Crab Orchard Review Vol 8 No 2 S/S 2003

Cover: Four photographs by Jason Holland © 2003 Jason Holland is a student in Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Writers on Food

Taste the World

7

82

ISSN 1083-5571

$8.00us Vol. 8 No. 2

77108 3 5 5 7 1

$8.00

Evie Shockley Renee Soto Virgil Suárez Ira Sukrungruang Margaret C. Szumowski Molly Tenenbaum Jennifer Tonge Judith Vollmer Ronald Wallace Charles Harper Webb J. Weintraub Tina Wiseman S.L. Wisenberg Terry Wolverton Jake Adam York Zhang Er

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Jeff Mann Adrian Matejka John McNally Orlando Ricardo Menes Aimee Nezhukumatathil Soo Jin Oh Lucia Perillo Marilene Phipps Rohan Preston Meredith Reiches Lee Ann Roripaugh Gianna Russo Ruth L. Schwartz Rebecca Seiferle Amar Gaurav Shah Nancy Shih-Knodel

Volume 8, Number 2 Spring/Summer 2003

Elsa Arnett Rachel Berghash Wendy Bishop Lorna Knowles Blake Catherine Bowman Linda Casebeer Victoria Chang Huan-Hua Chye Geraldine Connolly Chauna Craig Deborah Cummins Chad Davidson Susan Elbe Cherryl Floyd-Miller Jeffrey Franklin Ana Garza Rigoberto González John Guzlowski Yona Harvey Ava Leavell Haymon M. Ayodele Heath Christopher Hennessy Julie Hensley James Hoch Anna Maria Hong Robin Leslie Jacobson Terry Kirts Karen Kovacik Anya Krugovoy Donna J. Gelagotis Lee Gareth Lee Joseph O. Legaspi Nan Leslie Shara Lessley Timothy Liu Joel Long Bob Lucky

Crab Orchard Review

In this volume:

A B ORCH A R R C D •

•

REVIEW

C RAB •

ORCH A R D •

REVIEW A JOURNAL OF CREATIVE WORKS

VOL. 8 NO. 2

“Hidden everywhere, a myriad leather seed-cases lie in wait . . .”

—“Crab Orchard Sanctuary: Late October” Thomas Kinsella Editor & Poetry Editor Allison Joseph

Founding Editor Richard Peterson

Prose Editor Carolyn Alessio

Managing Editor Jon Tribble

Editorial Interns Anne Clarkin Barbara Eidlin Reagan Hanley Keith McElmurry Kevin McKelvey Emily Ostendorf Steve Sawyer Crystal Schroeder Mark Vannier Courtney Wilson Jason Vaughan

Assistant Editors Tabaré Alvarez Curtis Crisler Melanie Dusseau Melanie Martin Mary Stepp Krista Marie Vondras Fred Von Drasek

Book Review Editor Jon Tribble

Spring/Summer 2003 ISSN 1083-5571

Board of Advisors Ellen Gilchrist Charles Johnson Rodney Jones Thomas Kinsella Richard Russo

The Department of English Southern Illinois University Carbondale

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Lines from Thomas Kinsella’s poem “Crab Orchard Sanctuary: Late October” are reprinted from Thomas Kinsella: Poems 1956-1973 (North Carolina: Wake Forest University Press, 1979) and appear by permission of the author.

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C RAB •

ORCH A R D •

REVIEW

SPRING/SUMMER 2003

VOLUME 8, NUMBER 2

FICTION AND PROSE Chauna Craig

To Taste

1

Julie Hensley

Bread Pudding

3

Nan Leslie

Chez Noir

42

John McNally

Duke’s

52

Orlando Ricardo Menes

Squid

55

Marilene Phipps

Meat

79

Ira Sukrungruang

The Man with the Buddha Heads

85

Tina Wiseman

Sucking on Figs

121

Terry Wolverton

Breath

130

Rachel Berghash

Vignettes from Without a River or Sea: A Memoir

169

Wendy Bishop

How One Food Leads to Another —A Recipe from Memory

178

Rigoberto González

Piña

219

Bob Lucky

Confessions of a Kaya Eater

224

J. Weintraub

My Mother’s Recipes

233

Book Reviews

Recent Titles by Martha Ronk, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Anthologies of Writing about Food and Culture by Italian American Women Writers and on Southern Food Writing

243

POETRY Elsa Arnett

Thousand Years

16

Lorna Knowles Blake

Dulce de Leche King Sugar

17 18

Catherine Bowman

Little Feasts

20

Linda Casebeer

The Object of Desire

21

Victoria Chang

KitchenAid Epicurean Stand Mixer Dragon Inn

23 24

Huan-Hua Chye

In France fourteen and skinny Bog Town

26 27

Geraldine Connolly

Morel Hunting Lost Summer House Blue Ware

30 31 32

Deborah Cummins

The Season’s First Apples

34

Chad Davidson

Truffle Strozzapreti Bread Ossi di Morto

35 37 38 40

Susan Elbe

Fish Fry at Harry’s Tap

59

Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Weaned: Breaking the habit of pork

61

Jeffrey Franklin

Cookin’ with the David Jones Trio

63

Ana Garza

Eating Cactus from a Jar

66

John Guzlowski

Hunger in the Labor Camps

67

Yona Harvey

Blessing Blue Crabs

71

Ava Leavell Haymon

The Witch Has Told You a Story

72

M. Ayodele Heath

The Dreamlife of Dr. Bledsoe’s Inner Pickaninny

73

Christopher Hennessy

Pear, Apple, Peach Meat

74 76

James Hoch

Snapper

78

Anna Maria Hong

Song and Steam Poem about Sushi

100 102

Robin Leslie Jacobson Red Pear

104

Terry Kirts

Eating Ortalons

105

Karen Kovacik

Song of the Sexy Kitchen Saints

106

Anya Krugovoy

Poppy Seeds French Toast

108 110

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

Journey for the Bread

111

Gareth Lee

Durian Gizzards Ice Kacang

113 114 116

Joseph O. Legaspi

The Red Sweater

118

Shara Lessley

The Pomegranate

119

Joel Long

Preparing the Artichoke

120

Jeff Mann

Galatoire’s

142

Adrian Matejka

Con Leche Not Enough Bread in the World

144 145

Aimee Nezhukumatathil Why I Crave Ribs Tonight Are You Making Dumb Cake?

146 147

Soo Jin Oh

Returning

148

Lucia Perillo

Nathan’s A Simple Campsong

150 152

Rohan Preston

Daily Bread

154

Meredith Reiches

Balducci’s, Greenwich Village

156

Lee Ann Roripaugh

Luscious Things

158

Gianna Russo

Three Feasts in Florence

161

Ruth L. Schwartz

Ripe Fig Apples Tangerine

164 165 166

Rebecca Seiferle

The Anecdote

167

Amar Gaurav Shah

Ode to Bombay Duck

188

Nancy Shih-Knodel

Making Dumplings

190

Evie Shockley

party of two

192

Renee Soto

Martín Palm Sunday Morning

194 195

Virgil Suárez

The Essence of Cardamom

196

Margaret C. Szumowski La Fiorentina

198

Molly Tenenbaum

Year of the Myriad French Bakeries 200

Jennifer Tonge

The Mexican Cooks Return The Bursa Peach

202 204

Judith Vollmer

The Coffee Line

205

Ronald Wallace

Hamburger Heaven

206

Charles Harper Webb

After Thirty Years, I Meet My Highschool Sweetheart in the Cookbook Section at Safeway

208

S.L. Wisenberg

In Restaurants

210

Jake Adam York

Fire To the Unconverted Pilgrimage

212 214 216

Zhang Er translated by Timothy Liu

Watermelon Juice

217

Contributors’ Notes

256

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003

267 278

A Note on Our Cover The four photographs on the cover of this issue are the work of Jason Holland, a freelance photographer and a student in Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The photograph on the back cover and the middle photograph on the front cover feature a honeydipper created by Edna Madera Matejka, a graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondaleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s School of Art and Design and a winner of a Rickert-Ziebold award in 2001 for her work in metalsmithing. She is currently working on her MFA in the Metals Department of the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Chauna Craig

To Taste

The baker’s daughter steals her daily bread, tucking rolls and warm crusts in her skirt. She nibbles these as she walks to school some misty mornings. Sourdough is for the sea, for boats to weather any storm and gulls to guide her home. Honey wheat is for the plains, the dirt she would plough, the farmer’s wife she could be. The croissants are for Paris, for silver jets and open-air cafés, for the way she will let strangers kiss her. Her pockets, stained with butter, become translucent as the skin of saints.

She grows fat on bread, her arms resembling loaves tucked and pinched and rising up out of the pan. Her mother complains, what boy will love you now? She moves the butter, hides the cheese, forbids whole milk, and locks up the cakes. The baker’s daughter simply smiles, shaking out the telltale crumbs on her return so the sparrows can imagine they’re gulls, so the starlings can dive with the red-tailed hawks.

One day while she lets Paris melt in her mouth, tasting joie de vivre on her tongue, she steps into a city street and the milk truck can’t stop. Her spirit rises like good yeast, and a grackle steals the bread that falls cold from her hand.

The milkman is horrified, the mother distraught, and the baker throws his starter doughs into the trash. A starving woman rooting for a meal will find it and eat it and feel her stomach expand with cramps for days.

The milkman brings to the silent bakery bottles of milk, their necks clogged with cream thick and white as snow. He begs them to taste. His eyes fill with tears, and while the baker turns away to dismantle his mixer, his oven, his life, his wife stretches her finger and takes a small taste.

Each day the milkman returns. Each day she drinks more until one morning she gulps a whole bottle and milk spills down her chin and onto her breast where it stains and sours by nightfall. The baker tells her to throw away that dress that smells like the infant their Crab Orchard Review ◆ 1

Chauna Craig

daughter once was. But his wife wears the dress to bed and in the morning when the new milk comes. Their bed begins to stink.

She grows fat with milk. Her breasts swell and her hips round as they did when she was with child. The milkman sees how lovely she is, milkfed. He imagines her on his dairy farm, kneading bread and feeding children, lots of plump, healthy children.

And because her fingers still remember the roll of dough and her breasts the pull of milk, she buys a new dress, white as cream, silky as flour. After the baker leaves, she weds the milkman, they honeymoon in Paris, and they raise their babies on whole milk and cheese and buttery croissants.

One winter day, when a thin man steals from their trash a crust of bread, he will chew it slowly and recognize the taste. He will imagine he is a sailor facing the salty spray or a farmer cutting the earth. Finally, at night, stirring the molding blankets of his bed under the pier, he will remember that once he baked. Once he made everything rise.

2 â&#x2014;&#x2020; Crab Orchard Review

Julie Hensley

Bread Pudding

This is not the story of my lover. And neither is it the story of my girls, although both their beginnings are gnarled somewhere in the thick of what I’m going to tell you. This is my husband’s story because I label it so. I have never told my daughters, but I suspect if I could tell it to them—tell it the way it happened and the way it plays out in my mind—they would say it is first my story.

More than once my girls and I have packed a lunch and driven into the hollow, have climbed the washed-out logging trail that twists up to Cedar Creek Falls, and have had a picnic there amidst the ruins of an old farmstead. You can see, if you know where to look, the foundation of a cabin and the ruins of a family cemetery, limestone grave markers covered in nettle and moss. Between the two, we’ve found tangled pumpkin vines, the remnants of an abandoned garden, flowering yellow in early summer. The plants continue to grow without reseeding or direct sunlight, even after more than eighty years have passed. That is the way it is with this story.

I am allowed my secret. We all move around it carefully, knowingly. It grows larger and greener like the grass the cows leave untouched around last year’s manure. The people I love radiate out from a season of loss.

The summer of my fifth wedding anniversary was the driest in forty years. By July, the corn still hadn’t risen past the fence posts.

The leaves pulled away from the stalks, shriveled, and curled toward the ground. My husband Neil, who planted only about twenty acres of corn, grew it mostly for silage. But each week I would fill the back of the International with the best ears. This was in the time before the trees bore fruit, when my mother and I ran a roadside vegetable stand on summer weekends. I was strong then, and I would move down the rows with ease, cradling the crates of corn against my hip, sending the contents rumbling into the truck bed when I reached the end of a row. Cora, from the time she could walk, would Crab Orchard Review ◆ 3

Julie Hensley

sit in the shade of the tailgate sifting dirt through her fingers and sorting the pebbles into meaningful piles.

That year, instead of the quiet sigh of summer, the field was a hollow rattle around me. Forest fires were burning on the backside of Old Rag Mountain, and although the sky thickened gray in the afternoon, it was only ash hanging in the air, Neil worried for the fruit trees. The young orchard, which in ten years was to be our primary income, might not recover. Twice he filled five-gallon buckets from the pump by the barn and drove—with water sloshing over the sides of the truck—through the lines of new trees, pouring carefully around the base of each one.

Neil brought home the fire truck and the man the same morning in July. The truck was already an antique, a 1934 American La Franc.

Its red paint had faded to orange, and the words Shenandoah Hose Company stretched in a faded arc along each door. The cab was an open cockpit. Coiled in back were flat, gray loops of hose.

Rosario, who was short and thick, and all hands and shoulders, was to be the night irrigator. His hair was slicked back with water. It looked dark and clean in a way that reminded me of the old-fashioned men of my girlhood, my father and his friends milling around outside church. His skin was brown and mottled like pecan shells.

Rosario refused dinner, so when the rest of us gathered beneath the grape arbor, lawn chairs pulled up to the oak slab table, Neil told the man’s story for him. Bees murmured overhead even though the grapes were small and hard from the lack of rain.

“He’s originally from Chiapas,” said Neil as he took the plate of cold chicken from my mother, “but he’s lived in the States since he was nine. He says his people just kept working and moving. He and his brothers crossed over inside a crate beneath a truckload of melons. Christ, it makes you realize how easy you got it, don’t it?”

Cora was seated in his lap, and he had to pull her hands away from his tea. He gave her the cup with her milk, the one with dancing rabbits.

“Does he speak English?” Dad wanted to know.

“Sure,” said Neil. “He’s spent the last few years doing irrigation work out in California and Arizona.”

“There’s a good many of our boys looking for work right here.”

Dad was right. Young vets, only recently returned, hung around on the sidewalk in front of High’s Dairy Mart. Sometimes they waited 4 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Julie Hensley

with backpacks and cardboard signs along Route 33, thumbs extended in the wake of wind and horn from the rattling poultry trucks.

“Well, this one made himself known to me.” My husband tore pieces of chicken from the bone and handed them to Cora, waving the flies away from their plate. He no longer worried about pleasing my father.

“He saw me looking over the hoses, and he told me that he could rig up a pump and have the whole works going in two days.”

“Where are we going to put him?” asked my mother. The farmhouse already felt crowded. The only bedroom not in use was cluttered with boxes of seasonal clothes and holiday decorations. Her sewing machine was arranged there on a folding card table. In the end Neil cleared out the tack room, and Rosario settled in the barn.

When I was a girl, things grew differently. We never had to wait for rain. Nearly every evening, summer storms shook the darkened window frames and, for a moment, bathed the barn yard in blue light. Each morning, the ground was sprinkled with small branches and feathery leaves from the walnut trees. This entire valley is a flood plain for Dry River, and several creeks come down out of the hollow, forking like lightning across our pastures.

When my grandfather began farming this land, he had to build ditches and place drainage tiles beneath the earth to diffuse some of the ground water. He planted all sorts of things—soybeans, corn, wheat, barley, sorghum, milo. That way he could expect something to grow, regardless of the weather. He crossed the farm with barbed wire fences, partitioning it into several acre plots. By my girlhood, the wind had seeded each fence row with cedar scrub, blackberry bushes, and skunk weed. I tore up my legs following my brothers through that mess of bramble, searching for the snakes and field mice that teemed there.

When my father took over, he, like everyone else, began to rely more heavily on corn, selling it for chicken and turkey feed. Long houses for poultry had begun to appear all over the valley. We could see so many of them from the ridge at night, narrow strands of light in rows three or four deep behind the twinkling farmhouses. Some farmers began removing the fences and planting fields of corn so massive they worried that children would become lost in the canopied rows. But we played hide and seek beneath the flutter of green light and insect wings. I can remember kneeling, breathless, in the silt and looking up through the layers of leaves to where the sun winked white and far away.

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Julie Hensley

Neil and I changed the face of the land yet again. We grazed several dozen head of cattle where the largest creek drained into a pond; although, that summer it had shrunk to a third its normal size and was covered in a gray-green scum. Every year, Neil ordered fifty more fruit trees—mostly Stamens—to plant on the east side of the farm. They arrived in September in two shipments, the roots of each tree poking through a hulking mound of burlap and crusted soil, and they had to be planted before the first frost. I had no idea there were so many varieties of apples until I read the descriptions off the waxy pages of the Southern Fruit Co-op Catalogue.

Dad teased Neil about the trees. “What do you want?” he said when he saw my husband bent over the book, “To be a gentleman farmer?” He was slowing down, and he wanted Neil to take over. But my father wanted things done his way. He didn’t like the fact that Neil had a job at the muffler plant in Garrison. My husband worked a twelve-hour shift three times a week. He came home sweaty and exhausted, his brown hair matted from his hard hat and the creases on the back of his neck etched with metallic dust. My father couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t just stick with corn and farm full-time.

My husband grew up fatherless in a row house in Bayonne, New Jersey. He had to think about the land as a gift and keep it separate from the responsibilities he owed Cora and me. If he mixed them up, the blue line of the mountains might creep in and make him feel trapped. He loved his trees too much, but they were also his way of continuing to love me and our daughter.

When Neil came in, jeans wet from carrying water, my father always grunted, “How were your darlings?”

I had difficulty sleeping that summer. I would lie down with my daughter in her sleigh bed and breathe in her yellow hair. And later I would lie down with Neil. That was the only time he smelled like himself, right before he went to bed, the only time when the scents of work and the farm didn’t hover—the tang of factory grease, the powdery sweet smell of hay, the musk of skunk that hung over the whole place early in the morning. We held each other as the ceiling fan moved the dry air across our bodies, but that was all. I lay in the long curve of his arm and wondered when we had grown this tired.

After I’d seen everyone to sleep, I would move back through the dark hallways on bare feet, afraid of waking the others, as much out of selfishness as consideration.

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I baked at night, since it was much too warm to turn on the oven during the day. Rosario’s second night I prepared a cobbler.

The apples were store-bought, out of season. As I rinsed the bowls and measuring cups, I stared out into the backyard. Moths fluttered against the window glass. The barn doors were thrown back, and inside, in the quiet, orange glow of an electric lantern, I saw the shadow of Rosario’s back bent over some piece of machinery.

I carried a plate of cobbler and the small table fan I used in the kitchen. Underfoot, the grass was dry and prickly, except along the chicken coop where the dogs had run the ground slick. He stopped his work and stood up when I entered.

In the dirt and straw sat an engine from an old car, probably one of Dad’s Studebakers. My father drove his cars until they stopped running and paid to have others hauled in. His automotive history hulked between the trees behind the barn, stripped shells of vehicles covered in Kudzu and Virginia creeper. When we went for walks, Cora always wanted to climb across the cracked leather and mildewed upholstery to sit behind the wheel of one of them.

“Mrs. Ridenour.” Rosario wiped his palms on his pants.

“Call me Helen, please,” I said. “I thought this might make your room more comfortable.” I set the fan down. “And here’s some cobbler.”

“Thank you very much,” he said, taking the plate. His words had a sing-song, memorized quality.

Taking the fan in his other hand, he turned and stepped up into his room. I heard him pull the string, and a single bulb flickered on overhead. The tack room had a wood floor and an open doorway.

Neil had fastened a yellow plastic shower curtain across the entrance, but it was pushed aside and held in place behind a large nail. I hovered on the threshold. They had moved the saddles up to the loft. The shelves had been dusted and the rough floorboards had been mopped, but the smell of saddle oil still lingered.

“Would you like to come in?” he asked.

I stepped just inside the door. The cot was neatly made with the quilt and sheets I had sent out the day before, and on one wall Neil had hung a small rectangular mirror. The silver had faded away from the back, leaving the edges tarnished. A wooden spool that had once held fence wire had been fashioned into a table in the corner, and it was there that Rosario set the fan and the plate of cobbler.

“Are you sure this room will be all right? It’s too hot out here.”

A tiny radio and a comb rested on the table, and I could see his Crab Orchard Review ◆ 7

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empty duffel bag under the cot. I wondered if his clothing and personal items were stacked in the cabinet, the one that was usually cluttered with brushes and fly spray and a pink minty ointment. “We may need to get you another fan, a bigger one.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Everything is fine.”

“You’re certainly up late,” I said. “When I saw your light I was worried you couldn’t sleep out here in the heat.”

“I work at night,” he said. “In the sun, water will burn the leaves of the plants.”

That night I returned to the house and was able to fall asleep in Dad’s recliner. The light stayed on in the barn, though, and it was strange to know that someone else glided opposite me in my silent night movement, that we were together orbiting the house and the fields and the sleeping forms upstairs.

When I was seventeen, my parents sent me to New York to visit my brother. It was Christmas break, my last year of high school.

Dad drove me to D.C., and I took a train from there. My parents purchased the ticket and gave me one hundred and fifty dollars. I hid the money carefully in various pockets and compartments, except for a fifty dollar bill, which Ma sewed, in case of an emergency, into the lining of my wool dress coat.

This was a lot of money, particularly in the winter when everything was tightly budgeted. They were hoping that if I could see the city and the life James had there, I would come to my senses. They were offering me the same educational opportunities they had my brothers, and they couldn’t understand why I was refusing them. “Your girlfriends don’t have this kind of chance,” my mother never tired of telling me. She wanted me to go to Hollins College and study to be a teacher.

James had purchased a guidebook and a pile of tourist maps, so that I could keep myself busy during the day. He’d made an extra set of keys—one to his apartment, two to enter his building, and one to open the iron gate that closed the steps off from the street. “Maybe you should take the ferry from Battery Park today,” he said. “I hear there’s a awful line on the weekends.” He circled sites on the map with a black felt-tip pen while he drank coffee.

“Do you want me to make you some breakfast?” I asked him.

“I don’t keep food,” he said. “It just goes bad.” He took some bills from his wallet and tossed them on the table. “Here’s some money,” he said. “Be careful.”

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I watched his departure through the barred window. He took off at a brisk walk, paused to check his watch, then raised his hand to hail a cab.

There were things in the apartment I would have to commit to memory to describe for my mother upon my return—the stiff, green leather couch, the refrigerator with the working bulb, the muffled feel of walking over the thick rugs. Her back hurt her so in the car that she could never suffer the train ride up to see these things for herself. But she would be glad to know that her oldest son’s tap water ran in one warm stream. In the kitchen back home we had only cold water, and two faucets had to be adjusted above the tub in the bathroom, one for cold and another for hot.

There were other things that would not interest my mother, even though these were the things that clarified most how much my brother had changed: shelves of strange records, with pictures of men who had black, moist skin; a desk littered with open file folders and yellow legal pads half-filled with my brother’s masculine scribble; a rack of dark and ready wine bottles stacked sweet to dry.

The only reminder of home hung in his bedroom. Framed in raw wood above James’s bed was an aerial photograph. Everything was gray and a little blurry, but there were the creeks, spreading like blue-black veins beneath the reflective surface of the glass. The ridge of bramble and curling cedars that would one day be our orchard.

The house, white and windowless from so far below, its courtyard sprinkled with familiar out-buildings. Perhaps he had commissioned someone local to take it, a crop duster or a patrol pilot during the fire season.

When I ventured out and down the block, I paused every so often, checking my handbag for the keys and the map. I told myself, I’d find one thing that day, make my way to one of the little black circles. First I stopped for a late breakfast in a diner not a quarter of a mile away. Over the door a sign said Hot Food. Inside was a small bar, a cash register on one end, and a grill in the back. I sat down on a stool covered with cracking leather.

Two men stood in front of the cash register, and the first ordered an egg sandwich to go. The young man behind the counter turned and, using one hand, broke two eggs over the grill. His hair was in a crew cut, and I noticed that his face and neck, even his ears, were covered in freckles.

The first man tapped his newspaper on the counter. The eggs Crab Orchard Review ◆ 9

Julie Hensley

sizzled and popped. “Goddamn, you take too long.” He smacked the counter with his free hand, and turned to leave.

The freckled man shrugged and sort of smiled at the next man.

“What can I get you?”

“Two eggs, fried hard, and toast.”

Behind the counter, the man reached into an open bag of bread and dealt two slices onto the counter. He brushed them with melted butter and set them next to the eggs on the grill.

“I don’t want those eggs. Those were his eggs.”

“So, now they’re your eggs,” said the cook. “They’re just eggs.”

“I want my own eggs.” They clipped their words in a way that made everything aggressive and experienced.

“Suit yourself.”

As the man with the freckles reached for two new eggs, the customer said, “Forget it,” and stomped out the door. So I ate four eggs and two pieces of toast and a milkshake for breakfast my first morning in New York, and that’s how I met Neil. I spent every day sitting at that bar. Sometimes I bought a magazine and flipped through it while he saw to customers. Sometimes I just turned and watched the people hurrying by.

Frustrated at my lack of adventure, James dragged me into the subway on Saturday morning. We came out of the ground somewhere on Madison Avenue and clomped along the edge of the park, past the town homes, verandahs wrapped with red ribbon and plastic pine boughs. It started to sprinkle. We rode the elevators to the top of the Empire State Building, and I made James put change into the telescope.

The city groaned beneath us. The rain came in large, slow splats.

“Which way do you live?”

“Queens,” he said, pointing. “Across the East River.”

I swung in that direction and thought about Neil, grilling pastrami and rye bread.

I turned down my husband, inched away from the familiar pressure when, after weeks in that dry embrace, I felt him rise against me. He was not asleep when I left the bed, but he was not angry. Chemical planes hummed overhead, outside. At night, the fires moved in creeping orange down the mountain slope, an eerie volcanic glow. People, according to the radio, had refused to leave their homes. I imagined them, rising every few hours and climbing on top of their houses, inspecting the progress from their glistening rooftops, hoses in hand.

10 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Julie Hensley

Rosario turned the cornfield, which Dad insisted was the more immediate loss, into a twenty acre swamp. A new coolness arose from there at night, and you could almost hear the stalks nestling, drinking in the tepid water. He moved up the ridge with the fire hoses, and when they would no longer reach, the night irrigator wooed each tree in careful bucketfuls. I brought banana muffins and crumb cake and warm wheat bread. I carried them in the linen napkins that one of Neil’s aunts had embroidered as a wedding gift, and Rosario unfolded each item carefully, the same way my mother has always unwrapped a present, peeling back the taped edges, setting aside the paper to reuse on some other holiday. He ate what I brought him with a ferocity that made my heart swell.

Now, it seems like he was two different people during the month he spent with us. There was the man who rose just in time for lunch, who filled a space at the picnic table and offered polite, yet evasive, answers to Ma’s questions, the Rosario with whom I exchanged everyday pleasantries as I picked up an empty plate or shifted Cora on my hip.

“Do you have children of your own,” my mother asked him, “back in Mexico?”

“Yes,” he corrected her, “in California.”

“How many?” she wanted to know. When he told her a few, she grew insistent, “You should bring them out here. Kids need to be with their daddy.” He smiled and shrugged, and once, when he had left to run some errand for my father, she confided to me, “I don’t really think he understands a word we say.”

Then there was the working Rosario, clad in rubber boots and overalls, leaning against the tailgate to pause for a slice of whatever I’d brought him. Never again did we exchange even as many words as we had that first night. I sat in the truck bed, watching him work beneath a series of hazy skies. There were no clouds, but the ash hung on the horizon, giving everything a fuzzy glow. From the top of the ridge the neighbors’ turkey houses, the porch light, even the kitchen window wavered as if underwater.

Rosario bent again and again. Mosquitoes hung around his knees, hovering over the fresh mud. He would not allow me to help, but he never sent me home. Sometimes, if I fell asleep in the back of the truck, he would wake me, his hand wet and warm against my bare foot—“Despiértate, Helen. Wake up!”—just as silver light was beginning to glow behind the shadow of Old Rag. Sometimes I woke confused. He would return the napkin, folded neatly, and nod toward Crab Orchard Review ◆ 11

Julie Hensley

the house. I walked back through the mud barefoot and, even before there was anything to hide, rinsed my feet at the pump.

On Neil’s days off, the men moved together through the corn rows. The mud sucked at their feet as they fingered the leaves, marveling at how quickly they were softening and unfurling.

Neil and I were married, against my father’s wishes, two days after my graduation in a civil service at the Town Hall in Garrison.

To be truly blessed, Dad said, a marriage must take place in a church.

The minister at Shelby United Methodist refused to perform the ceremony since Neil had already been living with my family for several months. Only my parents witnessed our union. Neither of my brothers returned home.

We spent our first night as man and wife at Skyland, the hulking lodge that hugs the mountainside in the middle of the Shenandoah National Park. We ate in the dining room, surrounded by other vacationing couples. It was early in the season, and we were all allowed to linger over our meals. The evening sun came through the picture windows and cast a golden light on the giant chestnut beams that stretched the full length of the ceiling. The thought of leaving that room and walking across the terrace to our tiny cabin tightened my throat. I ordered blackberry ice cream and ate it slowly.

I locked myself in the bathroom. I sat on the toilet in my bra and slip, both white and trimmed in lace, far more delicate than my everyday fair. I was seventeen.

“Helen, honey, are you all right?” Neil’s knock was careful and hesitant. “Come on out,” he said. “We’ll go for a walk and relax.”

It did not happen that night. And when it did happen, days later, on the bed I had slept in since I first started school, we faced each other with a sweet and embarrassed reverence.

My grandmother taught me how to make a bread pudding. It’s a recipe that requires a certain amount of patience, and because of that some people can never get the hang of it. The most important thing is the bread. It needs to be a large homemade loaf that has been left uncovered on the counter for at least a day, and you have to tear it into chunks about the size of a man’s thumb.

You layer the pieces of bread in a medium greased pan, alternating it with layers of walnuts that have been crushed and shaken with cinnamon and brown sugar. Beat three eggs and add 12 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Julie Hensley

almost a cup of sugar. Then mix in four cups of warm whole milk, adding a teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt. Pour that mixture slowly over the layers of bread crumbs and nuts.

This is the secret: you set the pan inside another pan in at least an inch of hot water and bake the whole thing at 350 degrees for at least an hour. The key to a good bread pudding is keeping it moist. The steam rises up and replaces what is lost to the heat of the oven. To make it really good, you cream butter and brown sugar and add milk, drop by drop, until you have a sauce the consistency of a good gravy. Once or twice while the pudding is baking, you pour a little of that mixture over it, and then when it has finished, pour on the rest.

It’s a messy and decadent dessert, the kind of thing you have to sit down and eat with a spoon. When I made Rosario a bread pudding, I had plenty of time to think about what I was doing. I set the bread out early that morning. Once everyone was asleep and I began tearing the loaf and arranging it in the pan, the process took nearly two more hours.

The faucet above the tub screeched horribly whenever we turned the water on, so I crumbled a bar of lilac powder in the sink and sponged off while the dish was cooling. After that night, he always stopped whatever he was doing when he saw me walking up the hill.

I liked the fact that with Rosario there were so many questions.

He had children out West. Although he never wore a ring, he probably had a wife or at least a girlfriend somewhere. I didn’t want to ask, certainly didn’t want to know the answers. I liked the thickness of the things unsaid between us. Neil and I had always talked, before and lying together for a long time after. We even talked during. In fact, sometimes we talked so much we talked ourselves out of it if one of us was tired or not really responding. That happened right after Cora was born, and again the summer of the drought.

Rosario worried that he smelled like sweat and mud, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I thought of it years later when my daughters, visiting from new lives out West, claimed the thing they most missed about the farm was the smell of good dirt.

Mama and I were boiling walnut shells and soaking strips of green wood, an end of August ritual. She would weave the materials into baskets to sell at the county fair in the fall. Our fingers were stained an oily, yellow-brown, that nothing but turpentine could remove. We could not touch anything, not even Cora, who whimpered back and forth between each of us in turn. We had let the phone ring Crab Orchard Review ◆ 13

Julie Hensley

all morning because of the mess, but I answered it finally, exasperated, lifting the receiver from the wall with a damp dish towel.

“Mrs. Ridenour,” the voice was well-versed in the language and tone of loss. “This morning your husband was involved in an accident, here, at Walker Manufacturing.”

“Where is he?” My mother stopped ladling the black mixture, and looked up. I asked, “Is Neil all right?”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we have not been updated on Mr. Ridenour’s condition. We only know that his situation was critical.

We’ve been trying to reach you for several hours. I suggest you go immediately to Garrison Memorial.”

Of course, it was too late. The sleeve of his uniform had caught in his machine, and the blood loss from his mangled arm was massive. Hours later, I signed paperwork in a quiet hospital office.

I left brown smudges everywhere my hands settled.

Rosario’s departure was unceremonious. He walked to the end of the lane and waited, sitting on his duffel bag in the dust, until a van load of workers stopped to pick him up. They were heading toward Winchester for the fruit harvest. I had no way to reach him and could not yet imagine that I would ever have any reason to.

The ears remained on the cornstalks that fall, and the stalks remained standing, unused even for silage. The rains that came the first week in September flooded the creeks, and the Shenandoah threatened the bridge that connected Shelby with the highway. When the smoke cleared on Old Rag, a mean scar of charred forest split the skyline. The corn, which rotted in the field, tried to come back on its own the next spring, but it was choked with crab grass and Queen Anne’s Lace. Not until the next year would Dad plow everything up and reseed it. The storms split a walnut tree, and it tore through the century-old grape arbor, destroying the table underneath. Although the wind shook the gray undersides of the leaves, the new fruit trees held onto the hillside.

We scattered Neil’s ashes along the ridge on an Indian summer evening. They returned my husband in too small and too ordinary a box. It looked like it should hold take-out food. Only Cora was unafraid of the soft ash and hollow bits of bone. She trotted across the damp hillside, releasing her father into the breeze, her fingers spread in her own quiet vesper, an early sliver of moon hanging in the blue over her shoulder. We called a local collector to come haul 14 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Julie Hensley

away the fire engine, and then we retreated into the house for an entire season. Outside, though, the days pressed on around us.

To make sense of things, I tried to find the rhythms that had previously moved my life forward. I kneaded bread, I canned tomatoes, I hung sheets on the clothesline. And when solace failed to rise up out of my old rituals, I sought new ones—scalding baths, doses of mineral oil, hours chopping wood—hoping to work the secret out of my system before anyone could notice the change. But the truth has a way of taking root, and she clung there, like a sunken apple inside me, determined to find her way to the sunlight.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 15

Elsa Arnett

Thousand Years

She passes on none of this: A dozen duck eggs.

Two cups strong oolong tea. From the edge of my biochemistry text, I sneak a glimpse. I cannot cut flank steak on the grain; cannot smash a garlic clove with the side of a butcher’s knife.

No man will ever throw a potato pancake at you because it was too soggy. Salt, in a cup, up to her second knuckle. Late night, she brings lotus-seed sesame balls to my desk, my head a convolution of theorems, declensions.

One cup fresh-squeezed lime juice. She fills my lunch bag with sticky rice, dried cuttlefish, the awareness that promises are perishable as late autumn persimmons. This is the tricky part: two cups ashes of pine wood, two cups ashes of charcoal, two cups fireplace ashes. I don’t ask anymore about the lacquer box in her closet, smothered beneath flannel blankets: boar bristle brushes, black ink stone, scroll paper delicate as the veined wing of the damselfly. Her palms are pocked by oil splatters, fingertips patinaed from turmeric.

Combine tea, salt, lime, ashes. Coat each egg with paste.

You will never be stuck on a corner with grocery bags for a ride that does not come. Line ceramic crock with red earth.

Insert encrusted eggs. Bury into soil. Ferment 100 days.

All those nights she waited for his phone call from far-flung locales, the line crackling like hot chilies in a wok. She doesn’t tell me this, but I know: expectations crumble like stale rice paper.

Dig up crock. Rinse eggs under warm water. He said nothing when he saw the jar of black beans overflow, a bottomless gorge she tripped into while walking in her sleep.

Crack browned shell, peel. Cut into quarter-moon slivers.

The white of the egg will become a gelatinous black amber, the yolk, a phosphorescent green; both transformed completely from what they were.

16 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Lorna Knowles Blake

Dulce de Leche

Ahead of us a man asks for his coffee extra light, fuel for the dark midwinter.

The frozen food case is heating up—lime sorbet, mango madness, passion fruit glacé.

In the fogged glass my mother blooms briefly, wearing a flowered shirtwaist dress in a tiled kitchen slick with island heat, late morning moistened by the steam rising from pots filled with boiling cans of condensed milk—she must be making the caramel paste we loved to spread on toast, slices of fruit, our fingers.

And tonight in a Broadway deli, rows of crystal-crusted lids announce a new exotic flavor of premium ice cream— Dulce de Leche sighs the Scandinavian label on the pint we carry home. What does it mean? my daughter asks. Sweetness of milk or milk candy, I tell her and the words melt away like memories, lost in translation.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 17

Lorna Knowles Blake

King Sugar

Sugar cane harvest: an arc of machetes scythes down, decapitated stalks fall like soldiers crossed on the fields. The smell rises in the heat, so sweet the air itself sickens.

The cañaveral is full of spiders and armies of men in straw hats, shaded faces, backs burnished to mahogany, advancing like a wave in an unbroken rhythm over the fields of cane.

Later carts of cane are refined into sugar and fire ripples over the stubble of roots, incinerating the land, leaving a wake of black remnants glowing in the cremated fields.

Clouds of black ash drift over the town.

We dust and clean, black snow keeps falling.

Dust and clean and dust— 18 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Lorna Knowles Blake

It’s positively biblical, you say, the burning fields, ash falling like a plague— or a sign to remind us how we burn for that pure white sweetness at the core.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 19

Catherine Bowman

Little Feasts Loving you is like eating bread dipped in salt.

—Nazim Hikmet Like juice lemons pickled on the new moon, serpent garlic, slowcooked, spread on a bed of greens, packed in cheap coastal salt, stir-fried, stewed, seared, sweet soy, a well-flavored stock, deep-fried with a tartar of malt vinegar, battered in brown ale, plain flour and an egg, blocks of compressed tamarind, soaked and mashed, curried leftovers, caramelized, fried fish in salsa verde, wild fennel, parsley, étouffée smothered in its own juices, jack and pompano, mango and spring onion, coriander, lime leaves, ginger root, mackerel, clam hash, oyster beds, catfish in buttermilk and cornmeal, mole negro, almonds, ground cloves, cinnamon, savory pastries, skillet snapper, a rub of paprika and cayenne. Gulf coast gumbo for meatless Fridays.

Paella de campo eaten straight from the pan with the first three fingers of the right hand. Sweet orange. Bitter chicory.

20 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Linda Casebeer

The Object of Desire

So many wild culinary promises in the pungence of curry, the curl of parsley. In basil, saffron, turmeric, allspice displayed in woven grass baskets, the open air market’s oldest form of seduction.

And then the more subtle appeal of produce, lining row after row of stalls in their primary colors.

Reflected in the dark purple polish of aubergine. In the way an orange reforms as a geometric solid with shadow when placed in the palm of a hand.

In the inner secrets of flesh and seed that spill out when a seller, for the purpose of enticing a buyer, takes out a large knife and slashes open a tomato, a fig, or a melon.

And beyond spice or produce, the raw essence of fish, so strong it overpowers. Hangs in the air.

Seeps into pores, hair. Evokes the sense of earth’s broadest waters.

The Amazon. The Mediterranean.

Or a dozen others offering fish to market, each with its own array of sensual assaults.

The background could be Iquitos, Istanbul, Barcelona; the foreground composed of hands and knives.

At the fish stall, a buyer expresses Crab Orchard Review ◆ 21

Linda Casebeer

his desire. Before coins are accepted, before fish is wrapped in white paper and string, a sharp filet knife sheers away transparent scales flying up to catch the light. Beheads and guts the fish, her hands as intimate as a surgeon’s with the organs of lush purple, lavender, orange.

Splits open the flesh to remove a delicate skeleton, so many small white bones resting only for a moment on the knife’s blade.

Veined and worn, the hands are my grandmother’s hands with their knowledge of anatomy showing in every swift, sure movement she had used a thousand times before as she cleaned and fried the small fish we caught.

At the produce stall a man buys one avocado, his choice determined by sense. In his hands, the knowledge of ripeness, a result of months of picking avocados. He describes cupping a hand under what is ripe. Without tugging or twisting, feeling the avocado give way, dropping gently into the palm with the weight of a woman’s breast.

A Swiss army knife’s silver blade slips easily between the rough outer skin and the green gold flesh.

With two swift vertical cuts toward the large central pit, the first slice is one long, elegant curve reflected in silver on the way to his tongue.

22 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Victoria Chang

KitchenAid Epicurean Stand Mixer

Another year has passed and she never thought she’d Get to thirty-three years without one.

