Primordial Soup Read online

  Barry was holding his Adam’s apple. There was nothing of an apple at all in there, only cartilage and meat! The apple’s skin was clearly human skin, and the apple’s juice was recognizably warm and red. Segments of thin lip skin dangled in my mouth like that fine outer skin of a peeled onion. My new braces had grated my inner cheeks like a Parmesan shredder. When my mother heard on the radio that overbites could cause migraines later on in life, she had finally given in. Before Mr. Liverpool had quite reached us, Barry tackled me again.

  Barry, Cecilia and I were suspended from the school bus for the remainder of the year, such was Mr. Liverpool’s verdict after weighing each of our tearful versions and wounds. He saw that my front tooth was chipped. (It had been chipped against the driveway years earlier, but if Barry’s pulling of my hair didn’t show, I was forced to substitute it with something else.) Barry had a bite mark around his apple. The gap at the base of the throat between the clavicles swelled outwards like a blood-filled blister.

  Mrs. Ramsey picked up her son with the silence and rapidity of one accustomed to his behavioural problems. Once again, Mr. Liverpool dialled our number. I never should have told him where my mother was.

  When they arrived, I think my mother wasn’t aware that she was still holding onto her bowling bag, nor that one of those one third fractions of a pencil you get in bowling alleys and Yahtzee boxes was still behind her ear, squishing a soft, blonde curl. Ursula nodded to each of us apologetically, as if she had just barged in on a sacramental service because she’d opened the wrong door. They listened to my side of the story, which was the filtered truth, but my mother’s face flushed so excessively that I found myself continuing my descriptions more mildly.

  My mother confronted Mr. Liverpool, “So! You! Why you punishin’ my daughters?!” Her index finger was like a dagger ready to stab him in the face.

  Mr. Liverpool explained how we were to serve as examples that you do not take authority into your own hands.

  “You hear her! De boy, he was both’ring her! An’ she, she defen’ her sis’er!”

  Mr. Liverpool was the frail, pallid Protestant type, with white hair and a three piece suit, who had never yelled or been yelled at in his life, even as a child. His strong principles made him insist that I should have gone to a superintendent for assistance.

  “Someone, dey attack you, you wait ’til you are murder-ed dead to go to de super tendant??”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “You do? You wait ’til you are murder-ed dead?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Mr. Liverpool returned his face to his paperwork on his desk so my mother would get the hint it was time to leave. He pulled a ballpoint pen out of a tight bouquet of pens and pencils; paper-clips thrown in here and there were stuck between the wooden and plastic stems like petals.

  I don’t know if my mother was trying to prove her point or to simply vent steam, but she rammed her bowling bag into Mr. Liverpool’s back, repeating mercilessly with each consecutive blow, “Now wha’ you do! Now wha’ you do?! Eh? Eh? You call a super tendant?”

  Mr. Liverpool, understandably outraged, for enclosed in that red, white and blue segmented leather bag, was a fourteen pound bowling ball, stood to demand, “Leave this office immediately!” He trembled uncontrollably, which made him look a decade older in the span of a minute.

  “Olga, please, calm down you, calm down you,” pleaded Ursula, thinking that maybe if she resorted to my mother’s syntax, her words might sink in more.

  Cecilia acted as if nothing were going on. How one ought to behave was to her nonsensically abstract. She took people for the way they were and never expected variations of thought or temper from them. Cecilia, I thought, would make a good wife.

  “I pay for dis office, it belong to me as much as it belon’ to you! Who you tink you are?!”

  My mother did everything she could to get out of paying taxes, yet everything public, I noticed, belonged to her. She crossed her hands over her abdomen and concentrated.

  “Mom!” I exclaimed, fearing the worst was to come and it did.

  “Mótina!” gasped Cecilia, even she blushed this time. I guess as my mother’s own flesh and blood, she felt somewhat organically responsible for what had just occurred.

  “You wan’ I do again?”

  My mother now defied all of us in the office and I think she did try indeed, aiming her posterior towards Mr. Liverpool who had taken refuge behind a waste basket filled with reams of yellow legal paper.

