Life From Scratch (2 page)

She never made hamburgers again.

My older brother Michael and I spent much of our early childhood under the kitchen table, dancing wooden animals across the linoleum. We pretended the old trestle was a cave while Mom stitched odd jobs above us to make ends meet. Our father had vanished long ago: Mom was the only parent we knew. Sometimes Michael would inspect my scarred fingertips. “Maybe you’re an alien!” he’d exclaim over the hum of Mom’s ancient Singer. I can still see those laughing blue eyes; even in the shadows they sparkled.

I loved to watch Michael laugh. His wiry body wound up from the effort, tears filled his eyes, and his dimpled cheeks puffed out like sails. When he teased me, I’d sulk, lowering my face until my straight-browed, four-story forehead was all anyone could see, my tiny chin and owl eyes buried in my chest. But with the wisdom that came from being 21 months my senior, Michael knew just where to poke my sides until a giggle escaped.

Decades later, whenever I sat alone looking at my marred fingerprints, regret would overwhelm me, as though the rough and tumble course of our childhood had been set in motion by my careless curiosity as an infant. My injury instigated our initial visit from the Department of Social Services; though the judge dismissed the case, there was no wiping the slate clean once our names were in the system. Over the years, the kitchens I grew up in and around continued to draw me in, like a moth to a flame, as though I might recapture whatever innocence I’d lost in that warm, fragrant space.

There are mysteries buried in the recesses of every kitchen—every crumb kicked under the floorboard is a hidden memory. But some kitchens are made of more. Some kitchens are
everything
.

A few years after I burned myself, when I was four and Michael was six, Mom moved us to a streetcar suburb of Boston called Jamaica Plain (though whatever plains had been in those parts had long since been covered by concrete). Our one-bedroom apartment was on the first floor of a skinny triple-decker house with cream siding and evergreen trim. In those days, gangs roamed the parks, and shifty figures lurked by the towering railway known as the “Elevator Train” at the end of our street. But the meager rent was all Mom could afford.

I still remember our first night there—how the empty rooms echoed, how the December air made the tip of my nose cold, and how Mom turned on the oven to warm the rooms more quickly. Michael and I sat on the bare mattress—the only item in the apartment, borrowed from a friend. It felt like midnight, but we were too wide-eyed to sleep.

Mom stood, hands on her broad, bony hips, scanning the inky windows and the snow beyond. She was short; barely five foot two, with a petite, oval face that made her cocoa-bean eyes and frizzy curls more prominent. But Mom could fill any room she walked into with one of her signature looks: dark angled brows knit tightly together in what appeared to be a scowl.

A car screeched by as she stood in front of the windows. Or maybe it was a truck. All I remember is the loud bass rattling the windowpane and Mom’s capsized eyebrows.

“Why are you always mad, Mom?” I whispered, peering up at her.

She turned to me, her Peruvian knit skirt catching a puff of air.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, her brow smoothing. “That’s just how my face is shaped.” She rummaged through her bag. “What this apartment needs are some curtains.” She left the room, returning moments later with a sheet that she draped over the window nearest our heads. For about a week the three of us slept huddled together on the mattress under a scratchy wool blanket.

The final sleeping arrangements soon became clear: Mom in the bread-box bedroom on the other side of the kitchen, Michael and I each against our own wall in the living room. Since he was half a head taller, he got a huge, twin-size mattress, while I slept on a smaller bed cobbled together out of reclaimed two-by-fours. Mom sewed curtains for the windows and then another, from an old lace tablecloth, to drape along the posts that rose up at regular intervals across the length of my bed. She called it my castle.

In the morning, we’d shuffle into the kitchen to pick out our clothes for the day. The room felt enormous, despite the meager floor plan, lack of counter space, and awkward, freestanding stove. But the deeper we explored the space, the more the room offered. It was not just for cooking and eating; it was also a closet, Mom’s sewing room, and with nowhere else to convene, our living room.

Since our beds took up most of the actual living room, the kitchen was the only place to put our dresser. Never one to let a perfectly good surface go to waste, Mom found a piece of scrap laminate and placed it on top to create a makeshift prep area. She screwed hooks into the side to hang her cast-iron pans and bolted an old, hand-cranked mill to the edge, showing us how to grind our own flour. Shaking clouds of flour out of my socks became an inevitable part of our morning routine, despite Mom’s constant reminders that I should close my drawers all the way.

As time went by, Mom added more and more inventive details to our new home. One day while exploring the Bunker Hill Monument, she found an old railroad tie. Impervious to the stares and whispers of strangers, she lugged it home in the trunk of her car and bolted the enormous timber to the wall above the dresser. Here she stored a jumble of brown glass spice jars. “Spices do better when kept in the dark,” she explained. “It keeps them potent.” The finishing touch was a few silvery branches of eucalyptus suspended from the railroad tie. They filled the air with their honeyed, woodsy scent.