One day, when she was seven, On the kitchen table stood a chrome KitchenAid. Daring to put forth a vision, blended with Hearth, she promised herself that, On that special day of white cakes stacked to sky, Under a crescent moon with her man, Slung in his arms, gliding to band tunes, Emptying her heart to pour in his ambitions, Welcoming gifts from relatives she somewhat knew, In her arms, she would have a KitchenAid, Full of features and heavy-duty processing capability, Easy to assemble with a double whisk attachment, Head tilting back so it’s easy to Add ingredients and scrape down the sides of the bowl, Sensors maintain a constant speed regardless of load, And a soft-start feature reduces spattering.

KitchenAids still line the shelves at Williams-Sonoma, In military formations on her thirty-third birthday, Their smooth bodies feel like butterfat, Curves covered with enamel, boasting form and function.

Her eyes meet the hunter-green one in the middle, Everything she’s wanted in life in this box, Never imagined she would not be married by now, And still living with a roommate in a flat, Intimate with a new man every eight months, Dancing in circles, spinning around and around.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 23

Victoria Chang

Dragon Inn

Every night we waited for the last guests to leave—the stubborn leftovers who gazed, pointed at us, as if we weren’t there, weren’t sitting around the table.

It’s feeding time, in a room with red lanterns layered with golden calligraphy.

The cook turned the tray, judged the lobster, integer by integer, sucked the elegy out of its claw.

A plate of capsized mussels, in a metropolis of thick, bubbled, eyed us as if we were alive.

We rolled our eyes as the cook’s wife, hyphenated our air. She told us, your Chinese not so good.

She scooped eggplant onto our plates.

Marry money, a doctor, she said.

I only remember the pacific booth, in the back corner near the kitchen, pulling me into the wall, 24 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Victoria Chang

into the gut of Taiwan, of my mother.

There we snipped ends off Kentucky wonder beans, stuffed fortune cookies in wax paper bags, sealing Luck and Wisdom.

I only knew the way from our house to the restaurant and back.

I was diligent, obedient and shy— compatible with the dragon— now I am province, ten thousand acres from Dragon Inn.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 25

Huan-Hua Chye

In France fourteen and skinny

For two weeks we camped near the Breton salt farms, Huge squares of brown water rimmed with mealy white.

The farmers in their straw hats walked the paths between the pools, Dredging dirty salt into piles with long wooden rakes.

They sold that salt everywhere in Brittany, calling it fleur de sel.

I ate it only once: we had broiled sardines, and Aurélie Showed me how to eat them, rubbing salt into the crackled skin, Eating the tiny bones whole with the moist gray flesh.

The salt was coarse and soft; it stuck to your fingers, Leaving them redolent of the sea. C’est delicieux, I said meekly, Swallowing salt and crunching bones. I always spoke French, And they would exclaim over me: Mais elle parle tres bien!

Before I left they had me Take my picture with a salt farmer.

It was almost noon, the glare was blinding, And even on the paths salt crunched under my feet. The farmer was old, With salt crusting the folds of his knuckles. He looked behind us briefly At the expanse of barren fields, and the midday sun Froze his thick body motionless and colorless beside me.

I squinted into the light, staring straight ahead. They said Smile, Stay still, and I did, always determined to obey.

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Huan-Hua Chye

Bog Town

Two years ago, think of it, I was in Vienna With the snow outside the windows, My life incomprehensibly charmed.

We lay on our backs and touched hands Across the epic white of the double bed.

Somehow I had thought this story, When I told it, would have some greater weight, But here we go, let me drop it The way he dropped the letter today Onto the pile of discards, acknowledging The sentence we inflicted on each other.

Word by word and finally lightly, Our deliberate, casual goodbye.

The snow outside lay on everything and the day Was Epiphany, and Mariahilferstrasse lay empty As the Austrians lay inside as we lay inside Touching hands on the double bed.

The cake cost us thirty dollars, a Sachertorte Freshly rich from the Hotel Sacher.

We opened the box, parted its nest of excelsior, Sliced out two pieces, began to eat Inconsequentially. How did two years pass by?

The jam smeared our fingers, scenting us with apricot.

The chocolate smeared our fingers, Lacing itself into our freedom.

I did not feel free. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe now That it has been two years since my fingers trailed Across my body, writing onto it in sugar My desire for decadence.

His mouth went on filling with torte, The chocolate went on sliding through his body Veining him like a leaf, as love might, Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 27

Huan-Hua Chye

As we were tangled throughout each other As roots grow around dead earth, As bees crawl blindly through their homes.

I think sometimes, Oh, darling, How did this happen to us? Looking at the room, Remembering the snow that lay outside And crushed us into our dreams.

He would not mouth me clean, he would not lick my body In the small comfort that animals give as love.

The color he would teach me later again, indelibly.

Here is the bathroom where I washed myself clean.

He said nothing as I walked back over to the bed And lay down beside him again. Eating cake, He said nothing and then closed the box and said to me, Are you done, let’s go to bed.

And I went. It’s been two years and I cannot fathom How sorry he would have been, if ever, that I cried.

Now, of course, it’s too late.

He came over today and I stood awkward in the doorway As he looked over my shoulder at the room we had shared.

The pieces of the life we had are slowly disappearing.

I brought him the bag and he sorted them into piles, The pieces worth keeping, the pieces we’ll forget.

Remember the snow and the taste of apricots.

Has he forgotten that we made love and he licked me And that it was already too late for us, because two years later He will be sorting a pile of his old things on the table And then we will toss off goodbyes like crumpled letters.

Tomorrow is a working day again. Forgive me, I’ve lapsed— Here is the story we’ve been missing.

Frogger makes his way through Bog Town.

There is nothing here but the possibility Of catching a ride to another town, And to get to the next place requires honey.

And there are two ways out of this place. First, Speak kindly, bargain, work things out.

The bees will give you honey if you ask for it nicely.

They will offer it over and over again.

Second, the shortest path. Scream your way out.

Hurt the bees enough and they will give up.

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Huan-Hua Chye

There is the honey and the story ends here, The same always: bring your honey to the bear, And ride on out on his cable car.

Inconsequential. There are always these transitions Where it seems like the world will end, But they are, after everything goes on, transitions.

Years pass inconsequentially and you realize That the way they passed was inconsequential too.

How much would my present have changed Without him there? How much will it matter That I was free in Vienna, but bound in this time?

Frogger makes his way to the riverboat If the bees live or if they die. There was a future for me That lay waiting here regardless of whether, In the end, we had fought or we had tried.

As it is, we became separate. And if I toss off another story Of fighting for the sweetness that might have saved us, The last day in San Francisco that his breath warmed me, The night I walked away into someone else’s kiss, It will make no difference at all, for here I am at the crossing, The riverboat before me, the sun beating down, No way back and no way forward but this.

And would I have been better off, or worse, If none of this had happened? We passed Three years together, and have I changed at all?

It’s been two winters since Vienna. That cake is long gone.

Somewhere in Bog Town, some bear or some man Looks up, thinking of me, and licks his lips, Caught in his slow memories of sweetness.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 29

Geraldine Connolly

Morel Hunting

Past the tent city of pickers, past the drainage ditch, fallen cedars, you search for elusive morels at the far edge of the North Fork. How sure you are you must have them—devils’ thumbs, like foreign cities, or new love, fleshy and sexual—accidents of fire and water risen from the charred timbers like Lazarus. Along the rushing spring run-off, ashen skeletons of lodge pole litter the muddy loam. Only a vision with brandy and butter, veined domes drowned in shallots atop grilled tenderloin, keeps you hunting them, driven, clutching your empty basket, wanting a fleet taste of the sublime unmanageable— riotous as a preacher, bent over a forest stripped by fire.

30 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Geraldine Connolly

Lost Summer House

My father sang at the cast-iron stove, Already dressed in fishing clothes as he spread Buckwheat batter along the griddle, then delivered A hot tower of silver dollars to each child’s plate.

We poured syrup from a log cabin container, Another slow summer morning of pine and lake Begun—minnow netting and blueberry picking Planned for the far inlet past a rickety bridge— Across a ravine, like the bridge we crossed to morning Through boggy dream thickets, vines and dark rushes.

No choppy waves yet dissembled the horizon. No future raised Its disappointments, bitter divorces, heart surgeries, Every promise comfort, the pleasure of a day’s currency.

Beyond the corner cupboard with its stenciled plates, Eight window panes glitter, a mirror of fresh pines ascends, And past it, the lake ripples into blue washboard, Wave-tips agleam, silver as new-minted coins.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 31

Geraldine Connolly

Blue Ware

Porcelain. Some mothers took down their patterned plates for meals: china gravy boats with turned handles, gilded egg coddlers and lidded soup tureens.

Some mothers used their dinnerware, but mine stood china behind glass in a locked oak cupboard. Platters and tall-footed tea cups lined up, beauty deferred, saved until work was completed, for Communion lunch, feast day or wedding anniversary.

While our family chopped and weeded, scrubbed and hung work clothes in the yard, hens clucked, fluttered in their chicken houses.

At mealtime, ironstone prevailed, repository of parsnips and stew meat, pale homely sides of covered casseroles stained by the crusts of many meatloaves.

Plates nicked by the knife and fork were left to soak in a greasy sink.

In the corner cupboard, her dreams rested, purchased with egg money, kept in their accustomed places, with scenes of an indigo countryside, bridges and parks, columned estates

32 â&#x2014;&#x2020; Crab Orchard Review

Geraldine Connolly

where lords and ladies picnicked shamelessly across the painted plates, the ladies ripe in lawn dresses on their way to the pleasure boats.

Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 33

Deborah Cummins

The Season’s First Apples

At the farm stand, among the crates of late tomatoes and corn, the season’s first apples blush at their debut— smooth, unmottled beauties too pretty to eat.

For days, the ones I choose adorn my kitchen shelf, their stout stems like perky caps, tams, perhaps, the kind without protective earflaps.

At the open window, the wind is disguised in the stillness of trees, the luffing sails in the harbor. Nowhere in my radio’s broadcast is there a forecast of snow. I have no need for socks or a sweater. But at the sound of my first bite of the season’s first apples, boots crunch through icy layers.

Frozen tree limbs stutter against the roof and gutters.

And the stove gapes open, ready to make of another cord of wood ash. How solitary the flame of a single struck match that on certain cold nights seems like the only salvation.

34 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Chad Davidson

Truffle

Excavated, this shriveled fruit quieted the hounds with a cross between garlic and the very root they tore it from, more expensive than gold or saffron, the meat of its heart. Outside Perugia, we stumbled into a square cluttered with menageries of grappa bottles, wild boar, stacked baskets of black truffles.

You were so beautiful sifting over those stones like a miner.

Later we walked in the rising rain, the near-nil heft of the brown paper bag and the truffle inside I cradled. What were you counting in the distance? The returning crows, the smokestack grid, the miles of cars and wives and husbands who could not, any of them, sense this disinterred minute in the plain brown bag I open now in front of you. Two plates of steaming pasta, a bottle of oil

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cold-pressed, and this black truffle.

What were you counting that kept you silent in the rising rain?

It is late. The slicer’s set fine.

You talk about a morning in Alaska with snow so hard the world lost orientation, and how everyone watched the last snow of their lives.

You are telling me not to wait any longer. I set truffle to slicer, knowing the scent from this bit of the earth we’ve walked for almost one year now will not fade for days after we’ve left this place.

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Strozzapreti —Italian pasta, literally “Priest Stranglers” Bellying up to your door, the overbaptized arms, stoles worn thin about the neck: who but blasphemers wouldn’t open up?

They enter, light-headed from confession, call for linens, like a tether to save themselves from floating past the masses.

All the saintly portions, the sauces bland, angelic—a lording over moderation.

There in heaven, come to table, perfected hands hover, poised to carve the thin, light meat, something kept back like the gnawing voice they obey. They could do worse. You, too.

So go on, keep strangling. Each knot of pasta brings them closer to the mouth, the hell they go through starving at the plate of God.

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Bread

The egg-glazed challa that dazes my flattered guests, my fake passover flung into the fire of illinterpreted tradition, or the Hostess Twinkie with its century’s shelf-life, brioches I palm into an eyeballsize then pound thin as wafers: the first great resurrection, alive with myth and yeast, no wonder bread predates the words we conjure.

Loaf, related to lord and lady.

Pan, as if bread were universal like sweat and prayer: what we do to check impious rising. Because Chinese combines bread and bone in one character, two bread mean wealth or virility. And three extravagance or cancer. I’m lying.

But consider the metaphor: we eat our own strange bedfellows.

Because in my Anthology of Self-Centered Etymologies, bread derives from bird. Flown free of its signifier, this challa

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hovers over history, preying on my passing love of underlings who overlive.

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Ossi di Morto —Italian cookie, literally “Bones of the Dead” Savor these unnamed, our tongues still heavy with vin santo, a miracle or vice—the depths we crave this slow digestion of the past to something less substantial.

Mostly in Rome, it is 1978 again as the axe falls on Mary.

Witnessing the attack on the Pietà, we too would swab the marble like mad to catch a sliver quick under the skin, sick, believing the flaw, our bloodied palms gobbling up some resurrection, our mouths in search of veins of sugar we’d swear we tasted.

Being tempted once, we always catch the spark, like children crushing peppermint in the dark.

On the other hand to eye those piles under glass in cafés, the sinless fingers clawing in vain, some hardened part of us still wants denial,

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burial, their names spoken, given back. But ah! how anonymous that grate of teeth on bone, that aching, false flare of indulgence igniting all our mothers swore would be the death of us.

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Chez Noir

In front of a backstreet building, a factory rescued from the wrecking ball, down by the wharf where fishermen still docked, their calling cards carved from ancient mariner driftwood, a rusted cowbell hung from a lamppost. Ringing it loud was the only way to gain entry. No doorknob was on the outside, no windows, and you should be sure to have a reservation if you bothered the boy who manned the door.

Their hours were inconvenient: 6 P.M. to 9 P.M., with one seating per evening. The wait for a reservation was six months. Chez Noir was its name—not that anyone could read it—there was no sign out front, no menus, and no listing in the Yellow Pages.

I first came to Chez Noir as a surprise for my fiftieth birthday, feeling sorrier than happy at reaching this half-century mark, wishing to reclaim limber limbs and optimism from past decades. All this awareness weighed me down, convinced me to take things slow. I watched my elders with newfound fascination, followed their cues while whittling my world down to a manageable size that included a handful of old friends and my only child. My daughter Casey accompanied me, a darling of a woman who had materialized as a Generation X licensee, the proud owner of a pierced nose and silver-tipped lashes that flickered impatiently at her dysfunctional mother. I had always believed in the antithesis of evolution, the growth spurts of the mind compensating for my decelerated metabolism.

It wasn’t until Casey had the burden of thirty years behind her that she executed an abrupt turnaround. Now everything I had ever said or done was embraced as gospel to the grave. I wasn’t bitter, only I had stopped lunging for the goal line, content to make my way inside easy boundaries with minimal distractions. Casey was one of them, forgiving me fourteen years too late for losing her father who had never in his life done anything less than extraordinary.

He lived off his looks—taking everything and giving only what he had to—and if you asked for anything more he folded like an accordion and begged to be retired.

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Here she was banging on my door. “Come on, Mother. I know you’re in there.”

Where else would I be? I had given up driving, sold my car. In fact I rarely went outside except to smoke. Politically correct, if I was unlucky enough to be in a populated area, I stood well off from the flow of people pounding by. Even so there were always a couple of drama queens who made little coughing noises as if the sky lacked enough air for them to breathe. I took a quick peek at myself in the mirror. I’d actually found my makeup this morning. Not quite the professional job I was capable of, but within the subtleties of highlighting and shading gleaned from my early days with Mary Kay, I still reflected a marginal silhouette of my younger self.

Casey had been proposed marriage a half-dozen times, wore size eight dresses from Banana Republic and Gap, and refused to date men who weren’t fully vested in their company’s 401K for at least ten years. She was the only woman I knew who went hiking through the woods in platform sandals, carting a hemp shoulder bag with a readymade gourmet picnic in a box. She worked as a marketing consultant for the advertising giant Baskins and Bromwell, and was one of the chosen few in San Francisco who could afford her own apartment. Her boss was her landlord, charging her a ridiculously low rental fee that barely covered the water bill.

With henna curls and collagen lips, she darted around in a champagne BMW, cell phone plugged to her ear, always in-between meetings, on her way to somewhere important.

I watched her with awe, this woman so bright and brave and having everything her own way. I had fallen into complacency, left everything to chance as if my part in life was to merely show up.

From the time she could walk I had preached to her about men—as if her foresight could make up for my hindsight. She had grown up knowing exactly what she had to offer and how to use it. But in using her as my second chance, I had lost sight of what she needed from me. “I’m not you, Mother,” she had often shrieked in that grating sophomoric voice that teenage girls master. And I had wanted to yell: you think you know life; just wait until it has you in its clutches. She called me paranoid, overprotective. I said what all mothers say, “Wait until you are older.” Everything that came after: the live-in boyfriends, the power job, the driving force she’d become—she poured success in my lap as if we were keeping score.

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to get to that place again, and it was that thought above all others that woke me early, my clothes soaked through, just missing her.

My daughter had become an even more jaded me.

Two minutes after she walked through my door she was already rushing me.

“Come on, we’ll be late.”

“What should I wear?”

“It doesn’t matter where we’re going.” She eyeballed her Rolex.

“Right,” I said, turning to my clothes closet full of orange sale tags still dangling from sleeves. I always found fabulous treasures: red leather pants, a pair of stiletto pumps, a blouse with a missing midriff, knowing full well they were useless. But I couldn’t stop myself. Just seeing them hanging there gave me a kind of hope, a muted, tender joy. The Japanese silk pantsuit in a size eight that still carried the $400 price tag marked down to $69.95 would be waiting for me when I returned.

“I’ll help you,” Casey offered, as I rummaged through racks searching for the three pairs of pants and two sweaters that actually fit me.

“I’ve got it,” I said, selecting the old standby—a pair of black polyester pants and a lavender sweater set chosen for its remarkable stretching properties. I finished the outfit off with a choker of graduated pearls and slipped into my favorite pair of dressy flats.

“Ready?” I asked, eyeing her chunky leather boots and Mod Squad dress that looked like it would barely cover my foot bunions. “Better not get a run in your stocking,” I said. “They might arrest you for indecent exposure.”

She bussed my cheeks in a decidedly British way. “Happy birthday.”

“You’ve been seeing that Alfred Fleming from Masterpiece Theatre again, haven’t you?” I accused her, as she turned off the television and I locked the door behind us. She had a thing for Brits.

“Oh, Mother. I told you. I’m dating Saul now.”

“That’s right,” I said in the car, “the doctor. When are you going to bring him around? I’m ready to clasp him to my bosom.”

“You’d clasp a paranoid schizophrenic to your bosom as long as the letters M.D. followed his name.”

We parked in a lot near a line of trendy eateries. I thought we would be having the traditional birthday dinner by the wharf celebration, filled with good wine and lobster pie and my favorite 44 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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dessert—white chocolate mousse. But she continued walking until there wasn’t a single restaurant in sight.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see,” she said, picking up her pace as I huffed along behind her.

How she could navigate in platform soles thick enough to be certified as Red Cross flotation devices, I’d never understand. Finally she stopped, taking hold of a rope and ringing the bell like the place was on fire. I backed up, suspicious, eyeing both sides of the street for an advancing army of revelers, but she shook her head and gave me a stern look that told me to behave myself.

A young man finally answered the door. (If you want to call it a door. To me it looked more like the side of a barn with a hinge.)

“This way, please.” He turned and started walking, leaving me to close the massive latch that held the door from the inside.

“Come on,” Casey whispered.

Why were we whispering? It was dark inside. I could barely make out my own feet and found myself clutching the back of her dress. “Wait,” I hissed. “Give me your hand.” I let her lead me, with the boy in front leading her. We walked through some sort of corridor and then paused for dramatic effect.

“Ready?” she asked. “This is it.”

I’m not sure what I expected. I suppose a surprise party in full swing, a raucous throng of Casey’s friends in high spirits after their third margaritas, lime-tinted tongues crying out “Happy birthday!”

The boy opened a door and the darkness was so deep I could reach for my nose and miss it. I heard classical music playing softly in the distance—Chopin’s etudes, it sounded like—and I figured there had to be more coming, so I played along, praying I wouldn’t fall over someone’s feet on the way in. “Are we there yet?” I asked, and was met with a hostile “shhhh!” I put my hands on Casey’s shoulders, and I suspected she had hers on the boy’s—the three of us like line dancers at a wedding—at any rate someone was leading us in the direction of murmuring, the gentle ping of crystal raised in a toast, and I thought: now they will turn on the lights and illuminate my birthday guests. We stopped.

“Here you are, madam,” the boy said, and I heard a chair grazing the floor. He took my arm, guiding me. I felt for its back and gingerly lowered myself, brushing my knees against a tablecloth. Casey sat opposite me. Pieces of conversation floated up and down the length Crab Orchard Review ◆ 45

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of the dining room. I leaned toward Casey and whispered, “Do I know anyone?”

“Just take it as it comes.”

A hand brushed my shoulder and I jumped.

“Your napkin, madam,” said a new male voice, the napkin settling itself onto my lap. “If you need anything, please ring the bell on your table. We offer a preplanned menu which includes an appetizer, soup, salad, main entrée, and dessert. Can I offer you a bottle of white burgundy to start? I recommend the Château Margaux ’97 Pavillon Blanc.”

“That sounds fine,” Casey said.

I listened for fading footsteps but failed to hear anything above the background noise. All around me were the murmurings of strangers, snippets of laughter, the muted clank of cutlery against china, the piano strains strangely separate, though the music was quite low.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “When are they going to turn on the lights?”

“They’re not—it’s part of the ambiance.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I swear. It’s not a surprise party. Now relax and enjoy it. I can’t believe it’s your fiftieth birthday.” Casey sounded excited and happy.

Fifty years of the physical pain of being, defined by a lump at the back of the throat, the heartburn that followed, the aching in the chest. I’d become too emotional. I cried during movies, and not just the sad ones. I felt as though I was on the verge of doing something strangely new. I harbored urges. I pictured myself sitting in an outdoor café, the dry hot sun beating down on red earth, surrounded

by Middle Eastern dialects, sipping thick Turkish coffee and reading a four-day-old American newspaper.

“Your wine, madam.” The waiter was back. Then it dawned on me. He was barefoot. The squeak of the opener twisted its way through the cork, then a little pop.

“Madam?”

“Reach up slowly, Mother. He’s holding it out for you,” Casey prompted.

“Oh,” I said, feeling my way until my fingers brushed the stem of the glass. I swirled the wine gently, took a small sip to play in my mouth. The bouquet released vanilla-oak. “Delicious.” I wished I could see her face, her father’s face. I knew her expressions, matched 46 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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them to her tones, our guessing game and my last sign of impatience.

Why doesn’t she get it? I shouldn’t have taken her here. She won’t understand. Oh, but I do.

“Our appetizer tonight is Brochettes de Moules, Sauce Provençale, which is skewered mussels and bacon, served on puff pastry, with a Champagne demi-glaze.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Casey said.

The waiter floated away to some ghostly kitchen where I imagined the ghost chef flying about in his hat and apron, barking at the short order cook, Vite! Vite! I took another sip of wine. “That’s nice,” I said, my voice blending in with those of other intimate strangers. Distinct bits of conversation: I don’t see why she wouldn’t come / don’t you love it / I called over eight months ago for this reservation / pass the butter / I’m stuffed already / let’s get another bottle, until they all seemed to be dining with us, one large table instead of the scattering of smaller ones I envisioned throughout the room. It was comforting, as if we were all here at this moment for a common purpose, and I reached around the table to squeeze my daughter’s hand.

“It smells marvelous,” I said, relaxing. I didn’t have to worry about how I was sitting or whether my sweater had worked its way up to expose a pale patch of flesh. “How did you find out about this place? Is this a new dining trend—feed your senses instead of your stomachs?”

“Give it a chance, Mother.”

“I didn’t mean—” “Your appetizer, ma’am.” The waiter was back. “The plate is very warm,” he said, “Please be careful.”

The chance was lost.

“Smells so good,” Casey said.

I felt around the rim of my plate with my fork, deciding to investigate the rest of my cutlery: two forks to my left, butter knife and small spoon to my right.

“Would you care for some bread?” The waiter asked, and I followed the scent of yeast.

I set my bread down and dipped my finger into the plate, feeling charred ends of bacon wrapped in little balls. I speared one with my fork and brought it to the tip of my tongue. It tasted salty and warm, so I popped the whole thing in my mouth. “They must have marinated the mussels in wine; they don’t taste grainy at all.”

“It’s awesome.”

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We ate in comfortable silence. I marveled at the change in her.

For too many years we had been at odds with each other, finding fault in unnecessary places. But years had lessened the gap, and from that had grown a fragile respect. I couldn’t shake the feeling that our divorce had scared Casey off, made her see men with a detached cynicism. Without financial pressures, she had relegated intimacy to a back room. I realized how dangerous that could be.

Dependency had clouded my objectivity, but I did not want my daughter to reach the pinnacle of her career only to discover she had no place to go for the holidays but Aspen. I pictured her sipping solitary drinks in a bar, skiing for a few hours, then back to the bar, and maybe—if she was lucky—finding another lonely bar stool and the two of them ending up in his room.

“So what do you think?” Casey asked.

“Amazing. I wonder how the waiters manage?”

“Quite well, actually.”

“You mean all the waiters are blind?”

“Bingo.”

“The chef?” My phantom chef.

“Yes.” “Prep cooks?” I pictured sharp knives and missing fingers.

“Afraid so.”

“The manager?”

“He usually comes over to say hello after dessert. They serve nut biscuits. Try the whipped maple butter.”

I tapped with my fork until I reached something hard. It tasted of walnuts and pecans and creamed maple butter. I needed to tell her to stop playing it safe. Throw out her fears and just go for it.

“The Soup du Jour is leek with portabella mushrooms, served with a crouton topped with truffles.” Our waiter was back.

As he set our bowls down, a most intoxicating aroma filled the air. It smelled of wooded earth and herbs. I wanted to pick up the bowl and drink from it. Instead, I leaned down to the bowl and breathed it in, spooning it into my mouth. “This is the best,” I said, dabbing at my mouth with a napkin. “If I had to describe what it’s like here—I’d tell them it’s comfortable. I feel safe.”

“Why that’s exactly it,” Casey said, sounding surprised.

“I’ve been having these feelings lately. Like I need to loosen old knots, make myself scarce.” Because in the end you think you know someone. Someone who is closer to you than anyone else in 48 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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the world. It doesn’t take much: the kiss of a stranger, late night calls with the phone cradled in your pillow, gentle prodding, and suddenly you’ve lost your place, you’re expendable, and it may even take you a year or two to realize it. The trick was to find your own way.

“Why? Are you planning on moving?”

“Maybe. I’m feeling restless.”

“I know what you mean. I always feel that way.”

“Next we have a Caesar salad,” our waiter said.

It was becoming comical. He popped in and out of the conversation, whisking away our remains. This was pungent Parmesan and lemon, crisp and cold and excellent. “It’s like.…” I struggled for words, “The food tastes better because you can’t see it.”

“I knew you would like it.” Then she told me how the staff attended a culinary arts school with a specially-equipped kitchen.

“Did you know they use different shaped pans to remember what’s in them?”

If someone had asked me twenty years ago what I’d be doing for my fiftieth birthday celebration, I’d have come up with a list of scenarios. The common thread would have been the presence of my husband and child, my son-in-law, and my grandchildren. But my husband had left me for another woman, my daughter was not married, and I had no grandchildren. This lovely, daring creature— how I wanted to take all her sorrow and leave her all the joy. But life would take them both or give none at all. You could not separate them. The only thing I’d been guilty of was trying. Drawing a reality ring around the moon, Casey called it. But what if the moon was God’s spyglass?

“The entrée tonight is Sole Marguery, which is filet of sole with mussels and prawns.” Our waiter’s French accent had grown thicker with each passing course. Now he sounded positively native.

“Mussels again?” I laughed a nervous laugh, for I could feel myself working up to an outburst.

“This is so unbelievably good,” Casey said.

“A religious solemnity. Try the asparagus and potatoes.” I tasted Gruyére cheese in the potatoes, the top layer was crunchy, the bottom layer creamed.

“Wait until dessert.”

“They’ll have to carry me out.” Take the part that’s real, I thought. Grab hold. Soon enough you’ll lose her. I needed the trees and the wind tides whistling off the lake where we had spent our Crab Orchard Review ◆ 49

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summers when Casey was a little girl. I hadn’t seen our cottage in a decade. There was only one store in town. It would do just fine.

“I know. After I eat here I never want to go anywhere else. They change the menu weekly.”

“The service—how in the world he knows when we’re finished…” I shook my head in disbelief.

“I’ll tell you,” our waiter said, “I can hear you setting down your forks and knives. When I don’t hear it, I know you’re finished.”

“That’s uncanny,” I said.

“Coffee?”

“Two with Amaretto, please,” Casey said.

I sat back in my chair. “When you were little your father used to say he could always tell when you were lying. You’d scrunch up your mouth and your eyes would grow big and you’d talk as fast as you could.”

“Do you still miss Daddy?”

“It’s better this way.”

“I wanted to stay and take care of him.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you let me?”

“I needed you with me. And your father agreed. And now…I like my freedom.”

“So do I, but don’t you get lonely?”

“You can be with someone and still be lonely. In your father’s case—he didn’t like where he was or who he was with. I just made it easy for him.”

The pattern of feet against oak flooring filled my ears. People were starting to leave. I longed for the start of night again.

“Are you ready for your present?”

I missed seeing her smile but I knew it was there.

“Reach under the table. I don’t want to knock over your coffee.”

I fingered a small box, long and slender. Inside was a smooth chain with an oval.

“It’s made of petrified ivory. Carved into a rose. I found this wonderful artist in Cordova, Alaska.”

“It feels so smooth on the underside.” I traced the rose with my finger. “I’d kiss you, but I’d probably knock over the table. I’ve been thinking about moving back to the cottage.”

“Live in Maine? You’ll freeze to death in the winter.”

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some work done of course, maybe even add on one of those glassedin sunrooms.”

“I never thought you’d leave the house where you and Dad—but I think it would be good for you. I’ll come up for vacations and holidays. We’ll have a real country Christmas. Can’t you just picture the old place decked out?”

“Remember the ornery wood stove? When you were ten we went up there for Thanksgiving and you’d just finished reading The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. All you talked about was Polly Pepper and how she baked a raisin cake, and you wanted to bake one just like hers in that awful stove.”

“I poured a whole box of raisins in the batter, just because Polly had only a few, and the cake weighed about twenty pounds when we took it out of the oven.”

“Ladies, for dessert we have Soufflé aux Fruits frais de Provence, strawberry and peach soufflé served with green figs soaked in wine and honey.”

I dipped my spoon into the soufflé letting the velvety texture melt on my tongue. The figs were so sugary. When you bit into one, honey ran all over your fingers and lips—sticky sweet.

When we stepped out onto the street again dusk had fallen, but even this sifted gray light seemed overwhelming at first. We walked arm in arm to the sounds of foghorns and water lapping at the docks.

“You know I’d never say or do anything to deliberately hurt you. But the truth is I’ve done just that. For years I held you back, finding fault in anyone you cared about. It’s been fourteen years since your father left, but at night I still reach across his pillow.

How sad is that?”

We stopped to look out on the water, lit only by a few light bulbs strung across the bait & tackle shack. She rested her head on my shoulder, and then kissed me at my temple, the same spot I had always favored since she was a baby.

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Duke’s

Duke’s was where my dad took me to pick up the best Italian beef and Italian sausage sandwiches on the southwest side of Chicago.

The building wasn’t much bigger than a hut, but the lines sometimes snaked out its two side doors. Once you were within reach of the counter, ordering food turned from a spectator sport into a competitive event. The men and women who worked the counter would yell out, “Hey, YOU. Whaddaya want?” or “Who’s next? Are YOU next?” Sometimes they pointed randomly and yelled “YOU” over and over until someone claimed to be the YOU in question.

The closer my father and I got to the counter, the harder my heart pounded. I hated being pointed at or yelled at, but at Duke’s the chances were pretty good that both of these would happen to you, possibly several times, even after you’d ordered. And once you were picked, you’d better know what you wanted, and you’d better know how to order it. Ordering had its own language, and it took years of listening to my dad to understand what all of it meant.

“Gimme two beefs extra juicy, a sausage, make it bloody. Gimme two dogs.”

“What’ll it be on the dogs?”

“The works.”

“You want the beefs dipped?”

“Yeah, soak ‘em.”

“You want peppers on those beefs?”

“Yeah, gimme peppers.”

“Hot, mild, or both?”

“Both. Extra cukes on those dogs.”

“You got it.”

One time, a really fat guy in line ordered about half the menu.

By the time he left, he was sweating like mad, three bags in each hand, forcing everyone to smoosh together so that he could reach the door. As soon as he was safely out of earshot, everyone looked at each other and sort of snickered and shook their heads, partly 52 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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because he was so fat and partly because he’d ordered so much food, but mostly out of admiration for a guy who could eat that much.

“Must have an appetite, that guy,” someone said, and someone else said, “I wonder how much he spends on groceries, huh? How much you think a guy like that spends?” and then a few people whistled and one guy added, “Shit, I wouldn’t even want to guess.” This was how conversations unraveled in Chicago: one minute you’d be standing in line with a few dozen people you didn’t know; the next, everyone would be laughing and talking. All they needed was a topic, but once that topic revealed itself, there would be no stopping them.

My father never pitched in. He never added anything. He wouldn’t even smile or look at the people talking.

On our way home, I said, “Man, that guy was fat.”

My father said, “YOU,” and poked me in the shoulder with his forefinger. “You know better.”

“Whaddaya mean?” I said, but my father didn’t have to say anything. I could hear the answer in my own voice, the way I’d shot back my reply, and it scared me.

The next time we went to Duke’s, the fat guy was there again.

We went to Duke’s the same time every week, so our schedules must have started overlapping. I watched the fat guy order. I watched him dig through his pants pockets for money and pay for his food.

And then I watched him make his way out the door, mumbling “Excuse me,” as people pressed into one another to make room.

I always wondered who would be the first person to speak up, who would get the ball rolling, and so when no one stepped forward, I decided to give it a try. I cleared my throat. Louder than I meant to, I said, “Man, that guy was F. A. T., fat!” I looked around. When no one responded, I said, “Did everyone see that fat guy? Whew!”

I had expected someone to echo what I had said, to add to it, to spin off of it and start their own riff, but no one said a word. They exchanged looks, or they glanced from me to my dad and then back again. Beads of sweat appeared on my dad’s forehead. I tried picturing the man from last week who had called the fat guy fat, but then I couldn’t remember anyone actually calling him fat. What they’d said was that the guy had an appetite. But what was the difference? Wasn’t saying that a guy had an appetite and then laughing about it the same as calling someone fat?

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looked up, the sky was clear, not a bird in sight. I turned and saw that the noise was coming from Duke’s, from the men and women inside, and I knew that fat wasn’t the topic. I was. I wanted to go back inside and protest, I wanted to make my case, but I knew it wouldn’t help any. Everyone’s turn eventually came. Yesterday it was the fat guy’s. Today it was mine. Tomorrow—who knows?— tomorrow may belong to you.

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Orlando Ricardo Menes

Squid

I hated them as a boy, still do, though I liked Mamá’s savory arroz con calamares, Spanish-style squid rice, its oily ink and paprika sauce simmered to viscous iridescence. What repelled me was the creature itself. Beaky mouth popping out like a blister. Wormy tentacles. A fishier-than-fish malodor that fogged our house for days.

Above all I hated the whitish drool that puddled on the cutting board, I Mamá’s kitchen helper—Roxanita just a baby then, Carlitos too crazy to handle anything sharp. Most mothers used the canned variety from Galicia (actually cuttlefish), but Mamá was a purist so we scoured bait shops in Key Biscayne, Coconut Grove (coconogro to her) for the freshest live mollusk, I the translator because all she could utter was I-no-speakee-eenglee and wha-see-madda-wee-you.

When clerks snickered—you Cubans really cook fish food?—Mamá, tiffed, said Americans have no taste, no culture. Who else would invent tater tots and TV dinners? How scrawny their kids look. They’d eat better in Cuba, and they’re half starved.

Mamá also had her own way of observing Good Friday. Those three days prior we’d fast on stale soda crackers, half-boiled potatoes drenched in olive oil. On Passion Days meat rots from sin, she’d say. Can’t trick God who smells the tiniest drop of lard as it melts in our bellies. Her nose too could sniff out animal flesh from breath and sweat, even if we’d gargled with Listerine, rubbed lavender water all over, and each year Carlitos got ear-twisted for stashing crumpled bags of pork rinds stolen from Severino’s bodega on Douglas and Eighth. Then at six o’clock Good Friday, three hours after God’s last breath, we muttered novenas from prayer cards so old and brittle they flaked like confetti, then ate arroz con calamares steaming hot.

Our servings, neat as burial mounds, measured in teacups and monkey dishes, garnished with pickled onions, flayed pimento. Ripe cachucha peppers and squirts of Tabasco added the necessary penitential burn. For dessert no syrupy guava shells, no cinnamon fried dough, just tamarind jelly she’d made herself so you won’t Crab Orchard Review ◆ 55

Orlando Ricardo Menes

forget sour and sweet belong together. A fussy eater, Carlitos threw tantrums, once even hurled the bowl, scattering rice all over Mamá’s gleaming parquet, toppling Lenten candles encrusted with nails, cockleburs, lime bush thorns. She made him pick up every grain, shard, and lump of wax; he went to bed with cod oil in his belly.

Why not fried grouper or bacalao in green sauce like many Cubans? The tradition began with Abuelo Alberto, my mother’s father, a Catalan who immigrated to Cuba in 1905 at age fourteen.

Every Good Friday he cooked kettlefuls, forty pounds or more fresh squid, like they did in Mediterranean village festivals, enough to feed the neighbors on Calle Jesús Maria, plus Mamá’s three stray cats named after good-luck santos—Blind Lucy, Toothless Apollonia, Limping Lazarus. Her husband a poor math teacher all his life, it was Abuela Nena who worked as a laundress at month’s end when Abuelo couldn’t wheedle more credit from Don Moisés, the Jewish shopkeeper to whom he was indebted year after year.

Nonetheless, Abuelo was a genius with numbers: reciter of pi, dreamer of algorithms, scribbling formulas on the soles of his shoes, computing decimals quicker than a slide rule or an abacus.

Though antagonistic toward organized religions, Abuelo was a voracious reader of mystical books in Hebrew, even dead Aramaic, languages he’d learned with the help of rabbis who’d fled pogroms in Russia and Poland. Studied those tractates dictated by astral beings that dwell in the heaven of heavens, and within that minuscule heaven lies the mind of God, where thought is matter and matter thought.

Abuelo taught Mamá that squid and their allies, the cuttlefish, were holier than finned fish. Of all secretions in the ocean, Mamá said, sepia the closest to Passion purple. And if I concentrated on the eyes, I too would see Christ’s wounds, she said. Tentacles? His torn ligaments. Flesh? Those calluses he got dragging the cross on La Via Dolorosa. Sepia, this sacred ink, she said, Christ mixed with his own blood to scribe prayers against evil spirits, even Satan who penetrates your soul as a worm sucking out all the goodness God gave you at birth.

The real Jesucristo was a sorcerer who’d learned his art in Egypt and Babylonia, spoke animal tongues, traveled through time as pure energy, could take any form, even water. But the Popes have hidden his scrolls, keeping from us these holy incantations. Then Mamá told us stories about African ghouls in Cuba, called chicherekús, how they lay their eggs inside coconuts and when eaten you become 56 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Orlando Ricardo Menes

possessed, damned to roam Limbo among unbaptized babies and heathens, a place of darkness and dust where human flesh returns to brittle clay and the only way to regain your memory is to drink the warm blood of a sacrificed she-goat. Also the güije, a tropical merman, which lives in dark lagoons, pulling fishers and swimmers to their everlasting doom. With enormous sea fangs it injects poison, transforming human beings into monster squid whose sole existence is serving their güije master. How as a young woman, too, Mamá was fondled by a sea goblin (she lived just a block from Havana’s seaside malecón), her body paralyzed for what seemed like hours, so real a creature she could smell his salty breath, claws and scales leaving marks on her skin. Only a white mass was able to free Mamá from el duende.

Terrified of Mamá’s Good Friday stories, I stayed awake hugging the pillow, cocooned inside my blanket, thinking that just as we have pure angels and fallen angels, so must there be good and bad squid—Hell’s ocean a vastness of rippling sepia, so many they formed undulant islands, the dying ones washed ashore by the millions, flame-eyes hardened to blood stone. I broke off a petrified branch, splatted the mantles, innards spraying high up to tinctureof-violet clouds, and I felt powerful, holy like Samson, hollered, beat my chest, danced in circles, but slipped into the squishy mass when a wave pummeled the beach, almost drowned as I struggled out of eddies, spitting the bitter, purple-stippled squid. Floated on currents of mucus until the swells cast me on a shore of crushed jet stones like Mamá’s evil-eye talisman.

