The Kitchen Daughter (19 page)

“This is for mourners to wash,” she says. “Leave it alone.”

I stay far away from it the rest of the time.

There’s one tradition Gert doesn’t need to describe for me. I can see for myself. The members of the family are all wearing torn black ribbons pinned to their clothing. Just a small rip. At first it looks accidental, but everyone on a bench has a ribbon, and a tear in it. It can’t all be accident.

It preoccupies me until it’s time to leave. It seems such the right expression of grief.
I am sad, so in whatever small way I can, I will tear myself apart.
They’ve taken what’s on the inside and made it visible. If I thought it wouldn’t be inappropriate I’d do it myself.

Someone drives us back to the temple, and Gert and I walk through the chilly evening light back up Spruce Street to my house. At the base of the stairs, Gert says, “Thank you, Ginny. Good night.”

“Good night.”

She’s walking away and it’s almost too late but I want to know, so I ask, “Why did you take me to another funeral?”

“It was not the funeral,” she says.

“It was similar.”

It’s hard to see her in the dark. We need more streetlights.

Gert says, “Ginny, you cannot stay in the house.”

“No! Not you too!” I start to get outraged, try to control myself. “Amanda says I can’t stay, I didn’t think you agreed.”

“You misunderstand,” she says. “You should live in it. But you shouldn’t stay there all the time. You can do more.”

She puts her hand on my forehead, gives her blessing, and goes.

Maybe she’s right.

I let myself in. On the first floor there are no lights on. I feel
Midnight brush against my ankles, so I walk to the kitchen and put some food in her dish. Then I go upstairs to look for the humans. They are all together. Amanda is reading the girls a bedtime story, and when I stand in the doorway she doesn’t look up. But Parker sees me and says, “Aunt Ginny! Mom, can Aunt Ginny read us a story?”

“How about it?” asks Amanda, and I nod silently.

We trade places, me at the bedside and Amanda in the doorway, and the girls settle back down. I read in a small puddle of light. Parker is asleep before I even finish the second page, but Shannon watches with tiny open eyes, staring at the ceiling instead of the book. She looks like I feel. When I reach to turn out the light, she doesn’t protest, and says nothing as the room goes dark.

I climb the stairs to my own room and take up the same unmoving position, arms at my sides, covers up to my chin. Downstairs a grown-up voice murmurs. Amanda must be saying good night to her husband, thousands of miles away. I catch a few stray words. I hear
vanish
and
tomorrow
and
lay down the law
. Somewhere in the house the tags on the cat’s collar jingle, almost too faint to be heard.

To keep the faces of the mourners from troubling me in my sleep, I lose myself in the feel of sriracha, trying to remember every last note, to wipe everything else away. The burn of the chili heat, sharp but round. The soft, garlicky note in the back. The particular feel of the pain, not like a pinprick or a knife cut, but both blunter and sharper, a pencil eraser pressed hard against the soft meat of the tongue like a cattle brand. A taste that is somehow painful and positive. A riddle of chemical compounds, not human emotions. The only kind I know I can solve.

I
N THE MORNING
I am thinking about Amanda’s plan for me to live with her family, and whether I should. I’ve been so fixated on staying in the house, not selling the house, it’s hard to shift gears. But would it be so bad?

But Ma never finished that sentence.
It’s very important that you not let Amanda
… talk me into leaving the house, maybe? Is Amanda going to hurt someone? Me? Herself? There are too many possibilities, and it paralyzes me.

Amanda looks up from her laptop at the dining room table and says, “Hey, I was just thinking about you. Do you want some breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

“Parker’s still asleep,” she says. “And you know Shannon is wherever your cat is, she’s plain obsessed with that thing. But honestly this is good. We need to talk.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been putting this off because we’ve both been so upset. But now I don’t think it’s right anymore. I think we just need to face it.”

“Face what?”

“Your problem.”

There’s a soft sound behind me. I glance over at the steps and see Midnight walking down. Her white tail swishes in the air, from right to left and back, dignified, slow. I try not to let the hypnotic movement distract me.

“I’ve told you, I don’t have a problem.”

“You think normal people hide in closets during their parents’ funerals? You think normal people mutter down at their shoes instead of looking people in the eye? You think normal people shriek at the top of their lungs when someone just barely grazes their arm in public?”

“I don’t always do that. I hardly ever do.”