  Mr. Liverpool quietly mentioned that if I were too indisposed to seek help from a school authority, that Cecilia easily could have, and it was not proper conduct for a schoolgirl to have kicked a fallen boy in the head. With that, he gently asked if he could be of further assistance to us.

  My mother said, “Yes. You keep you big words to youse’f.”

  Outside, our mother gave us a choice. Feeling that she had already paid for our public transportation in her income taxes, the ones that she deducted to nearly zero the last few years, and thus unwilling to repay a supplement for car fuel, either we had to ask Barry Ramsey’s mother if she would give us a ride to school with him, or get up at five in the morning and walk.

  Cecilia and I chose to walk.

  CHAPTER 14

  “To my biby I am prou’ of, you work very har’, you deser’ wha’ you get.”

  My mother lifted her glass and, it almost goes without saying, her chin in the air. Fishing nets were strung up on the walls around us as though we were part of the catch, (clients, or suckers as my mother would put it when she would have to pay for anything). One dollar bills with signatures on them were tacked on the wall behind the cashier. My mother looked at these with distaste.

  “I hope you order-ed wha’ you wan’. It’s de las’ supper.”

  “The last supper before she goes,” protested Cecilia, “You make it sound like she’s gonna die.”

  “Wait an’ see. She’s goin’ to ge’ so smart, she’s goin’ to forget her Mótina.”

  “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God,” I quoted.

  “Tell me, Kate, honey, from de ten tousand dollars dey give you, you get sometin’?”

  “No, Mom, I already told you, it shall cover all my expenses, but I don’t get any cash in the palm of my hand, no.”

  “Yes, but say you don’ go?”

  “I will go.”

  “Yes, but jus’ say you don’, you get to keep de money?”

  I saw what she was getting at and felt indignation stirring in me.

  “The goal is an education, Mom, not monetary gain.”

  Cecilia cut in, “I thought ‘the wisdom of this world was foolishness with God?’ ”

  “Yes, but you don’ eat very much, do you get some o’ de scholarship back for dat, I hope?”

  “The cost per meal is the same whether I eat big or small amounts.”

  My scalp was sore and my eyes felt almond-shaped. At dawn every morning, I took three strands of my hair, one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost, and entwined them into oneness.

  “Den you be smart an’ eat!”

  “Yeah, eat! You!” Cecilia imitated our mother with her top-lip curled under so that one could see the gums; she poked my cheek harder than my mother had.

  The waiter came back with three plates balancing on his arms.

  “But wha’ are you suppose to become? I don’ understan’?”

  “I have requirements to fulfil from the college of arts and letters, and from the college of math and sciences. By my junior year, I’ll have to confirm a major. I will at that time commit myself to theology.”

  “Yes, bu’ wha’ job will it bring? You?”

  “What do you want to be?” asked Cecilia.

  “I don’t quite know,” I gave my braid a tug.

  “Den why you waste you time in school instead of to take de ten tousand dollars! You people, you go to school, you so smart, I don’ understan’, you so stupid!”
<
br />   “I have two years to decide.”

  “Twenty tousand dollar, you know how much furn’ture you have for dat, you keep for de rest of you life?!”

  “I’m not a pharaoh. I’m not going to bring furniture with me to the grave!”

  “You won’t bring books either,” smiled Cecilia.

  “I am absent in the flesh,” I hymned to myself.

  “You don’ always need so much salt to eat! Cecilia, honey, say a blessin’, all o’ us we here toget’her …”

  My mother interrupted Cecilia before she was done, “Don’ be a mule head, Kate. You sit in de library where de law students, dey go, an’ you marry me a rich man!”

  “I don’t care for a man,” I politely stated, as though I were refusing a piece of lemon meringue pie.

  “You’ll change, you’ll see. Whe’ de right one comes ‘long.”

  “He’ll have to come along on water before she’s interested.”

  “Dat’s wha’ we all think, den it’s love on firs’ sight.”