As each wave splashed and roared, the squid grew and grew, arrowhead fins turned to battle-axes, skull-grinding horny beaks, arms and tentacles lashing, siphons squirting like jet engines. Where ink waters overflowed into glittering pools, I found refuge inside a grotto; clambered onto a ledge with a hut made from fish spines and fish heads—thousands, countless sizes and species—where a slimy, bulgingeyed, tentacle-headed güije chopped on a giant clam shell, his cleaver big as a ship’s rudder, globs of ink dripping into a grimy coffin.

Squid parts floated on the black scum as baby heads, baby arms, baby ears, baby feet, baby torsos, and I cried out, Mamá, Mamá, then sprung from my bed, panting and shaking, skin gummy, throat dry. Searched for signs of the horrible creature, hid in the closet where I dozed till daylight. Woke again to the sound of pans clanking, the beating of eggs, the smell of burnt milk and toast.

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Orlando Ricardo Menes

Mamá entered the room to rouse us with cold orange juice, but seeing only Carlitos she began to yell out my name, her voice louder and shriller as she continued searching throughout the house. When I came out of the closet, she hugged me hard, spanked my butt when I told her about the güije and the monster squid. Said I was a stupid boy to give her such a fright, that thinking about monsters and demons only gives them more power over the living.

Fill your mind with holy thoughts, she said, warned that God is quick-tempered with bad boys. Imagine Jesucristo doing miracles and the saints floating to heaven. To placate Mamá and God, I recited El Padre Nuestro until I counted three hundred, maybe less, maybe more, and went to school with stiffened knees, a throat so sore it hurt to swallow my own spit.

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Susan Elbe

Fish Fry at Harry’s Tap

Every Friday all summer, Aunt Gertie started early to dredge the shell pink wings of perch fillets with seasoned flour and bread crumbs, slice white Idaho potatoes for French fries, shred cabbage for her vinegar cole slaw.

My cousins and I helped, setting up the black Formica booths with silverware, spooning tartar sauce and cole slaw onto sectioned paper plates.

In the steamy backroom kitchen, meaty butterflies plumped in bubbling oil.

Out front Uncle Harry set up chaser shots, tapped pilsners of beer from the land of sky blue water, Hamm’s, its clock sign hung behind the bar, backdrop of Northwoods lake, cobalt glass that rippled with a trick of light.

On the jukebox, Patsy Cline sang “Crazy,” and farmers, come to town in clean frayed overalls, pressed forward with their dollar bills—three fish for Mabel and the kids, shot and a beer for me.

Their laughter echoed off tin ceiling tiles as they rose up to summer’s plenty. A lull when the men, with their sixth sense for this weather-driven life, listened to hot wind shift gears, blue highways crazing in the sky, thunder’s rough idle way off—cash in rain and ruin in lightning. June bugs climbed

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Susan Elbe

the screen door’s mesh. Outside, miller moths took light into their wings, disappeared in streetlights, then looped into the darkness, visible again like night fields in palpable relief.

Breathing out beyond the town’s pink glow, acres and acres of sighing corn.

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Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Weaned: Breaking the habit of pork

First trimester:// No matter what I smell, it’s a hot dog. And (from miles away) makes me sick. It was Andre who reminded me how meat factories take remnants from the pig, cow, or chicken and stuff them into paperthin edible skins to make the wiener. All-American. Brand name Oscar Mayer (usually). Garlic and coloring, usually red dye no. 254 or something close to that. Boiled and stuffed in a bun, the wiener makes a nice pocket of leftovers. Remains. Food that wasn’t wanted somewhere else.

Second trimester:// I want it. The baby wants it. We want minced barbecue from Ralph’s with coleslaw on a round bun. So I beg my husband to drive the winding mountain roads from Indianapolis to North Carolina just to get us a Ralph’s barbecue sandwich. Because he loves me, he does. Eleven hours, he drives us to satisfy our craving. My mouth waters for the vinegary, red pepper hot in my mouth. But the moment I open the sandwich wrapper and the smell wafts to my nose, I am sick again. Squeamish. The thought of remnant meat from the hot dog remains. Minced pork is also a leftover stuffed into a bun. Pulled pig that was not used somewhere else.

Third trimester:// Bloody hog killings and souse. Pork trimmings pickled, cubed, soaked in cider vinegar and chilled. Chitterlings. Pig brains and eggs. Pickled pigs’ feet. Hog maws. Pork rinds. Fatback. All that is left over when the good meat is already gone. There was a time, my Crab Orchard Review ◆ 61

Cherryl Floyd-Miller

granny says, when fatback meat was all we had. Little pork never hurt anybody at all. I walk into the feast of swine leftovers in my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. Smell makes me queasy. Odor embedding in my skin. I wash my hands insanely so that my skin will smell like skin again. But the pig remains. It is here left over in every corner of the house. The scent of it does not linger somewhere else.

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Jeffrey Franklin

Cookin’ with the David Jones Trio Life is fun when you’re good at something good.

—William Matthews In Saturday’s kitchen in jeans, Dad wound up his wrist, looping the fat yolks into a pinwheel of yellows, concentrating ease into speed, and just let go, let the greased sockets of the wrist spin on the elbow’s flywheel, let the eggs, as if by their own momentum, merge into a smear of galaxy and rise with the ring of the whisk to finebeaded froth. Last night, the jazz trio’s pianist urged the first few notes from between his shoulders, listening, eyes closed, for them to alight somewhere far away, then followed or was pulled along like a man after spilled papers, the wind cartwheeling them now in overlapping riffs, shavings of sunlight Crab Orchard Review ◆ 63

Jeffrey Franklin

tumbling across the emerald lawn and down the rumpled hillside into the shade-steeped funk beneath the trees where the bassman joined him, approaching thunder felt in the ground, in the bones, startling a flung fist of starlings from beneath the eaves of the baby grand, a swoop of notes dispersing, satin shadows rippling across hedgerow and rock-wall off the fringe-lipped precipice, the drummerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s snare and slash of cymbals, the foot-pedaled drum jumping hearts into our throats and out above the dazzling waves, miraculous suspension, oh, take me, let me go, let me hover in the windâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chamber, drift up and eddy in a thermal, even as horizon comes a sweep of thunderhead, hot rain strafing the city, its soot-grimed cars riddled with leopard spots, tenement windows rattling prismatic

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Jeffrey Franklin

streaks, a whale’s moan of sweet anguish from a thumb drawn across the conga’s skin, the arse-end of a handle sliding down the cymbal’s brass spine, and ending when the eggs hit the skillet, the sizzle buttering our appetites for artifice made natural, grace given back by hands that thank. Thank you, Dad, Daddy, Daddio.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 65

Ana Garza

Eating Cactus from a Jar

And white bread soggy with mustard and wet crackers with my fingers; everything with my fingers and my tongue and the roof of my mouth; eating cactus, onions, carrots, peppers diced in vinegar and jalapeĂąo mustard and baked wheat squares with lemon flavoring and black pepper, all of them with my hands, my mouth; eating and eating and eating and eating till the vinegar spills down my arms, and the mustard and the crumbs catch in the corners of my mouth and the creases of my elbows stick, the cactus, mustard, pepper, starch; eating till my body fills and keeps the cactus from a jar, mustard, soggy lemon-pepper jumble.

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John Guzlowski

Hunger in the Labor Camps

1. What My Father Ate He ate what he couldn’t eat, what his mother taught him not to: brown grass, small chips of wood, the dirt beneath his gray dark fingernails.

He ate the leaves off trees. He ate bark.

He ate the flies that tormented the mules working in the fields.

He ate what would kill a man in the normal course of his life: leather buttons, cloth caps, anything small enough to get into his mouth.

He ate roots. He ate newspaper.

In his slow clumsy hunger he did what the birds did, picked for oats or corn or any kind of seed in the dry dung left by the cows.

And when there was nothing to eat he’d search the ground for pebbles and they would loosen his saliva and he would swallow that.

And the other men did the same.

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John Guzlowski

2. What a Starving Man Has He has his skin. He has a thinness to his eyes no bread will ever redeem.

He has no belly and his long muscles stand out in relief as if they’d been flayed.

He is a bony mule with the hard eyes one encounters in nightmares or in hell, and he dreams of cabbage and potatoes the way a boy dreams of women’s breasts.

They come uncalled for, round and fevered like rain that will never stop. There is always the empty sea in his belly, rising, falling and seeking land, and next to him there’s always another starving man who says, “Help me, Brother. I am dying here.”

3. Among Sleeping Strangers The moon set early and it grew darker, and the men settled to sleep in the cold without blankets. Soon it would be spring but it was still cold, and it was always cold at night, and they did what men always did at night when they were cold. They pressed their bodies together and looked for warmth the way a man who has nothing will look, expecting nothing and thankful to God for the little he finds, and the night was long as it always was and some men crawled roughly across the others to reach an outside wall to relieve themselves,

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and some men started coughing and the coughing entered the dreams of some of the other men and they remembered the agony of their mothers and grandfathers dying of hunger or cholera, their lungs coughed up in blood-streaked phlegm, and some men dreamt down deeper and deeper against the cold till they came somehow to that holy moment in the past when they were warm and full and loved, and the sun in those dreams rose early and set late and the days were full of church bells and the early spring flowers that stirred their lives and in the morning the men shook away from the cold bodies of their brothers and remembered everything they had lost, their wives and sisters, their lovers, their homes, their frozen fingers, their fathers, the soil they’d been born on, the souls they’d been born with, and then they crawled up out of the earth and gathered together to work in the dawn.

4. The Germans These men belonged to the Germans the way a mule belonged to the Germans and the Germans stood watching their hunger and then their deaths, watched them as if they were dead trees in the wind, and waited for them to fall, and some of the men did. They sank to their knees like children begging forgiveness for sins they couldn’t recall,

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John Guzlowski

or they failed to rise when the others did and were left in the wet gray fields where the Germans watched them and the Germans stood watching when the men who were still hungry came back and lifted the dead men and carried their thin bones to the barn, and buried them there before eating the soup that wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have kept them alive.

The Germans knew a starving man needed more than soup and more than bread but still they stood and watched.

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Yona Harvey

Blessing Blue Crabs

Smiling white teeth, television host pleased with her face, her there-you-have-it filling the screen.

One last shot of the elegant restaurant poised a few miles across town, its proudbellied chef & owner, spit-polished silver, glasses clear enough to ring.

Goodbye to the women who blessed the blue crabs with hymns, who undressed the trapped bodies from blue-tinted shells, lifted the meat from its legs, sealed flesh for markets, who weren’t invited to sit at the linen-clothed tables of the fine restaurant featured on the cooking program, a “must-stop” for indulgent diners passing through the Lowcountry.

These women, still in uniform, sang stridently in the cannery kitchen, but spoke barely above whispers to cameras stationed outdoors for interviews against the backdrop of foamy sea, whimsical sailboats.

At a picnic bench propped for the occasion, supplied with paper napkins, they sampled the chef ’s famous crab cakes, a cup of water to wash them down.

Yes, they are delicious. What else could they answer without accusation of ungratefulness, their dark fingers shaking away the delicate crumbs?

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Ava Leavell Haymon

The Witch Has Told You a Story

You are food, she said.

You are here for me to eat.

Fatten up, and I will like you better. Your brother will be first. You must wait your turn.

You must feed him yourself.

You must learn to do it. Take him eggs with yellow sauce, and muffins, butter leaking out the crooked break in the sides. Fried meats later in the morning and sweets in a heady parade from the oven.

His vigilance, an ice pick of hunger pricking his sides, will melt in the unctuous cream fillings.

He will forget. He will thank you for it. His little finger stuck every day through the cracks in the bars will grow sleek and round, his hollow face swell like the moon. He will stop dreaming the fear in the woods without food.

He will lean toward the mouth of the oven, the door that yawns wide every afternoon to better and better smells.

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M. Ayodele Heath

The Dreamlife of Dr. Bledsoe’s Inner Pickaninny Bledsoe, you’re a shameless chitterling eater! Ha! And not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you’re not being observed!…I accuse you of indulging in a filthy habit, Bledsoe! Lug them out so we can see! I accuse you before the eyes of the world!

— Invisible Man, from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Though he long ago resumed consuming pork to this day he still will not eat fried chicken in front of White folk (Octoroons, or even Negroes he needs to impress). Pondering entrées at a recent business lunch, craving the crunchy peppered crust, his glands moisten at the mere thought.

But he fears the Black skillet’s neon grease will wildly distort the innate thickness of his lips. That sucking a drumstick dry will expose the enormous ivory bone stuck through his nose, warping his face, weighing him down in an apelike walk till his meticulous pin-striped life unravels like an unruly raffia skirt.

Thus, when desserttime comes, he avoids sweet potato confections, pecan confrontations, and other denigrating delectables at all costs. Instead, his controlled fork picks (like a good little boy) through cool fruit salad. Devouring apples, cherries, pears and grapes, he leaves a clean White plate—curiously bare but for watermelon parts.

Asked why he will not eat them, his reply: Where would I hide the seeds?

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Christopher Hennessy

Pear, Apple, Peach

La poire, la pomme, la pêche, she sings as she shaves away the sugar mountained past the rim of the tin measuring cup—a sweep that turns into an upturned palm.

She holds nothing, but I back away from her, from her supplication that I leave.

I am secretly learning those words I will never speak, the name of the mother I will never kiss.

The syrup of a pitted memory swells from my stomach, punches me back from the table, where I break my nights into a mire of sticky rinds, into bouquets of stiff baguettes— pleas that share me with her.

I am secretly learning the fruits as days.

She places a sugar cube—soaked in her morning’s coffee— on my tongue (a shaking bone clicking terribly, a scold

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that scalds the soft, peachy flesh of my mouth).

The days pass as I count my teeth: Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi.

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Christopher Hennessy

Meat

Though I’m careful to keep the sheet up to his chin, covering the trellis of his ribs, his dying complains in him— an echo through his body, the rasp of his promise: we survive together. An acid swallow, when we, together, realize he is still here.

If he’s able to open his mouth, I will kiss sugar water into him.

Not even a few strings pulled loose from a lump of stewed beef, he cannot take even that. A swampy broth, but eye-dropped into his mouth.

A lentil, or a mashed kernel of corn someday soon, I promise him.

Can he feel the sunlight welling up in the sinkholes left by his clinging starvation? Even a few moments of day, muted by linen curtains, and his skin turns translucent.

When he asks me to brush away the starved insects he imagines crawling over him, I blow a cool current over his skin. My lips so close I almost feel the insects’ bristles.

They want meat to inhabit,

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but he gives them nothing, only a cavern of tunnels.

If his eyes focus, if he can remember why he cannot remember, if he sees me—I tell him he’s rescued.

He asks if we’ve found our way out of the caves, if the sun is out.

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James Hoch

Snapper

Ancient rot. Earthen rot. Carrion eater.

Older than human, old as stone if stone could float and wander onto a creek road in a rainstorm, cars swerving around the splayed carcass, a boy waiting, a flat shovel in hand like a timepiece.

Almost twenty years since we watched a turtle, hours roiling in a stock pot, a bleed hole in its pale head, turning the water brackish. A stink so thick we wore bandannas over our faces, as it drained into a white pickle bucket, and hucked the turtle on a wood table, gently pried carapace from plastron, leaves of shell coming off in our hands.

We slaved in a basement kitchen, picking through innards, streaked with piss and shit. We shucked muscle from cartilage, tendon from bone shard, careful with the gall sac, our eyes jaundiced pools in gourdgagging steam, a single fan resigned to empathy turned against the wall.

We sang; we could not sing. We moved our hips; we could not dance. We converted animal to oblivion. We worked like we never wanted to work again, balled our aprons in laundry bags and buried the day in some cave back in our heads, the same place this boy must fill, standing crow-like in the road, his shovel downward swung, a divining rod, a lever.

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Marilene Phipps

Meat

With three bullets stuck in his chest and still in his chair, the dead watchman at the downtown Port-au-Prince Bridgestone store got his shoes stolen from his feet less than three minutes after the zenglendo thieves killed him so they could rob the place for whatever small amount of cash was in the register. In Haiti now, there isn’t much time for sentiment. It didn’t take long for someone walking by the storefront to take one look at that still-warm-dead-watchman to figure out he wouldn’t need his shoes any longer. Better take them now than leave them for some of the corpse’s relative to have.

Besides, the watchman may not have any relative those shoes would fit. We’ve got to be sensible. I come from a country of coconuts.

Fate is like a coconut—you never know when it’s gonna fall. Can be good, can be bad. If it falls on your head, tough luck. If it falls at your feet, you’ve got something sweet to eat, something sweet to drink. That’s what happened with the shoe story—the watchman got it on the head, the man passing by got it at his feet. You see, this coconut business has made us a fatalistic people. We take what comes and we make sensible choices.

Talking about sensible choices—you see me sitting here with you— a nice young woman—in this Miami airport? I’m waiting for the next plane home because I just missed mine. Why did I miss my plane?

Because of some excess baggage I was trying to put in someone else’s who offered I do that because he had very little baggage of his own and I had way too much. Was going to cost me a fortune. After I put some of mine in his, I started re-doing my packing so I could spread the weight differently. I didn’t realize it took so long, and by the time I got to the boarding gate, they’d just closed it and given my seat to someone on stand-by. Anyway, I was talking about sensible choices, right? Well, what do you think all that weight is about anyway? Gifts you say? You are right! But what kind of gifts d’you think? Don’t even bother to answer. I’ll tell you right now: it’s not scarves, doilies or smart books, it’s meat! I bring meat.

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Marilene Phipps

And meat weighs. Specially the frozen ones. The cooked ones not as much obviously. And meat is what we need. Meat to eat so we can put some meat on our bones. If you look at our people and didn’t know better, you’d think it’s the sun that melts away the meat from the bones. Some people are nasty enough to say that we dance and fornicate so much that meat never has a chance to stick. I tell you though, I’m not the only one that lugs meat every time I get a chance to go home.

Meat is criss-crossing America all over and everyday in Haitians’ baggage. Oversized, overstuffed, overused baggage that tears, bursts, explodes all over the runways, or sometimes stands there, and I say stand, not sit, because it’s not the kind that sits—it has bulk, it has presence, it has legs it stands on and challenges you to move it if you dare. It’s like a donkey that won’t go forward no matter what and everybody behind you in the line helps pushing at it just so they get their turn and don’t miss the plane.

I tell you, they hate us at the airports. They hire special people for us—to keep Haitians in a single line, quietly one behind the other. Maybe it’s thinking about us that someone thought of that cellophane-luggage-wrap machine. Maybe they’d love to wrap us just like that—neatly and tightly. Everything has to be so neat and controlled all the time. And straight! And you know there ain’t nothing straight enough about us. We are here on this earth to illustrate the meaning of curve—look! my nose, my hair, my ass.

Our emotions also have too much curve! They swell and wave, they bulge in our chest, burst from all our movements. We’re overwhelming and overwhelmed, we’re dislocated and desperate, disorderly and often illiterate, but! MEAT, we know how to pack.

You can freeze it like a rock and it will take the whole day you’re traveling to defrost, and your relatives will cook it that same night if they don’t have a fridge—that’s one. Two is the way you prepare the meat so it can last several days without spoiling—sometimes Port-au-Prince isn’t your last stop even though half the family has been there waiting for you all day on those airport benches because waiting for someone they love is fun and because they came far from the provinces anyway, traveling by bus day and night, and they have no place else to wait. And that place far in the provinces is where that cooked meat is gonna have to go before any relative gets to chew any piece of it. Me, I’m going to Chantale. That’s where my mother is and that’s where I grew up. So, from Port-au-Prince I have to take the bus to Les Cayes, and from there find some kind of 80 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Marilene Phipps

a ride to Chantale. All the meat I’ve got now stored in the plane’s belly is gonna go to my mother’s belly.

I’ve got goat, beef, lamb and chicken. It’s all cooked—I won’t get to Chantale before tomorrow night. The meat is all prepared. I’ll tell you how I do it. Everybody does it this way. Ask any Haitian woman that travels with meat, and she’ll tell it to you the same. So, first the meat needs to soak in salt and vinegar. Beforehand, I poke and slice it to let the salt and vinegar get in real good. Then, I prepare spices to marinate the meat—leek, parsley, salt, Maggie cubes, garlic, onion, hot pepper. Afterwards, I take the meat, wash it with sour oranges, rub all the spices on it. At this point, the meat is ready to be cooked, under low heat, covered, so it loses most of its juices, but not all. Don’t add any oil, or any liquid of any kind—heat and spices will make the meat sweat. After that treatment, nothing can happen to it, nothing can hurt it, nothing can spoil it. Your meat’s safe.

The way I have it figured out, my mother and my relatives will enjoy meat for at least a week. I know they haven’t had any since the last time I visited. You hear about this food chain story? Well, Haitians aren’t at the top of it like the rest of the beautiful people in this world.

We go up and down. Sometimes we’re up on it like when I go home with the meat. Other times it’s the other animals that make it to the top feeding on us. These days, sharks eat us. When we’re shot to death and left on the ground to rot, it’s ants and worms that eat us. When we get dumped in the sewage, it’s rats that get fat on us. Their beady eyes get all shiny on that human vitamin. If we happen to make it to some proper burial, the cockroaches are on stand-by. I know you don’t agree with this kind of reasoning, but me, that’s the way I see it and that’s that.

Mind you, I’ve got my reasons—my youngest brother, it’s the rats that were enjoying his sweet seventeen-year-old meat. We were looking everywhere for him—the hospital, the police, the morgue. Some woman watching her steps at night for uncovered sewage holes saw something big that was floating. She called the police. My little brother was so swollen they could not lift him outa there. Picks and shovels got him out of that black piss and pulp of God-knows-what. The rats were sorry.

And he hadn’t done a thing. He wasn’t in any kind of politics.

Not that there isn’t anything to complain about and be in politics for, mind you. He was walking downtown and some guys picked him up. Don’t know who, don’t know why. They beat him to death, dumped him. My mother fainted at the morgue. First drawer they pull open, it’s him—her baby. Still now, it’s been fifteen years, if Crab Orchard Review ◆ 81

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she hears his name mentioned, she can’t eat for days. She had thirteen children, only four of us are left, four girls. Two of us here. I’m in Boston. My sister’s in New Hampshire. She should be here with me today. I’m going to my father’s funeral. That’s why I’m wearing all black. It’s not for fun I’m going this time. He died Thursday. I’m ashamed my sister isn’t here with me. She’s never been back since she left. She’s afraid. Today is Saturday. She says she’ll come Monday. She won’t. I told her to give me the money of the trip, that way I can distribute it to relatives. She says she’ll send it if she can’t come. Lies. They are sick of seeing me down there. Every year I go. Even my mother says what’s wrong with me I keep coming back. They’ve waited at the airport all morning and they’re going to be sorry it’s me, not her. Me, and with these seven identical black hats piled up on my head for all of us women of the family to wear at the funeral. My father will be proud. Death reunites us. But really, we shouldn’t wait for death to do that.

He was sick and we knew he wouldn’t last. Cancer. Cancer killed him. Cancer all over. Can you picture this: my father’s body eating itself up? What a mess when the doctor opened him up!—all his insides turned into ground meat. The doctor closed him without touching a thing. Too late. I told you he died Thursday? Right. Well, ever since Monday I felt my bones as if broken. My relatives may be sick of seeing me but I know my father wants to see me. How do I know that? It’s clear—because when they called me to tell me he was dead, I couldn’t move. I was dead. Neighbors gave me bitter coffee—didn’t work. It’s only after I talked with him I was able to move. No, I didn’t light a candle. What? No, I didn’t make any promises. I just talked to him, I told him: Help me, give me strength, because if you don’t I won’t be able to go to your funeral, and I want to go, help me. It worked right away! If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t be sitting in Miami airport talking to you to pass the time.

Do I feel sorrow? No. I don’t feel these things any more. I used to.

Had bad thoughts too. Once, I stood in front of a train track. I wanted to let my body drop on the tracks. Neighbors told me to pray—ask God to remove these thoughts from my head. So now, that’s what I do. If you die, I just don’t think of you anymore. My father’s dead.

After the funeral, I won’t think of him any more.

Besides, I have enough stuff that fills up my head. I have three children, two of them twins. Luck? Yes, I hear twins bring luck.

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have one of each. And they fight. And neighbors fight. Even Spirits fight! In the neighborhood where I live, things have gotten so bad, no one trusts any one anymore. It could get just like it is in Haiti now, when neighbors throw stones at each other, and if it’s not hungry people piled on top of each other in one room under a tin roof like in a steam bath, it’s the dogs getting at each other when they can’t find a goat to gang up on. You think I’m making this up? Let me tell you. You know how in Haiti people like to have dogs to watch the house but they don’t like to feed them? What d’you say?...Yes, that’s true—they can’t feed them. Anyway, just the other day in Chantale, some dogs killed and ate a man’s goat. The man was so frustrated— his only goat!—all day long he went after all the dogs in the neighborhood, guilty or not guilty, and hacked them to death with his machete. Some weren’t quite sliced enough and died only after they had lost all their blood. D’you know how many dogs died in Haiti that day? A mess I tell you. And we don’t eat dogs. An angry waste—that’s what it was if you ask me.

And you think that’s the only sickness going around now? It isn’t. I have a brother...what? What brother? Never mind what brother. I tell you, this one or that one, they’re all my brothers. All Haitians are my brothers. What’s more—everybody in the world’s my brother. My mother, your mother, her mother, it’s all the same belly! And that’s what can drive you crazy—what’s happening to you or him over there, it’s happening to me. Like those quilts in Maine they call Crazy Quilt—made up of all kinds of fabrics, all sizes, all colors, stitched together—you know, and if one place gets torn or damaged, any other piece of fabric can replace it, because all the flowers, same blanket? Well, all the red blood going around—same thing, same blanket. See what I mean? Anyway, I was telling you about my brother and his sickness. He is getting old, my brother, and it’s around the mouth it’s showing. His lips used to be full and soft, now they’re getting small and cracked. His father didn’t love him, and his mother, well, she had others to take care of. It’s like he is drying up where he couldn’t suck or scream. And now all he wants is little girls. He is horny for little girls. Ten years old and his eyes get funny when he looks at them. He thinks they’re looking at him too. Fifty-five years old he is! He tells me a five-year-old once grabbed his balls knowing full well what she was doing. He says I don’t know what’s going on in the world any more and if my twelve-year-old says she is still a virgin it’s either a lie or I don’t give her any rope, and whatever she Crab Orchard Review ◆ 83

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don’t do for fun, she’ll do for money. So I tell him that a little girl is not a piece of meat, that the head needs time to catch up with the body, it’s not because a fruit has color it’s ripe to be eaten, and then I tell him about love, love that can save us all, that love’s the Messiah, that my man’s love is waiting for me at home like a Messiah, my Messiah, my man is, and I tell my brother, I tell him, and he looks at me like I am crazy.

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The Man with the Buddha Heads

My mom usually spends most evenings at Ameri-Thai, balancing numbers and budgets, going from table to table with an extra large smile asking patrons about the quality of their meals, instructing her hired chefs on the correct and most efficient way to carve up a mango for the chutney. So I’m surprised to see her cooking in our kitchen and not at the restaurant’s. She chops a head of onion rapidly, without tears, then swishes a finger along the sides of the blade, knocking off the diced onions that cling to it.

“I’m surprised you’re home,” I say, tossing my algebra book on the couch.

She places the knife on the marble countertop and smiles. “Just wanted to spend time with my boys,” she says. One of her blouse straps slips off her shoulders, and I look away.

My mom’s sporting a new look I can’t get used to. She used to have beautiful black hair, long and straight that went well past her waist like an Asian Rapunzel. It was what my dad loved most about her; sometimes he stroked her head as she lay asleep on his lap. After he moved out, she curled it, cut it in half, and dyed her bangs blond. Now she wears tight-fitting outfits—revealing mini-skirts, butt-hugging leather pants, belly button blouses—clothes moms should never wear. My brother’s creepy friends—the blond twins—call her their “Asian Wet Dream.” Whenever they talk about her they make everything sound sexual. “Oh, she can cook for me any day.”

My mom checks on the noodles rapidly boiling in a pot. She’s preparing my favorite meal, one of the house specialties at the restaurant, Thai spaghetti—a blend of puréed Roma tomatoes, coconut milk, a tablespoon of red curry, and one Thai pepper that, when I eat it, makes my head itch and sweat.

“Isn’t Esteban going to miss you?” I say a little too sarcastically.

“He can handle the dinner rush,” she says, frowning. “You should treat him better. He likes you, wants to bond.”

“Great.”

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Esteban’s my mom’s new beau and the new appointed head chef at Ameri-Thai. He thinks he’s all that like Ricky Martin—a Latin loving machine. He talks with a thick Spanish accent—I swear it’s fake—and calls my mom his cielo, his sky. He says he’s been around the world, traveling from country to country, a drifter, and now he’s looking to settle down. Yeah, I think, you want to settle down with my mom’s money. When he’s with her, he sticks his chest out and makes sure she notices his biceps. When she leaves the room, he takes a deep breath and lets his stomach collapse over his waistline.

“Where’s Bobby?” my mom says.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” I say. I dip my finger into the bubbling spaghetti sauce, and my mom swats my hand away. “I saw a new one today. This one was freaky—red eyes and really sunken-in cheeks like those starving people in Ethiopia. It was in the third window on the second floor. I swear its eyes were following me.”

My mom shivers. “It’s a sin to have just the head of Buddha and not the rest of him.”

“What does a guy want with so many heads anyway?” I ask.

She says some rich white people think Buddha heads are art.

She says a person who does this to a religious icon can’t be a good man, a man to keep away from. “Do you hear me, Gron?”

“I hear,” I say. “When’s dinner gonna be ready?”

The man lives at the end of our lane, in a run-down white Colonial, paint chipping and turning an ugly shade of yellow. Weeds tangle and weave around the rusted gate and into the lion’s mouth at the front opening. The house creaks when it gets windy, which it sometimes does during hurricane season in Rhode Island. The columns in front of the house lean like that tower in Italy, like they’re going to fall at any time, taking the whole house with it. Off to the right is an old fountain—one of those mythological guys blowing his reed at a naked woman whose breasts are beginning to crumble.

In the spring, birds get together on the house and electric lines— sparrows, finches, robins—like a symphony of tweets. There are bird feeders at every corner of the property, always filled.

Outside the gate is a large oak that must’ve been there since the beginning of time, so huge its branches extend deep into the man’s property. The oak looks strange because the electric company cut a big U through the middle of the tree so the power lines could stretch to the house without getting tangled in branches. If you squint, the tree looks like a bald man with tufts of hair growing out of the sides.

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At certain angles, through certain windows, you can see a Buddha head, sometimes two or three, lined up on pedestals. That’s the eerie part. Everyone seems to know about it. The Buddha heads move around week to week, never the same head at the same window. Sometimes a head might be staring right at you, as you stare right at it.

The man has lived there for over thirty years, I think. At least my mom says he’s been there her whole life. He must be around eighty. When my mom was little he used to go all out during Christmas. The house was the brightest thing in Rhode Island—so bright neighbors complained and the nearby airport told him to shut it down because the lights along the driveway were confusing the pilots. My mom doesn’t know what happened between now and then, but she, too, has heard strange stories. He was accused of murdering his wife with a pitchfork. He keeps dead bodies in the basement like John Wayne Gacy. He’s a dangerous schizophrenic. He fought in wars and still hears bombs and bullets. His daughter drowned in the fountain and he can’t forgive himself. He’s a Satanist and does sacrifices, which explains the Rogers’ missing poodle.

I’ve never seen him, not once. He’s a big mystery like the other things I keep wondering about: where Dad is, what my mom sees in Esteban, why my brother disappears into the bathroom for long durations, whether there’s life on other planets, how baby birds know when to spread their wings and leave the nest. Because the Buddha House is on the way home from school, every day I stop outside the gates and peer in, hoping to see the man. Sometimes, Bobby comes with and makes up stories to scare me; it’s his right for being three years older, a junior in high school.

“I’ve seen him once and nearly pissed myself,” he said. “He had this eye patch, walked with a cane. I was just looking inside the gate, and thought I saw something moving by the ugly fountain. He came after me, for real, burst out of the bushes like a tiger. Called me gook. Growled something serious. ‘Fuckin’ gook, fuckin’ gook,’ he kept saying. ‘Die, die, die.’ The dude thinks he’s still in Hiroshima or some shit like that.”

Bobby’s hands moved in every direction; his voice slowed for dramatic effect. I swallowed hard. I believed that inside the house lurked a man with one eye, waiting to kill any Asian—even Thai halfies like we were—who crossed his path.

“You scared?” said Bobby, looking proud of himself.

“No,” I said.

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“Yes you are,” he said. “Don’t lie.”

“Shut up.”

He hunched over and said, “Die, die,” in a croaking voice.

I flinched and he laughed, jogging ahead of me toward home, his arms waving above his head, screaming, “The gutless gullible geek falls for another one.”

Things have changed since our dad moved out. We used to hang out all the time, the three of us—Dad, Bobby, and me. Bobby’s real name is Bhudipone, but when he started high school, the kids picked on him, called him booby or booty, so he simplified it: Bobby. He was my best friend. We did everything together—play laser tag, pretend to be knights and rescue a porcelain doll that was our princess. We’d stay up all night and make shadow puppets on the bedroom walls—our favorite, “E.T. go pee.” But Bobby isn’t fun anymore, a real jerk in fact. He has new friends—jocks with too much muscle and not enough brain. He’s getting stupider too, his grades dropping from what used to be an A average to a C-. Mom has threatened to take him out of Alser High, a public school, and enroll him in St. Vincent’s Boys Prep, but her Buddhist pride keeps her from it.

Our dad left last year. He worked for the telephone company, so we’d see him around town on the poles, safely harnessed in. I used to call him Spider-Man because he climbed up those poles so fast. He’d take me on certain jobs before I started school. I’d watch him do his thing, working efficiently, as if he was part of the air.

Birds would remain on the lines, unbothered. When he was done, he’d push off the top, come down like a feather, landing softly on his feet. I’d clap.

He got jealous of Mom’s restaurant; she spent nearly all her time at Ameri-Thai and made Bobby and me help most days. He spent his evenings alone in a big empty house until one day he left.

He quit his job at the telephone company and moved out of town.

The next week the divorce papers came. My mom signed them like she signed bills for the restaurant, automatic, without a second glance. He promised to take Bobby and me out every weekend— promised to take us paintballing and disco bowling—but he’s been absent the last four months. He hasn’t even called. We don’t know where he is.

After my grandma’s death, my mom found a bunch of recipes in an old notebook. My grandma at the age of seventy-four could 88 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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make anything out of nothing, unique stuff—spicy hot dog salad, holy basil chicken burger on Chinese buns, and deep fried shrimp and imitation crab croquettes slathered in a canned pineapple sweet and sour sauce. My grandma immigrated to America from Thailand when she was twenty, married a Thai man a year later, who passed away when my mom was three. Grandma raised a large family practically by herself—my mom being the youngest child out of six. While the rest of her brothers and sisters traveled far from home, my mom stuck close to the nest.

When my mom met my dad, she was nineteen, he was twenty-two; she was interning in a five-star restaurant in downtown Providence; he washed dishes there. Grandma didn’t mind he was white and poor, a high school dropout; she was the rare Asian who believed in love and destiny, consulted the old ancestors in such matters. My mom was in her last year at Johnson and Wales, ready to move to New York and work in the best kitchens, but my brother sidetracked her.

It made sense then to stay close to home so Grandma could help take care of the baby. When my dad landed the job with the telephone company, he liked to brag to his co-workers that his wife was a big shot chef, and she was going to be the one bringing home the bacon, literally. After I was born, my mom began toying with the idea of opening a French restaurant. It was then my dad started being a pain. He questioned her every move. Who’s gonna take care of the boys? Are you sure this is what you want? Have you considered working at one of the other restaurants instead of owning one? Do you know how much this is gonna cost us? I remember Grandma saying: “White people never understand Asian ambition. Go make restaurant. Cook your heart out. If he love he will understand.” The next day, she bought a commercial lot in downtown Providence, next door to a Williams-Sonoma, and set off to be the top French restaurant in the country.

The food at The Bistro—the restaurant’s original name—was great, no doubt, but it was “familiar, no flair” as one critic remarked.

Providence was the home of four French restaurants—all established, all packed full every weekend. After six months, The Bistro was spending more than it was making. My dad was saying I told you so. It looked hopeless. But when Grandma died, everything changed.

The entire family mourned for months, but her recipes were a godsend; they were my mom’s way to set her restaurant apart from the others. She changed the name and décor. The Providence Phoenix Crab Orchard Review ◆ 89

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named Ameri-Thai Best Restaurant in Rhode Island six years running and Gourmet magazine did an article on my mom—“Asian Beauty Creates New Thai Taste.”

It’s Sunday, a week before Halloween, in the middle of the dinner rush. Bobby and I are supposed to work till closing because a couple of people called in sick at the last moment. We’re trained for whatever. Sometimes we wait tables, sometimes we help with the prep, and sometimes—I hate this the most—we wash dishes. Today, Bobby tends the bar, and I make sure the food is plated perfectly before the waiters bring it out to customers.

Instead of mixing drinks at the bar, my brother’s in the kitchen, in all black, the bartender’s garb. He’s talking to the twins in the back alley—both with short blond hair and blue eyes. They wear combat boots laced to the top and thick bomber jackets with skull patches.

Bobby is probably telling them how gullible I am because they laugh and look my way a lot. I try to ignore them. I wipe the edges of the plate clean and nod my approval at a waiter, who takes the dish out the swinging doors. Tonight’s special: lemongrass-skewered salmon with a ginger citrus sauce; everybody’s ordering it.

Esteban barks orders to the four chefs working like mad to get the dishes ready. Each chef has a responsibility—one does appetizers, one does desserts, two cook the entrées; Esteban lends a hand here and there, but most of the time he shouts. In the corner, two Johnson and Wales interns are washing dishes, looking miserable.

This kitchen is a well-oiled machine. Everyone does his or her job—no rust here. It sounds like a crazy punk band with no sense of melody—rhythmic chopping, mad clangs, sizzle sizzle, the swishing of the swinging doors, the hurried footsteps of the waiters in their hard heels, click click, the occasional eruption of curses and repeated commands of Hurry hurry! Here, everything shines—the counters, the refrigerator and freezer, the stove, the cabinets, everything chrome. My mom orders special white fluorescents so the chefs can see better, but after a while my eyes get sore, feeling as if I’ve stared too long at the sun.

Esteban looks over my shoulders as I work on the presentation of the tamarind crab cakes. I center one in the middle of a square plate, and lean the other against it. The chefs work so fast they get sloppy with the sauce. I do a quick touch up and off the plate goes to happy customers. “Muy bien, little man,” Esteban says. He winks 90 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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and gives a thumbs up. “You will be successful. I can tell talent when I see it. You are like me. Hard worker. Soon you will be head chef of a restaurant. I know things like this.”

I say nothing, but smile at his compliments even though every fiber of my being is screaming, Phony freak! Fake! You’re so full of yourself!

Esteban goes to the deep fryer and checks on some truffle-filled spring rolls. He shakes the strainers and lets the rolls cool. He turns his attention back on his team of chefs.

“You guys hungry?” Bobby says. His two friends nod. Bobby dodges a couple of waiters and takes two spring rolls from the fryer, bobbling them. He gives them to his friends, who eat and suck in air at the same time, the steam rising from the rolls. I look at Esteban.

His eyes are on Bobby, frowning, which looks funny because he’s wearing one of those hairnets. Finally, he leaves the kitchen, and I suspect he’s telling my mom what’s going on.

“Those were for customers,” I say.

“So what,” Bobby says. “Make new ones.”

“You took them out, you do it.” I flick him off. Bobby puts his hand in front of his mouth in mock fright. One of his friends says tough guy and the other laughs.

“Listen, fat ass,” my brother says—though I barely weigh a hundred pounds—“Want to be the most envied eighth grader in Providence?”

“Don’t you have drinks to make?”

“Whatever,” he says. “The guys and I, we want to decorate the Buddha House next Wednesday, on Halloween.”

“So?” I say.

Bobby scratches the side of his face. “We need someone to open the gates from the inside.”

“I’m not skinny enough to squeeze through.”

“But you can climb the tree,” Bobby says. “You’re light enough the branches won’t break.” He walks towards me and bends to my level.

He’s tall, almost six five, center for the school basketball team. I’m waiting for my growth spurt. When Bobby plays basketball, it’s like watching a swallow dart around. He moves unbelievably fast, turning on a dime. He’s the only one on the losing team that can dunk and he likes to show it off, pulling himself up and kissing the rim before spinning onto the ground. The team likes to joke around with him: “I’ve never seen a Chinaman jump so high. Must be all that weird shit Crab Orchard Review ◆ 91

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your mom feeds you.” He’d laugh, though once, when I was tagging along, I said he wasn’t a Chinaman, and my brother told me to shut up.