Every morning after breakfast, Mom would take out her old Singer and begin her freelance work as a seamstress, hemming the wool trousers and silk skirts of lawyers and bourgeois homemakers while Michael and I played at her feet. She found the work from ads tacked to billboards around town. When things were slow, she made our dress clothes too, converting a 25-cent pair of XXL pants from the thrift store into a Christmas dress for me or a blazer for Michael. With the scraps she made my doll’s clothes. My job was to collect the fabric from the linoleum floor and thread the needle.

Through the years, Mom approached food the same way she approached sewing: Not a scrap should be wasted. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” she’d always say, promising to ship our leftovers to China if we didn’t eat up. So we choked down what we were given: heaping mounds of spinach tossed with nutmeg and green onion, fried liver, rice-stuffed cabbage rolls, corn chowder, and the dreaded block of “welfare cheese,” as long as my forearm and as thick as my thigh. The processed bites tasted like wax, but Mom said we needed the calcium.

Mom practiced what she preached. When our molasses sandwiches were flanked by slices of suspiciously fuzzy bread, she would shrug off our complaints, saying a little mold never hurt anyone. If we had browning bananas, she’d whip up a batch of her Hungarian crepes—a recipe she learned from her father—and let Michael and I roll them up together with some yogurt and maple syrup. The result, endlessly drippy and sweet, was one of our favorite childhood treats—one that made us believe that our lives were as ordinary as any other.

Overnight Crepes

Even though she’s half Hungarian, Mom calls these thin pancakes crepes instead of “palacsinta.” And perhaps they are crepes;
most palacsinta are prepared with carbonated water to lighten the batter. Mom omits this trick, instead relying on an overnight rest to make a silkier batter. Like magic, all the lumps are gone in the morning
.

Still, like any good Hungarian, Mom makes an art of rolling up the crepes with a wide range of sweet and savory fillings. Her simplest preparations are smeared with apricot jam, sprinkled with crushed walnuts, and stacked under a dusting of powdered sugar. Sometimes, they’re rolled around leftover chicken paprika and reheated in a warm oven. My favorite is a Hungarian-American hybrid: sliced fruit (whatever is on hand), a spoon of yogurt, and a drizzling of maple syrup. Speaking of syrup—traditionalists will say to keep the batter fluid; it should pour like cold maple syrup. Thin as needed with extra milk
.

• 2 large eggs

• 1 cup milk

• 1 cup flour

• 1½ teaspoons almond or vanilla extract

• Pinch of salt

• Butter, for cooking

Finishing touches:

Seasonal fruit (bananas, pears, apples, peaches, berries), apricot jam, maple syrup, yogurt, powdered sugar

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, flour, extract, and salt. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, whisk the batter smooth. Preheat a 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat with a little butter. When it sizzles, ladle in ¼ cup batter. I lift the pan a few inches and slowly twist my wrist until the batter spreads evenly over the surface to fill the entire pan. Return to the burner and cook until the top of the crepe changes from shiny to dull, then flip. Cook a few more seconds, or until done. The first one is always a mess. Eat it, and carry on with the rest. Store cooked crepes in a warm oven until they are all cooked.

Finishing touch: Roll each crepe with desired fillings.

Makes 8 crepes

Though she could easily have plunked Michael and me down in front of a TV as she worked, Mom felt that this particular appliance should be used with caution. If we complained of boredom, she’d sit us down to write letters, design our own paper dolls, or read from her extensive children’s book collection, which included Leo Tolstoy’s
Fables for Children
. She kept “the boob tube” in her bedroom closet. No matter how many seams she had to stitch, she’d only bring out the two-dial black-and-white set once a week, for what she called “educational shows,” like
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Leave It to Beaver
, or Julia Child reruns. Sometimes Michael got to watch an old Western or a cop show called
CHiPs
.

Though I’m not sure how it qualified as educational, I was allowed to watch
The Addams Family
, starring apparent witches, a disembodied hand, and a big ball of walking, talking hair in sunglasses. Part of the fascination was that strangers liked to tell me I looked eerily like Wednesday Addams, the small black-haired girl with too-big eyes and straight-lipped face. Like her, my quiet stares seemed to unsettle the adults around me.

But it went deeper than that: These oddball TV characters made sense to me. Like Mom, they found the habits of conventional society ridiculous, and were genuinely surprised when neighbors abhorred their eccentric lifestyle. These misfits stood their ground, triumphing over their neighbors’ judgment and criticism.

I also loved watching Julia Child bumble and laugh her way through the kitchen. I must have been five when I told Mom that I wanted to make the roast lamb I’d seen Julia make on TV.