  “You mean love on first bite,” giggled Cecilia.

  “Please, don’t worry. I’m not afraid of such things. My studies are what are important to me, mostly I wish to live with God.”

  “God, forget God! Where He lives, dere is no pain, no hunger, no mis’ry, but dere is also no boat, no swimmin’ pool, no colour TV!”

  “Mótina!” I exclaimed, my hand to my heart.

  “Too much God, an’ you’re not ready whe’ de wolf, he comes to eat de little lamb!” she pointed at me with the prongs of her fork, “an’ God, He don’ pay de electric bills, de tel’phone bills, de groc’ry bills!”

  “Not unless you’re the Pope,” joked Cecilia.

  “God, He make de grass grow, de trees grow, He make you hair grow, but He don’ pay for you to cut dem!”

  “Oh, please …”

  “You remember you mot’her, wha’ she says to you. You listen, too, Cecilia. Maybe one day I’m no’ here to give you, too, good free a’vice. So listen. Whe’ you meet de man, any man, if de milk is free, dere is no reason for him to buy de cow. Remember dese words! Dey are golden!”

  “So what does he have to do, pay for the milk?” asked Cecilia.

  “You milk him!” cried my mother, excited by now, “Either he’s goin’ to milk you or you’re goin’ to milk him. If you smart, you milk him!”

  “If either of you don’t mind, the only thing I wish to drink is a cup of God’s holiness, and the only thing I wish to devour, are His Holy Scriptures.”

  “You should have say so in de firs’ place, it would cost me less tonigh’!”

  “There’s a draft in here with all the wings flapping around.”

  “Shut you mouths both o’ you now! Eat.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I arrived an hour early to get a seat in the first row. Half an hour later, no one had shown up. Nervously, I checked my schedule. Room 241, nine a.m., Old Testament.

  I joined my palms for morning prayer, nibbling my tongue until it bled slightly. This, I knew, must be done daily.

  At nine, the other students crowded into the last two rows. Doctor Westway strolled in with a cup of coffee, finished his doughnut, and clapped his hands free of sugar. He wore a red and black lumberjack shirt, black jeans, and high-top trainers with no laces. The curls of his hair descended below his collar. He reminded me of an undercover policeman.

  With a stifled burp, he asked, “Who wrote La Dame aux camélias?”

  “Flaubert?”

  “Alexandre Dumas?”

  “Which one?”

  “The father?”

  “The son?”

  “Who wrote the first doctrine on spontaneous generation?”

  “Francis Bacon?”

  “I’m asking you. Well?”

  No answer emerged despite Dr. Westway’s expectant stare. “The Symposium?” he scanned the faces of the class.

  “Socrates, Plato, Aga you know, Eryxima-whatever, and all them others at the booze party …” advanced a muscular individual in army trousers.

  Dr. Westway didn’t comment on the answer before continuing, “Who wrote the Bible?”

  I was the only one to raise my palms towards the sky.

  “Yes?”

  “God.” I rejoiced.

  “God?”

  “How do you like to be called?”

  “Kate.”

  “Kate. Good. Can you start reading Genesis to us. I hope you’ll be using the Oxford revised standard version I put on your reading list.” He squinted at the minuscule pocket Bible on my desk.

  Having read in the bulletin that Dr. Westway held a Doctorate in Theology from Princeton, I assumed he would like a fervent recitation. My goodwill was short-lived. Dr. Westway stopped me constantly, asked me to go back to different passages until I was confused and had to refer back to the pages of my Bible. The thinness of its pages didn’t allow vigorous manipulation, and I lost the corners of some in my haste.

  Vegetation concerned him particularly.

  I read, “Let the earth cause grass to shoot forth, vegetation bearing seed …”

  “Stop! What day was that on?”

  “And there came to be evening, morning, and a third day, sir.”

  “What day was man made on?”

  “The sixth.”