Bobby’s hair is getting longer and it falls into his eyes; he traces the strands around his ears. “You know you have this obsession,” he whispers. “Won’t it be cool to see what’s going on on the inside?”

Bobby stares straight at me. He’s right. It is an obsession. Every day I stop in front of that house and stare through the rusted bars. I look for the Buddha heads. I look for the man who has so many. I want to investigate for myself. I want Bobby and me to be friends again.

“OK,” I say, cleaning the rim of a dish.

Bobby straightens himself and ruffles my hair. I pull my head away.

He turns to his friends and says, “You see, my little bro’s cool.”

The two blonds say, “Yeah, cool,” at the same time.

Mom storms through the kitchen, face red, and heads directly for Bobby. She’s wearing a black mini-skirt and knee-high leather boots, her midriff exposed. I shake my head because she looks like a slut. Bobby’s friend’s eyes bug out. Bobby shakes his head, too, turning the other way.

“Why are you back here, Bobby?” she says, arms crossed in front of her. “There is a mound of drink orders. People are complaining.”

“So?” he says. “I’m on break.”

“No break during rushes,” my mom says. “You know that. Don’t be stupid.”

She glares at Bobby’s two friends, and they smile and take steps back. One of them says they’ll catch up with him later. “Peace.” Bobby nods, his temples scrunched together. They walk away, laughing.

“What are you waiting for?”

Bobby starts walking to the doors slowly, mumbling under his breath.

“Hurry,” she says.

Before Bobby reaches the swinging doors, Esteban tattles.

“Wait. The little punk took two spring rolls and gave them to his vatos. Thinks he’s the big boss man in this kitchen.” Esteban lifts his chin and flares his hairy nostrils—his tough guy face. He’s not much shorter than Bobby, but a lot thicker. He hates Bobby, doesn’t appreciate being called the Latin Loser behind his back.

Bobby turns. “You’re such a whiny crybaby,” Bobby says.

I laugh into a towel.

Esteban puffs out his chest and takes a step toward Bobby. “What you say?”

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“Cry-baby,” Bobby says slowly, the syllables distinct.

“Understand that, Latin Loser?”

The entire kitchen stops working. It’s like a schoolyard before a fight, that quiet anticipation before the first punch. I want Bobby to knock Esteban out. I grab a fork, ready to throw down if my brother gets in trouble.

“Enough,” my mom says, walking between them. “This is not a boxing ring. This is my restaurant.”

Esteban backs off, lifting up his hands. “For you anything, mi cielo,” he says.

My insides reel.

“Put two spring rolls in the fryer, Bobby,” says my mom.

Bobby pretends to scratch his face with his middle finger toward Esteban then drops two rolls in the fryer; the peanut oil spits and pops.

“This isn’t a cheap delivery-in-ten-minutes Chinese restaurant,” my mom says. “You don’t give anyone anything without asking me first. Do you hear me?”

Bobby shows her his palm and says, “Whatever,” pushing through the swinging doors.

Esteban’s pleased with himself. He begins to bark orders at the other chefs, real machismo. Work continues. He comes up behind my mom and wraps his arms around her waist. “It’s all right baby,” he says. “You got one good boy.” He nods at me.

My mom sighs and pulls away from him. She whispers, “Not here,” squeezing the bridge of her nose and then massaging her temples. “Gron,” she says softly, “don’t forget to mop the floor when we close. Everything’s so dirty.”

Once, two years ago, my dad got an emergency call to check out the phone lines at the Buddha House after a lightning storm. He left home near midnight, got in the work truck and headed down the block.

I woke up and looked out my bedroom window. In the distance, electrical sparks rained to the ground. A large branch had fallen on the lines. The streetlights were out because they shared the same electrical grid as the Buddha House. The power company was already there, working to untangle the lines and get everything under control. My mom told me to go to bed because I had school the next day.

In the morning, my dad looked exhausted—bags under his eyes, disheveled brown hair, a small scab on his bottom lip. My mom had left for the market to buy the freshest seafood, meats and vegetables Crab Orchard Review ◆ 93

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for Ameri-Thai. Bobby was still fooling with his hair in the bathroom. At first, my dad answered all my questions in grunts. He spooned cereal into his mouth, the milk running down his chin. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I asked my dad what was it like. Did he see him, the man? Grunt. Did he see any Buddha heads? Grunt. I begged him to tell me more.

“What’s with this fixation, Gron? You’re like your mother and the damn restaurant.”

I shrugged, staring at him unflinchingly.

He was having a bad morning—lack of sleep, probably another fight with mom over something inconsequential. It was nearing the end of their relationship, when she came home after work and slept on the couch, when they bickered about laundry lint.

I didn’t say anything, but stared. My dad was a sucker when it came to his youngest son. I tried to look as cute as I could, stuck out my bottom lip, made my eyes droop.

He looked at me and then looked away. He crunched on cereal and looked at me again. He looked away again. He tried to ignore me, but finally, throwing his arms in the air, he shook his head, smiling. “Good god, boy! You can’t let your father enjoy his cornflakes.” I had won.

After the electricians were done, he climbed up and checked the main phone box. He figured a couple circuits were burned out and he’d have to reconnect the phone line. He cleared away an unused bird’s nest, settling on the lip of the box. The lights were back on. A light shone in the second story window nearest him. My dad said he was curious. He took a peek. There was the outline of a man in the window. He squinted and thought it was a statue of a Buddha head.

But this Buddha head moved. This Buddha head pushed open the window.

Startled, my dad lost his footing, slamming his face on the telephone pole, which explained the scab. After regaining his balance, my dad said, “Hello?”

“Why did you do that?” said the man.

My dad pointed his flashlight at him, and he shrunk away like he was Nosferatu, shielding his eyes from the artificial sun.

“Sorry, sir.” He turned off the flashlight. “You scared me.”

“Why did you do that?” the man asked again.

“Do what?”

“Destroy the birdie home?”

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Ira Sukrungruang

As far as my dad could tell, the man was bald. He couldn’t make out any features. He wore a robe—not a bathrobe, but a wizardlike robe—long open sleeves, baggy, hanging on his skinny body like an oversized dress. The man looked two stories down at the discarded nest.

“Oh,” said my dad. “No birds were using it. In case of another electric storm it could catch on fire and endanger your house.”

The man didn’t hear what my dad was saying. “I see birdies all the time,” he croaked. “All kinds. Some colorful, some not. They sit on the wires. They sing for me. They like the nest.” Here, he lifted his face and stared at my dad so accusatorily that my dad looked away. He didn’t know what to say. He began working, ignoring the old man. It was two in the morning. It was cold.

The man looked down at the nest again. “Poor birdies,” he said.

“Poor, poor birdies.” He closed the window, and my dad swore he disappeared because when he looked up he wasn’t there anymore.

It’s my dad’s story I remember as Bobby gives me a boost up the old oak. His two blond friends hide at the side of the house, shaving cream in both hands. Bobby has eight rolls of TP in his backpack.

“Be careful,” Bobby says. “The power lines. Don’t touch them.”

“That’s the first thing I’d like to do,” I mumble. I make it over to the other side of the gate and drop down, stumbling, falling forward onto my hands.

Bobby throws the backpack over. “Go open the gate,” he says.

I walk to the front, but I don’t see a handle or anything.

“Come on,” says one of the blonds.

“You’re so slow,” says the other.

“Give him time,” says Bobby. He points to either side of the front gate. “Gron, look at the stone posts—on the sides.”

Dead vines climb up and down the stone posts. Nothing on the left. The sun begins to sink under the horizon, the sky orange. I take out a slim flashlight and shine it on the other post. A lever sticks out from under the foliage. I move to it quickly and push it up, grunting.

Slowly, the gates open, creaking on rusted wheels, and the boys burst through and go to work. One of the blonds attacks the fountain with the shaving cream, circling the woman’s breasts. The other quietly shaving-creams the front steps, writing FREAK but misspelling it FREEK in messy letters. Bobby throws TP from tree Crab Orchard Review ◆ 95

Ira Sukrungruang

to tree. The white TP flutters like ribbons, drooping on limbs and branches.

I’ve done my part. I walk to the side of the house away from my brother and the blonds. I try to make my steps quiet, but the leaves crunch. The house is immense; it seems to go on forever. In one of the windows, a Buddha looks at the setting sun, his eyes wide open, a shadow creeping across his golden face.

I look through every ground level window, but see nothing. Not one Buddha head. Not one sign of the man. There’s a screened-in porch I never knew existed in the back of the house, and a few wind chimes hanging on the limbs of a tree. In the corner of the yard, a few sparrows fight over a bird feeder, nipping each other’s tails.

Because of the sunset, a long shadow of the house looms across the yard. I begin to think the man doesn’t exist.

Once in history class, Mr. Brony made us watch a video about an excavation of some Egyptian tomb. The guy on TV kept saying: “Here it is, the moment we’ve been waiting for. After blowing up this layer we might possibly have the biggest find in archaeological history.” And when the dynamite blew and the dust cleared, they found nothing. No tomb. No treasure. No dead king. Just a few cracked pots. The entire class started booing. I thought about the disappointment of the scientists, about how hard they worked, how they waited for this moment for nothing.

I sigh, turn the corner, and make my way up the other side of the house.

The twins continue to shaving-cream, jumping up and down, laughing. Then one of them abruptly stops and drops his can. He waves the other over. Both of them crouch down, looking through a lighted window. I run to it, bumping into one of the blonds.

Buddha heads. Fifty of them, in a circle, leaving the middle empty like a stage. So many types. Chubby heads. Ones with pointy hats. Ones with buns on top. Heads with abnormally long earlobes.

One with puckered red lips like a drag queen. Buddha heads with open eyes, some shut, some waking from a deep sleep. Some obese, their chins overflowing. Some anorexic. Some with long faces. Some with block chins. Different colors—gold, stone gray, silver, white, green. One head looks like the serious Buddha my mom keeps in the restaurant’s kitchen, sitting on a small throne over everyone, our critical inspector, tarnished and stern.

“No way,” one of the twins says.

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Ira Sukrungruang

“How ’bout it?” says another.

“Freaky,” they both say.

The heads mesmerize us—our mouths open, fogging up the window. One of the twins swipes his hand across the glass.

“Look at that one.” He points to a pudgy stone Buddha.

We don’t see him at first. The man. But he’s there. He emerges from the Buddha heads, pink duster in hand. He goes from Buddha to Buddha. He doesn’t use a cane, but walks upright, strong, shoulders thrown back like a soldier, a slight skip to his step. He isn’t bald, but has a full head of hair—silver, floating above his shoulders. Round glasses cling to the tip of his nose. Brown spots dot his face. No magician’s robe, but plain navy slacks and a tightly tucked in dress shirt that makes the man look rail thin. I can hear him humming through the window. He stops at a fat Buddha head.

Dusts it. Talks to it. He’s so deliberate I wonder if he’s seen us.

“Oh my god,” says one of them.

“Shut up,” I say, trying to hear.

“You shut up,” one of them says, pushing me. I catch my balance, my palm hitting the window.

The man turns towards the thud. He tilts his head. He doesn’t look angry, but surprised, bewildered. He takes a step closer to the window. Then, quite suddenly, he smiles. Not like a crazy man.

“Hi,” he says, pushing open the window.

The twins bolt, tripping and falling on their knees a few times.

My eyes don’t leave his face. I’m rooted to the ground.

“I wasn’t expecting any guests today,” says the man. He watches the twins burst through the front gates. “I don’t expect guests most days.” He turns back to me. “Just doing some cleaning, though. Got so many of these guys.” He waves his duster behind him. “If I don’t dust, they’d be covered.”

The old man leans out the window and takes a look at the shaving cream smiley faces on the outside of his house.

“Pretty,” he says. “They do good work, your friends.” His voice has a strange lilt to it, soothing. He chuckles to himself, then says, “Do you like my heads? I have over three hundred in this house, not one alike. But these are my favorites, my precious ones. You see this one? It’s from old Burma, Myanmar now. It’s about four hundred years old. You can tell it comes from Burma because of the big lips.

When I first got him—maybe twenty years ago—his lips were vivid red like someone put lipstick on him. Now the color’s fading.” He Crab Orchard Review ◆ 97

Ira Sukrungruang

pats the Buddha head, like a father would a son, smiling. “I have so many.”

He begins spinning, arms outstretched in the center of all the Buddhas, a joyous dance like little kids sometimes do in the rain.

He stops. “I like Buddha heads. Is that your question? Each one is like a different friend. I like to sit in the center here. They listen to me. They tell me they’re doing fine. They say, you are a good man.”

I unclench my hands, letting my shoulders drop. I want to ask him about his secrets. Tell me some, I want to say. I won’t tell.

Promise. But what comes out my mouth is the last thing I want to say: “You’re weird.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.” We stare at each other, and I see the loneliest man in the world.

That’s his biggest secret. He looks small, standing in the middle of the Buddha heads. I want to step inside the house and hold him, tell him to come to Ameri-Thai and I will treat him like a king, bringing him only the best dishes. He won’t have to pay because I’ll tell my mom he’s an important food critic, ranking restaurants around the world like the famous Zagats. I want to tell him that I get lonely too, so lonely that I think of nothing but him. This is my secret.

“Would you like to come in?” he finally says. “I can show you more.”

Before I reply, Bobby grabs the back of my neck from behind.

“No you’re not, retard.”

Bobby pushes me away from the window. “Don’t touch my little brother,” he says to the man. He pulls a can of shaving cream out of his back pocket and points it like a gun. In the dark, Bobby seems even taller.

The man doesn’t flinch.

“Bobby,” I say. “We were just talking.”

The man stares above his glasses, the smile back on his lips.

“Just go,” says Bobby, “I’ve got you covered.” His eyes never leave the man. I shake my head, sigh, look at the man one last time, and say sorry with my eyes.

When I get through the front gate, Bobby catches up with me.

He smacks the back of my head. “I saved your life,” he says.

“He’s not like everyone thinks.”

“Right,” says Bobby. “You would’ve gone into his house and that would’ve been the last of you. Hasta la vista, baby.”

“Whatever,” I say.

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Ira Sukrungruang

“Whatever nothing. The guy’s a weirdo. He collects Buddha heads.”

“So?” “Are you that retarded?” He puts his arm around my shoulder, and even though I want to shrug it off, I don’t. “Where’d the Barbie twins head off to?” he asks.

“Morons went running as soon as the dude came out.”

“Big tough guys.”

“Real tough,” I say, smiling.

Bobby chuckles. “We got samurai blood in our veins, isn’t that right?” He pulls me closer. “You and me,” he says, messing up my hair.

I push away from him, patting down my head. “Why you gotta be a dork?”

“Man, you’re ugly,” he says. “You can mess with that mop all you want and you’re still gonna be ugly.” He starts jogging ahead of me. “Come on,” he says, “Mom will freak if we’re late.”

Tonight, we have to go to Ameri-Thai and work till closing.

Bobby has dish duty for the next month. I’m on the same job, presentation perfectionist. Bobby will probably squirt Esteban with the sprayer, talk trash behind his back; the kitchen will be fun tonight.

A lone finch bobs in someone’s yard, pecking for a worm. I’ve never seen a bird at night before. It keeps pecking until it finds something. When it does, it gets into the air quickly, flying into the tree and disappearing in the tangle of branches.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 99

Anna Maria Hong

Song and Steam

The month is late, and leaves the color of pulled spinach tap the window of my mother’s home. She splits meat with a song that mingles with the sound of imminent rain, rain drumming wind, gathering steam.

She pours rice in the cooker, ready to steam.

Peels turnips, rough and white. Outside, the leaves stiff and green, pull rain to the window, drops tapping like so many seeds. Mutterings of a song half-remembered. Her mother’s soft throat or the lilt of her stepmother’s indifference. She remembers steam streaming a pitiful song as umma embraced her to leave.

The strong back turning, thin tap of heels echoing the rain.

It is August, she thinks, and the rain is too late. Too late for my mother’s cabbage and peas, though still their pale roots tap into the earth and vines climb the window thick with steam.

My mother watches the day fade. Leaves strew her garden like the notes of a song.

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Anna Maria Hong

She knows the fruits of late summer can be bought for a song.

But the demands of detriment and even the rain singing promise me more, don’t leave me again, pave little room for a mother’s soft sentiment. It is only steam curled beneath an old tap.

A bluebird of summer taps on the window. Its melodious, moist song blends with the steam in my mother’s kitchen. The rain has stopped muttering in my mother’s ears. It behaves like rain and douses the late summer leaves.

A bluebird taps through the late summer rain.

She knows I am not immune to my mother’s soft song.

She sings of blood. Steam on a river of delirious leaves.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 101

Anna Maria Hong

Poem about Sushi

1 (didactic haiku) Think of the salmon, whose flesh languishes thus, just for you.

2 (imagistic/Darwinian haiku) Beaded heap of roe gleams rosy resentment.

Too bad fish, you lose!

3 (political/erotic haiku) Pearl-bombed harbor of my mouth to swallow this wounded pink mound whole.

4 (expositional haiku) Eggs. They’re eggs. Tasty spawn snack. Haven’t you ever heard of roe?

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Anna Maria Hong

5 (haiku from an article on shipping uni) In Queens, Korean and Chinese women pluck fresh gonads from urchins.

6 (haiku: a memory) In lieu of sandwiches, mother made hand rolls: daikon and spam.

7 (traditional haiku) Salt burst on my tongue christens this meal. Who would have such supple array.

Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 103

Robin Leslie Jacobson

Red Pear

Ripe the day I buy it at the gourmet grocery that took over the neighborhood market.

Now we have perfect fruit whenever we want, but at a price. This hybrid already hurt where something with a hard edge pressed against it in the bag coming home. I save the damaged things for myself. Perfect host. Holding it, the dark skin gashed to white, I see my own flesh reversed, the way an afterimage burns the eye. Clear juice pools in my palm, essence rising. Would eating fill me more than breathing the exhalation of this wound?

It smells like sun. Like Steve, freckled red the summer before the sun killed him.

I eat it anyway. The last breath leaving his body.

His ashes in the Golden Gate.

104 â&#x2014;&#x2020; Crab Orchard Review

Terry Kirts

Eating Ortalons I love no meat but Ortalons, and no Women but you.

—Alexander Pope This is what it’s like to eat a song: you must put it in your mouth at once, feather and all, warble and squawk, each note a delicate bone that gives only to the tooth’s persistent pressure.

Succulent chords erupt on the tongue with oil, with blood, the sacrifice of two swollen lungs, engorged with wine, fattened on millet and fig for the night when all melodies converge like ions into one redeeming bite, le prime morceau.

This is what it’s like to eat a song: you must cover your head with lace to keep your tears from showing.

The singer is made more delicious by the strangling, the oven’s choke, by stopping where a beak would reach its apex. In this, you breathe what the voice once breathed, soar where the voice once soared. You take onto your tongue the story’s sustenance: how the death of one too soon makes us immortal. The shortest opera ends in your scorched throat.

Note: An ortalon is a small songbird once prized as a delicacy in France and Italy, where the birds were roasted and eaten whole, with diners traditionally covering their heads in a decorative cloth.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 105

Karen Kovacik

Song of the Sexy Kitchen Saints after the triptych by Laura Panozzo Not every girl saint’s a virgin with a miracle up her sleeve.

No use starving yourself thin as a wafer, or shoveling in oatmeal the whole dull way to heaven. If you don’t believe in the church of the kitchen, the holy offices of shiitake or pear, come worship within our paprika walls. We’ll sauté pollo con arroz, simmer plums in cognac and mint. There’s no sin in begging for seconds! Our hands are tough as melmac plates and hot for the crotch of garlic, virile yams— our thumbs cigars, strong as strong café, our fists shoving mushrooms up the ass of some fowl. Faster than you can say “yerbabuena” we’ll make a mess for you to clean up. The agave out the window will weep peyote.

Forget nuns, veils. Better the dress a full size too small. Better berets instead of haloes, and sticky pans

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Karen Kovacik

after flan. What’s to confess?

That you polished off the plums and left none for us? Skipped Mass?

Compañeros: stinginess at the banquet is the only sin.

Worship our bodies and our blood.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 107

Anya Krugovoy

Poppy Seeds

Midnight Easter eve, we circled the church three times, cradling flower-wreathed icons, cupping candles. The chorus grew louder, then softer, as we lost them around corners, their voices trailing before us like incense.

My mother and I leaning into each other, arm in arm, the tall cross gleaming in the white and gold sleeves of altar boys.

Once or twice, a car drove by, Pink Floyd puncturing the cadence of footsteps and ancient Slavic hymns.

Hyacinths at the altar sighed in musk while a basket of deep red eggs waited beneath white napkins for the benediction, my mother’s fingers rusty with boiled onion skins.

The anticipation of yeasty kulich and paskha, the dome of sweet cheese studded with almonds and candied fruit, rolls thick with poppy seed paste, and for my father, kielbasa, pickles and a shot of icy vodka.

Missing among this Russian song was the Easter Bunny, crinkled cellophane grass, and the pithy sermons I heard visiting the Methodists with Girl Scouts, that quoted “Family Circus” and transformed Jesus into a kindly neighbor, familiar and American.

Here, bass voices chanted the language of the Patriarchs, and a girl couldn’t step on the altar without its defilement, these immigrant rituals as strange as the bearded Russian monks who came for special prayers, as the jeweled box of relics people kissed when they approached the altar.

108 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Anya Krugovoy

And yet, they stay with me like a palimpsest etched beneath doubt and disuse, remembered too deeply for erasure: the chanting and rocking of a synagogue more familiar than Protestant hymns, the sudden crossing of my heart at the sound of an ambulance, or the way I reach for poppy seed cake in the bakery over chocolate or lemon. How I can still repeat, when I talk myself into sleep: Accept me today, Oh Lord, as a communicant.

For I will not speak of thy mysteries to thine enemies, Neither like Judas will I give thee a kiss, But like the thief will I confess thee.

Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 109

Anya Krugovoy

French Toast

Pain Perdu: lost bread. Thick slices sunk in milk, fringed with crisp lace of browned egg and scattered sugar.

Like spongiest challah, dipped in foaming cream and frothy egg, richness drenching every yeasted crevice and bubble, that’s how sodden with luck I felt when we fell in love. I walked around dazed, concentrating only on you, my work lost, not even wanting to write. Now, at thirty-three, I remember that “lost bread” means bread that’s gone stale, leftover heels and crusts, too dry for simple jam and butter. Still, week-old bread makes the best French toast, soaks up milk as greedily as I turn towards you under goose down after seven years of marriage, craving, still, that sweet white immersion.

110 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

Journey for the Bread

As the olive trees interrupt the sidewalk to send shade along the street, I greet the morning with almost silent steps to the bakery.

The women in black pass me, nodding a greeting or glancing with a partial smile, intent on the duties of morning, the chores of the day ahead.

In their hands, under their arms, against their breasts, the hot bread rests, bread that will slip into tzazíki, saláta, or the olive oil of fasólia… bread wrapped in gray paper, uncut, crusty village bread, horiátiko—I have learned to ask for it, as the villagers do, by weight: misó kiló, éna kiló—bread that will be offered by women, their faces thick with folds, their eyes bright, even fiery, as the day bursts toward noon, when the food for mesiméri will already be in the oven or simmering on the stove.

Each woman will take Crab Orchard Review ◆ 111

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

the loaf from under the linen napkin and slice thick pieces, leaving the rest under the cloth, within reach.

112 â&#x2014;&#x2020; Crab Orchard Review

Gareth Lee

Durian

Size of a soccer ball, my father said to describe it. A fat porcupine, my mother said. The king of fruits. I like to think of it as creamy whispers out of the mouths of angels and placed within a green husk of spikes. And if Malaya were in Europe, its knights would have fought with it as a sort of mace, then hunkered down to crack it open for spiritual indulgence after the battle.

You don’t pick durian; you wait for it to fall to the ground, my father said to explain why he’d driven the car over the hefty fruit and punctured the tires. It stank by the roadside. It smells, I said. I learned it always does. That is its tragic flaw. That is why, when we sat on the grass to eat the durian, I refused to partake. My mother explained how the shell had been cracked open by the impact, how it was split. No need to fuss over cutting it, she said, even though that was not the point.

But pressed thus, as one is pressed to smoking, I nabbed a piece of the pale flesh and tasted. Pungent but sweet, and later, hot to the body and made my blood run! The angels who formed it must have used whiskey somewhere in the process. I demanded compensation.

Why can’t we eat mangosteens? I asked. I was miserable.

Now I recall that day, having acquired the taste for durian, and I see a boy in slippers sitting on the tall grass, holding durian between his index and thumb, hardly eating. An hour later, he is holding that same piece, resolute, son trying to please his parents but refusing to obey blindly.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 113

Gareth Lee

Gizzards

Crockery dashed against the walls, the couple next door fought with butter knives and clatters.

I caught glimpses once. The man who ran the tuck-shop at the school was less saintly now, belt in his hand meant to mock his wife.

My mother grabbed me by the wrists.

Midnight and the violence and she refused to let me be witness.

Instead we dined on the rejects of the day at a restaurant, the only one open at this time.

The menu detailing chicken gizzard curry, deviled tongue, sliced beans with liver— the insides of animals were crucial.

Intestines, stomachs and giblets, bladder, lips, eyes.…

This was not conventional flesh.

This was what rhymes with lizard.

Even then I felt nauseous, discomfort wafting up my throat from my stomach. I couldn’t eat.

My mother could, though with a lack

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Gareth Lee

of appetite, and I knew these gizzards were not so much food as healthy motivation, meant to draw us away from the sadness of housewivesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; into a haven where rejects collect.

Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 115

Gareth Lee

Ice Kacang

The hawker centers were full of that stir-fried talk in the heat, and such clang from the wok. We would find a table, the busboys hustling around us— collecting the plates and chopsticks; dropping them into buckets.

Such clatter. But sun and stove-fire, we were weighed down by brows of cumbersome sweat: we were here for bowls of flaked ice and plus, bowls of ice kacang. But how to explain the dish? It was moon, moon-snow, packed as a lump of ice, given some syrup and dropped over a bowl of dessert. My sister and I would search under its mound in excavation.

Once inside, we’d spread apart the slithers of black jelly for the prized: the sweetness of palm fruit, the chunk and pineapples.

We would mine for our food, our machinery our spoons.…

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Gareth Lee

Ten years since I had a bowl of ice kacang placed before me. Now I think of it as an ice chest of exoticaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; of Arctic plums, seaweed, and pulp.

In the heat in Singapore, shirts sticking to our backs, for a dollar we could sit over each bowl as royalty would.

And as if by decree, the weather would get cooler by the minute.

Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 117

Joseph O. Legaspi

The Red Sweater

slides down onto my body, soft lamb’s wool, what everybody in school is wearing, and for me to have it my mother worked twenty hours at the fast-food joint.

The sweater is a perfect fit, the sleeves snug, thin on the waist.

As I run my fingers through the knit, I see my mother over the hot oil in the fryers dipping a strainer full of stringed potatoes.

In a twenty-hour period my mother waits on hundreds of customers: she pushes each order under ninety seconds, slaps the refried beans she mashed during prep time, the lull before rush hours, onto steamed tortillas, the room’s pressing heat melting her make-up.

Every clean strand of weave becomes a question.

How many burritos can one make in a continuous day?

How many pounds of onions, lettuce, and tomatoes pass through the slicer? How do her wrists sustain the scraping, lifting and flipping of meat patties? And twenty hours are merely links in the chain of days startlingly similar, that begin in the blue morning with my mother putting on her polyester uniform, which, even when it’s newly-washed, smells of mashed beans and cooked ground beef.

118 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Shara Lessley

The Pomegranate

Even now, I can see the seeded apple between my mother’s fingers— full, heavy, persistent—and the tubular calyx guarding the tart-sweet pith inside. In her absence, I can feel the care she took to split the hard fruit open. Tracing the chamber with my fingers, she likened the fruit to my heart and the slow, sustaining muscle that was her own thick heart.

Gently, as if it were a child struck with fever, she held the pomegranate, pulse faintly throbbing against my ear. Still it pleased her, as it pleases me, to stain my tongue, hands, and the white flesh that binds each seed to the walls of its ruby chamber. I break apart an Early Foothill.

July. The valley is hot, harvested— strange, what a body withstands.

Stranger still this emptiness, What now. Mother. What now?

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 119

Joel Long

Preparing the Artichoke

Hideous flower, leather green I cut the peaked bloom flat at the top then trim the thorns from the other petals until it is harmless outside, dressed fancy as a Russian dome.

I submerge it upside down in water and bring it to heat, just to a simmer, then cover the pot to keep in steam.

Left there, softening in the undulation of water and heat, it changes from one thing to another. I ignore it, turning away, so that when I return and lift the artichoke with two forks from the water the color of tea, the point of the knife slides into the stalk.

I cut it in halves to see inside, diagram of flame, nearly white, blanched pearl, to the center, then purple at its absolute middle, where small things grow out of nothing, petals thin as membrane with hooks and fur. I carve the line along the grainy heart with the knife blade then scoop out the center like a series of raw wings, just born. The cut leaves a reservoir there, for dark vinegar and sea salt, little pools of olive oil that make the severed bloom shine, green mineral from deep in the shaft.

120 â&#x2014;&#x2020; Crab Orchard Review

Tina Wiseman

Sucking on Figs

I liked being tied to the fig tree. With practice, my mother learned to knot the rope so it wouldn’t cut into my waist, making it just the right length so I could move about freely without hanging myself. In my mind, the tree was the stage and anything beyond the border of our yard was the audience. I was tied to the tree for stealing mother’s money again, and for riding the bus into town to see Gone With the Wind in the theatre. With my chin thrust out, I’d hold figs up in the air instead of turnips, like Scarlett; dramatically vowing with God as my witness I’d never go hungry again. When I was three years old, we came to this country from Selcia, Yugoslavia, and my father found work as a fisherman. That afternoon, arriving home from the docks, Father saw me performing my antics and called me a whore. “I bring you to this country for a better life and you lift up your dress and suck on figs and act like a sporco curba.” I was twelve years old. I am seventy-five years old now. My husband is dead, I am blind in one eye and I still like to suck on figs.

On the docks of San Pedro, rumors of Father’s Herculean strength grew from stories and tales into legends. Drunken Dagos, Spics, and Slavs would gather to see if the legends were true. Toma Mosich, my father, was a short, thick stump of a man and by lifting the anchor of a commercial fishing vessel off of the dock in front of an awe-struck crowd, he’d prove to everyone there that he was the strongest, most virile man in San Pedro. At home he was a murderous bastard.

Everything we ate he killed with his bare hands; goats, lambs, and pigs would cower between his legs as he straddled them, snapping back their necks and slitting their throats in one motion. Stringing them up by the hind legs, Father would slice them open and carefully catch all of their innards in a large bucket. I’d watch him skillfully peel the hides away from the dead animals as easily as I peeled the skin off fruit. Singing to himself, he’d slip the intestines and stomachs over the faucet, flushing them of their foul contents, preparing them for Mother to boil.

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Tina Wiseman

All of this was unnecessary, I’m sure of it, because I know there were markets and butcher shops in San Pedro. I’m sure of it because I stole from these places. Mother would send me down the hill to buy milk, fruit, and eggs. I’d enter a store, traipsing and swaying down the aisles like Prissy, Miss Scarlett’s wide-eyed slave—lazy and innocent, la-la-la-ing—then I’d carry out under my shirt whatever looked tasty to me; meats and cheeses, chocolates and hard candies, I’d fill my stomach with them on the long walk back up the hill. Smelling my breath like only a fisherman’s wife could or would, my mother would swing at me, cursing in Slav, and then drag me by my skinny arms to the fig tree so I could endure my punishment. I ate figs until my stomach bloated and swelled and gurgled and contracted. Even then I sat with a few of them on my lap and poked my fingers through the supple, fuzzy green skin. The insides were so luscious, so crimson and moist; the layers of flesh burst open, swollen and ripe, sticky juices squirting out and running down between my fingers onto my legs. As a little girl I did not know why the sight of me sucking on figs bothered my father, but now as an old lady, I know.

My mother hated my father, my father hated me, and I hated my brother. There wasn’t an abundance of love in our house. Mother, who only cooked and cleaned and cried, allowed herself one small secret pleasure; she loved the rabbits that lived in our yard. She hid from my father the damage they did in the vegetable garden and eventually she gave each little kuni a name, purring to them in the evening as she mended our clothes on the porch. Nikola, my brother, told me the devil would eat my soul if Mother ever found one kuni dead. In his cruel fashion, he’d hold a terrified rabbit by its long, furry feet and swing it around in circles, faster and faster until the air in front of me whirred with each horrific passing. Letting go, the poor creature would fly away, landing somewhere in the small grove of magnolia and lilac trees that lined our neighbor’s backyard.

Laughing hysterically, Nikola would compose himself before running into the house to tell our mother the kunis faced peril because I was evil and had evil intentions. Mother would come outside swearing and swinging, carrying the rope.

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much of a twist to kill the thing. Hearing the low whisper of my mother muttering to herself as she came out to do laundry, I flung the dead kuni into the washtub. Finding it floating, its fur and skin scalding in the water, she covered her face with her apron and wailed, crying out, “Kuni, Kuni, Kuni!”

The special reserve of disdain that my father held just for me wavered momentarily that evening. As he tied me to the fig tree, I know I saw pride in his eyes. He brought me the rabbit, dropped it on the grass in front of me and handed me a knife. Sitting with the rope tied around my waist and fig juice dried on my chin, I listened to him spit out instructions as I carefully cut and stripped and gutted.

That night we each got a small piece of stewed rabbit with dinner.

Father walked around the table, meat dangling from his mouth, proclaiming, “Dobre! Good!” After that, it was my job to catch the rabbits and kill them. For several weeks I hunted in the thickets of our small California yard, twisting and wringing and hanging the floppy rabbits by their ears from the clothesline. Mother roasted seasoned potatoes in the oven to serve with them, and cried.

Theresa Bonilla Lozano came to my class during the middle of the school year. Her Puerto Rican family moved to San Pedro from New York City. With a doctorate in education, her father, Dr. Lozano, was appointed by the district’s school board to help reform the education of Latinos in Los Angeles County. As the teacher led this refined, new girl to the front of the class and asked her to introduce herself, the nine syllables of her magnificent name bounced out like staccato music notes. I loved her instantly. At recess she insisted I simply call her Theresa, but I refused, calling her by all three of her names. I probably did this because I hated my name, Jeroslava, which translated into English is Geraldine, meaning “mighty one who carries a spear.”

Just like her name, Theresa Bonilla Lozano was beautiful and delicate and striking. She came to school everyday wearing soft, layered dresses with tiny flowers embroidered on starched cap sleeves. Satin ribbons were braided into her shiny, thick, chocolatebrown hair, and her black shoes had buckles and tiny lifted square heels; she was every bit as beautiful as Scarlett O’Hara with her skin glowing amber on the burning fields of Tara. Even the food she ate was beautiful. During lunch she would explain to me, in her lilting accent, the ingredients that went into what she called camarones a la criolla, carne guisada, or whatever other textured Crab Orchard Review ◆ 123

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concoction her mother prudently wrapped and packaged for her.

Listening intently, I’d watch her take dainty bites with a fork as I discreetly tried to gnaw off a chunk of the chewy cow tongue that flopped out from between two slices of soft white bread.

That summer Teta Maria, my mother’s sister, made the long voyage from Yugoslavia with her husband and four children, and was now coming by train from Ellis Island. The preparations for their arrival began as soon as we heard the news. My mother and aunts cooked for days. Beef, pork, and ham were ground up for sarma, delicious stuffed cabbage rolls cooked with bits of bacon and onion. Polenta was made by the pound and stored in covered dishes in the refrigerator. Nikola and I helped prepare the bakalar, one of our favorite cod dishes. We soaked the seasoned dried fish in water overnight until it was soft enough to work with. Removing the skin and the bones, we beat at it with hammers until it was completely tender and flat. The shredded pieces of fish were tossed in large ceramic bowls with diced potatoes and garlic and olive oil.

Mother stayed up late in the evenings making pashka, a sweet bread made of eggs, yeast, flour, and sugar. Lifting cheesecloth from the bowls, Nikola and I would try to pinch off a taste of the rising dough without deflating the whole mess and sending our mother into a rage. I watched as she kneaded and pounded and flung the dough; flour settling into the lines on her forehead and cheeks, completely dusting her hands and arms. Cutting the kneaded mounds into three sections, she rolled out the dough with the palms of her hands until each chunk looked like a snake, plump and tapered and long. With the pieces laid side-by-side on the table, Mother pinched the tops together and began the process of braiding the dough. The criss-crossed strips were smooth and thick and perfect, and after she brushed them with egg yolk and water, they shined, somewhat resembling Theresa Bonilla Lozano’s braided hair. The excitement of these preparations infected me with anticipation and hope. Seeing my mother so busy that she almost seemed happy, breathing in the incredible savory smells rising from the stove, watching my father lug flasks of whiskey and bottles of wine up from the cellar, I was compelled to invite my friend, Theresa Bonilla Lozano, to the reunion.

Laughter and crying intertwined with singing and shouting that rose up from our backyard, straight through the clear evening sky.

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in the small yard. The crumbling stucco walls that surrounded the property seemed to tremble and swell and strain. One moment Father was yelling and cursing at his brothers then the next moment they were pulled close to him and he’d hug each one with such force they’d cry out in pain. The women surrounded Teta Maria, taking turns touching her face, holding her hands and imploring her for news of friends and relatives still in the old country. Cousins ran wildly in through the front door of the house and raced around each room. In the kitchen they’d steal frustules off the counter, leaving a powdered sugar trail that followed them out the back door to the yard where it disappeared in the grass. They’d burst out laughing and start the whole charade again. Mother snapped dishcloths at their bottoms and stomped her feet at them with each sprint through the kitchen. With a slight smile she cried out for the devil to come and take his demons back to hell. The smell of the pig roasting over the fire and the laughter that lifted with each toast of the wine glasses made the evening air seem warm and delicious.

I saw Theresa Bonilla Lozano before she saw me. Standing in front of the giant brick barbeque my father had built the first summer we lived in our house, she was watching the giant pig revolve slowly on the spit. Sizzling and turning, dripping fat into the fire, the blackened animal seemed to smile at her. Besides the pig, and me, no one else noticed her presence. She stood with her small, gloved hands in front of her mouth, staring at the pig with disgust, pity, and interest.

“Theresa Bonilla Lozano!” I called out her glorious name and pushed my way past Nikola and the other boy cousins who were crowded around the picnic table watching my uncles throw dice.

She turned and waved at me then refocused her gaze on the pig.

“I am so happy you are here!” Out of breath from the struggle it took to cross the yard and from the excitement that had been building inside of me since first inviting her, the words came out choppy and hollow.

“What is this for?” she asked, pointing a finger at the pig. “To eat,” I answered her matter of factly, but right then I saw the pig for what it was; I saw the pig the way Theresa Bonilla Lozano saw it. It was a dead, spinning swine, charred, whole, impaled and degraded.

A twinge of shame and sadness shot threw me. I looked around the yard, taking in the whole scene with Theresa Bonilla Lozano’s eyes.

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throwing the dice, grunting out expletives, tipping back shot glasses of whisky and expressing their dominance by wrapping hairy arms around each others’ chests and squeezing the air out until one cried for mercy. They were acting like the apes I once saw at the zoo. Nikola and the cousins were sneaking sips of wine and crawling under the table looking up the dresses of my aunts. My mother was making her way through the mob with dishes of hot food, shuffling her tired feet, bent over, martyred, and alone. Candles, torches, and a string of tiny white lights illuminated the surreal scene, and I stood watching it, outside of myself, and it all came into such focus my eyes hurt.

“Let’s go in the house.” I grabbed Theresa Bonilla Lozano’s arm and pulled her in the direction of the back door. At that moment a commotion broke out, stopping us. Father was letting a small, white lamb out of a crate that was hidden behind the dilapidated one-car garage. Shouting out in Slav, whooping and whistling, the crowd parted as Father herded the lamb to the middle of the yard.

With his fist raised, he began his somewhat slurred speech: “Our family has been blessed and we welcome Maria and her family to this country. With much pride, my brothers and I came here with nothing and built a life that is the envy of our neighbors.

We know how hard it is, Maria, and we pledge our help to you. This lamb will be slaughtered this very evening and roasted for you as a seal of that pledge.”

Theresa Bonilla Lozano couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Leaning over to me, she whispered, “What’s going on? Is that little lamb a present for someone?” I put my face in my hands and shook my head. It was all too horrible. My father was still rambling on, still pumping his fist in the air. When I heard him say, “As God as my witness,” I peeked through my fingers and watched.

With his knees pressed firmly against the small flanks of the lamb and one hand holding back its head, Father lowered his fist, reached behind him, and pulled his long knife from his pocket.

Theresa Bonilla Lozano gasped, “What is he going to do? He isn’t going to kill it!” I reached for her hand and pulled her across the yard, stepping on feet and elbowing through the crowd with my head lowered and my eyes closed. I would not allow her, Theresa Bonilla Lozano, to witness this hideous event.