“But you do sometimes. Mom did the best she could with you, I know. But I think she might have been able to help you more if she knew what you have.”

“A personality.”

Amanda says, “Ginny, that’s not cute anymore.”

“I’m not trying to be cute,” I tell her.

A little trilling pattern of footsteps, muffled by the carpet, follows Midnight down the stairs. I see Shannon crouched on the bottom step, stretching her hand toward the white, soft-looking tail, just beyond her reach.

Amanda says, “Ginny, did you hear me?”

“Sorry,” I apologize absently. All my attention is eaten up watching the cat and the girl and concentrating on not telling my sister to put a figurative sock in it.

“I said … I think … Ginny, I think you need more help.”

“I have Gert.”

“Not that kind of help.”

I know that. Midnight lowers herself off the steps onto the floor and sits down to lick a paw like it’s the most urgent thing in the world that her paw be licked. Shannon leans a touch too far and tips over, and she falls off the bottom step, falling too fast to catch herself, striking her head on the hardwood floor. Her howl immediately fills the house.

Amanda is on her feet. “Shannon, honey, it’s all right, it’s all right.” She sweeps her up. “C’mere, baby. It’s all right.”

Shannon is sobbing as Amanda strokes the back of her hair. Amanda twists to face me and says, “You’re not getting off the hook. Listen. This can be easy. All I want is for you to see a doctor. Get you diagnosed. Treated. It could make things easier.”

Shannon’s cry drops and rises through the octaves. I can’t tell, it might be getting louder. Amanda stops stroking and just holds her head with a flat palm, pressing gently. Midnight scurries away.

“No,” I tell Amanda. “No doctor.”

“One of these days you’re going to get hurt. That’s why I worry. You nearly set the place on fire the day of the funeral. And you let strange men in the kitchen. And you vanish for hours with the cleaning lady. I mean, Ginny, it’s just not normal.”

“Just one.”

“One hour?”

“One man.”

“You’re going to get hurt,” she says.

I stare her in the throat.

“Those are the facts. Shannon, hush, sweetie, it’s okay, all right?”

Shannon is crying some words but I can’t make them out. She cries them into her mother’s ear.

“Here, Ginny, you try,” says Amanda. “She wants you.”

I hold my hands out and Shannon comes over. She’s heavy. Immediately her head drops onto my shoulder as if drawn there by a magnet. My hand goes up to cradle her without any help from my brain. I look at Amanda. She’s staring at me, arms folded. I know what that means. The shoulder of her shirt is a different color than the rest, wet with Shannon’s tears.

She says, “Please. I know you don’t think you need it. But do it for me, Ginny. To make me happy. Just go to the doctor and get screened.”

“Screened” makes me think of food getting rubbed through a screen. It’s a French technique. Soups get screened, and sauces. Forced through a tamis or a chinois. Everything that comes out is smooth and all the rough parts get left behind, thrown away. I don’t want to be screened.

Amanda steps toward me. She speaks in a low voice. “There’s a word for it. For your condition.”

“Shyness?”

“No.”

“Social awkwardness?”

“No.”

“Iconoclasm?”

Shannon is much quieter now, not howling, only whimpering. Amanda steps even closer and puts her hands over her daughter’s tiny ears.

“God damn it, Ginny. It’s called Asperger’s syndrome.”

I say, “I’ll stick with iconoclasm.”

“Hear me out.” She leaves her hands on Shannon’s ears. We’re all standing very, very close together. “This one, at preschool, they told us she was unusually quiet. Plays alone, doesn’t talk as much as the others. I’m sure she’s fine. But I started doing some research on the Internet, and when I saw this list of symptoms for this syndrome, Asperger’s, I was like, oh my God! That’s Ginny.”

I snap, “I don’t have a
syndrome
, Amanda.”

“Just think about it. Just consider it.”

“No.” If I weren’t holding Shannon I would bolt for the closet right now.

Amanda won’t stop. “And I talked to Angelica about it and she said she had a cousin who has it, or something like it, and all he had to do was take some pills and now he’s fine.”

“I don’t want to take pills.”

“Don’t be mad. I’m trying to help.”

Parker comes thundering down the stairs, and Amanda runs to the bottom of the staircase in a flash. The little girl is unsteady on her feet. My arms are getting tired, so I move in the direction of the chair by the fireplace, thinking I’ll set Shannon down.

Amanda yells back at me, “We’re not finished!”

