the first half of the mountain I thought went eternally up.