We were almost to the back steps when I heard my father’s deep voice boom out, “JEROSLAVA!” I froze in my tracks and Theresa Bonilla Lozano bumped into me. The crowd quieted and every face 126 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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turned in my direction. Trembling, I could not imagine what I had done to deserve this hateful display. My father, in private, couldn’t contain his hatred of me; he told me loud and often that I was a disgrace to his family, the first-born, and a girl. He would spit on my shoes and tell me to leave his sight, but he never revealed his disgust in public.

I let go of Theresa Bonilla Lozano’s hand and turned to face my father. A wide smile spread across his weathered face and he waved the arm that was holding the knife, motioning for me to come to him.

Looking into the eyes of Theresa Bonilla Lozano, I wanted to cry. She was more frightened than the lamb and I knew if she opened her mouth she would cry out with the same helpless bleating. Squeezing her hands, I hoped to silently communicate to her to go inside, or better yet leave, but she only stood still, her mouth hanging open.

The throng of relatives parted and whispered to each other as I walked, feet dragging, to my father. At his side, his voice boomed out once more. “Jeroslava is my first-born, my daughter.” A collective gasp was followed by muted whispers. “That’s right! Why, you ask, do I bring the shame of my loins to stand beside me tonight?”

Everyone nodded their heads, like Father could read their minds. “I stand her before me, before you, because this girl, this daughter of mine has bigger testicles than all of the men here combined!” If my eyes were not held in place by the webbing of veins and arteries lining their sockets, they would have popped right out of my head.

My ears burned with laughter and shouting.

“Silence!” Father bellowed on. “Jeroslava has shown great skill in slaughtering and skinning animals. Tonight, because I am proud of her, she will slit the throat of this lamb!” My knees buckled under me but Father kept me from falling to the ground by letting go of the lamb and grabbing the back of my neck. In one slow blur, I looked into the faces of my family. My mother was smiling, holding a casserole dish with yellow and white potholders. Nikola’s arms were crossed over his chest and he kicked the ground with his boot. Teta Maria’s head rested on her husband’s shoulder; the look on her face said she could only dare to wish for a moment like this in her lifetime. Cousins were sitting cross-legged on the grass, looking up at me with respect and admiration, and Theresa Bonilla Lozano, although not able to interpret the language, revealed she knew exactly what was about to happen by the tears that streamed down her lovely face.

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hold the lamb’s head, my father positioned my body like a doll until I was straddling the animal. He nodded his head and waved his hands at me. The wool felt soft and warm in my fingers. The small creature did not struggle and I hated it for being so placid. Relaxing the grip of my knees, I hoped it would dart away, somewhere, anywhere. Instead it just stood there, looking up at me with its clear, stupid eyes.

Anger boiled inside me. Why were we doing this?—to feed Teta Maria? The obese woman was hardly starving. Was all this bloodletting to put food on the table? No more food could fit on the table. We may not have been the envy of the neighborhood, as Father said in his speech, but he and his brothers had enough money combined to purchase a fishing vessel and each one owned his own home. I knew we could afford to buy meat that had been killed, gutted, sliced up, and packaged by a butcher. Why did we continue to do this? Why? The answer came to me as I raised the knife up over my head: we were savages, all of us. Father killed these innocent creatures because he liked it. He liked it, and he knew from watching me under the fig tree, scraping out the guts of skinned kunis, that I liked it too. I thought of plunging the knife into my own heart rather than have Theresa Bonilla Lozano see my murderous actions. It was too late anyway; she witnessed our barbaric family and was frightened by what she saw. She’d never speak to me again. The anger in me ran hot in my veins and seeped out through each pore of my skin. Yanking the lamb’s head back with all of my strength, its bleating cry strangled in its own throat. The knife’s blade flashed as I swung it down and across, slashing deeply enough to almost decapitate the small head. Theresa Bonilla Lozano cried out, “NOOOOOO!!!” The dead animal crumpled to the ground and my family began toasting and cheering, raising their glasses up to me.

The lamb’s head was lying limp on my bare foot and blood seeped out and ran between my toes. I looked at the steps that led to the back door. Theresa Bonilla Lozano was gone.

The pig was hoisted down from the spit and my uncles were carving it into pieces, putting large juicy chunks on plates for those impatiently lined up, waiting. The sky was completely dark, faintly dotted with stars, and a warm wind drifted in from the east. Standing in the middle of the yard with the knife still in my hand, I waited for Father to speak to me. I waited until hunger gurgled up in my belly and exhaustion washed it away. I waited until Nikola dragged the dead lamb off by its hind legs. I waited until my legs cramped up 128 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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and my arm went numb, the knife slipping from my fingers to the ground. I waited until sleeping young cousins were slung over the shoulders of adults and carried like sacks of potatoes into the house.

I waited until Mother and Teta Maria cleaned off the tables and sat on the back porch with their feet up, drinking wine. After the moon was at its highest point in the sky, I stopped waiting and went under the fig tree and slept.

Telling it now, it seems a little bit sad. In my memory it’s not that way at all. I am an old lady. My own house has filled up with children, emptied, and filled up again. My grandchildren sit at the table and help me make pashka. I tell them about Scarlett O’Hara and Theresa Bonilla Lozano’s shiny braids and we work until the dough looks like snakes. I have been blessed with family, a rich heritage—and food. I sit in my chair by the window, remembering, sucking on figs, and I laugh.

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Breath

Our families always thought we spoiled Madrigal, but both Josh and I were committed to giving our daughter the space she needed to become herself without a lot of interference on our parts. I think it’s a value common to our generation, which spent our youths in rebellion against our parents’ repression and conformity, and which prized freedom above all else. It is this freedom we tried to give our children.

While our friends’ children experimented with drugs or alternative sexual lifestyles, Madrigal’s investigations were most often conducted in the alimentary realm. We were of course permissive with her, bemused by her vegetarianism, stoic through her macrobiotic phase.

We suffered quietly through the years when our windowsills were crowded with glass jars of hairy-looking bean sprouts, and finally resigned ourselves to her regimen of nothing but raw fruits and vegetables, except for oranges, which she would not touch.

We made room on the kitchen counters for the parade of food processors, nut grinders, and Champion juicers she would periodically drag home from her various sojourns: at the ashram, the Himalayan trek, the Zen retreat. We stopped shaking our heads over the baggies of exotic spices that crowded the cabinets, eventually driving out the humble cinnamon and paprika, the banal black pepper. And we no more than sighed at the drying racks that colonized our oven, thin metal bars layered with flattened disks of tomato, apricot, their soft flesh leathering.

Even as a little girl, Madrigal was different than our friends’ children. She wasn’t interested in Barbies or Nintendo or TV or riding her bike. She never seemed to want to hang out with kids her own age.

From the time she was six or seven, she spent a lot of her time alone in her room; she could sit for hours on her bed, smiling and humming to herself. When we asked her what she was doing, she’d say, “talking to God” or “singing with the angels.” This surprised us, because both Josh and I had fallen away from our faiths—Jewish and Methodist, respectively. Madrigal had never set foot in church or temple.

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“Do you think it’s weird?” Josh asked me, of our daughter’s spontaneous devotion. Like many of our generation, we were suspicious of religion, which we viewed as a form of social control.

“Actually, I think it’s kind of sweet,” I told him. We stood at the open door of her room. “Look at her.” And indeed, our golden-haired daughter’s face was radiant as she sang to a spirit we could not see.

Josh’s mother thought there was something wrong with Madrigal. “It’s not normal,” she said time and time again. “You need to take her to a psychiatrist, get her tested. I think she’s autistic.”

Widowed when Josh was in his early teens, my mother-in-law was an amateur therapist; she read every self-help book in print and was never shy about offering her diagnosis. His mother’s unsolicited advice may have been the very thing that convinced him that our only child was perfect.

“She’s fine, Ma,” he would dismiss her in that tone of impatience that only surfaced when he talked to his mother. “Leave her alone.”

Our daughter was always a picky eater. She would eat only what she liked and she only liked a discrete number of things. At age five, she rejected meat, a stance that secretly delighted me; I too had declared myself a vegetarian at age sixteen, provoking severe battles with my father at the dinner table. I’d lapsed since being married, but I was more than willing to celebrate this impulse in my daughter. She had her own set of dietary rules, her own strict orthodoxy. Tuna fish sandwiches were fine, but only if the tuna was mixed with lemon juice, not mayonnaise, and never if the mixture included sweet relish. She liked grilled cheese sandwiches, but only on rye bread and with a little catsup, but it had to be Heinz or else she would leave the whole thing to congeal in its buttery coat.

“You’re spoiling her rotten,” my mother chastised us for indulging her, but the truth was, if Madrigal didn’t find the food to her liking she would simply refuse to eat for as long as her preference was denied. Not just hours, but days.

“Come on, baby girl, just try this chicken,” I’d brightly encourage. “Just a couple of bites, okay?”

Her eyes would grow sad. “It’s a bird,” she’d protest, as if I’d failed to grasp this essential thing. What kind of barbarian was I, I’d wonder to myself, trying to cajole my daughter into eating a creature with wings?

She never threw a tantrum or got angry. She simply abstained.

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pitying glances as we spooned up whatever she had disdained. I used to think she kept a secret cache of food in her room, but we never found anything, not a wrapper, not a crumb, to betray her.

Her preferences were so pronounced and her will so unshakeable that we decided it was better to simply give her what she wanted.

Maybe if she’d only wanted candy bars we would have intervened more. But tuna and grilled cheese? Apples and bananas? How could we complain?

“I’d make her eat, and like it,” my father once growled, when he was still alive, but he was from a different generation with different ideas about childrearing. I remembered the whippings I would get if I protested that I didn’t like brussels sprouts or fried liver, and the hours of being forced to sit at the table, my bottom still stinging, my face flushed with shame and injustice. Sometimes I sat well into the night while everyone else went to bed, forced to sit there until my plate was cleaned.

Josh and I met in college in 1970. It’s a cliché but we actually met at an anti-war demonstration. This was a time when we believed the world could change and that our generation would be the ones to change it. After we fell in love, we used to lie on my mattress with the batik print sheets and talk about the child we’d have together.

We both wanted only one child, because we didn’t want to contribute to overpopulation. We both wanted a girl, Josh because he didn’t want to have a son “to feed the war machine.”

“We won’t ever spank her,” Josh would say.

“Never!” I agreed. “She’ll grow up knowing only peace and love.”

“And when she’s old enough, she’ll have a say in what the household rules are.” He’d pass a lighted joint in my direction and I’d suck the smoke into my lungs, feel it wash over my limbs like spirit.

“And we won’t hassle her about her hair,” I’d exhale, “or what she wants to wear.”

“And no TV. No junk food.”

“But what if she wants that?”

“She won’t, baby, she won’t. She’ll know how empty and corrupt all that is.”

“I love you, Joshua Lehrman.” And then I’d roll on top of him, and we’d go back to making love, trying things we’d read about in the copy of the Kama Sutra I kept stashed beneath the mattress.

Madrigal was in junior high school when she made the declaration that she was no longer going to eat any “other animals.”

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That was how she put it. No more tuna. “Nothing with a face,” she’d say. She had already begun to dress only in white clothing, winter or summer. I remembered my own high school years—miniskirts and bellbottoms, halter-tops—and was obliging. In truth I was relieved she hadn’t gone for the black leather and heavy boots, the metal studs in every orifice that so many of our friends’ children adopted. I was less sanguine when she shaved off her beautiful golden curls and had a mandala tattooed on the top of her head.

Still, her face was lovely and in a way, the starkness became her; she seemed all the more striking. In her snowy gauze fabrics, with her shaved head, she seemed to emanate a kind of glow.

It was during these years that our friends started to complain about their offspring. “Liana is always on the phone; my boss couldn’t even get through last night!” “Jordan won’t get off my computer.” “Eric is constantly after me to buy the latest video game; man, those things are expensive.” “Meadow came home and her eyes looked funny, but I couldn’t get her to tell me what she was on.” And all of them, it seemed, were always going off with their friends to god knew where and didn’t come back until the wee hours of the morning.

Josh and I marveled at how easy we had it. Madrigal went to school, came home, meditated in her room. “How was school?” I’d ask her, as she drifted in the back door. I was selling real estate in those days, and I worked from home. She’d give me a brilliant smile that seemed to contain both mystery and wonder. Once in a while I’d coax her to tell me something about her day, but it was never about girlfriends or boys she was interested in or bands she liked to listen to—the kinds of things I talked about at thirteen. She’d say, “They made us cut open a frog in biology class today. I wanted to leave but I had to stay. I just watched the way his heart pumped, and I could feel my own heart pumping right along with him.” Or she’d say, “Our music teacher played us Barber’s Adagio for Strings and it made me feel like I was rocking on a boat somewhere at night.”

Sometimes I wondered if she was lonely, but she never showed any sign of it; she seemed deeply content. I began to harbor the secret fantasy that she really was special, perhaps a saint in the making. I wasn’t sure what Josh and I had done to deserve such a gift, but I was grateful.

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couldn’t envision her at her locker, or in PE. I couldn’t picture her in algebra or gossiping to a friend in the cafeteria. It was a while before I learned that in fact my daughter didn’t actually attend the private high school we’d so carefully lobbied to get her into and for which we had paid tens of thousands of dollars. I learned that she left the house each morning in her white widelegged Indian cotton pants or the long white tube skirt she’d crocheted herself. She took her backpack, which I had always assumed contained books. She’d flash me her detached, dazzling smile and close the door behind her, then spend the day wandering the city.

The school was as progressive as we could find; many of the students had parents in the entertainment industry who often went off for months to shoot in exotic locations and took their kids along.

It was several weeks before the school thought to communicate with us about our daughter’s absence.

When the headmaster finally called me, I tried to make excuses for my daughter. “Maybe she doesn’t find school that challenging,” I suggested.

“That’s the trouble with the Baby Boom generation,” his voice was indignant. “You grew up resisting authority, and now you can’t exercise it over your own children. Children need discipline…” It was an odd line of argument from the director of an alternative school; he was close to a decade younger than I, “a product of the Reagan era,” as I would later sniff to Josh. I cut him off, mid-lecture.

“Let me talk to Madrigal,” I said coldly, “and I will call you back.”

When confronted, she made neither excuses nor apologies. “No,” she smiled gently, as if we’d asked a very stupid question, but it wasn’t our fault. “I don’t go to school.”

“But where do you go?” Josh demanded.

She answered without a trace of defensiveness. “Sometimes I go to the park and talk to the old people who sit there all day. Or I go to the library. Sometimes I read to people at the hospital. On Wednesdays I’ll go to the farmer’s market and buy a lot of apples and bananas and then go downtown and hand them out to people who live on the streets.”

“You hang out on skid row?” Josh’s voice crept dangerously up the register. “With the homeless?” I shot him a glance that said, Cool it.

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was what we’d taught her, and her clear gaze made us feel ashamed and conflicted. This was our sixteen-year-old daughter, skipping school. Not just a class here or there, but skipping it entirely. But not to smoke pot or meet boys at the shopping mall. Instead of going to school she read to sick people, gave fruit to people who lived in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk. She had created a separate life about which we knew nothing. It was infuriating and terrifying and moving and humbling all at the same time. I was not going to be the person who told her that learning algebraic formulas was more important than what she was doing. I had memorized them all and never in my life since had I had occasion to use them. Those old formulas floated amidst my brain cells, unrecovered, like detritus drifting in outer space.

So we applied to have her “home schooled.” We hired a tutor with the instructions that he was to leave her alone, just file the paperwork as needed to satisfy the requirements. When it came time to take her GED, she passed without difficulty. It gave Josh and me a kind of thrill; we felt like we were radicals again, protecting our daughter against the intrusions of the kapitalist state.

Madrigal was no more adapted to college than to high school.

“Have you thought about where you’d like to go?” Josh asked her one night. He was always a little nervous talking to her, as if he felt slightly ridiculous in her presence.

She looked amused, though in a kind way. “I don’t think that’s where I need to be,” she said simply.

Of course the work world seemed equally out of the question.

Madrigal in an office? Waitressing? Selling cosmetics in the department store or office supplies over the phone?

When Josh’s mother died, she left a trust for Madrigal. It was supposed to come to her when she married, but we were the trustees and when she turned eighteen we decided to let her have it. Our daughter began traveling then, for weeks or months. Although we fretted about her, out on her own, we were glad to see her make her way in the world. We would get postcards once in a while—from Nepal or Nova Scotia or Caracas—but she would always come home to our house, to her room that was painted a deep saffron, and which contained no bed, only a thick carpet on the floor. It was surprising, I think, that she returned to us, when all of our friends’ children had long since fled the nest. Surprising, a bit worrisome, yet precious, an incalculable gift. My neighbor Andrea’s children weren’t speaking to her; our daughter still considered our house her home.

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If we coaxed hard she would tell us fragments of stories from her travels: Tibet: “There was one little girl, maybe about eight, her waist was no bigger around than my thigh. But when I handed her a bowl of rice, she gave me the biggest smile.”

Zimbabwe: “They don’t have the drugs like they do here. The doctor would sometimes get so frustrated, and then get on the phone and start yelling at his friends in the States to send more boxes of whatever he needed.”

Guatemala: “There were fifteen of us and we’d get up before dawn and go out with our shovels to start digging, because by eight in the morning it was too hot to work.”

She was always sparing with the details, as if she wanted to protect us from the harsher realities she faced, and deeply modest, talking about the accomplishments of the others she worked with. They never had names, though; it was always “the doctor” or “the teacher” she referred to, as if she did not relate to them in a personal way.

And each time she would return with some new habit of eating, some new regimen, a new theory of purification. After one such trip, our house was redolent for weeks with the scent of sautéed ginger and garlic, essential, apparently, for healing the lining of the stomach. After another, we could always find dried apricots soaking in a bowl; she would drink the water to “remineralize” the body.

Such practices were apparently good for her; her skin was clear and radiant, her body lithe. And she never tried to impose her habits on us, although occasionally if she wandered into the kitchen when I was mixing ground beef for a meatloaf or dressing lamb chops, her eyes would fill and she would quietly leave the room.

I didn’t know how to talk to my friends. When I’d see them at the market, or run into them at a café in town, their conversations were laden with news of their children: “Liana is pregnant with twins.” “Jordan just signed a two-book deal.” I didn’t know how to say, “Madrigal is on a wheatgrass juice fast,” or “My daughter is now meditating six hours a day!” or even “My daughter is feeding beggars in Calcutta.”

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one night, a little glumly. I could only shrug in response. Did Madrigal have boyfriends? Or, for that matter, girlfriends? Did she ever yearn for someone’s particular touch? Did she experiment with positions, techniques, as Josh and I had done when we were younger?

Did she concern herself with birth control?

When she was a little girl, I used to talk to her about sex. I didn’t want her to be fearful and uptight, as my mother had raised me to be.

For a while I waited for her to come to me with questions—“Where do babies come from?” or “Why do you and Daddy like to kiss?” She never did. So I went to her—she must have been about nine or ten—sat her next to me on the chenille bedspread and talked to her about her body, the miracle of sexuality that would one day unfold for her. The poignancy of desire. The electric current of lust. She listened gravely and with patience, as if indulging me, a soft tolerant smile on her lips.

I asked if she had any questions. She didn’t.

Now I could no more imagine asking her about her erotic life than I could make such an inquiry of a nun or priest. Madrigal’s body seemed composed not so much of matter, of blood and sinew, as of light. She’d let her hair grow in; in fact, now she never cut it.

When loose it swung below the curve of her buttocks, draping over her narrow shoulders, a tarnished gold, but most of the time she wrapped her head in a peach-colored turban. No, not peach, more of a pale orange. Deeper than sherbet; redder than cantaloupe. I never could find the word to describe the color she now dressed in—long pants or skirts that swept the floor. She made a soft glow in whatever room she was standing. I was glad her grandparents were no longer alive to see her. Not that I was ashamed of her, but there would have been no way to make them understand.

On her last trip she was gone longer than she’d ever been before.

Twenty-seven months. We got postcards from Pakistan, Australia, Jakarta, Japan, India. Josh and I began to think that perhaps Madrigal was gone for good, that this time she would not return to our home.

That she had at last found someplace to root. We felt sadness at this prospect, and we felt relief. Not because we didn’t like to have her around, but because we wanted her to have a life of her own.

That spring Josh had decided to retire from his law practice. “I want to get back to the things I’m interested in while I’m still young enough to enjoy them,” he said, although he was perhaps as vague as I was on exactly what those interests were. We talked about turning Madrigal’s room into an office for him. “I could build some bookshelves Crab Orchard Review ◆ 137

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on that wall,” he’d say, “and haul my chair up and put it in that corner.”

But we could not bring ourselves to paint over the saffron walls, dismantle the altar under the window with its crystals, its candleholders, its brass Buddha.

Then in August, just before her twenty-seventh birthday, Madrigal came home. I’d been out at Costco and arrived back at the house with the car loaded: cases of toilet paper and paper towels, bottled water and soymilk. When I walked in there was an unusual aroma, something I couldn’t identify, spicy and murky at the same time, and I called out, “Maddie? Honey? Are you here?” She stepped from her room and came to the top of the stairs. She stood there shyly, as if embarrassed to be seen, and in fact, at first I scarcely recognized her. She wore a gown of pale coral that fell simply from her shoulders to the ground, shiny, like silk. Even with the drape of her dress I could tell she was thin, too thin, and her skin had a pale yellowed cast to it that clashed with the warm color of her robe. Her face held something else too, but it would be only later, upon reflection, that I would understand it as fear.

I gave no indication of this observation. I set down my shopping bags on the Italian tile and climbed the carpeted stairs to enfold her in a hug. “Welcome home, baby,” I said. In my arms I could feel the sharp points of her hipbones, her shoulders. She felt brittle. “You were gone a long time this time,” I whispered into her neck. There was a dry smell to her skin, like dust. I held on.

She pulled back to look at me. The green irises of her eyes looked fractured and chipped as granite. “I’m back,” she said simply, in a voice more ragged than I’d heard before.

“And with what are you going to be taking over my kitchen this time?” I teased her to cover my distress. “Sprouting some exotic beans you picked up in Marrakech?”

Her lips stretched in the direction of a smile but never quite reached their destination. Instead she ducked her head and said nothing.

“I’m only kidding,” I hastened to explain.

“I know.”

“All right,” I took a step backward. I needed to get my breath.

“I’ve got to unload the car.” I hardly knew what to do in the face of her tentativeness, her awkward hesitation. “You put me to shame, Maddie; you live so simply, and I just keep acquiring more stuff.”

I started down the stairs but turned back to glance at her again.

“Want to come down and talk to me while I put things away?”

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self-contained person I’d ever known, and never seemed to lack for something with which to occupy herself. Even as a little girl she’d never been bored, never come to me complaining about wanting something to do. But standing there in the upstairs hallway, her bony arms poking out the bare sleeves of her dress, she seemed to me strangely adrift, more lost than I’d ever seen her. It broke my heart.

Later that night, after we’d gone upstairs to bed, Josh asked me, “Is she all right?” She’d made only a brief appearance since he’d been home, and I didn’t know how much he’d noticed. I’d kept my concerns to myself, wanting the chance to think more clearly about what to do.

“I’m not at all sure she is,” I confessed. We both lapsed into a worried silence.

It took me a few days to notice that my daughter wasn’t eating.

I knew she didn’t come to the table to dine with us, but that had long before stopped being a reliable ritual with her. I kept expecting to come across the pulpy discards from her vegetable juice in the garbage disposal, or a pool of black, glossy watermelon seeds in the trash. But not a plate was disturbed except what my husband and I used; not a cup was moved from the cabinet. And I was pretty sure she wasn’t eating out either, because as near as I could tell, she hadn’t left the house since she’d arrived.

It had been years since I’d made any attempt to question my daughter’s habits, eccentric as they might seem to me. I’d always felt that Madrigal was guided by her own Divine light. How could I presume to challenge that, to interfere? But now the glow that had always seemed to emanate from her was faded, its cast cool and dim, and I felt afraid for her.

“I’m going to talk to her,” I said to Josh later that night. “I think she might be in trouble.” This idea was profoundly unsettling to me.

What if we had been wrong about her all these years? What if she’d needed us to be different with her?

“That’s a good idea,” he agreed. “Do you want me to be there? Or do you think she’ll feel like we’re ganging up on her?” I saw how he, too, was afraid to transgress our daughter’s life.

“I’ll do it,” I assured him, and watched relief melt into his face.

So I waited until he’d left the next morning for his volunteer shift with Heal the Bay. I watched him back the Volvo out of the drive and disappear down the street, listening as the noise of his engine blended into the buzz of a summer morning. Then I climbed the stairs and knocked on Madrigal’s door.

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It took a long time for her to answer, and at first I worried that she’d been asleep. I waited a few moments, then knocked again.

When at last I heard, “Come in,” and turned the knob, I found her sitting upright on a meditation cushion beneath the window with the curtains splayed, sun streaming onto her body.

She was naked, and I could observe more starkly the prominent arch of her ribs, the slackened curve of her breasts, the protruding knobs of her spine. That spine so perfectly erect, her palms open against her knees.

“Maddie…” It was a kind of gasp that escaped me before I knew it would.

She smiled up at me then, and this smile held its old beatific quality. The heat of the sun had lain a fine sheen on her skin, and in the light she once more looked radiant.

Still, I could not ignore the sharp, drawn planes of her face, the shadows under her eyes. I took a deep breath, then plunged. “Honey, I’m concerned. Your Dad and I are… Why aren’t you eating?”

Her laughter tinkled out of her, weak but musical. “Because, Mommy…” When was the last time she had called me Mommy? “I don’t need to…”

“What are you talking about?” I interrupted her. When was the last time I’d interrupted her? “Of course you need to eat. Without food you’ll die!”

She blinked twice; when had I ever been this forceful with her?

Then her face broke into its familiar expression of bemused tolerance, a look that ordinarily reassured me, but not now.

“I’m teaching my body to live on light and prana,” she told me.

“Breath.” As if to illustrate, she took a deep inhalation, seeming to savor it with every cell of her being.

A “breatharian,” she went on to explain, is similar to a vegetarian, or a fruitarian. But a breatharian doesn’t eat vegetables or fruits or anything at all. The breatharian, my daughter insisted, can transmute the energy of light and breath to feed herself.

“That’s not possible…” I began, but she continued.

“Yes it is!” she insisted. “It’s the highest form of spiritual evolution. There are people who’ve done it for years.”

She must have seen the look on my face because she kept on. “I didn’t make this up! There are books about it; you can look it up on the Internet!”

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ever heard.” I was yelling down at my naked daughter. “I’ve put up with your nutty notions for years—no meat; nothing with a face; nothing with a mother; no, just vegetables; no, just raw foods; juice fasts.” Some other voice was rising out of me like a giant hand.

“Look at you,” I couldn’t stop this voice, this force moving inside me. “You’re like a skeleton. Your skin is practically gray; your eyes are dull. Do you expect me to sit here and watch you starve yourself to death in my own house? I need to get you to a hospital!” I was shrieking.

I scarcely recognized myself. In twenty-seven years I had never spoken to her this way. If she hadn’t been so weak, I would have never done this. It was as if the intensity of my anger provided its own justification.

“No, please don’t. It’s hard, Mommy,” she said then, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing her face so naked. It was empty of the certitude I was accustomed to in my daughter, on which I’d come to rely. “I’ve always felt God wanted me to serve in a special way. It meant I couldn’t be like other people.” She sounded apologetic. “And I’ve done what I could to open myself, to be a better channel for that Spirit to work through.”

My daughter’s face was open and full of searching, yet there was courage there too. Commitment. “But this is the hardest test yet. And…I don’t know. It takes so much faith. I don’t know if I have enough.”

She ducked her chin then, and I stared at the top of her head, the dull gold swirl of her hair. When she was a baby, I used to kiss this spot, and I was flooded suddenly with a memory of the sweet powdery scent that used to rise off her infant skin. What did she need from me now? To intervene, take control of her destiny, safeguard her body? Or to give her strength, invest in her the faith she needed to continue on her path?

My anger drained from me in one great rush, and left my knees too jellied to stand. I let my body sink to the rough carpet beside Madrigal, allowing the floor beneath to steady me.

Tears had begun to leak from her eyes; it had been so many years since I’d seen her cry. I opened my arms then, enfolded her slender frame, pulled her into my lap. I sat there for a long time, holding and rocking my daughter, Madrigal, my saint, my mortal child, the sun streaming through the window, flowing over us both.

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Jeff Mann

Galatoire’s for Bonnie Soniat Begin with a Sazerac. With dinner, Chardonnay. As appetizer, oysters en brochette—bacon’s flattery, the crisp-fried coating, the soft gray hearts.

Then seafood-stuffed eggplant, bulging with crabmeat and bits of shrimp.

French bread to chase each stray morsel about the plate. Crème caramel to finish, richer than many remembered kisses.

How many novels and movies brought you here? You are finally fiction for an hour or so, pushing aside the plates now, settling back, sipping wine.

Street grime and humidity, inadequate reality’s left at the door. And the empty chair across from you? That ripest fruit of fiction? Lovers who could have been here?

Long ago exposed, damned, dismissing or dismissed. Here no one’s needed.

Conversation would be distraction.

Put down the empty glass, pull out the credit card, rise. End this lyric of elitist elegance with a short, muttered hedonist’s prayer:

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Thanks for delights needing no oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s consent, delights those alone can arrange themselves. Thanks for the blessings of crabmeat and bourbon, those joys too sweet to be shared.

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Adrian Matejka

Con Leche

If, in fact you are what you eat, I absorbed that beating like a plateful of plantains.

Even before I made the mistake of calling him a Mexican, Hugo didn’t like me. No one in his family had a job, rent money coming from my mom—the one white person in the neighborhood—for babysitting.

Maybe it was being darker than me that made him aggressive or the way his sister said I was muy guapo despite gap teeth, black father. Or because I told him only wetbacks ate rice, and bananas were better than plantains after his mother served them mixed in a bowl as breakfast again. I’m tired of eating like a Mexican and I was grounded after the first punch: heap of crying rice, milk, and those plantains. It’s tough to run, belly full of arroz con leche no matter what country of origin.

Cramps from rice sponging everything in sight.

Milk bellyache. Sore jaw from Hugo’s right full of Puerto Rican pride in a city of misnomers.

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Not Enough Bread in the World

Worse than sweating cooks or crumb-encrusted floors. Worse than thigh-bruising trays & plate stacks.

Worse even than white zin, entrées dusted with thyme for presentation is a sack as stomach, grumbling despite etiquette— foie gras & red lobster bisque on shoulder.

As long as no one sees, there’ll be no fit about the spooned tongue catching spill-over.

Trays don’t need food, after all & leave no tips. Your only worry becomes madam at table one, who came ready to go at lamb shank, pork chop, or drive-in-sized ham: waiter isn’t on the menu presently, but if she doesn’t eat soon, it will be.

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Why I Crave Ribs Tonight

Baby, don’t even come near me with that napkin.

Just let me at each bone, slick & sweet with smoky sugar sauce. See all the steam when I nudge the meat with my tongue?

(The only kind of cloud we see this lemonade day in June.) Ten hours driving & I need to feel food in my hands, no knife or fork tonight. I want to burn my lips just enough, but not too much it hurts to kiss.

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& that reminds me of the glowing heart inside me. How each rib curves around, locks tight in neat snaps along the back—make your hand like that around my small wrist & lead me to the bathroom.

Stand with me in the shower, feel the tender spot just underneath my ribs, lift my hands above my head & trace the spacebone-space-bonespace-bone down my sides with a blue bar of soap—let this be the only way I’ll ever come clean.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Are You Making Dumb Cake?

BRITISH ISLES Shhhh. I need complete silence. Turn off the radio, take off your clickety shoes. Don’t even think of bringing that baby into the kitchen. This cake needs Quiet to predict who you will marry.

Twirl the egg like a top on the counter before you break it. I need three more whisked (so rich so creamy) in this silver bowl. Complete. Silence.

Push your thumb into each shell, pour oil into the heap of flour slowly, lest you make even a tiny, tinny sound— like a cold creek sliding over shale. Prick your initials in the batter to make a boggy cloud appear— your future love’s face—hovering in your oven.

If you don’t like who you see, eat your sorrow in spongy forkfuls and brush the crumbs from the corners of your very dry mouth. I know how it is to want to taste a neat husband, savor your future house, lick the windows clean.

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Soo Jin Oh

Returning

Father: without language, I fall into your childhood night room of sharp-angled Korean vowels, where stars are frothing, glistened neon through a tear of the rice-paper wall.

Acrid odor of feet means weekly sun to moon hike, school to home with a string of books ending in a tin bento box, empty but for the chopsticks rattling along.

Monday morning, your box was replenished with barley and white rice, marinated anchovies, roasted seaweed crisped and condensed to one corner, and red beans boiled black in soysauce.

Father, I want to return to a childhood where words were as common and nourishing as thrush caught with stick and basket, simmered in soysauce, sesame oil, and garlic, nestled in rice. Not that I ever ate thrush, only supermarket poultry, but Sung showed me with a clap of hollowed hands their trapping, his fingers thin as the ribs sheltering their hearts.

Your nephew said you were nothing like you are nowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; a vague smile sitting guard on your face.

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I think when you were young you shouted out sohjou and cigarette fumes.

In the army, you sloshed kimchee with bare feet, pant legs rolled up to the knees.

Now, our silence.

When we visited the courtyard house in the hills, your father handed a bowl of porridge with garlic cloves flattened into pale fans to the granddaughter who was good as mute.

I could only eat three bites.

Next morning, I threw up outside the house and shivered into a cocoon.

You came for me in your old room, woke me for the hike between the trees, up the rice terraces to the ancestral graves.

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Lucia Perillo

Nathan’s

When church was done, what my mother wanted was a cup of coffee not made from dust.

And my father woke hungry from his dreams of waffle-cut fries in their cardboard boat and blintzes and bagels and burgundy meats distinguished by their mottlings of fat.

By day, its neon resembled barbed wire: this mutant hybrid of hot dog and man.

Inside, the hairnet battalions rafted potato knishes through whitewater grease and tonged the weiners into buns’ white seams where each sprawled like a lurid odalisque.

And when I’d spent too long with the gray gum daubing the table’s baroque underside, my father would dredge his pockets for change he presented in his palm, so that I’d go away, leaving him and my mother to bite down on their coffee cups in peace.

And that’s how I left them, for the arcade at Nathan’s Famous, for gunning down ducks and steering the roadster over the grains of film loops reckless with their apple carts and mules. Soon it would be risky trying to go back for extra dimes—my mother

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would test my head-sweat with her hand, pronounce that I’d had enough. So I paced myself, rationing coins, saving my last to rouse the gypsy in her dusty velvet booth.

Drowsily then, her claw nudged the tarot until a chit fluttered into this world like a leaf. Predicting love or travel, though Time to Go is what it meant—who knows how she knew when my father’s cigarette was closing on his knuckles? My parents gazing, rapt, at nothing, maybe even holding hands—and this is what appalled me, this idea that someday I too might think one decent cup of coffee were enough.

Sometimes I steered for the mule on purpose, just to see if it had guts, but the hide always turned into a whirling gray blotch without answering me: Enough what? What?

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Lucia Perillo

A Simple Campsong

In the days of yore, three handsome drunks took me to sea until my jigging hook was swallowed.

I reeled its line around a plywood chock until the big fish hovered at the ceiling of the water.

I know this sounds like a fable, so let it be a fable in the rain where we hunched underneath our stupid hats.

We didn’t have a gun, so one of the drunks leaned out and drove a gaffing hook under its jaw bone.

A loud whump from the transom when the rope played out: then the little boat stood on its hind end. We rose up with the bench seats pinned behind our knees and hung in the air until the boat sat down again.

And nobody’s lungs were inundated by the sea in this soft-core, cloud-upholstered version of the past.

Someone merely pulled the starter and we towed the fish to shore where it sprawled on the wet sand, bigger than a woman.

I know a fable would have coughed up a pearl or a word but the fish was a fish, lying there, not speaking.

Its lips did move in a mockery of speech, its gills a set of louvers, opening and closing.

Then the drunks found sticks and I did too and we brought them down on the shovel of its skull.

But the fish wouldn’t die until I put some weight behind the stick, until I jumped with my upswing, like a primitive.

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Buh went the stick. It felt all right to be barbaric, to be cut from the same cloth as the wilderness itself.

But soon a birding group appeared on the bluff and stripped the teeth off all the gears inside their lungs.

The drunks were coming sober and the screaming made them look down at their hands, streaked with red fish blood.

The birders wanted us to find a quicker way to kill the fish— Okay you try, we said.

Then it drops like a curtain, the heavy velvet of dys-memory.

I guess the sandpipers wobbled in the tidepools in the rocks.

The birders withered back into the spaces in the brush.

And someone cut off the halibut’s cheeks.

The reason why it’s vague is: all I wanted was the drunks, bunch of snaggle-toothed losers who lived in trailers in the woods.

In those days I was drawn to the wind-chapped hand.

Good Lord, how they stunk.

Question: how big does a stick have to be to be a club?

Answer: at least as big around as a small man’s wrist.

Too big, and the club starts to turn into a log.

And the drunks start to stagger when they raise it for their blows.

So how far back for yore? First the story needs to skip the part where the club has bits of brain stuck to the wood.

Instead cut to the evening when we chopped the fish in pieces and ate them fried in butter that left a halo around our mouths.

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Rohan Preston

Daily Bread

Tea Miss Gladys dishes up eggs: scrambled sun-shearings among rose petals. And leftover saltfish gravy, with onions and scotchbonnet peppers that bite into a sharp-sweet flavor when sopped down with brown flour dumplings.

And the eating is easy. And though we want it to linger, we swallow ackee unchewed, and slurp lemongrass or cocoa tea (brought “up” with condensed milk) as if the whole table, plates, mugs—as if eating itself—would go out of style.

Lunch The finger dumplings swell up and turn over and through noodles and thyme in chicken broth like big fish feeding in a pond, their white underbellies flashing in the frothy boil amid a hundred small and stringy fears—our frenzied feeding in Mum’s soup du jour.

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Din-Din Deciduous pimento pearls down the shaved leg of goat or bull that shortly opened like a coat from a hang-nail, now smelling of burnt wood spiced with pepper— these make a formal cocktail with meat stewed and simmered over a slow fire.

And oxtail that gives a clean knob with an even cleaner whistle after sucking the bone dry. And the sticky gelatin of chicken feet that we pluck and eat for days. And crayfish cooked whole in salt to hot pepper red, that hunger burning in my breast, hunger for Mum’s daily bread.

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Meredith Reiches

Balducci’s, Greenwich Village

There’s an entire island of them: white peaches with rosy skins and honey flesh, plums in dusty somnolence, nectarines, obscenely orange apricots the size of sleigh bells.

They recline, ensconced in straw, luxuriant and plumply, richly round.

It rains outside; their world’s tropical.

The price tag reads: five ninety-nine a pound.

I watch the women milling. In their wake, fresh dryer cotton and elastic socks leave their domestic scents.

They’ve marked this territory, between the wall of figs in fancy tins and the baker’s case, glass-fronted street of sin.

We’ve stood in line, selected a pear tart with glossy glaze, resplendent as new shoes.

The impeccably white-clad man behind the counter ties the box with colored twine.

We place it in a bag and, bag clutched closed, venture into the rain. It’s strangely dim compared to wheels of cheese and shredded parm.

We’re soaked through to our bras, but our alarm’s directed to the bag. Will it survive?

We run down Tenth Street, skirting puddles.

I glance at vine-decked brownstones as we pass; you cradle the bag as if it were of glass.

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Once home, we shed our rain gear. In your robe, you run out barefoot to unclog the drain.

To what depredations are we reduced!

Hilarity! The dryer hums, juggling your overalls, my orange pants. Unscathed, the tart graces the table like a queen.

It grins, yellow-toothed, through its plastic screen, blind to all but the most imminent mortalities.

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Lee Ann Roripaugh

Luscious Things

I. Tangelo The delicate spray of zest that spritzes out when your fingernail first catches under the skin—pulling it back to expose the cool spicy fruit. Slipping a finger into the membraned sections to make them blossom out and yield their seeds, their lacy fretwork of pulp, the tangy-sweet spurt of juice against the tongue.

II. Peach A peach is more delicious when you take the time to inhale its fragrance first, rub your cheek up against the tender furred curve of its skin, lightly run your tongue along the cleft, break the skin with your teeth and press your mouth deep into creamy golden flesh—

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ravishing it bare right down to the bone of red, pitted stone.

III. Banana I do not find bananas in any way very luscious.

IV. Fig The fig enjoys a rather lusciously perverted sex life, with secret, ingrown flowers that never see daylight sprouting inside. Some figs are edible, others house fig wasps who hatch and mate. The male dies, while the female bursts from the eye as if rebornâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;honeyed with pollen, seeking more ingrown flowers in which to lay her eggs. She pierces fig eyes to gain entrance, then wriggles down the long, slender necks to find those secret bloomings, pollinating all she touches with her wings, her mouth, her feet.