Shannon puts her hands over her ears.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

“Mommy’s loud,” she says, speaking into my shoulder.

“Everything’s all right,” I tell her. She says nothing, but my arms have gone from tired to tingling. “Do you want to get down?”

“Okay.”

I set Shannon down. She immediately heads toward the couch and lies down on the floor in front of it, her head on a throw rug.

“Why is she doing that?” asks Amanda.

“It’s where the cat went,” I say. Parker walks over to her sister and mimics her, lying down with her head against the floor.

Amanda speaks softly to me. “Just go to the doctor. It’s one little thing. For me.”

“No.”

“Come on. After all I’m prepared to do for you.”

“What is that?”

“Open my home to you. Let you stay with us.”

I think about it, and I say, “But I don’t even want to stay with you.”

“This is how I know something’s wrong with you,” says Amanda. “Because I can’t make you see reason.”

Parker says, “What’s wrong with Aunt Ginny?”

I say, “Nothing at all.” But that’s not what Amanda thinks. Amanda wants to label me. Like a piece of fruit. A cut of meat.

Shannon says, “The cat won’t come out.”

“Just let her be!” shouts Amanda, too loud again.

My sister wants to put a word on me.
It’s very important that you not let Amanda
… “put a word on you”? Is that what Ma was saying? It makes sense.

Amanda says, “God, are you even listening to me?”

I tell her the truth. “No.”

“This is your future we’re talking about!”

“You’re talking about it. I’m not.”

“This is the bottom line,” she says. “Will you go to the doctor to make me happy?”

“No.”

“That makes me unhappy.”

“Then be unhappy,” I say. We’re all unhappy sometimes. I don’t see why Amanda should get to be exempt.

She says, “Oh, I’m unhappy, believe me. Believe me.”

Parker says, “Mommy, why are you unhappy? You should be happy instead!”

“I know I should, sweetie,” she says, “but sometimes people just won’t listen. Hey, tell you what. Do you and your sister want to go out for breakfast?”

“Yeah!” says Parker.

“Shannon, do you want pancakes?”

“Pancakes!” says Shannon, getting up off the carpet.

“That’s silly, I can make pancakes here,” I say, but Amanda’s already walking out the door, taking her daughters’ winter coats off the coatrack as she goes, and they scurry out behind her.

Okay. She’s upset. She needs space. That’s fine, if that’s what she needs. But I’m not going to do what she wants me to do, and not just to be contrary. Because I think I’ve finally figured out what the ghosts are warning me about.

If Amanda puts a word on me, I won’t be equal anymore. She can run the show. She can take the house, and kick me out, and sell it if she wants. If I have a disorder, she’s in charge.

It doesn’t matter what the disorder is—I don’t have it—but I should probably educate myself anyway. That way I can prove it. I’ve heard the word, I don’t remember where—maybe at school? But I only know how to spell it. I don’t actually know what it is. In that way Asperger’s is like fregola, or kohlrabi.

I go to look up Asperger’s in the dictionary, but it’s not there. The page it would be on is a good one, with lots of food words.
Asparagus. Aspartame. Aspic.

Then the words turn bad.

Asocial.

Asphyxiate.

I close the book and walk into my parents’ room and kneel down on the floor of the closet and put my hands inside Dad’s shoes. I stay
there for a long while. I break one of Ma’s cardinal rules. (
Cardinal
is on a page with
cardiology
and
cardoons
.) I let the one-hour battery recharging turn into two hours, even three. She would be aghast at the indulgence. She would say,
Ginny, my word!
But she isn’t here to say it.

When I come back out again, Amanda and the girls are still gone. I go upstairs to my room and sit down with my laptop in the alcove facing the back of the house, and I pull up Kitcherati. I read a thread about kitchen injuries. I have countless little cuts and burns and bruises, but nothing serious other than the cut across the pad of my thumb that Dad was too late to fix. Even that one isn’t as bad as what a lot of people on Kitcherati are writing about. People talk about burning themselves on spun sugar, which is extremely hot and dangerous. Or they cut off parts of their fingers in meat slicers. They swallow pure wasabi, sit down on griddles, step somehow into boiling stock-pots. The kitchen is a place of sharp and hot and deadly things. Ma never would have taught me to cook if I hadn’t kept going in there, over and over. But either she taught me right or I learned right, because I never hurt myself that badly again. Amanda thinks I’m not capable, but I am.