  Dr. Westway had me proceed to the second chapter, where I read, “Now there was yet no bush of the field found in the earth and no vegetation of the field.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “God makes man out of dust, or clay, or whatever,” boasted the boy in army trousers, hugging himself as if to make sure he was now made out of muscle.

  “So if I get this right, in the first version, vegetation precedes man. In the second version, man precedes vegetation. Hm. Did God blunder?”

  How dare he postulate such blasphemy. Surely, the confusion must be attributed to the translations from Hebrew to Latin, from old English to modern. I said something to this effect.

  “Who else besides me reads Hebrew around here?” asked Dr. Westway.

  One student, so gaunt that the Coca-Cola glasses he wore across his face seemed a prank of cruelty, had the force to raise a long finger. The student only pretended to read. I watched his eyes pivoting in the wrong direction, from east to west.

  “Is the contradiction there?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  For the next several minutes, Dr. Westway referred to the creation of the earth as the “seven day myth” opposed to the “Adam and Eve myth”. I was dumbfounded. Sacrilege was not what I had expected from a college called Trinity. Dr. Westway lectured on the “hodgepodge” of authors of this “bestseller”, making jokes about the copyright had the “book” been written today, as though Jehovah and Job were mere “characters”.

  “This is not a book!” I snapped.

  There were a few snorts of accord.

  “What is it then?” Dr. Westway asked me.

  I stood up to say, “Jehovah God is the heavenly author of this sacred library of six and sixty testimonies.”

  The applause was meagre, but there.

  Dr. Westway stated, “I might as well make it clear, this class has nothing to do with belief in God. You are all free to believe or not to believe in whoever or whatever you want, I don’t give a damn. This class is about a book, some parts are magnificent, others are trashy literature, blatant propaganda, some of the ideas hold true today, others are long outdated, some of the authors had talent, others stank. If anyone has a problem with that, he or she is free to withdraw. Drop/adds are until Wednesday. No one’ll ever know you were here.”

  As I walked out the door, I stumbled.

  I turned the knob quietly and before I even stepped in, found myself the concern of an entire population of faces.

  “You must be Lester, Kate. There’s one seat left over there.”

  My neck sank into my shoulders as if a meek bearing could quiet the sound of my steps. Professor Ranji scratched the formula
of an amino acid onto the chalkboard. He looked at me peculiarly before writing GLUTAMINE. He added glutamine onto leucine, proline onto serine, valine onto tryptophan. The amino acids linked like chains.

  Dark hairs covered Professor Ranji’s knuckles. Like air plants, hair trailed out of his ears and nose. His eyes, dark and a trifle protruding, were protected by thick brows. His untidy beard framed teeth as white as any sun-bleached clam shell, and so straight, they seemed filed that way.

  Professor Ranji began his lecture, “There was no life whatsoever on the young earth; for over a billion years, it was covered with boiling water, you can imagine the steamy vapours, the moist heat … but no life … no life whatsoever …”

  He continued, “The early conditions of the earth can be simulated in the laboratory, hydrogen, water vapour, methane, ammonia, heat and electrical discharges break the gas molecules down and they re-form in these very organic molecules we have been talking about. Scientists call this period on earth, lasting a few billions years, primordial soup, oh, just fancy jargon for chicken broth, you know, water, amino acids, simple proteins, harbingers of the first living cells … Um, yes, Kate?”

  “You mean to tell me that the origin of life is the birth of protein?! The miracle of life is but a fatty acid? The first living organism but a simple cell already concerned with assimilation?”

  Professor Ranji smiled. “The living and the non-living are made up of the same elements, so to speak. One of the characteristics that separate the living from the non-living is the capacity to steal energy from the environment and transform it to its own use.”

  I clamped my arms between my knees so they would not be seen shaking.

  “Then the definition of life is: an edible, that eats?”

  “Depends on what you mean by eat. All forms of life do not have mouths. Autotrophs steal their energy from the sun, you know, photosynthesis. You and I can’t do that. Edible for some doesn’t mean edible for others, look at the detrivores, you know, worms, maggots, vultures, hyenas, it seems they steal the scraps no one else wants.”