When you eat a fig you eat these secrets, this pollen, her touch.

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Lee Ann Roripaugh

V. Pomegranate It’s thought that Eve might have been tempted by the pomegranate as opposed to the more quotidian apple and really, while apples are nice, they don’t seem very luscious to me…think of the pomegranate’s flowered calyx, her jeweled ruby seeds nested in plush, egg-carton dimples of membrane. Who wouldn’t?

VI. Artichoke A thistle, yes, which might not seem luscious at first, but there is the scraping off of nutty flesh that’s tugged between the teeth— base to tender tip. There’s the way thistle down scents the fingers still hours later, the yielding creaminess of heart melting against tongue. Eat the bud, and let the bright violet flower bloom inside.

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Gianna Russo

Three Feasts in Florence

I. Caffe Vinaio: Antipasto The evening sun roasts the stone streets of Florence.

Shoved up onto a curb, the café sweats under two weak fans and the fire of the kitchen.

But when the senorina beckons, we step to the cool display case as she touches the rim of dish after dish.

We don’t pronounce vegetariano, she doesn’t practice her English, but white platters sing out our choices: artichokes cupped around buttery hearts, baby onions, the honeyed cippoline, tomato cups plump with basil and bread, thick pungent wedges of asiago cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and spicy bread salad, garlic roasted with glossy green beans, savory red peppers gleaming with oil, escarole piled in a dark tangy heap, and black and green olives glowing with oil, and charred eggplant slices glistening with oil, fennel, and lemon, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil, olive oil, olive oil

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II. Ristorante Beccofino: First Plates On the smallest piazza in Firenze, the glass walls of Beccofino glitter.

Forget the Renaissance— this presentation’s modern: stacked, sliced, saturated with color.

Placemats are black Escher cut-outs; the glasses of prosecco, two stems of Mapplethorpe’s orchids.

We order prima piatti, first plates, and what appear are Mondrians, Rothkos, O’Keefes: risotto traced with scarlet beet sauce and sage, pepper soup shading into jade-green oil, fried zucchini flowers, translucent as lace.

Then our mouths are Picasso’s, stunned into new angles, our lips, tongues, and tastebuds reassembled.

Until we sit back stupefied, savoring what fork and spoon unveil to craving.

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III. Ristorante Cavolo Nero: Dolce Jasmine crisscrosses the courtyard like the lattice on a pie.

Our table’s the spun-sugar center, flecked with the Florentine sunset.

Early moonlight glints there.

Extravagance waves to the waitress and yes, we will have sweets, dolce to complete the already exquisite.

She presents the homemade specialties: glasses of ruby vin santo, wine of the saints, and cantucci—flour, sugar, almonds, and eggs baked into golden fingers to tell our buona fortuna.

We dip and eat and drink, with the luck of this dolce vita, while swallows outline the sunset as if icing the sky.

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Ruth L. Schwartz

Ripe Fig

There is nothing like a fig which has wept honey, nothing.

Amber would die a thousand deaths to live just once like this: sweetened drop against the tongue, honey-colored, hard as sap, holding to its form, relinquishing— there is, I tell you, no other world, and there is nothing like a fig which has wept honey—except perhaps a fig which is preparing to weep honey, body growing heavy as a swollen breast, readying itself for loss.

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Apples

This is a poem for the apples, red Rome Beauties, fourteen bushels; for your hands touching each one, life-lines, head and heart-lines wrapping round those apples, far from me; juice packed hard and sweet as yearning in each fruity cell. This is a poem for you in the orchard, sweating in the bright full trees; for your body’s healthy fierceness, dry leftover sun of autumn, ripeness warming, rotting, spilling, ants and flies and bees all swarming. It’s for how you left me, how you hold me, how the heart insists on reaching for more apples, always, through the thick of leaves. For how the heart, which is a muscle, grieving, greedy, chewing, beating, pulses and holds to the truth of its beat, and lets go of love, and does not let go: the round and red of it, blessing my empty hands.

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Tangerine

It was a flower once, it was one of a billion flowers whose perfume broke through closed car windows, forced a blessing on their drivers.

Then what stayed behind grew swollen, as we do; grew juice instead of tears, and small hard sour seeds, each one bitter, as we are, and filled with possibility.

Now a hole opens up in its skin, where it was torn from the branch; ripeness can’t stop itself, breathes out; you can’t stop it either, you breathe in: such loss transmuted into fruit; grown edible, grown sweet.

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The Anecdote

Even then I knew what she held out to me was an erotic spark in the damp wood of my sadness, so I don’t want to diminish her gesture, to make her into a literary anecdote on that coldest of days, with the air smelling like a fire that has just been extinguished, and a breeze so cold from the depths of the ocean that everyone who stood about on that hill overlooking the sea shivered and folded their arms over their own chests, as if to keep the chill out. It was one of those aimless gatherings, and she and I had found ourselves telling the secret histories of archived griefs, when someone appeared with a pan of steamed clams. I know now they were of the genus of Venus clams, Veneridae, a species without teeth and with rough lips, named for she who rose from the sea, probably because of that moist bud in the relaxed clasp of the shell, those shells lying side by side, the hinge of flesh sprung open, sprung apart, and that some poets say it’s an exhausted metaphor that compares cunnilingus to eating clams, but all I saw that day was so much death, so many shells clattering at the bottom of the pan.

I tried them reluctantly, surprised by their salty sweetness, the smoky flavor of their pearls of flesh, but even so, it wasn’t until much later that I guessed what she meant when she came up to me afterwards and offered that red raspberry, polpastrelli, holding

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it out to me on the tip of her finger. “Try this.

Eating raspberries after eating clams. It’s very sexy.”

By the time I understood, I would see her leaving with her husband, and she would stare at me over such a distance, such a dark and living depth, that she stumbled a moment and missed the curb, taking just one step toward me, leaving that moment— which was a gift, this story I’m telling you—even now still poised at the tip of her finger like a nipple, ripe, erect, at the tip of my tongue.

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Vignettes from Without a River or Sea: A Memoir Jerusalem, 1946–1949, Recollections of Childhood and After

I am standing with my mother in the fish store on Geulah Street in Jerusalem. There is a tank filled with fish. The fish are all the same kind and look identical to me, but my mother, with determination and expertise, finds one fish best to her liking. At home she fills the bathtub with water and puts the fish in. When she is ready to cook it, she places the fish on a newspaper on the marble shelf in the kitchen and kills it with one or two blows of an ax. Once when I was home alone, a fish my mother put in the bathtub jumped out, gasping and wriggling on the floor. I was afraid to touch it, and ran to my friend’s house a block away. She came back with me and fearlessly put the fish back in the bathtub.

Outside the fish store is a string of shops, most of them specialty stores. There is the dairy store for eggs and milk, the meat store, the tailor and the dry cleaner, a laundry that would wash and iron your linen, the blacksmith and the shoemaker, the pharmacy, the hat store, the clothing store, and the shoe store. There is the mikvah where you dip your silverware to kosher them before Passover, the slaughterhouse where you have your chickens slaughtered after you have atoned for your sins before Yom Kippur, making the chickens, which you later cook and eat, the bearers of your sins.

Sometimes, on days that my mother doesn’t go to the market, she asks me to go with her to the neighborhood vegetable store. She inquires about how fresh the vegetables are, when did they arrive, why some don’t look fresh, or why is the selection poor. The owner, who looks grim and worn out, answers her every question. I see he likes her.

My mother offers coffee and cake to anybody who comes to our house, whether it is the white-bearded man who collects tzddakah (charity) for poor people, the cleaning woman who is invited for coffee and cake Crab Orchard Review ◆ 169

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after cleaning the house, or the neighbor who suffers from depression and who is advised by my mother to go to the market and look at the vegetables and fruits, as a way of healing. My mother’s hospitality reminds me of Abraham’s, whose hospitality is described in detail in the Bible—God appearing to Abraham “during the hottest part of the day,” Abraham looking up, Abraham running to greet the angels, running from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowing to the ground; rushing Sara to make loaves of bread for them, he then serves them a tender calf which his servant had prepared, and cream and milk. These concrete descriptions evoke in me, each time I read the story, a visceral response—perhaps it is the instant trust that Abraham has in his guests, his unreserved welcome, care, and generosity that touches me.

The different faces of my mother make me either sad or happy. On rainy days when I come home from school, wet to the bone, my mother’s face emanates care. She takes off my boots, dries my feet, and sits me in front of the kerosene stove that warms only a small area. I stretch my arms above it, rubbing and warming my hands, while my mother prepares my favorite dish, a potato baked in a pot.

After my tonsils are taken out and I am still under the effect of ether and am not sure where I am—the brownish-orange tiles look bumpy and unusually big as I look down from the crib I am lying in—my mother walks in with ice cream. “My throat hurts,” I tell her, “I cannot swallow the ice cream.” A cloud comes over my mother’s face; her smile is forced and anxious.

Once a month when my mother accompanies my father on a business trip to Tel-Aviv, I imagine her confident; I know she goes away freely because she trusts me to be alone. On these days I eat lunch at a restaurant, ordering food I like, hot dogs and mashed potatoes; I feel free and independent, especially when the waiter asks me what I want to eat, and later when I pay. After lunch I climb the street that leads to my house, it is early afternoon, the streets are empty and the stores closed. There is loneliness, marked by a quiet satisfaction that there is care, and things go on, with only a brief pleasant break in continuity.

How agile my mother is, squatting to light the primus, as we call it, a gasoline-fueled one-burner stove, in order to fry schnitzel or heat the laundry pot. With what speed she bakes a cake (my father and I careful not to slam doors lest the cake will collapse), how effortless 170 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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the movements of her hands when she makes lunch, the big meal of the day: eggplant in tomato sauce on Mondays, boiled cow’s brain on Tuesdays, on Wednesdays, fried fish, and Thursdays, cauliflower in tomato sauce. Friday nights, the beginning of the Sabbath, we have gefilte fish, chicken soup, chicken and salad, and for dessert, compote. I eat everything that is served to me, even the compote which I don’t like.

On the Sabbath, upon returning from the synagogue, we have lunch.

My mother places a bottle of arrack (an alcoholic Mediterranean beverage) on the table with small glasses, and my father pours two glasses of ar rack—for him and me—as we eat gefilte fish, encouraging me to drink. “It is good,” he says, “you will learn to like it.” I like the cloudy near-mystical look of the arrack in the glass. And I drink it in one or two gulps. I feel brave and manly, savoring the sharp taste.

In the afternoons my parents and I sit on the terrace cracking pumpkin seeds. The terrace has a southern exposure, and the sun warms us in cool autumn, or chilly spring. We sit there after eating scholent (beans, potatoes, and meat prepared before the Sabbath and cooked overnight), the sumptuous savory dish we eat every Sabbath.

My father tells me about the locusts invading Palestine in 1915, destroying the crops. I am frightened by the mentioning of the word “locusts,” perhaps because it was one of the ten plagues that had hit Egypt, or because of the image I have of a mass of insects descending on our city, hurling itself at the city as Hosea prophesied, wounding the few trees in our neighborhood, leaving them bare, or sweeping the trees in the outskirts of the city making them white and dry. I imagine the locusts as a dark cloud over the Old City of Jerusalem when my father was a child—women standing in courtyards looking troubled, whispering to each other, men fasting, sounding the ram’s horn, praying to avert the decree, gathering in synagogues or outside synagogues, praying as the groups of men in my neighborhood did who recited the “Sanctification of the Moon” at the conclusion of the Sabbath, huddled under the sky, looking upwards at the slender new moon as it shed a faint light on them. Later I would learn, to my surprise, that locusts were edible; that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey in the rugged area of the Judean hills where he made his abode.

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There was a famine after the locusts’ invasion in 1915, and a famine after the British had occupied the Old City. My father would follow the British soldiers, picking up orange peels they discarded and eating them. Later, my father’s skin around his elbows often turned red with a rash and he would use a special ointment to relieve the itching, and it seemed to me the rash was a remnant from the time he was hungry and the city was wasted by famine.

In winter, whenever we have a rainless season my father worries about a drought. He remembers the hunger he suffered as a child. His community believed that a drought was decreed from heaven because of some grave communal sin, and they fasted and prayed to avert it.

Would these prayers affect nature, stubborn as it is? I had my doubts.

And yet now I love and am humbled by the daily prayers for rain and dew, brief and plain like the poem by Aleixandre where someone’s kiss is raining, soaked with rain. At night, as I lie in bed listening to the rain, I become more real to myself, as if a holy message penetrates me.

As in some other neighborhoods in Jerusalem there are Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Yemenite Jews living side by side on our street. The Ashkenazi Jews say that the Sephardi Jews are lenient regarding their religious observance—they turn on the lights and listen to the radio on the Sabbath. They also say that Sephardi Jews eat rice and beans on Passover but that it is not a leniency; it is a custom they bring from the countries they come from. I am an Ashkenazi and I can’t imagine eating rice or beans on Passover. But I am excited about living next to people who do.

My family romance with the Sephardi family on the left of our house endures. I admire their vivacious temperament, so different from the restrained Ashkenazi temperament. I love their halkum (a Mediterranean candy), their bread dipped in olive oil and sprinkled with za’atar (oregano), their tremus (a Mediterranean bean), sprinkled with salt, their okra cooked in tomato sauce. They sometimes eat their meals on the terrace. There is laughter and levity.

I think the Ashkenazi food doesn’t lend itself to levity. One must eat meals at a table, indoors.

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woman makes dishes called kubeh and melawach. Sometimes the smell from their kitchen is very strong. The Sephardi neighbors say, “She burnt her food again. After all she doesn’t have a sense of smell.”

From the terrace of our house I can see a sea of red-tiled roofs that stretches to where the market is. Our house has a red-tiled roof and beneath it an attic. In it we store our Passover dishes in a black chest. Before Passover my father and I climb to the attic and unload the chest. It makes me feel liberated. Little by little, very carefully, and with the help of a flashlight, we unpack ceramic ware, crock and china, vases and pots, all more beautiful and delicate than any other dish or utensil used during the year.

On Passover night my grandmother and two aunts spend the Seder with us. My father also invites an old aunt from Tel-Aviv. She likes slivovitz (plum brandy), and we nicknamed her “Slivovitz.” The Seder is the biggest meal of the year, and as I eat I keep on looking at my thin wrists to see if they are becoming fleshier. My father gives me a little wine to taste. The next day the Sephardi sisters from next door and I compare notes. They tell me that during their Seder they had so much wine that they got drunk.

Jerusalem 1947: War of Independence The enemy blocks the road from Tel-Aviv, and trucks with supplies are not able to enter Jerusalem. The city is under siege. The water pipeline had been blown up. People use rationed water from cisterns.

Adults look serious and worried. But everyone continues to do their duties quietly.

During the siege the city is invisible to me. In a room my family occupies on the ground floor, the mattresses are on the floor; in the corner a brown square chair with some dishes and cups on it and a small shelf with a pack of oatmeal. In the courtyard there is a kerosene stove to cook on. At the center of life is the thought of where to find food. Later, my mother tells me about the pain she experienced when I asked for bread and she had none to give me.

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My mother and her female neighbors begin to collect weeds in the fields. They make different dishes from weeds—soups, patties, and salads. My mother sometimes goes to shops in the neighborhood to try and buy food. She comes back and tells us, “The streets are empty.

Mortar shells were falling, but it seems that I ran between them.”

After a month-long siege, it is a miracle that a convoy of supplies arrives from Tel-Aviv on a newly-built road, and that a paratrooper, the son of a distant relative of my father from Tel-Aviv, comes to our house and brings eggs. My parents are delighted and very surprised, and everyone showers him with blessings. I stand in the courtyard and stare at him. He is so brave and handsome with his khaki clothes and red beret. How did he find us? We have never even met him before, and he might as well have descended from the sky.

The plan of austerity rations that the Military Governor of Jerusalem devised after the war no longer exists. Most people loathed the man and his plan. His name became synonymous with evil. But some had been fervent about that new law, such as a classmate’s mother who told my mother she never bought food on the black market.

Concerned about my health, my mother bought blackmarket eggs and butter. She said of this woman, “Her son became very ill because of malnutrition. I don’t understand how a mother can deprive her child of food just because of some rules.”

Kibbutz Be’erot Yitzhak—1954–55 I like the smell of the melon field, a smell full of promise, especially after the field had been irrigated. I like holding a melon, feeling the shape of it. I like to be in the sun. I like picking melons on the kibbutz (part of army service), and I like the men with whom I work, simple and straightforward. I like to prove that I can work as hard as they do.

Sometimes I see Uri working in an adjacent plot, irrigating the field.

He carries pipes and places them on the ground and puts them together. He is in the sun without a shirt or hat, and I sense his scent, so familiar to me, mingled with the scent of earth and water and melons. In the winter I pick oranges, around my waist a sack in 174 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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which I put the oranges. While working in the lemon orchard I climb high up on the ladder and delight in the view of the orchard and the sheer blue sky and bathe in the simple unpretentious scent of lemons.

On rainy days I work in the kitchen. All day I peel potatoes, chatting and gossiping with other women workers; we put them in an enormous pot of water for later cooking.

Jerusalem 1972 I live in New York City. Visiting Jerusalem, summers, siesta, and my father brings me a plate with grapes, plums, and figs. He says, “I was in the Old City today and I saw these figs, they are very sweet and I knew you would like them;” I shrug and say, “I don’t want any fruit,” and my father puts the plate down on a table next to me and says with sadness in his eyes, “Well maybe you will want it later.” My father died eleven years ago, and I recall the large soft figs, and the red grapes and sweet plums, his love for me distilled into the gentle gesture of his outstretched hand, and I recall how I shrugged off his outstretched hand and my heart constricts at the recollection. I recall my children taking their afternoon naps at that time, my mother reading in the living room which the thick walls kept cool, the city quiet, as I recline on the sofa with no thought.

Summer afternoons, my father takes my older son to his store and teaches him to give change. And once he took my younger boy to the market, and pointing to the market he said, “You are a good boy, tell me what you want, anything, and I will buy it for you.”

My father believes that religion gives a taste to life and he instills this belief in my boys, his grandchildren. If I had told him that his perception resembles that of John of the Cross who said that in the new wine of the pomegranates, a fruit that signifies a virtue and an attribute of God, the soul that seeks God tastes the delight of God, he would have been baffled, intrigued, and ultimately open to the comparison. After all he may have thought, “The Song of Songs” must have influenced John of the Cross. In his heart of hearts my father knew that we are all creatures of God, and that being disconnected from Christians, or from any other racial or religious group, was an artificial and contrived way that belongs to narrowmindedness.

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Upon Visiting Israeli-Arab Villages, 1999 At Amir’s home in Umm-al-Fahm, the hospitality is unreserved.

Amir’s mother, with her Greek classical features, welcomes us with an erect posture, an open, unstudied smile. Genuinely warm, somewhat weary, proud of her erudite children, she serves us Coke, watermelon, nuts, and coffee. I sink comfortably into a chair and listen unreservedly to Amir reading his poetry. The desert is miles away. Years away. Receding into oblivion. Amir writes about the desert, the wanderings, the adventure of the tent.

Clusters of grapes hang from slender vines supported by wooden slats. The thatch is intimate, like a sealed spring, with plentiful delectable green grapes resplendent in the sun that streaks through.

Nearby is a shed in which a woman, wearing a long heavy dress and a head covering, is baking pita bread. The shed is windowless. With easy-flowing movements she places a tray of dough in the oven. I can see the flames through the oven’s opening. It is intolerably hot and I step outside, but keep looking in. She smiles. Bread making is a habit for her; she displays a flair for it. Later, the bread, warm and generous, is served with labane and olives. We feel wanted, embraced. Ali, a school supervisor who hosts us, tells us about the life of his Bedouin tribe. They fled Syria to escape paying taxes to the Turks, and settled on the mountain they now inhabit, naming their village Kamana.

As we walk in Kamana we see several men sitting under almond trees. They invite us to sit with them. We are served coffee, coffee brewed for hours, black and bitter, thick like earth. The sea-green almonds humbly hanging from delicate branches remind me of the almonds I used to eat as a child, plucked from a tree in an uncultivated field, hard and raw almonds. We ate them with a pinch of salt, unwashed, imagining ourselves true and unyielding. The men sit aimlessly; some of them dream of adventure and a more transient existence. This is leisure, I think. Perhaps this ambiance is a remnant of life in the desert, life in tents, a direct contact with everything natural, raw time, unsullied. The man next to me has a diseased eye half-shut, some of his teeth are missing, some are discolored, yet when he smiles, a spark in his one good blue eye lights up, and for a moment he looks like Paul Newman. He tells 176 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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me about his longings for wandering, the desert, life without constraints, he tells me about the wedding tomorrow, with drums and singing, feasting on lamb now being sliced on a big table to be cooked tomorrow, and the hundreds of people who will come from the villages around, to feast, to dance, to sing. The man tells me about his sons and his wife as the afternoon begins to fade and the sun to weaken, the manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s half-shut eye tires, it is almost completely shut, and I like his expressions of longings for a past of wanderings that he hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t personally experienced but was related to him as family history. The longings match my own, for something in my past that is familiar and to which I belong in body and in blood, a natural environment of raw almonds in almost-deserted fields, and in impoverished gardens, and among those less fortunate than the people I generally mingle with today.

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Wendy Bishop

How One Food Leads to Another —A Recipe from Memory Homecoming

The wedge of sharp and crumbling cheddar cheese, the salami, the glass of white wine were a welcome home and a seduction. These foods, flown in on the Berlin airlift of supplies that flows daily into Fairbanks, were purchased by the man who now wanted to remain with me and for me to remain with him, were offered, as food so often is, as an unspoken request, both plea and prelude. For now, we would resume our marriage.

I had finished a course of summer study outside. I had studied new options but left them behind as my luggage and I were left by a man at the Pittsburgh airport. My napping two-year-old daughter downstairs was a homing device that brought me back from where I had wandered weeks earlier.

We sliced the aged ivory cheese thinly on the kitchen breadboard, in the small university rental house, perched on the campus, perched on a plateau above the city, perched above the lower-forty-eight states we, together, had not so long ago left. We shook the waxed paper from a row of wheat crackers. We brushed their sesame seeds off the counter into cupped hands. We set up an assembly-line, dressing crackers with bitter flakes of milky protein and wedges of salami, that unhealthy and succulent pointillist rendering of white fat and seasoned red meats; the peppercorns—black and green—in each cross-section looking like olive slices on a miniaturized pizza slice. Tenuous, this balancing, the plate and glass and bottle cradled and clutched on the walk along a worn rug runner toward the bedroom.

Nervous, this undressing, wine rinsing away each unspoken word, regret, and recrimination, pucker of salt and sweet exploding in our mouths. Then we could settle and talk about the brief green summer ending and the longer white winter ahead.

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glasses folded into themselves like large articulated insects, lip salve beginning to scallop the wine glasses, one empty, one half full. Early evening sunshine angled into the bedroom, passed first, we knew, over the raspberry bushes that grew at summer’s breakneck speed behind the house. Expected surprise of a few bright berries, bloodred juice cushioning tough seeds, the weight of the fruit pulling razor-wire bushes back toward earth.

A summer dress waiting to be slipped on. A finger trailing through that provocative oily film on the empty snack plate. A furtive tossing back of the other’s glass of chardonnay. Nothing finished or said. Jeans, socks, and collar to be buttoned down.

We walked out of the room we had for some time wondered about walking into. We filed out the front door, the screen, down the front steps, around the corner of the duplex, and each picked a raspberry, then the third that we’d carry upstairs for our daughter, willing her to wake soon, to burst into the scene, to alter our meaning.

But before that, placed the first two berries on the other’s lips, tried to meet eyes, tongued the hard promises, crushed and ground the familiar bittersweet of seed and sharp juice between teeth, swallowed, seemed, even, to smile.

The Stanley Thermos The Stanley thermos makes you feel like an adult. It is heavy, used by working men and now by you, a working woman. It comes in the mail from a distance and goes with you from Arizona to Alaska. Moving from the reservation’s high desert cold to the North Star Borough’s very cold, you consider returning to the catalog for a carrying handle that you can fit onto the slick thermos body so that your gloved hands won’t slip and drop it. Dentable but unbreakable is a universal virtue.

The Stanley has a metal liner, inside a metal casing, and weighs far more than its contents; it brings coffee or soup with a solid thunk to a long day’s desk. It marries need to commitment.

Unlike the elementary school lunchbox thermoses you dropped and broke, this one simply drops and rolls. When it does, you hear again the less dignified sound of your metal Zorro lunchbox rattling onto the front porch. In the second grade, a classmate slapped a Goldwater sticker across his (now collectible) Jetsons dome box with its King-Seeley thermos. You didn’t know who Goldwater was, Crab Orchard Review ◆ 179

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or how incongruously linked with George Jetson, but you liked the idea of gold water, something that should have poured out of the metal Disney theme boxes you coveted each Christmas. Your thermos dropped because you had to run the last three blocks home from Washington Elementary, childhood’s enormously long blocks, and tried to latch open the front door to the stucco house on Christman Avenue with one hand, for of course the other held your lunchbox.

Because you had the lunchbox, the latch, two hands, and because you had to pee, the box crashed to the cement porch and you ran inside just in time and came back to get it. A sad rattle of apprehension sent you to the kitchen where you shoved the chrome dinette chair with its yellow vinyl seat to the sink. This was the chair you balanced on to wash the dishes, skinny arms plunged in up to the top of the plastic gloves, after begging Jeannie, your housekeeper, to let you try. You’re bent into that intent forward arc, girl over sink, peering into the eye of another broken thermos, familiar kaleidoscope of shattered, sharp, white and gray liner glass, a chicken noodle roping one jagged peak to the other. You’re in trouble again.

You’re someone who can appreciate a Stanley. Must have one.

The Stanley thermos costs more discretionary money than you’ve had, ever, and comes from your first full-time paycheck in Arizona, and though you haven’t had a thermos since your Southern California childhood, now you’ve paid your dues, learned to drink coffee, though only if cream dilutes the ropy stream of mocha that pours steaming into your office cup.

Because you spent college time in Northern California, you order Graffeo coffee beans from San Francisco, life-long. Growing up is about moving from avoiding foods to holding opinions about food. Entering the tax economy. Developing aesthetics. Each bag of mixed, light and dark, whole beans helps process you into your day. Each dent on the green Stanley shell casing of a cap speaks its little story. Like slipping on the very first, and luckily lowest, of the ice-rimed stairs that ascend like a wooden praying mantis up the side of the hill to the university. Distracted by darkness and aurora borealis, bundled deeply in fleece-lined boots and wool and leather gloves and fur-trimmed down hood and down jacket, tumbled onto your butt fast, windmill of constrained limbs, short slide on the frozen asphalt produce a momentary dent in your pride. Also a note of worry. You may be pregnant. You suspect you’ll have to dilute the brew soon or turn the Stanley to other steaming uses. Soup. Herb 180 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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tea. But for now, caffeine chases your dreams into the dark of day.

It’s odd to open the kitchen freezer to take out the coffee beans when it’s twenty degrees below outside. Paying for manufactured cold seems foolish. Still, you enjoy pouring the beans into the Braun grinder, the light rattle already making you feel more alert, the dentisty noise a comforting sort of walking alarm clock (that you muffle with a dishtowel so as not to wake the children, their father already up but lost in a long shower in the far bedroom). You wield a one-inch paint brush to sweep recalcitrant grounds from the grinder’s plastic lid and into the paper cone, smelling like…like…like…coffee but looking like earth, the warm brown loam you took for granted when you lived in a college town, nestled upon the rich agricultural quilt of the Sacramento Valley.

Click the switch, machine’s red eye baleful in the kitchen’s yellow light. You eat a bowl of cereal, check the baby’s breath— yes, he’s still breathing—soon to haul him from sleep’s caul and into a new diaper, a T-shirt, a sleep suit, a snow suit, a car. Before that, coffee mug in hand will be set down and taken up around the house, while you keep your daughter busy before the TV, smile when she runs to rub a hole in the frost on the window pane to check the old and the new snow outside. Still there. Still there. One day, finally, she seems reliable enough to watch him, so you prop the padded dozing infant against the pillow that supports her first choice, a large gray and white stuffed rabbit. You go back and last thing fill the Stanley thermos, pre-heated with hot tap water, to the brim. Then you pour out some coffee to the one and a half-inch depth that you know is exactly right and refill with cream. Close and turn the lid along the reliable threads, settling silver cap on the dull green body.

You’ve made more than a morning can hold.

There are so many things to balance, you think, as you plug the car’s heater cord into the parking lot outlet, as you slip on your backpack that hauls your shoulder blades into military wings and you proudly carry the weight of the Stanley, as you snug down the edges of your down jacket and head again toward the bright star of your office window, three flights of iced wooden staircase and two floors of building above you, above the brow of the hill. Once there, unzipped, unbuckled, unharnessed, let loose into your lighter layers, you will let the thermos swirl alertness into your waiting cup.

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empty, lighted parking lot, and down the road into the darkness where you have so recently been, you are what you sip.

Pot’s Luck Like a weekend house party crammed into eight or ten hours, the potluck continues. Doorbell elicits a room-wide relay of let-em-in. They will bring stew: caribou, bear, moose, elk, deer, reindeer, a round of name that game. They will offer bread, some in Safeway plastic wrap and some handmade, kneaded in cabin-woodstove-warmed kitchens.

They will set down paper bags full of chips, offer up bowls of additive soup, drab gray even if started as navy, kidney, lima, split pea, or lentil. They will provide wine, generally by the jug, and hold each arriving case of the cheapest beer high above wool-hatted heads in the crowded entry hall. Food, imported, costs so much. To share is finally to be sated.

They will bring casseroles made with eggs and green chilies, chili con carne with an eagle’s crown of crudely-chopped white onions, macaroni and hamburger, or cast iron pots of wild and brown rice. They seldom bring fruit. Sometimes a small salad, ruled over by the squat round god of long-lasting iceberg lettuce. When they provide brownies, it’s by calorie-rich panfuls. Steppingstone-sized cookies, compounded of oatmeal, nuts, chocolate chips. All experiments are welcome. Whatever remains after the hard-working week. Baked offerings are built on a challenging base of hand-milled wheatberries. Crock pots burn out. Soup froths up and spills over onto the crusted burners on the range. The oven is mostly open, pans covered with tinfoil sliding in and out like flickering tongues.

The occasional centerpiece is smoked salmon and someonesent-a-ham!

They have few chairs, rely on jackets. A steamy assortment of outerwear meets inside’s bordello of just-shucked innerwear. Hummocks of cloth collect against shipping-crate bookshelves. They rely on discount store desk lamps lifted for safety off the desk and perched on a high shelf throwing a kiltery light across a room full of moustaches, beards, damp and drying hair, teeth, and flashing spoons.

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and bent and bent back, the dishes are all out, laid forth from kitchen pass-through breakfast-bar to the nearby coffee table. The room stinks of done and ready and reheated. Paper plates are tossed around like personal Frisbees. There is no room to move.

In a home, the woodstove is stoked high. A bit more disrobing, down to socks, even sans socks, to T-shirt sleeves, and the revelation of a wide-beamed space to wander into. Covered dish precedes a bundled face, bulky body enters next through the outer door, like a supplicant, or a poor bowler aiming down a lane, to balance storklike, foot nudging boot off by working it against bunched calf. Smell of wool and gravy. Bunny boots tipped over like dominoes by the inner doorway. Or the house is tiny, hand-built, no space then to wander, sitting, back against rough log walls, staring at a high upper loft alive with smoky shadows; outside unshoveled snow accumulates, battens the small high windows. As much carpentry expended on the sled dogs, each animal chained in a personal pen and sitting on its separate doghouse roof, noting with bark, yip, howl, the covered-pot processional of arrival.

Here, they run howling to the outhouse, or, drunk, piss designs in the nearer snowbanks. Here, they start the potluck before the guests arrive and discuss it for some weeks after. They cheer each dish and its unveiling. Forks are raised. Beans slide down. The bear stew is handed around like the sacrament it is. Have you tried it have you tried it have you tried it? By three A .M., not a single crumb left as a turntable tosses everyone to a different and distant past.

Calories work their hot and necessary magic. Some snoring. Some dancing. They are tearing a last bit of meat off the bone, cracking and sucking the burnt mahogany marrow. Cheeks convex. Stomachs concave. They will return dishes to the office mailroom on Monday, to be reclaimed, to be reused.

A Recipe from Memory In Ventura, California, 1970, the Fosters Freeze Drive-In across from my high school provided illegally off-campus seniors with hot and salty deep-fried rolled corn tortillas, stuffed with a creamy, light pink, bean paste. These were handed through the square, eighteen-inch order window in a French-fry paper bag. Today I call these flautas and order them from San Miguelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mexican Restaurant in Tallahassee, Crab Orchard Review â&#x2014;&#x2020; 183

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but they don’t quite contain the same high-calorie-yet-bland approximation of authentic Mexican food (with little packets of the mildest hot sauce) that satisfies memory’s cravings.

To eat anything not a hamburger was an accomplishment for me. As a child I would be left alone at the table staring at my uneaten foods. Chicken pot pie with its glutinous gravy and fisheyes of overcooked green peas joined avocados, sour cream, or beans on the list of textures and tastes guaranteed to make me want to throw up. I’d face off against these for what now seems like hours. I responded to my parents strained marriage with stomachaches, to their limited palette with a revengefully limited one of my own. I was their child.

In Durango, Colorado, in 1983, I’d continue my gastronomical journeys, my dance with fried and filling, by discovering and embracing the Frito-pie, layer broken Fritos corn chips into a paper, palm-sized bowl, and top them with traditional bean-and-meat chili and a layer of cheddar cheese. A meal to stoke a human engine—I could never eat the first half of the dish fast enough, but then my plastic spoon slowed as the second half made me want never to eat a meal again and, regretfully, I tossed that last dollop into the trash can. Until the next time when I’d stand, transfigured, eyes running down the menu of burgers and fries to fix, with a sense of guilt and indulgence, on Frito-pie, $1.25.

As my menu slowly broadened, I filled in the AAA map of Indian Territory in this way: Frito- pie to the Colorado north and sopapillas to the Arizona south and fry bread everywhere in between. We drove offreservation to Gallup to shop, always finishing with a filling Tex-Mex meal topped off by sopapillas, the puffs of fried dough drizzled with honey from the honey-bear dispensers that joined salt and pepper and catsup and napkins on each gingham-checked oilcloth-covered table.

Perhaps I should admit to a personal fried bread genealogy, having worked at Loops Bakery during high school where I despaired over my future (college) life and nurtured my worries with an indulgence of donuts—buttermilk, old-fashioned, glazed. But the present delights of Navajo tacos (or Hopi tacos depending on which territory I was trespassing, i.e. touring) filled my mental map. Served at national park restaurants, at pow wows, rodeos, and the Navajo community college cafeteria. Fry bread layered with a ladle of red beans, topped with chopped onions and tomatoes and thickly-grated yellow cheese, contributed to a dawning sense of destiny. Bliss: to 184 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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work, to weekend, to take a run, to go camping, to be both tourist and traveler, to read more local history and Tony Hillerman novels, and to eat my way from distant town to distant town. Honey-sticky fingers twisting a napkin. Cheap and dependable heft of the warmed bread and chili in hand, a defining satiety of the high desert.

In Fairbanks three years later, I bought tortillas from a Mexican restaurant whose food was too expensive for dining in but whose corn tortilla imports I would attempt to take out. Sometimes they had enough to sell and share, sometimes I came out empty-handed and longing. Scoring a hit, I would return home to cut and fry the thin tortillas in piles of ten, sliced three times into six wedges, placed with tongs in the smoking pan, drained on paper towels. Fingers slipping into the cooking oil, burnt, stuck under cold sink water, sucked on. Ice cube, butter, any remedy. The stack of chips salted with the left hand as the right managed the pan were nibbled and crunched away before the first batch could move from counter to plate. In those days, always hungry as my internal temperature dropped and I shivered and looked for comfort food in every doorway, I imagined I could see calories expended visibly with each exhale of warm breath. Without much effort then, I can track the trail of oil, lard, fat through all these northern memories. Good bad habits prevail.

Because restaurants were so expensive, because I had small children, I seemed always to be eating on the run. Since the best Mexican was, reportedly, farthest north at Barrow on the arctic rim, I shuttled most often between Blue Marlin Pizza and Hot Licks Ice Cream, both on the drive to the university. The ice cream parlor made meaning out of a strip mall nestled at the head of the main road, catty-corner from my parking lot below the long wooden walkway that linked the lower parking lot to the university on the hill. Steamy windows in winter, bright lights inside. Ice cream scoops the size of a pipeline worker’s fist. Soup followed by ice cream and coffee equaled a round of bodily needs met, that telling litany of chicken broth, milk fat, and caffeine.

A meal, of sorts, ended in the gathering up of belongings, a careful relayering, my attempt to keep the imminent cold from leeching out what had so laboriously and lovingly been ladled and licked in. Then a leaning into the first assault of blackness, cold, ice fog haloing street lights, and my didn’t-grow-up-here lumbering across the intersection, through the lot, up the hill again, to arrive at an office, all calories accrued nearly re-expended.

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pizza to go, wondering if I could get it home warm. In a land where cars were left locked and idling outside Safeway for a thirty-minute February shopping trip like a row of enormous animals leaning toward their lit-up watering hole; in a land where stores featured foods that had arrived in bulk that week, or put out pre-printed on order signs on empty shelves until the ash from the volcano eruption cleared and the flights resumed; in a land where you could identify wilderness workers on a spree fueled by pipeline dollars by the steak and whiskey and chocolate cake and bundle of dark-edged roses on the conveyer belt at the checkout; in this land, the dive down the steps into Blue Marlin’s dark, wood-paneled, fake stained glass, juke-boxed, pong-tabled, beer-signed, and utterly lower-forty-eight-familiar pizza parlor was a ritual and a reprieve.

The Blue Marlin didn’t ask me to ask myself why I was there, whose life I was living, why I was isolated in newcomer’s enclaves, until I walked back outside and wondered how to keep the lovely cardboard and pepperoni smell flowing through my station wagon that cached a deepfreezer’s worth of sub-zero air in the back compartment as the heater labored to prepare me for the run from preschool to car seat, my fingers without gloves hurting and burning with cold, with humiliation at not knowing how to adapt and adjust as I buckled my children in.

This is before the microwave. This is two miles from the center of town where the pre-fab landscapes abruptly ended in blue spruce.

In spring, the hollows still ran with snow melt and black combs of ice groomed the green grass. Farther on, tundra, and shadows of float planes. In actuality and in my imagination, natural danger (and beauty) was everywhere, and at the same time was nowhere near.

I could take home a midnight pizza in July and eat it lukewarm on the front porch, watching a moose and her calf amble off nervously behind the rental house, air warming enough to disperse the scents of pineapple and ham. Even in summer we had to heat water for the kids’ wading pool—placed in its newness on the wooden front deck—because the outdoor tap ran so cold. We’d totter from house to porch with pots of range-boiled water. We’d sit on piles of towels with mugs of beer and pull pizza from the Blue Marlin box and watch the babies splash and then shiver.

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like making Eskimo ice cream. After a long snowmobile journey back to family, the ice and salmonberries and seal oil were compounded and savored. I can still offer up their recipe for these rich, high calorie memories.

Akutag 1 1 1 1

lb. dried or shredded reindeer fat cup seal oil pint salmon berries cup sugar

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Amar Gaurav Shah

Ode to Bombay Duck

Imposter!

You are not a duck, but a mere translucent fish.

You are Saurus ophiodon in ichthyology, bombil in common tongue, and bummalo to the Koli fishermen who remember this city as an archipelago of seven islands, this city whose name is as corrupt as yours: from bom-bahia to Bombay; from mumba to Mumbai.

You were named a duck for the English who ruled this city like duces; But, once salted and then sun-dried, and flavored with red chili and turmeric powders, and fried with some green chilies, you become a fish again, a delicacy of this city.

But you will never lose your monikerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Like me, you are also forever linked to our common colonial heritage.

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besides Bombay Duck, and how can I betray this English language that I love?

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Nancy Shih-Knodel

Making Dumplings

Lately my father wanders moodily, in and out of the swinging, heavy half-door of our kitchen, and not knowing whether to come in or go out, mostly, he stays out— especially now since my mother died.

Together, they used to make platefuls of chiao-tzu, their delicate, slippered feet marching one after another into our mouths, their weight on our tongues a fearful comfort— like crowds of refugees, huddled into hidden caves carved into the mountains— and dipped into spicy mustard or vinegar, they left a lingering hot and sour imprint on our tongues, the taste of burning metal spreading over the desolate countryside, the aftermath of aerial bombers sowing their palpable terror, like a void in the stomach.

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mashed raw prawns, boiled Chinese cabbage squeezed to a damp pulp, and seasoned with chopped green scallions, shaved ginger root, the shiny black pearls of soy sauce, the golden coins of sesame oil.

Pinched carefully closed with a scalloped edge, they were eaten at special celebrations, delicious amid the gaiety, while they could not help but carry the memories of a vanished homeland, of famine and war, abandonment and loneliness, living inside my father like a second heart, in 1937, a skinny boy with an alias— his only protection from his father’s enemies, waiting with guns outside the door— and the only one left behind during the holidays in an empty boarding school in Shenyang, eating salty soybeans and rice.

And I can remember a time in the kitchen with my parents, when safety was never assured, when some of the dumplings, flawed and wayward, opened their little mouths, their precious contents escaping into the cloudy, rolling water, swirling slowly to the bottom of the pan.

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Evie Shockley

party of two

i hover in the kitchen, steaming raw, green leaves and tubers only hours from the earth, stewing for flavors that only come from the mixture of things. the cracking wood of the old table against the far wall is tested by the weight of baked goods, plumping on platters, proud of their powdered and crystal sugar coatings, their chocolate drizzles. fruits hang from hooks near the window, or glisten in bowls, wet from washing, suggesting their own juices. i study the science of the palate, the art of herbs, the interpretation of creams. all day, i work,

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comfortable in my disarray, cookware where i least expect it, needing to be cleaned, the rowdiest smells elbowing each other, my t-shirt dusted and crusted with preparationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s excess, hair pulled back from my warm face. only when my stomach growls do i peer into the empty dining room. the tablecloth is a blue sea, where silver, glass, and china float like strangers. i light the white candles, absorb the glow and scent of vanilla they exude. here is chill and echo, barely broken. i glance at my watch, absently lick a dab of lost honey from my finger, wonder if i can keep everything hot until the acceptable guest arrives, the one whose rooted music will coax me into sharing.

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Renee Soto

Martín

Martín makes quick work. Red and gray in his market stall, he makes quick work, whops off heads—that familiar diagonal—discards. Eyes bulb, still startled, and point up through fly-buzz deep in the bucket.

He deflecks the skin, stands sequined in the sun.

One sharp swipe slices each white belly. Once or twice his toss is short and the pail’s outsides glisten, tell-tale evidence of slippery contact. Yellow-blue guts trail to the dirt, dirt a step or two up from beans, dirt years from beans, from Ana. Fresh dressed fish lounge on ice. This man in the market makes quick work, works left (fish) to center (bucket) to right (ice)—can do this with his eyes closed—but eyes! always! ¡todos los dias! ¡los ojos! Fish work is sterling: the hair, skin, pail, knife, fish-slick and fly wings, pink shine on Martín’s fingers after he pokes dead eyes out for staring, “¿Dónde están sus hijos, Martín?”

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Palm Sunday Morning

Before nine o’clock Mass, she separates beans from pebbles, good acts from sins, until the silver scratches in the enameled sink become muddy rows, and the sorting stops, the picking days and beanfields return— first, stooped next to her mamacita, later the sneaky study of the men: Someone save my niños from following the seasons.

She and Martín met weariness together, handled each other tenderly and cleanly, like full bushes, but slower. In her shack she soothed his body, magic he returned when he smoothed her spirit with a voice hidden in his hands. They slept.

She pays for beans now, pre-shelled, dry, in three-pound bags marked beans, frijoles, brown-pink speckled just like the bright blue-green malted eggs she will bury under plastic grass in bright plastic baskets next Saturday. Today we twist flat palm leaves into crosses to tuck behind the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Martín is gone. Everyone sleeps in beds, but the smell of dirt upon waking stays fresh for Ana. She counts the pile of dusty stones, blesses herself, and freely runs cool water through the colander’s stars.

Pintos sparkle and wink, happy to rinse.

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Virgil SuĂĄrez

The Essence of Cardamom in memory of Agha Shahid Ali I split a papaya my mother sent up from Miami, and I stand in the half-dim, afternoon light of the kitchen, two halves of this gorgeous, meaty fruit like opened hands, its black bead-like seeds, polished smooth onyx of well-wishes to follow you into the afterlife where words buzz about you, iridescent, luminous, incantations all, the way the scent of cardamom will always remind me of your breath, your eyes, your funny accent that bit into each word with great relish. Dear Shahid, you have left the world your hunger, your vast and voracious appetite for the sweet succulence of a frutabomba, your lips enveloping all words for eternal longing. After a fine meal, your memory will return to all of us, one word at a time, this string of seeds that I want to hold suddenly, as if only to ask of it for a miracle, prayer beads to keep count, finding my own way up toward lightness, this quickness of your delicate feet, one step at a time. We will bite into and eat

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of your fruit, a welcoming chorus of nun finches flocking toward thin air, diminishing, darting in and out of your mouth, your eyes, your hands.

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Margaret C. Szumowski

La Fiorentina

This food is too rich for us: pastas, scallopini, rigatoni, parmesan, deep purple wine. We order only espresso, dark and bitter, none of your pink Italian cookies. Let us drink black and chew crusts until we’re thin and strong as old sailors who know only the taste of salt. But even old Batista the pizza man, looks different here.

He wears his rags like a velvet cloak, looks at us like some grand signor examining his jewels. The coffee machine is a golden palace, walls of emerald and silver, every cake plump with custard, air heavy as honey: and ah, the foaming milk, the thick icing.

Old men savor last night’s loves, rich cakes gobbled too quickly: I hear the women chant, “Almond, almond, they taste of almond every one.”

Put on your velvet doublet, your tights, how fine your legs look in tights.

Trim your beard to a goatee: remember wild nights on the riverbank, water swelling around us, dark rivers of our bodies.

We are not spectators in a museum, only watching the Renaissance creatures; we are great golden bodies

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heavy as cake, as bread, as all things good to eat. I am still hungry, let me taste you again.

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Molly Tenenbaum

Year of the Myriad French Bakeries

It ought to have been later already, but it was still ten in the morning, ten-thirty, everyone at tippy round tables, crumb-gunked plates, everyone reading the movie section, the personals, no one getting up to go.

We were happy to stare at the raspberry, chocolate, lemon silk tarts, counting weekends in a year, chances to try every one.

One woman got a boyfriend so they could order two and trade halves.

Dawn was crystallized violet, berry preserves, butter-spot windows on white paper bags.

It opened like a rose, the petals, butter, apricot glaze on the frangipane hills.

Almond grit stuck to everyone’s shoes.

We rattled Real Estate and Living, after each sip, set our cups in the same pools in the same saucers.

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rising daily, time looking back, longing, the closer it slowed to noon.

We wanted—you know, those flaky buns with the chocolate inside, bittersweet dabs, how do you pronounce them?

“One of those,” we’d say, driving all over to find the best, and we did, salty outside, grainy inside, curled like sleeping doves.

If they handed us something else, tipped like a top hat, honey-glazed, wing-shaped, powdery-white, we’d accept it.

Unwind the coils, sugared nuts dropping, prise the layers, pull the soft inside away from the crust.

We’d find a whole pear, sometimes.

We’d unwrap lemon-flecked air.

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Jennifer Tonge

The Mexican Cooks Return

to the land of their birth and start to trade recipes.

It is as if some note has sounded, which only they can hear, and they have heeded.

They have come, from tacquerias and great hotels, from Les Étoiles and Napoli and The Jade Garden.

They have brought with them their knives and their favorite dishes—countless ways of preparing squid, a perfect almond cake, a perfect ginger glaze.

They’re excited; it’s good to be back, on a better footing, they’ve learned things up North that are worth knowing, and now they can use them to advantage.

As their erstwhile diners await delayed entrées or assay second choices, as trainees scramble in the unfamiliar kitchens they have left, they are mulling the relations between mole and sambal, condensed milk, coconut milk, and crème anglaise.

Here is the recipe for kasuzuke broth— what fish from their waters will fit it most pleasingly, what peppers might come into play?

One has made a papaya chutney riddled with something—tomatillo?

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considering which oil might suit better than sesame.

Collectively, they’ve put in centuries as short-order cooks, fry cooks, jacks of all the cooking trades; they’ve learned to deal alike with the fancies of spun sugar and the obdurate reality of ketchup.

Now at last they get to be the chefs.

They are rapt—and deft, and that is a good combination.

They talk as they work, sharing some secrets, keeping others, reciting traditions and making some dashing departures.

They’re asking all the big questions: Is poaching ever necessary?

Can the tomato remain relevant in its fallen state?

What really is best for clearing the palate?

A sous-chef is teaching a former assembler of fast food to fillet a salmon.

A cloud of sighs gathers over a new pesto.

O flavor, o piquancy and tenderness, o beauty, o newness brought once more into the world.

They have come, from the places of their long labor.

They have come, and now they cook, and now they wait. for Julio, Jesus, Alfredo, and Alejandro

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Jennifer Tonge

The Bursa Peach

See if you can do this cleanly: the cleft velvet Envelopes—no, purses—unimaginable Fullness; it will gush at your bite, it will drench you.

Think this hyperbole in what words you choose, staid Adam reaching, then know it in the flesh: it is Luscious beyond recall. But, you think, this region Is famed also for its baths and its thick, thick towels.

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Judith Vollmer

The Coffee Line after Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1847–1917 The cart was a house we approached at dawn, the man tended the chrome pots bent over in his canvas apron, the steam a circuit above the boiling water and the smell could knock you out at 6 in the morning; our paper bags softened in the mist and our lunches sealed in waxed paper held meats & fruit— second sweetness of the day—but this would be the first, the dark poured into our thermoses, the dark warmed our faces in the first-light, the smell, holy smell of the whole oiled & turning world smoked into our nostrils down onto our tongues, eyes in our heads watered, ears opened to the sound of pouring from the chrome spout, the falling dark waterfall into the cup, 1 cup just now before work, sipping the dark, 2 sugars, 3, help yourself to a fourth, it’s payday, the milk warmed if possible is that possible, the man bends toward us hands us the cup and keeps pouring elixir & frugality, cost & profit. Every morning the red ring of the single burner on the white stove in the cart can be seen from far away in the black wet streets we walk, minds dipped in sky-tar buffed to something ebony & bony & vase-like; we walk toward the wedding ring of night & morning fused, Saturn, ring of the brain’s tiny volcanoes awakening.

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Ronald Wallace

Hamburger Heaven

Tonight we find them again, parked under the stars (no one ever eats inside in Heaven) beeping the tired carhop with her pageboy and mascara for a paper boat of french fries drenched in sauce, a smashed hamburger baptized with spices.

They’re sixteen and in love; the night is hot, sweet and tangy on their tongues.

Why do we stop?

They’re in heaven, after all, listening to the fry cook in the kitchen with his savory benedictions, the AM radio playing “Love Me Tender,” “Peggy Sue,” unperturbed by the future with its franchises and malls, its conglomerates and information highways. Is there something we would tell them?

Here in Hamburger Heaven where the nights go on forever, where desire’s resurrected and every hunger’s filled?

Wait! Do we call out?

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fervent “Thou Shalt Nots,” our longings glaring in the rearview mirror.

And they’ve turned on the ignition and they’ve floored it and are gone.

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Charles Harper Webb

After Thirty Years, I Meet My Highschool Sweetheart in the Cookbook Section at Safeway

How does a sauce made from barley dough rotted in a box under hot sun for forty days, then mixed with water, spices, salt, then rotted for another forty, sound to you?

Called murri, it took Assyria by storm.

Lacking dentures, the medieval English hung pheasant until the flesh turned green and slithered off the bone.

Roman desserts featured liquamen, a sauce decanted from fish pickled in brine.

Herbs like hyssop, tansy, southernwood sound sweet today, but taste bitter, which seemed sweet when spice was rare, and the more you served, the richer you appeared.

Gleaning such tidbits from A History of Cooking, I feel Advanced as I do noting Neanderthals’ low brows, knowing my forebears ate each other, and fought naked, painted blue. But we moderns have lost ground too, forgetting how to read entrails, raise demons, love “the simple things.”

My appetite for Frosted Flakes and Kool-Aid must have dropped out of my bike basket as I thundered through Big Woods, gorging on velocity. Nothing will ever

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taste as good as strawberry lipstick, your hand inside my jeans. The first time I caught a King Salmon—well, there’s only one first time. After a year in Seattle, I scarcely saw snow-nippled Mount Rainier.

I get so tired of getting tired of things, sneering “Surprise me,” as life shows its wares.

No wonder I drool pronouncing skirret, vervain, viaunde despyne. Dated delicacies— I want you all! Let waiters stagger under trays of anesere and blanc desire!

Let patino de piris drip from our lips, old friend.

Let’s feast until our jaded palates glow— till rue soothes, sweet as plums, horse parsely rides, and grain of paradise brings Eden back again.

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S.L. Wisenberg

In Restaurants

We speak of other restaurants, food we cannot have now: deep dish pizza thick as stew in that place that burned down— maybe arson— the potatoes and goat cheese on that terrace in Spain, herbs gathered fresh somewhere else in another season we never have here.

We speak of other restaurants, other companions, conversations too witty to recall in full: bits of bons mots from the mouth of the lover that almost returned.

We speak of other restaurants, other menus, faraway prices, the waiter that never forgot us, the waitress we always remembered: a blue silk blouse and blue-black hair, crisp white bow tied so nimbly at the neck, 210 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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a friendliness you couldn’t quite see past through the steam from the chowder.

Was that laughter as she spooned out crème fraîche, on top of impossibly firm strawberries bathed in some kind of Europesteeped liqueur?

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Jake Adam York

Fire

Like love, or the things we call love: the uncontainable inability to contain: a secret spreading, as if it waited like a dream inside the wood, charcoal’s youth in second wind: potential turned potent, so what you see in a stand of trees on the edge of hard winter or in the shoulder, the butt, the rack— a moment of delicacy deep within: so how do you explain ants-in-your-pants habañero shock you never sought, snuck in but strong enough in smallness to require a lake of beer: no moment, friend, and not delicate by half: then both the touch and what can hold it, no heat without molecule, a spreading largesse at home in this local state and beyond: everyone can hold it but not for long, not alone: no heaven in the hand: the kingdom in the pepper seed: already I water

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when you bring it from the pit, walking so I know where we’re going, why I love this long, sweet business: how we shape what we can’t hold in.

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To the Unconverted This is the meal equally set.

—Whitman Mud Creek, Dreamland, Twix-n-Tween, the cue-joints rise through smoke and glow like roadhouses on Heaven’s way.

Or so the local gospels raise them.

Each tongue’s ready to map the ramshackle of shacks and houses, secret windows and business-sector hip in some new geography of Truth. If the meek shall, then a rib-mobile may shame the fixed pit in a reading from the Book of Skill, the grill-less one cook himself to legend rib by rib. The great chain’s links are live and hermetic as bone, and where cue burns hotter than politics every mouth’s the forge of change, all scholars temporary and self-proclaimed.

One says he half-sublimes each time he eats a rib and expects to go in a puff of smoke when he finds the perfect pig: he wanders like a ghost, his eyes trying everything, a genuine R & D, and once a day he proclaims the latest find, a homegrown Moses canting a vernacular talmud changeable as wind.

A word could crumple him, some backyardmaster slapping mustard on a country rib to turn the state of things entire.

So every word reverberates and mystery’s sown again. Rib or rump, dry-rub or ketchup, the eternal terms turn and barbecue’s rooted or pulled anew. Theories proliferate 214 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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like flies after rain, but that’s the usual business where Georgia and the Carolinas river in, the wind spirits Mississippi or Caríb, and piedmont’s melted to the uplands in open hearths and coke ovens, stitched tight in cotton fields, and a kudzu vine’s the proper compass. Beef or pork, catfish, quail or armadillo, we’ve tried it all, loved it with brushes, kiss of vinegar, tongue of flame, so whatever it may not be, we’ve covered all it is. Vegetarian exception opens eggplant, means tofu’s the next horizon, purity an envelope that’s always opening. So summer afternoons and Saturdays when the fires go up, smoke rises to a signal and shapes the single common word, handmade silence talking on every tongue.

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Pilgrimage

Well off the map, on roads that branch like capillaries into the blanks, we follow the turns of rumor far beyond the interstate’s shoulders, the travel like prayer, so far gone from any place we know.

And soon the light’s diffused so it seems the trees, the earth itself gives off what we thought taken in, and the joint drifts from the haze like any other church, smoked up and ready to serve. Within, we pull and pull the body to its melting, weave the rumor new. The taste already grows to fill the distance, overtakes the wind we’ll cite. And when the woods have faded, we settle in our light, our meat taking in the lesson, the smoke so deep in our skins when we sweat it breathes, we tire and forget in having found and carried it away just how hard it was, to know what you need and where to go to end the reach, how few maps there are, after all.

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Watermelon Juice translated by Timothy Liu You say you’ve never seen watermelon being eaten this way: held up to the face, drunk with sweat pouring down nose tip, forehead and back. Have you read Frida Kahlo? Seen her watermelon wide open, full-lipped, black seeds so manifold for she was lonely.

You cut it up with a sharp knife into neat cubes, so genteel. I gnaw mine like a dog, that melon of Kahlo’s, then drink it up.

Not even fresh.

True, this morning isn’t even opened.

Let’s then grind it, squeeze out the juice and pour it into an inverted cone glass: red fluid, thin straw, and so genteel.

Now we can hear the birds above and the landslide in the far roaring under our feet. A residence dynamited again or an old factory. Some parts survive: a watermelon, for example.

You’re like a starving kid, but still you say that you’re not hungry?

Hungry? Can’t possibly understand that: hunger.

Lick deeply into the oozing juice again and again, hungry.

It won’t keep our cuts from being normal and correct.

Nor beautiful.

No? The tide rushing up to our feet…

It’s going to be hard.

So what? Easy things have been done already, easily finished and easily dropped.

Where are they now? The melon rind carelessly thrown away?

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one small portion after another, it’s getting thicker, the edges sweeter. Asking for nothing means asking for all, all in the upstairs.

Downstairs.

This is the medicine— drink it, drink it down for it will heal all wounds. Joy now struggling alongside the fear of being attached which is understandable: whoever grew up drinking from the river must migrate to the desert. Too crowded, too many knots that can’t be untied, the uncertainty of losing control in its rushing current.

Desert that an underground river passes through, water juice too.

Desert.

And then will you hold her feet up again and recognize her?

Wisteria arch, Shanghai port bearing the red tide as it swells into the body.

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Rigoberto González

Piña

I began my allergy to pineapple at the age of nine.

Nineteen seventy-nine also marked my first year in an American school after migrating with my family to southern California from southern Mexico. My paternal grandparents had long prepared me for some of the changes I would encounter at John Kelley Elementary: the size of the student body, the blonde blue-eyed teachers, the bilingual classrooms, the absence of haceo—the Mexican school policy that every student take turns contributing to the janitorial duties—and, to my complete delight, the free lunch program. All of these expectations seemed positive to me, but no leap of my imagination could help me grasp my initial introduction to the cafeteria and to the compact Styrofoam tray that shimmered with a variety of colors, textures, and smells. I remember looking around the room, dizzy with pleasure, trying to seek out my brother, the only other person in the world I knew could understand me at the moment as I walked to my seat to enjoy what was for me the greatest prize for having left the country where I had learned hunger.

Adapting to a foreign school wasn’t so hard, knowing that every lunch hour of the week was rich with discoveries. I looked forward to the constant encounter with different foods prepared the American way: chicken coated with a layer of sticky barbecue sauce, honey-sweet fruit cocktails with the few coveted cherries bright as rubies, steamed corn that spilled onto the tray like nuggets of gold, strings of thick fideo called spaghetti that came smothered in tomato and ground beef, and this tasty milky concoction with the funny name of macaroni and cheese. Even the burritos, which were filled with a soft muddy heap of refried beans that gushed out at the first bite. I had never seen anything like that, but it was on my tray and it was mine and it was delicious.

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little pickier than I about what he would and would not try, but I was as adventurous and excited as I was on that first day. At home my mother tried to keep us nicely fed as well, afraid that we would undermine her abilities in the kitchen. Something I learned right away was not to praise too highly the school lunch over dinner. I could see the hurt in her eyes if I went on for too long, so I compensated by always asking for another helping of her cooking.

She knew very well that at school we were not allowed a second serving. Only my brother put a damper on my strategy by smirking at anything he didn’t like on his plate. This only encouraged me to eat with more vigor.

“What can’t this one eat?” my mother pronounced proudly as I gobbled up her food. Her question would soon have an answer.

The school lunch the following week included a small wedge of pineapple in the shape of a wheel or the letter O, the center hollowed out. The fruit looked so pretty in its fluorescent yellow, swimming on top of a layer of sugary juice, just like the peaches from the week before, and the fruit cocktail a time before that. My mouth watered. I watched the other kids at their skill, lifting the wheel from the center and then chewing their way up the slice with their heads tilted. I used the same technique with equal success and savored the fruit, juice dripping down the side of my mouth, just as I remembered eating it many times in Mexico. But somehow, presented in this American style, pineapple tasted even better.

Soon afterward, however, I developed a severe reaction to my meal: My body slipped into a cold and sweaty shock, I developed hives and vomited repeatedly. The discomfort began with a minor bellyache during physical education and then escalated to a near convulsion as I made my way to the nurse’s office, hauling my stomach after me like a bag of churning knots. Each time I vomited I tasted the acidic pineapple in my mouth and I told the nurse this as she encouraged me to keep purging over a plastic wastebasket in her office.

“It was that pineapple. It was that pineapple all right,” she said as she nodded. She rubbed my spine while I remained hunched over the wastebasket.

The diagnosis was not convincing to me. How could I be allergic to a fruit I had tasted many times before?

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to unload the heavy crates of fruits and vegetables destined for the many market stands. One of the perks to this task is that he gets to take samples of the produce home. As I was growing up in Michoacán, abuelo Melecio would take great pleasure in repeating one of his fondest memories of me as a child, the times I’d asked him to bring back my two favorite fruits—coconut and pineapple.

What continues to amuse him is the way I would ask for these items.

I would say, Abuelito, quiero una piña—describing the fruit with my small hands, drawing the rounded body and then plucking the green blade leafs in midair—y un.…Coco would remain unnamed.

Instead I drew circles against my temple and that was enough for my grandfather to know what I meant.

That memory echoed in my brain as my mother was called out from work to pick me up that afternoon from school, even though I lived only a few blocks away. She arrived less than an hour later but waited until we left the school grounds to scold me.

“I had to leave work to walk you across the street?” she said as she pinched me. “What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s not my fault,” I said, rubbing the back of my arm and dropping tears of humiliation. “I got sick.”

“Eating pineapple?” she said, repeating what the nurse had told her. “Ridiculous.”

That night I went to sleep early, skipping dinner and then waking up hungry in the middle of the night. But I was too weak to feel my way through the dark for a snack, so instead I cried some more, unsure about why my body had betrayed me. Worse yet, I was sadly disappointed that my beloved school lunch had failed me finally.

Perhaps this sickness was a punishment for turning my back on Mexico, for accepting my new country with such a simple bribe: a string of warm meals with a plastic-wrapped chocolate chip cookie on the side. Maybe I shouldn’t have declared out loud last week over dinner that everything was better in the United States, even the eggs, which didn’t come right out of the chicken butts, dirty with chicken shit, but clean and white as a row of brushed teeth in their supermarket cartons.

Two weeks’ worth of school lunches is what it took for me to forget all about this so-called allergic reaction to the pineapple. And I suppose two weeks was also enough for my mother to forget as well because she bought a large can of pineapple to use in tía Marta’s recipe for cake. Tía Marta, my father’s sister-in-law, had also joined Crab Orchard Review ◆ 221

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my family on our migration north into California. Her big obsession was the dessert, and crossing the border for her was walking into the largest collection of sweetbread and pie recipes that she mastered even before she could speak a complete sentence in English. She would even try out the crust recipes on the side of cereal boxes. We were privy to her experiments, on many occasions trying out her creations, which weren’t always successful. My father never let her forget the time she made us eat a pie with a crust that tasted like Corn Flakes.

“Maybe we should have poured in some milk and dropped in a few slices of banana. Would it have worked out then?” he said to her as she turned her head in contempt.

My mother was less daring with desserts. She preferred to stick with the traditional Mexican flan or rice pudding, but every once in a while she attempted one of tía Marta’s more fruitful efforts, like the homemade doughnuts, pecan pie, or, as was the special occasion that evening, pineapple upside-down cake.

I rushed through my dinner of enchiladas and Spanish rice to get to the novelty of the dessert, eating so fast my mother threatened not to serve me any cake if I started choking. I slowed down but my heart was racing, excited by the smell of bread baking in the oven.

My brother didn’t seem as anxious as I was so I pleaded with him, “Let me have your piece, okay?”

Once I got my big slice of cake I stuffed my mouth with pineapple bread and chewed and swallowed and chewed my way through a first serving. I could hear myself breathing heavily as my mother gave me a disapproving look. I relaxed on my chair, but just for show. When I began to feel the discomfort in my belly I attributed it to having eaten so fast, but I decided not to inform my mother, afraid she would discipline me by keeping me from the cake.

“Wait a little bit for that cake to settle,” my mother advised.

“Your stomach may not know yet that it’s full.”

I waited and the minutes dragged on. My mother lost her patience even sooner when she saw me run my finger on the empty plate as I tried to lick every last trace of the pineapple off the surface.

“All right, then,” she said. “Give me your plate.”

I was about to offer the empty plate to my mother, when I saw her expression change from impatience to concern. I was quickly breaking out in hives. We both knew then what came next: the cold sweats and the vomiting.

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We discovered that it wasn’t the pineapple specifically that caused that effect on my body; it was the canned juice, though I wasn’t allergic to any other canned juice. Even smelling an empty can of pineapple makes me queasy and disoriented—something to do with the combination and decomposition of the acidity of the fruit and the complex sugars in the juice. But those two experiences were enough to keep me away from pineapple altogether, and I never touched the fruit again, even during the many times I returned to Mexico and I saw the pineapple in its natural dress: spiraling leaf scales and three-parted flowers.

On a recent visit to Michoacán, I arrive a little more changed, older, wiser, but so has my childhood home changed—the town more populated, the newest building structures taller, the traffic more congested as Zacapu slowly shifts toward a city-like landscape. But some things remain the same: the quiet Sunday mornings leaving room only for the rooster call and the church bell, the smell of evenings in the plaza, of corn roasting on the brazeros and of potatoes frying in a bubbling pool of oil, and the daytime bustle of the mercado, where abuelo Melecio now supervises the younger workers bringing in the cargo from the shipping trucks.

Inevitably, during one lazy afternoon of catching up over a vegetarian meal especially prepared for me since I have given up eating meat, abuelo Melecio slips into nostalgic storytelling. He is sure to speak of the many times I chased after him as he walked to work so many years ago to remind him to bring back for me my piña y coco. And I am glad that at least for one of us the pineapple will always remain that magical fruit that can only be drawn in the air by the innocent gestures of a little boy’s hands.

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Bob Lucky

Confessions of a Kaya Eater

It all began innocently enough.…I was in Singapore with my family.

We had arrived late by train from Kuala Lumpur, dumped our bags at the Inn on Temple Street in Chinatown, and hit the streets for gailan with oyster sauce and fish in black bean sauce before calling it a day.

Our traveling routine is fairly predictable: while my wife and son slept in the next morning, I got up early to explore the neighborhood on foot. It had been five years since we had last been in Singapore, and at the rate that city transforms itself, it was almost like exploring a new place. My feet knew their way around, but my eyes were often lost. In a modest building abutting the steel-and-glass-enclosed boutiques of the Far East Square, I came across the Ya Kun Coffeeshop Stall, an unpretentious, crowded, un-air-conditioned shop. I found a plastic stool at a table under a ceiling fan and settled myself among the office workers, businessmen, and laborers from a nearby construction site enjoying breakfast. Before I had time to wipe the sweat from my brow, my order was taken.

The menu is short: kaya toast and boiled egg. To drink you have a choice of four different versions of coffee and tea—black, with sweetened condensed milk, with sugar only, and iced—and two versions each of Horlicks, Milo, and Nescafé—hot or iced. The service is brisk. On that first visit I barely had time to scan the walls covered with newspaper clippings, a framed poem, “The Story of Ya Kun Coffeestall,” and old posters (or posters designed to look old) extolling the superiority of sock-filtered coffee over Frenchpressed—“Forget the French press. We’ve got the sock.”—and the runniness of the eggs before my order arrived—“How would you like your eggs, runny and wet or wet and runny?”

The eggs were indeed runny, reminiscent of raw egg cracked atop a Portuguese bread soup. Following the lead of my fellow diners, I splashed a bit of soy sauce and sprinkled a little finely ground pepper over them and commenced slurping. It was very good, tasting 224 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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clearly of egg, but there is something that doesn’t trust a nearly raw egg in the tropics, so I ate it quickly and took a swig of the coffee, after giving it a good stir to scrape the creamy layer of sweetened condensed milk off the bottom of the cup.

And then there was the kaya toast, a simple dish that transcends its constituent parts. Traditionally, a slice of bread about an inch thick is grilled, earning its stripes and hence the sobriquet “Zebra.”

The burnt bits are scraped off with the top from a tin of sweetened condensed milk and then the toast is sliced in half horizontally. Kaya, a custardy jam of eggs, sugar, and coconut milk, perfumed with pandan, is spread on the un-grilled side of the bread halves, a couple of thin slabs of butter are placed on one half and the two pieces are sandwiched back together again. What I experienced can’t justifiably be called an epiphany (because I still haven’t completely understood what happened at that moment, except to realize that it was very pleasant), but if there is a heaven on earth, then for a short while, atop a plastic stool, with a mouthful of kaya toast, I had purchase on a prime piece of real estate there.

Heading back to the hotel, I wandered along Siang Club Street, admiring the restored shop houses and having fantasies of immigrating to Singapore. I crossed over South Bridge Street and popped into the Sri Mariamman Temple, the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, where, despite my daily attempts to be a philosophical Taoist, I found a statue of Ganesh, the elephant-headed god with a penchant for sweets, and thanked him for the blessing of kaya toast.

Religion, or the lack thereof, seems to be no bar to worship among Singaporeans; almost everyone in the temple was Chinese.

Worship apparently has no effect on me. As soon as I got back to the hotel, I lied. I told my wife that I was starving, that the complimentary hotel breakfast was finished for the day, and that I had seen this interesting little kopitiam, coffee shop, on my stroll. I rushed her and my son through the lobby and out on to the street.

The waiter smiled but did not give me away, and I ate my second breakfast. I read the clippings on the wall, enthused over the coffee, savored each bite of toast, audibly, contemplated the color of the yolk, and acknowledged every waft of air from the ceiling fan. I was in the moment, perhaps stuck there. In the course of back-to-back breakfasts, I had seemingly gone from intense pleasure to obsession, having skipped passion altogether. A passion, unlike an obsession, is something that Crab Orchard Review ◆ 225

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can be shared with others, and I could feel something was not right.

My wife found the coffee too sweet and the eggs too wet. My son didn’t finish his toast, preferring instead the Portuguese egg tarts we later discovered.

That afternoon after my visits to teahouses in the area, I came across another branch of Ya Kun on Tanjong Pagar Road, just across from the Maxwell Road Food Centre, where I was headed for a cold Tiger beer. My desire for beer dissolved and instead I had a coffee and kaya toast. Eggs didn’t matter any more. Anyone can undercook an egg.

For the next four days I dragged my family to one branch or the other of Ya Kun for breakfast and in the afternoon went there alone for a snack. Occasionally I would stop into a shop selling kaya toast and give it a try, but nothing compared to Ya Kun’s. Their kaya was sweeter, and they used a brown bread that was thinner than that served at other places. Late in the afternoon the day before we were to return to Kuala Lumpur, I came across a copy of Makansutra, a directory of local eateries by K.F. Seetoh, a photographer and self-styled makan, or food, guru. His highest rating—“Die! Die! Must try,” symbolized by three rice bowls and three pairs of chopsticks—for kaya toast went to Killiney Kopitiam. I had to try it. My wife suggested I breakfast alone before going to the train station the following morning. So for dinner we enjoyed a meal of boiled peanuts, olive rice, Samsui chicken, and a steamed fish dish at Soup Restaurant. No toast, no coffee. Not bad.

We had to check out of the hotel by 10 A.M. to make the train, so my 8:15 start didn’t allow enough time to risk a walk to Killiney Kopitiam near Boat Quay. I hailed a taxi, and for the first time in several visits to Singapore, I got a grumpy cabby whose English was only twice as good as my ten words of conversational Mandarin.

I knew almost immediately we were going in the wrong direction and going too far, so I began calmly repeating “Killiney Kopitiam, near Boat Quay” in an increasingly hopeless tone of voice as minutes and unfamiliar neighborhoods whizzed by. But he drove on, finally following an arrow pointing to Killiney Street and attempting to drop me at Tanglin Coffee Shop.

“This isn’t it,” I remarked and pulled out my much-folded tourist map, pointing to Boat Quay and a little unidentified road running off of it, hoping that was it.

“Boat Quay?” he said, slapping his forehead and giving me a 226 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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withering stare and a scowl unblemished by any dentist’s touch. “Boat Quay other way! You want eat something?”

“Kaya roti…kaya toast.”

He took off. We were soon in the right neighborhood but on the wrong street. He pulled over near two kedai kopi. (Kedai kopi is the Malaysian term for coffee shop; kopitiam is a Hokkien word.)

“No, not it. It’s called Killiney Kopitiam. It’s on Killiney.” But I wasn’t sure if it was a lane or a road or an alley, and as we had just come from Killiney Street, the driver had had enough of my ignorance.

“Very popular, this, this,” he growled, pointing to both shops in turn. “Very busy.”

It was true, and I only had 45 minutes to get back to the hotel and check out, so I paid up and consoled myself with the thought that at least I would have a good breakfast even if it wasn’t going to be the kaya toast the makan guru said was to die for. However, I wasn’t ready to give in just yet. I had about five minutes of wiggle time. I looked up at the skyline and figured I was directly between the Singapore River and the Far East Square. It had to be just around the corner. It was.

The coffee was excellent, and you got to crack your own halfboiled eggs into a shallow bowl, but the kaya toast was a disappointment.

Certainly it was different from Ya Kun’s. In one respect it was more traditional in that it used a thick white bread, but the kaya was spread so thin and was less sweet than what I was accustomed to that I could hardly taste it. The real flaw, allowing that white bread and a less sweet kaya are matters of taste, was the butter. It was too cold and hadn’t begun to melt.

I wanted to stop off at Ya Kun on the way back to the hotel, but there was no time. It would be four months before I made it back to Singapore.

I was alone. My family had gone to San Francisco for a wedding, and it would be three days before friends from Japan arrived to join me for a two-day immersion in the flavors of nonya cooking, a laborintensive, primarily home-bound cuisine (nonya means ‘mother’) that grew out of the marriage of Chinese immigrants and local Malay women throughout the colonial history of the Malay Peninsula.

Plenty of time, I thought, to find out a little more about the history of kaya toast and those breeze-catching, corner-situated kopitiams where it first made its entry on to the local food scene. I had several Crab Orchard Review ◆ 227

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questions and a craving when I set out for Ya Kun on Tanjong Pagar Road that first morning back in Singapore. What came first, kaya or the kopitiam? When was kaya invented? How is it used other than in toast? But the shop was so busy it was all I could do to get my order in.

To work up an appetite for the next round, I wandered around the Chinatown Complex before making my way up Ann Siang Road and down the concrete step shortcut past Sin Chor Kung Temple and the Amoy Street Food Centre to Telok Ayer, a street on which a mosque, a Chinese temple, and a Durga shrine share one block, making the lunchtime choices at the food center delectably overwhelming, before seating myself on a stool at the Far East Square branch of Ya Kun. (The Portuguese egg tart stand in the square that my son was so fond of, I noted, had become a Japanese dessert bar, but there’s only so much culinary adventure a person can have in one day.) After polishing off another order of kaya toast and coffee, I was beginning to revise my opinion of Ya Kun’s bread, which at both branches had tasted more dried out than grilled.

A comparison was in order. I waddled over to Killiney Kopitiam (on Lor Telok, not Killiney Road or Street, as I discovered) and ordered a lime juice and kaya toast and had a crisis of loyalty. It was good, and the butter was warm and soft. I ate very slowly and pondered grilled toast and the fickleness of taste. Did I really now prefer a thicker slice of white bread to thinner brown bread? Was Ya Kun’s kaya too sweet? Could day-old bread or an inexperienced toast cook make that much of a difference? Cynical as I am, I nevertheless try to learn from my experiences, and at that moment I was just happy knowing I was not a restaurant reviewer. I don’t know if I could live with myself if I were.

Another long walk was definitely in order. I crossed the river on South Bridge Road and made my way to the MPH bookstore at the intersection of Armenian Street and Stamford Road. I had read somewhere that the café there had kaya on the menu, so I avoided it and went straight to the cookbook section. But there was nothing there to answer the questions I had started the day with.

I paid a visit to the National Library, which is nearby. The staff was friendly and helpful, but I didn’t have much luck. There is, I learned, a five-part television series on Singapore called “Heritage,” the last part of which focuses on the history of the kopitiam, but the library’s copy had been missing for over a year. I scanned several hundred titles including the word kaya in the catalog, but none was 228 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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in a language I could read. I found nothing in the cookbook section.

Most instructive was the interaction between the two reference librarians when I asked for help tracing the origins of the kopitiam.

One was Chinese, in her late twenties; the other Indian, about fifty.

The Chinese librarian had no idea what a kopitiam was (or my pronunciation is far worse than I think it is). The Indian librarian, looking rather puzzled, said to her colleague, “You know, it’s an old style coffee shop.” I threw in the Malaysian name, kedai kopi, but it didn’t seem to register. Obviously, she takes her cups at Starbucks, or Le Dôme, or Délifrance.

The imminent demise of the original Chinese coffee shop, the kopitiam, is a prediction you will hear and read about in Singapore and Malaysia, along with the lament for the disappearance of Hainanese restaurants. The Hainanese, who have a reputation throughout Southeast Asia as coffee shop owners and restaurateurs, came to Singapore to work for the British, often as cooks. Besides establishing the first kopitiams, many also started their own confectionaries and bakeries, selling Chinese specialties and European cakes and breads. The golden age of the traditional kopitiam was from the 1920s through the early 1940s, though if my gleanings from the Internet are to be trusted, there are many Singaporeans and Malaysians who long for the expanded-menu version kopitiams of the 1950s and 1960s with great nostalgia. By then, many of the shops rented out space to other food vendors, creating mini-food courts, and the food choices expanded beyond cakes, breads, and toast to include various noodle dishes, fried rice, curries, Hainanese chicken rice, and soups.

Kopitiams were (perhaps they still are to some degree) important social institutions where one could grab breakfast or a snack and take advice from the ah pek, the elderly men who would happily idle away some time in gossip and the dispensing of wisdom. E.N. Anderson, Jr., and Marja L. Anderson (in Food in Chinese Culture, edited by K.C. Chang, 1977) see this as a pan-Chinese phenomenon worthy of much more discussion: Adult men are expected to be found in local tea shops or the local equivalent (e.g., coffee shops, in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia) at specific or, at least, approximately known times, to meet people and keep up Crab Orchard Review ◆ 229

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on local affairs and to transact any business afoot. Boys are initiated slowly into the rite, first by stopping for an occasional soda, then by sitting with their fathers, next by gradually frequenting the shops by themselves, but at less regular times and sitting in less prominent places than their fathers. Finally, when they become heads of households, they become regulars.

Local leaders—the informal experts at dispute settling and face-to-face politics—are particularly careful to have daily “office hours” at a specific time, at a specific shop.

So much has changed in the last quarter of a century in Singapore that the Andersons might find the discussion unrecognizable.

There are still a few old-style (and old) kopitiams out to the east of the city center, notably Chin Mee Chin and Katong Bakery, also known as Red House Bakery. Killiney Kopitiam is a chain. Ya Kun is trying to become one—besides the two family-owned shops, there is a franchise called Toast of Hope in the Central Business District on Robinson Road that is a self-styled “café-tiam,” meaning the menu is the same but the plastic stools are gone and central airconditioning, not ceiling fans, is doing the wafting. And since there is often money to be made in nostalgia, one business concern has launched a very modern, air-conditioned food court called Kopitiam on the corner of Bencoolen Street and Bras Basah Road that serves everything from local favorites to Korean food.

The term kopitiam is also alive and well on the Internet. It doubtless has a real resonance in the historical and social subconscious of Singaporeans, symbolizing in particular a simpler, idealized time when the wise ah pek down at the kopitiam could answer most of life’s questions. Academic and intellectual groups have appropriated the term and use it to denote a forum for discussion, but everyone has to bring her or his own coffee to the computer screen.

Over the next couple of days, I ate a lot of kaya toast, so much that I began to worry. I vowed to give it up, at least for a time, when my friends arrived from Japan. The day before their arrival, I wanted to start my day at the Ya Kun on China Street, the Far East Square branch. I still had unasked and unanswered questions. It had dawned on me, rather more slowly than things usually dawn on me, that despite having spent time years ago in Hong Kong and Macao 230 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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drinking the occasional cup of yuanyang, a blend of coffee and tea, I had never in my life associated the Chinese with coffee. However, outside of China, they often made the switch from the leaf to the bean. The drinking of coffee in Vietnam I had always considered a French influence. Was it Chinese? If so, whence had the Chinese got the secret? The techniques are slightly different: the Vietnamese let the coffee slowly drip onto a layer of sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of a cup; the Chinese in Singapore pour boiling water over finely ground coffee in a sock filter attached to a metal ring with a handle. The filter is then lifted in and out of the water (sometimes in a kettle, sometimes in a large can) until the desired strength is reached. The cups await nearby. The brew I was drinking at Ya Kun and Killiney Kopitiam and other establishments of a similar ilk was too good to be a British coffee legacy.

Lost in my coffee ruminations, I strolled too far, and so breakfasted at Killiney Kopitiam on French toast and kaya and wondered where the spittoons had gone. In traditional kopitiams they were under the tables, but their exact function is debatable.

Young people I asked didn’t know or care about the spittoons; the elderly said something to me in Chinese and went back to their noodles. I suspect many spittoons were used for spitting into, as it is an old and common Chinese custom, except in Singapore, where it has been legislated almost out of existence. Another use for spittoons was probably as a receptacle for coffee that had sloshed out of the cup and into the saucer—although it is not rare to see elderly Chinese pour coffee from the cup into the saucer to cool it, then drink from the saucer.

On the off chance the segment of “Heritage” missing for more than a year might have suddenly been returned or found, I went back to the National Library. It was a short, fruitless visit, a bit of air-conditioning before walking up the street to the Singapore History Museum. An exhibit there on the Hainanese in Singapore, which had ended in June 2000, had included a full-scale old-time kopitiam, but no one could tell me what had happened to the struck set. There were no old brochures in the offices. A catalogue, if there had been one, could not be bought. “It’s over,” a woman told me, both amused and confused by my persistence. It was clear she meant both the exhibit and my questioning.

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find anyone to ply with my questions. Later, over a spot of Ti Kuan Yin gong fu-style at Tea Chapter, I planned a dinner of grilled stingray at the open-air evening food court on Sago Street and admitted to myself that as much as I liked kaya toast, I was heartily sick of it. Nevertheless, just in case, I stopped in at Ya Kun on Tanjong Pagar to buy a couple of jars of kaya. In my opinion, theirs— just eggs, sugar, coconut milk, and pandan—is the best.

At last I was able to squeeze in a few questions to the woman selling me the kaya. After eliciting practical information about storage (about a month in the fridge after it’s been opened; use a dry knife to spread it; if it gets watery and sour, toss it), I popped the question: “By the way, who invented kaya toast?”

“Oh.” She blushed. “That was my husband’s grandfather, Ah Koon. He started this business.”

“Just one more question,” I begged, the line behind me growing.

“Who invented kaya?”

“Ah Koon did,” she replied, stirring an imaginary pot of kaya in the air. “They were very good at that.”

They were the Hainanese. And who knows? Maybe Ah Koon and the Earl of Sandwich are playing cards or mahjong and having a big laugh in that great banquet hall in the sky.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my last jar of Authentic Ya Kun Kaya in front of me. I think I’ll keep this jar—in the back of a cupboard—as a reminder that there was pleasure before immoderation gripped me, for I’m well aware that the day I see the bottom of the jar will be the day I stand at the stove and start stirring my own pots of kaya.

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My Mother’s Recipes

What could she have wanted with all of those empty containers, so meticulously cleaned and stored so haphazardly around the house?

Empty mayonnaise and pickle jars, aspirin bottles and prescription tubes, butter and sour cream tubs, cookie tins and coffee cans, brown paper bags and plastic sacks, piles and piles of shoeboxes? Of course, she had always been thrifty and detested waste, but what about, then, all of those opened yet barely touched bottles, boxes, and jars—the same brands, the same sizes—of instant coffee, ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, spices, napkins, cleanser, toothpaste, mouthwash, dish, hand, and laundry soap that filled the cabinets and closets in the basement, kitchen, and bathrooms? (Their seals and tops broken and torn, their contents reaching almost to the brims, further evidence, surely, of the darkening forgetfulness that had overwhelmed my mother these last few years.)

All worthless even to the local food depository, and we tossed them out, along with the tattered magazines and yellowed newspapers, the canceled checks and the paid receipts, the expired policies and warranties, the used holiday wrappings and faded ribbons, the torn and soiled linens and rags, and so much else that was of little use to anyone, certainly not to my parents anymore.

But other possessions of theirs were far more difficult to discard, objects they had used so often to cook, sew, repair, or clean, but were now too flawed or worn to sell or to donate, and also so many keepsakes and knickknacks without worth other than the emotional value attached to them. Bric-a-brac, usually chipped or cracked, to commemorate anniversaries, birthdays, and Mother’s Days, and souvenirs from vacations in Puerto Rico and Florida and, before that, Atlantic City.

There was so much personal memorabilia, too—snapshots, scattered and pasted in photo albums, of friends and relatives whose names and circumstances we could no longer place; invitations to weddings and prayer booklets from funerals; postcards, thank-you notes, and letters in indecipherable hands; deeds to property sold long ago; documents Crab Orchard Review ◆ 233

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from public and private institutions certifying graduations and tax payments, exceptional service or generous contributions.

Neither Mom nor Dad would ever return to the house, but they were both still alive then, and my sister and I could sense their presence overlooking us—their horror and their powerless dismay— as we obliterated one memory after the next, buried them among the scraps of paper, fabric remnants, balls of yarn, and spoiled foodstuffs packed inside the black garbage bags that we hauled out to the curb for pick-up with the next day’s trash.

My wife and brother-in-law had joined us at the beginning of the weekend, but when they returned to work on Monday, my sister and I were left alone to inventory and dispose of the remainder of our parents’ possessions. While she continued to concentrate on the bedrooms and closets upstairs, packing and discarding the clothes they would no longer need, the blankets and sheets, the toiletries, cosmetics, and other bathroom supplies, I would clean out the kitchen.

One of our first tasks during the weekend had been to empty the side-by-side refrigerator of its perishables. But we had left the freezer compartment untouched, and it was still stacked throughout with small packets of food, each one wrapped in aluminum foil and then in clear plastic, a slip of paper inserted in between to identify the contents and the date the package had been frozen. The top two shelves were reserved for leftovers: individual hamburger patties, chicken legs, slices of roast beef, solitary blintzes, soft dinner rolls scavenged from a nearby diner.

The shelves below held even smaller packets—some only pellets— that, to my surprise, preserved chicken fat, livers, and skin. It had been some time since my mother had last made the chopped chicken livers that usually preceded our holiday dinners, and because of her heart condition, she had ceased frying with animal fats years before.

Except for a carton of ice cream, water crystals lining its inside, and frozen bagels, the remaining space in the freezer was stacked with the kind of beef shanks and bones my mother had once used for soup, when she still had the desire and stamina to watch over a simmering stockpot for hours.

As I gathered the frozen packets together and disposed of them, I noticed that the earliest had been dated about four years previous, when my father first began to complain about my mother’s forgetfulness, and the latest from six months before, when we all finally understood that her chronic depression was returning in full force.

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above the stove and the countertops had overflowed with the empty containers and opened foodstuffs we had already discarded. More cabinets were built in beneath the sink and countertops, and although I found an occasional open box of baking soda and soap powder there, they were filled primarily with the kinds of supermarket loss leaders my parents tended to buy in bulk: cans of tuna and condensed soups, jars of pickles and jams, paper towels and detergent. “At least I won’t have to throw these away,” I said to myself, as I packed them into the empty cartons we had brought for whatever we could salvage.

Just above these floor cabinets were a series of counter drawers.

Those beneath the cutting board contained mostly silverware and cutlery, and after a preliminary screening and disposal of can openers, scissors, graters, peelers, knives, measuring cups, and other ancient implements too rusted, tarnished, or dulled to be of any value, I deposited the remainder on one of the countertops for my sister to sort out.

Only the two drawers beneath the counter next to the refrigerator now remained to be emptied, and I stared at them for several moments.

Despite all the years I had lived in the house, I could retrieve no memory of what might be stored inside, and pulling the first one open, I found it to be stuffed with coupons clipped primarily from newspapers, magazines, or Sunday supplements. Many of them were for products I could not recall my parents ever buying, and the ones I glanced at were well beyond their expiration dates.

Toward the rear, yellowed and curling at their edges like the coupons, were labels bundled together with dry, stiff rubber bands that snapped as soon as they were stretched. Steamed from glass, cut from cartons, and stripped from tin, the labels were being saved, I imagined, to be redeemed for discounts or products, although some were for brands that, as far as I knew, no longer existed. Lining the bottom of the drawer were several Quick Saver books filled and half-filled with A&P plaid and S&H green trading stamps. “Did she think,” I wondered, “that some day they would come back and be worth a transistor radio, perhaps, or a pop-up toaster?”

The second drawer was also crammed with stacks of glossy and yellowed clippings. These were not coupons or labels, but rather recipes, hundreds of them, cut from the family magazines my mother once subscribed to and from the food sections of the daily newspapers. Behind them, wedged in so tightly I had to pry them loose to extend the drawer to its full length, were pamphlets and Crab Orchard Review ◆ 235

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booklets filled with recipes by the home economics departments of appliance companies and major food processors: Kellogg’s, Armour Meats, General Mills, Nabisco. Some had accompanied the pressure cookers, mixers, and blenders my mother had purchased over the years, and the others must have been received as premiums or in exchange for the same kinds of labels and coupons I had just thrown away.

From the graphics and the photos and even the ingredients, I concluded that most of the recipes dated from the years my sister and I were living in the house. Yet these were not the dishes my mother made most frequently, the ones we were accustomed to eating as children.

Those recipes had been collected in a thick, leatherbound engagement book that my sister had already removed from the house. This was a book that I had used myself during long winter weekends when my mother decided to teach me how to bake a cake, or just before I left for college, when I wanted to learn how to recreate her chocolate-chip cookies or her beef stew. I recall having seen an occasional magazine or newspaper recipe—usually a simple one, baked chicken or pineapple upside-down cake—pasted inside. But most were family recipes, handed down by the women on my mother’s side, aunts and first cousins, many of whom were skilled and creative cooks. These were all in my mother’s handwriting, and I can still visualize her cornering one of my aunts during a bar mitzvah reception or a cousins’ club gathering, translating casual procedures—a smidgen of this, a scoop of that—into precise measurements.

Or sitting with my grandmother at our kitchen table after they’d made a batch of knishes or an applesauce cake together, reviewing the ingredients and inscribing the proportions into her leatherbound bible. My grandmother was also an excellent cook, although she limited herself to traditional Eastern European Jewish cuisine and Old World methods. As long as she lived with us, the aroma of rendered chicken fat permeated the kitchen, and I can remember her rolling out sheets of strudel dough and raising them to the window, draped over her arms, to see if they were thin enough for the sunlight to sift through. One spring day I returned home early from elementary school to find a huge carp—soon to be transformed into gefilte fish—floundering in our basement sink.

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week, and shortly after my grandmother died, variations began to slip into our standard diet. She would never attempt anything as drastic, say, as baking a ham or frying bacon, but I can remember early experiments with shrimp au gratin and beef stroganoff that were declared by my father to be inedible and were immediately removed from sight, to be frozen for another time when he would not be present.

My father scorned religion and he would order pork chops at a restaurant or a ham and cheese sandwich at a drugstore counter without giving it a thought. But he was also, as he constantly reminded Mom, a meat-and-potatoes man, someone with simple tastes, and therefore easy to please, and although the premise of this last statement was accurate, the conclusion was not.

The slightest alteration in a customary dish—a sweet pickle chopped into his meat loaf, a hint of sherry in his stew—would invariably be banned from our table after a single appearance, and although my mother continued to experiment for a time, she quickly learned to have a substitute on hand—a piece of roast beef, a leftover chicken leg—for the inevitable rejection. Eventually, except for those Fridays and Saturdays when my father worked late, we settled back into our usual routine of roast or baked chicken, standard meat loaf, brisket and beef stews, and, on occasion, hot dogs and beans, veal or lamb chops, minute or rib steaks. Wednesdays were devoted to cold cuts from the deli or tuna salad and stuffed eggs.

Most of our main dishes were invariably accompanied by potatoes (mashed, braised, baked, or bound with mayonnaise in a salad) and the few canned or frozen vegetables my father would tolerate: peas, green beans, corn. Even when we would dine out on Sundays—not so much as a pleasurable experience but to give Mom, as he phrased it, “a break”—it would be to a diner or deli serving basic American or Jewish food or, when we were more financially secure, to a steakhouse. The one neighborhood Italian restaurant we occasionally visited fortunately did not object to serving my father his veal parmigiano without the tomato sauce and without the cheese.

It was early evening by the time my sister descended from the bedrooms with plenty of packing and discarding still left to be done, to be resumed the next day. While I made us both a cup of instant coffee, she sat down wearily at the kitchen table where, that same hour, we had eaten dinner together so often as a family. When I joined her, I also heaped a large part of our mother’s recipe collection in front of her.

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“I think Mom and I made this once together,” she said, drawing a clipping from the pile. “Or something like it.” It was a pizza, concocted from Bisquick, Hunt’s tomato sauce, and Wesson salad oil.

“Not for Dad, you didn’t,” I said.

“No, of course not. I don’t think he ever tasted pizza in his life.” And we were both simultaneously struck by the fact that not only would he never have tolerated this processed American version of a pizza at our table, he had probably never sampled the authentic kind at a pizzeria, nor had one delivered from Pizza Hut or Domino’s, nor even had a frozen Totino’s or a Tombstone.

Nor—with the exception of my mother’s thoroughly domesticated version of spaghetti and meatballs and an occasional macaroni and cheese out of The Joy of Cooking—had he ever eaten, as far as we knew, any other Italian pasta or primo: no ravioli, no manicotti, no lasagna, no risotto, let alone anything as exotic as gnocchi or polenta.

Despite the fact he’d lived in Philadelphia all of his life, we had never seen him eat a hoagie or a grinder or an Italian meatball sandwich, or even a cheese steak. Never a gyros or souvlaki or a falafel sandwich or anything else from the eastern Mediterranean—hummus, baklava, stuffed grape leaves, couscous, or babaganoush. Mom occasionally brought home Chinese takeout—the usual egg rolls, chow mein, and fried rice—but never when he was present, and we had never known him to sample anything that could be considered Asian or, for that matter, from the entire southern hemisphere. Nothing that would be typically seasoned with soy or hoisin sauce, with chili peppers or curry, with mole or cilantro, with saffron or lemongrass. Occasionally—when we were at the shore or at a popular fish house where decent red meat was unavailable—he would order crab cakes, but nothing else without a spine, certainly no clams or oysters, and nothing that swam in the seas or the inland waterways unless it had been canned, pickled, or smoked.

In later years, my parents had sometimes driven down the East Coast with my uncle and aunt to vacation in Florida, but I am certain that, along the way, he never willingly ordered any hush puppies or grits, country ham or barbecue, gumbo or she-crab soup, or pompano or Key lime pie once they had arrived in Miami.

In later years, my wife and I took my mother out to French restaurants several times on her birthday. Much to our relief, Dad always declined to join us, since he would have nothing to do with any sauce that wasn’t a gravy or didn’t flow from a ketchup bottle.

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other than a legendary “dago red” he had been forced to swallow at an Italian girlfriend’s house in the days before he met Mom, he never drank wine, neither the sparkling variety served at weddings nor the cloying liquor served at Passover. He never snacked on Fritos, Doritos, or microwave popcorn, and although he ate hamburgers, I don’t think he ever had a Big Mac, a Whopper, or a White Castle slider, or had ever been inside a Wendy’s, a Big Boy’s, a KFC, or even a Dunkin’ Donuts.

I know that I’m being unfair and narrow myself, and that some of the foods my father enjoyed—beef borscht, sour tomatoes, fried matzoh—would seem foreign and exotic to many Americans not raised near an urban center where Eastern European Jews settled.

I’m sure, too, that he shared many of the preferences and biases of the generation that came of age in the years between the World Wars.

And, of course, I recognize that the eating habits of millions of Americans are controlled and limited by cultural traditions, regional tastes, financial considerations, health restrictions, ethical concerns, and religious fiat. But except for the first, none of these factors mattered to my father, and my sister and I were both sorrowed and angered by his rigid intransigence in the face of so much bounty and his destructive belligerence when confronted with anything new or unexpected on the table.

“Broccoli,” said my sister, as we continued our litany of the foods we had never seen him eat or he had brutally rejected in our presence.

“As well as cauliflower,” I said, “and all the other crucifers.”

“Vegetables are too easy. It would save time just to name the ones he liked.”

“Potatoes.”

“Well, after all,” she said, smiling, “he is a meat-and-potatoes man.”

“Oh, yeah? How about beef liver and kidneys? Not to mention sweetbreads and tripe.”

“Come on! I’ll bet you don’t eat those things yourself.”

“Ok. Duck, goose, pheasant, squab, partridge, quail, and that’s only poultry. Remember the time Mom tried to serve Rock Cornish game hen?”

“Stuffed with cherries, no less. But he eats chicken and turkey.”

“Not the white meat,” I reminded her.

“No,” she said softly, no longer smiling, “not the white meat.”

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And we both recalled our last Thanksgiving dinner in that house, a decade previous. My sister and I had liberated the turkey from my mother’s usual long, slow dehydration, searing it first under high heat, then rotating it several times and basting it frequently to ensure a moist, flavorful bird. We could not persuade my father to try a slice from the breast, but my mother was impressed by the freshness and texture of the meat. Giving her full credit for the success, all of us—my wife, brother-in-law, sister, nephews—praised her for one dish after another, until my father exploded in wrath. Enraged by all the fuss, he declared emphatically that the meat should rather be falling off the bone as it always had in the past, and, instead of being perfect, his drumstick was perfectly inedible no matter how much gravy he poured over it. We returned the legs and thighs to the oven, firing them up beneath the broiler, but they were still not cooked to his satisfaction, and he even refused to taste the pumpkin pie my sister made from scratch, settling instead for the last few scoops of vanilla ice cream remaining in the carton from the night before.

“So what then were all these about?” my sister asked, sifting through the ancient recipes and recipe booklets heaped up between us.

“Fridays, perhaps?” I suggested. “And Saturdays?”

On these weekend nights before he retired, my father usually worked late, eating dinner at “the Greeks,” a rundown diner up the street from his store, serving, despite its ownership, distinctly unMediterranean fare. Our dinners at home, however, would consist of tuna and mushroom-soup casseroles or fish chowder or creamed ham over biscuits or some other such concoction that would have been foolhardy to place in front of Dad. My sister, a few years older than I, would often be absent—on a date or at some high-school function—and since Mom and I would eat these meals alone together, there would usually be leftovers for the following night or for a Saturday afternoon lunch. Sometimes I helped with the preparation, if only to open a can or chop some onions, and if we were both well satisfied, the recipe might even be promoted into my mother’s leatherbound collection.

“But I can’t remember any of these,” I said, shuffling the cuttings and pamphlets together, retrieving those few that had dropped to the floor, “although…”

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from the kitchens and laboratories of food conglomerates, many of the recipes depended on branded ingredients, offering a multitude of ways that Miracle Whip and Rice Krispies and Junket puddings could be put to use beyond the obvious. But others were based on ingredients that as far as I could recall never found their way into our pantry, products such as Cinderella Raisins, My-T-Fine Desserts, Merkel Meats, Delrich margarine. Still others depended for their success on appliances we never owned from companies I’d never heard of—MicroMatic, Presto Cookware, Club Aluminum.

Concentrated soups from Campbell’s and condiments from Heinz appeared frequently, contributing to casseroles of every sort, many of them bound or extended with an instant starch—tapioca, flaked potatoes, bread crumbs, Minute Rice—and occasionally topped with wheat germ, crushed corn chips, or vacuum-sealed, dried, French-fried onions. There were innumerable uses for canned salmon and tuna, chipped and ground beef, leftover ham, chicken, or turkey, all of which could be formed into entree rolls, molds, loaves, and croquettes, scalloped, hashed, curried, and creamed, and served over toast points or noodles or corn bread. There were “American” chop sueys, “American” sukiyakis, and “American” soufflés as well as “mock” versions of American classics: mock lobster bisque, mock brown betty, mock Indian pudding, and, of course (from the back of the Ritz cracker carton) mock apple pie.

There were vegetable aspics and seafood cocktails and sunshine salads and jellied molds and jellied rings filled with meatballs, melon balls or Vienna sausage. There were all sorts of mixed marriages— tuna taters, chicken shortbreads, fruit salad puddings—as well as dessert cakes with mayonnaise, sauerkraut, or cream of tomato soup serving as essential ingredients. Frozen pastry crusts were filled with anything that could be emulsified into a cream, and there were cheese dreams, succotash medleys, peach surprises, chocolate specials, peanut butter delights, along with ambrosias, rhapsodies, bonanzas, paradises, and joys.

“All this is making me pretty hungry,” I said. “Care for an American cheese sandwich on Wonder Bread?”

“That’s not funny,” replied my sister, who knew I was referring to the paralyzing anxiety my mother had exposed to us a few weeks previous, when she was unable to prepare a simple lunch for my father— an American cheese sandwich on white bread and a glass of milk— until we showed her how to do it, step-by-step, over and over again.

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By then, my father had already lost most of his vision and could hardly look after the preparation of his meals even if had wanted to make the effort. And Mom, my sister and I both eventually realized, preferred to believe she was shopping for groceries and cooking my father’s dinners rather than actually doing it, and by the time we obtained a court order to force him into the hospital, he had lost seventy pounds and was suffering from malnutrition and severe dehydration.

“Toss them,” said my sister. “Toss them all, and let’s get out of here,” and I did as I was told.

We would visit my father that evening. By then, he had probably had his dinner, although he had not yet been put to bed. Since he had developed severe digestive problems—due primarily to his prolonged deprivation—he was limited to soft foods: purees and jellies, yogurts and whips. It all looked fairly unappetizing to us, and we preferred not to visit him during mealtimes. But perhaps because of his blindness or the gradual loss of his ability to taste or his bout with starvation, or maybe because he often thought he was in a restaurant where someone else was paying the bill, he ate the bland and unfamiliar diet without complaint and often with considerable appetite.

My mother was in far better physical health and lived nearby, under much less supervision. Yet although she needed only to request a staff member to walk with her the hundred or so yards down the hill to see my father, she refused to visit him unless accompanied by my sister or another family member, fearful, she said, that she would be abandoned there and unable to find her way back.

There was a central kitchen where my mother lived, and the residents could use it to prepare snacks or even to bake cookies.

But Mom, like most of her neighbors, preferred to be served her meals in the common dining hall. Still, the nurses informed us, she frequently refused to leave her room in the morning, remaining there for hours, sitting on the bed trembling, terrified because she didn’t know what to buy at the grocery store or what to serve my father that night for his dinner.

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Book Reviews

Ronk, Martha. Displeasures of the Table: memoir as caricature.

Los Angeles, CA: Green Integer, 2001. 132 pages. $9.95.

“Goose liver pâté,” “Chocolate turtles,” “A Dagwood sandwich,” “Lemons,” “Trout,” “Rappini,” “Zucchini and mint,” “Coca Cola,” “Summer squash,” “Parsley.” The table of contents in Martha Ronk’s latest book, Displeasures of the Table: memoir as caricature, reads like an extended grocery list. The sixty-nine prose block poems, packaged in a pocket-sized book, delve into the act of eating and reading and the nature of memory.

In the first poem, “Table,” which works in part as a prologue, Ronk, a postmodern poet, writes: In this book I have tried to put eating and reading together, to come at them sideways. One odd consequence of time passing is that the memory of many years in which I thought I was making the most important decisions about life seem to have gone dim. Instead, I find childhood and yesterday clear and juxtaposed. There is no way anyhow to come at appetite head on. I began these “recipes” to get a glimpse of some version of a middle American past…and a Protestant one of guilt and loneliness, lived, invented, let go, clung to.…

The poems that follow are all titled after particular foods and drinks, each of which is discussed (i.e. “Bananas” does discuss bananas)—but Ronk artfully weaves much more into each poem, including quotes from other writers (William Carlos Williams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, and Gertrude Stein, to name a few) as well as her own childhood memories. What Ronk gets at in this book is difficult to define because she does not—as she says—“come at [it] head on.” She layers unexpected connections into each poem and always with a degree of knowingness; that is, Ronk lets readers know that she recognizes herself as the speaker—one familiar with the past she describes.

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Some of the poems touch on Americanism and how our perceptions of particular foods and table etiquette are ingrained as part of the American experience. For example, in “Artichokes,” Ronk writes, “Everyone tells me translation is difficult. I am so American I really don’t really know.” In “Raw eggs,” she states, “What’s hardest to get is anyone else’s experience, especially in America where experience, unregulated by custom or culture, counts for so much.” Here, she comments on the defining—and perhaps isolating—nature of the American experience. With this, too, as well as in other poems, come suggestions of the Puritan influence that still pervades the table and our lives. “Brussel sprouts” begins with an epigraph from The Puritan Origins of the American Self, followed by: “To take it, to have the wind knocked out, to swallow it whole, to know one’s place. We had to eat everything on our plates.” Indeed, many poems discuss the expectation that one should overlook desires and should not be wasteful.

The poems work, too, as memoir of Ronk’s past, often showing how even memory—what is later recalled—is false because what is being remembered has, in a sense, been staged. In “Lima beans,” she recollects childhood Christmases: I made cutout figures for a felt board performance with baby Jesus and elves and Santa Claus and made everyone watch while I assumed different high-pitched voices, my idea of the theatrical. I know this as nostalgia. I knew it even then. The five of us were making memories, not exactly having a good holiday, but constructing what it would be at some future time.

Ronk’s poems “get at” much more, including the nature of writing and poetry. What should not be left unsaid, too, is the comic aspect of the poems—the fresh, funny approach to grappling with particular foods.

To her credit, Ronk’s nonlinear style does not allow readers to become too comfortable as turns are taken and surprising links established. What she accomplishes in this book is striking: her “recipes” explore the past and the embedded expectations of that past—and even what comes before that. Aptly named, Displeasures of the Table: memoir as caricature works to reveal not exactly truths as much as uncover the false representations of the past to force readers to think of their own uncomfortable memories—especially those memories with food.

—Reviewed by Mary Stepp 244 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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Kalfopoulou, Adrianne. Wild Greens. Los Angeles, CA: Red Hen Press, 2002. 79 pages. $13.00.

Wild Greens, the first collection by poet Adrianne Kalfopoulou, is an elegiac volume where the history and lives of the people of Greece and its islands are honestly, memorably, and lovingly portrayed.

Suffering and joy are to be found side by side in this landscape of rough beauty, and Kalfopoulou’s poems look through the “…loss in the flames, burning / darkness, burning ignorance” and find what sustains through the losses—the families and faith, the food and community of sharing that promises, “There Will Be A Harvest.”

This is a collection rich with culture, and at the heart of that culture is food: It is All Souls’ Day and the women outside the cemetery where my people are buried carry plates of Koliva to feed strangers.…

The rituals of preparing and sharing food are public and personal here; these rituals are how we come to know others and how we begin to best know ourselves. In “Chrisavgi,” the poet portrays an “aunt of ninety-nine” through the simple activities of her kitchen where she “molds dough / makes / swollen shapes / to let them bake.”

The aunt’s experiences during the German occupation are also seen through memories revolving around food. Her son, Papou, recounts the story of his mother sharing an egg she had found on Easter day with a German soldier: Do you imagine that?

Three years without a taste of bread?

And she gave an egg away?

The final image of the poem captures the intrinsic connection between food and life made throughout this collection: Her dress, the brown-blue calico, is white around the waist, some flour flakes still cling.

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Fear and suspicion that exists between women and men is also explored in Wild Greens, and the terrain of obstacles between the sexes is as dangerous as the rocky shores of these islands. In “Peace and Freedom,” the chance encounter of an offered ride exposes this fear: I say nothing, suspicious he might drive somewhere, spread my legs, his hands suddenly violent, the hands he keeps on the steering wheel as he speaks of the love he has for his wife of 18 years.

Even the line breaks in this poem point to the precipice women and men find themselves teetering over: You have to feel agony for someone, he says, sex and love are not the same, my wife… if something were to happen to her, I would lose my mind. Every time I finish work I am mad to see her, to take her for a drink or a cup of coffee in the square.

The “Wild Greens” of the title poem are the natural counterpart of the speaker in this poem, “sudden / today in sudden love,” and the greens serve symbolically to combine the desperate and, often, dirty work of love: we didn’t leave out the mud or blood or ground parts.

Despite the mess, we were in season and found it all edible.

Adrianne Kalfopoulou finds much in her poems in Wild Greens to feed and sustain her readers. This table is well-set, with the bitter and the sweet together to test our palates and to remind us that the bread and meat and fruits and greens of life come with many flavors and at a cost that is as dear as it is worthwhile.

—Reviewed by Jon Tribble 246 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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Nezhukumatathil, Aimee. Miracle Fruit. Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2003. 75 pages. $14.95.

In Miracle Fruit, the new collection by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, the author writes, “…How I love / the grab and pull for something you can’t name, only / knowing you want more,” and this becomes the mantra of this plentiful book. Wanting—and receiving—more is what these poems explore, and these desires are always competing with what can and cannot be named and known. It is in these tensions that the delights of the poems reside and are waiting for the adventurous reader.

From Kerala, India, to Fredonia, New York, to the Phillipines, the territory of these poems is ever-shifting, a world in motion that invites its travelers to taste fresh cheese curds and dumb cake, imagine the fruit cocktail tree and the Hell Pig. The lessons taught here range from the definition of “Aanabhrandhanmar” (“Mad about Elephants”) to how to remove a fishbone from your throat: At dinner, my mother says if one gets stuck in your throat, roll some rice into a ball and swallow it whole. She says things like this and the next thing out of her mouth is did you know Madonna is pregnant?

But I want to ponder the basket of fried smelt on the table, lined with paper towels to catch the grease—want to study their eyes like flat soda, wonder how I’m supposed to eat them whole.…

Like the speaker in the poem, the reader never knows what might be said next.

The roles put on by the poems’ speakers and characters are as varied as the many places we are taken in the poems. Amidst the poems of family relationships—mother, father, and daughter, sister and brother, grandparents and aunts and uncles—there is “The Woman Who Hates Frogs,” “The Rolling Saint,” the Incredilble Hulk, Lewis and Clark, the Bonsai Master’s Daughter, Arachne, and the Original William. “The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Crab Orchard Review ◆ 247

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Cherry Farmer” laments her decision: “I had made / a terrible mistake.

I just know my summer would have been / full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee.” In this collection, less is seldom more.

The flavor left on the tongue in the empty mouth is most likely to be regret.

The final poem in Miracle Fruit, “My Name,” explores the ways we come to know ourselves through a treatise on the author’s name, and she considers the methods we rely on for identification: In New Guinea, to identify a person’s family, you ask, What is the name of your canoe? My seventh grade social studies teacher made up a dance to help him remember how to pronounce my name—he’d break it into sharp syllables, shake his corduroyed hips at roll call, his bulge of keys rattling in time.

But the poet’s own method, a lesson discovered through her family and her imagination, finds an even more memorable way for her senses to recall: …My father tells me part of our name comes from a flower from the South Indian coast. I wonder what it smells like, what fragrance I always have dabbed at my neck. Scientists say some flowers don’t have a scent, but they do—even if it’s hints of sweat from blooms too long without drink or the promise of honey from the scratchings of a thin bee leg, feathered with loosestrife and sage. I wonder if I’ve ever smelled our flower, if the smell ever wafted clear across the ocean.

I would swim out to meet it, brush the salt and bits of pink shell away, apologize for the messiness of my hair.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil has nothing to apologize to her readers for in this satisfying first book. The Miracle Fruit we are invited to partake of here is worth more than “One Bite”; it represents a talent that doesn’t leave us asking, “How long / before you lose the sweetness?”

—Reviewed by Jon Tribble 248 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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DeSalvo, Louise, and Edvige Giunta, eds. The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture. New York, NY: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 2002.

346 pages. $26.95.

When Italians immigrated to the United States, two things they held onto through their journey were food and family, essential elements of their culture. As editors Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta write in their introduction to The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture, “Food-writing and life-writing in Italian American culture are interconnected, for to examine our relationship to food is to examine ourselves, as well as the relationship between these selves and the family, the community, and society at large.” Food and family are united and celebrated in this anthology by a wide range of Italian American writers, including Carole Maso, Cris Mazza, Kim Addonizio, Maria Terrone, Dorothy Barresi, Sandra M. Gilbert, Diane di Prima, and Lucia Perillo. The anthology includes both poetry and prose pieces thematically placed in eight parts: “Beginnings,” “Ceremonies,” “Awakenings,” “Encounters,” “Transformations,” “Communities,” “Passings,” and “Legacies.”

In part one, “Beginnings,” Mary Bucci Bush’s satirical shortshort “Aperitivo” shows us a new mother and father fussing over their baby, calling it “plump and brown like a meatloaf,” “tiny, like a muffin,” and “sweet strawberry tart.” Soon the cutesy baby-talk cliché “I could eat you right up” leads literally to placing the baby in a roasting pot alongside a celery stock. This story is short and sweet and maybe over the top, but dares us to keep reading just to see how far these parents will go.

A second story from part one, “Smoke and Fire” by Mary Saracino, turns our attention to more serious matters of depression, isolation, and adultery. A mother tied down to a houseful of children and an unhappy marriage finds she cannot even cook her children breakfast. The oldest daughter, Regina, the narrator, assumes her mother’s job of cooking breakfast for her siblings, as ungrateful as they are, and makes sure her younger sister’s mittens are on tight.

As the two sisters walk to school with Regina’s best friend, Amelia, Regina realizes how perfect Amelia’s parents are. Amelia assumes that Regina is in a foul mood because she is hungry; it never occurs to her there could be worse things. Regina is both angry and jealous of Amelia and thinks, “Maybe I could go to her house instead, have Crab Orchard Review ◆ 249

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her mother tuck me in, read me a story, make me hot chocolate.

Sing me to sleep.”

In part two, “Ceremonies,” Camilla Trinchieri’s “Kitchen Communion” takes place in the kitchen while a mother and three children decide what to do with the father’s remains. The children finally persuade the mother to cremate their father’s remains after convincing her “‘They're doing it in Italy now’” and lying to her that “‘Cremation is what he wanted,…He told me he didn’t want a fuss.’” During this conversation, even with a refrigerator packed with food from friends and neighbors, the mother is cooking: “‘Cooking, that’s how you hold a family together,’” she says. We find out later that not even her cooking could keep her husband home. The daughter, who is the story’s narrator, remembers her father moving out when she was twelve. When he returned, three years later, the damage had been done. The daughter searches for reasons why he left and partially settles on the fact that her parents’ bedroom door was always unlocked, hinting at their passionless marriage. There were many things the daughter couldn’t forgive: “the way he’d take out his measuring tape in front of my friends to make sure my skirt was two inches below the knee,” “the way he’d lift the lids off the pots cooking on the stove to taste Mama’s cooking and tell her to add salt or water, to lower or increase the flame.” While she credits her mother and father for teaching her about her homeland, quizzing her on facts of various regions in Italy, she says, “Above all, I was ashamed of myself for not being able to keep Papa home.”

In part three, “Awakenings,” Rita Ciresi’s “Big Heart” explores a mother’s and daughter’s relationship through the lens of a young girl coming of age. The daughter is nine when she starts accompanying her mother to the local Italian butcher’s market. The mother, whom the daughter characterizes by her Tower of Pisa wallet, is cheap, always asking the butcher for the exact amount, no more, no less. She further unintentionally embarrasses her daughter by continually asking for “scraps,” and playing along with the butcher’s comment, “‘For the dog, eh.’” The mother strolls down the butcher’s aisles “stopping once or twice to inspect some canned goods,” announcing loudly, “‘Cheaper at the A&P.’” The butcher teases the daughter, calls her “‘Swiss Girl’” because she likes Swiss cheese, and at each visit he charitably slices a piece for her, which irritates the mother, who’s too cheap to pay for it.

When the butcher’s mother dies and a young man, known as “Cugino, The Cousin,” comes to take her place in the shop, there is gossip about the new arrival. The pre-adolescent daughter’s heart flutters as it pumps 250 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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warm blood through her body each time she sees or even thinks about Cugino. When the girl becomes upset about lambs that are to be slaughtered for Easter in the yard behind the butcher shop, Cugino takes her hand to comfort her, but her mother interrupts and drags her daughter off. The story ends with the butcher sending Cugino away, the daughter refusing to leave her bedroom for dinner, and the mother boasting about the specials she got at the butcher’s.

In part four, “Encounters,” Vittoria repetto’s “pasta poem” names Italian pastas in a litany that is irrestible to the ear: i ate linguine lasagne ravioli cappellitte capelline di angeli ziti fettuccini tortellini and gnocchi In fact, the poem primarily does two things: plays with the sounds and music of the Italian language and pokes fun at Americans for being a nation who, when the speaker was growing up, always opted for spaghetti “over cooked / and out of a Chef Boy-ar-dee can.”

Cooking is something many Italian women take pride in; it’s an edible art. In part six, “Communities,” Rosette Capotorto's poem “Dealing with Broccoli Rabe” is a celebration of her cooking skills.

She begins, “three women in one week / told me my broccoli rabe had / changed their lives.” She proudly claims to have perfected preparing broccoli rabe and has been taking it as a dish for birthday dinners and brunches. As in most of the other pieces in the anthology, the woman is not portrayed as slaving away preparing a meal for her family; rather, she is seen as enjoying this creation which she can share at several different occasions.

In part seven, “Passings,” Dorian Cirrone’s poem “After We Bury Her” talks about cycles, rituals, and grief. A daughter remembers her mother: How many times without complaint did her hands mix cold, raw meat, cheese, Crab Orchard Review ◆ 251

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eggs, parsley, bread crumbs.

Fingers freezing, yolk oozing through knuckles, hours spent molding, mixing, browning, hands still slippery with fat, washing bowls, scrubbing pans.

As she follows her mother’s recipe for lasagna she thinks “of the note my five-year-old son / placed in her coffin: a picture of / spaghetti and meatballs, to remind her / to make some for God.” We know that as a girl and, perhaps, a young woman she watched her mother prepare this traditional Sunday meal that now she prepares.

There is a somber mood at the end of the poem as the daughter admits to loathing “this chore.”

Part five, “Transformations,” and part eight, “Legacies,” remind us with their titles that culture is constantly evolving, even as we try to preserve the flavors that make each culture distinct. Editors Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta have created an anthology of Italian American women’s writing rich in culture and life lessons, one which captures this evolution of understanding and holds on to the essence of the experiences of Italian Americans. This compilation of poems and prose pieces compliment each other and give voice to dark moments such as death, mourning, and eating disorders. At the same time, The Milk of Almonds gives light to the celebration of mother/daughter relationships, coming of age, and the joy of cooking and eating.

—Reviewed by Melanie Martin

Egerton, John (ed). Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 260 pages. $16.95.

Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, edited

by John Egerton, is a collection of essays, short stories, and poems that address food—the heart and soul of the South. Cornbread Nation 1 is judiciously arranged into five select sections: “People,” “Times,” “Things,” “Places,” and “Southern Foodways.” The section titles are specific to the concerns that reflect the uniqueness of the South and its history with food. Egerton gives us an open invitation to partake in 252 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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how the traditions of Southern cuisine have played a tremendous part in our problematic yet grand history.

The first section, “People,” is rich with historical narratives of popular cooks and critics, some gone and some still with us, whom have established themselves in the genre of Southern cuisine. Leah Chase, the daughter-in-law of the founder of Dooky Chase restaurant in New Orleans and the cook who still continues to carry on their great tradition and reputation, is profiled by Lolis Eric Elie. This piece gives an overview of the establishment that began serving sandwiches and selling lottery tickets in 1941 and evolved into a restaurant that once catered to Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Nat ‘King’ Cole, and Ray Charles, and hosted integrated groups during the civil rights struggle.

For all its fascinating history, the success of Dooky Chase remains its Creole soul food. As Ella Brennan, matriarch of the famous restaurant family, reminds us, “[Leah] cooks the food New Orleans loves to eat,” and when other successful businesses have moved away from poorer neighborhoods, Dooky Chase has stayed put: “A decision was made to become a major restaurant and stay in the neighborhood,” recalls Kalamu ya Salaam, a writer and civil rights era veteran. “This neighborhood was across the street from a housing project. That decision could not have been made lightly. For the amount of money they spent they probably could have moved somewhere else cheaper. It was a gutsy call.”

Community is inextricably connected to Southern food, and the anthology captures these connections and how they are both preserved and evolving. In another piece in the “People” section, Carrie Brown’s “Interview with Kim Wong, Clarksdale, Mississippi,” we discover Wong was the first Chinese boy to integrate a white school in Mississippi, and also the first man to bag cracklings.

In the section “Times,” Cornbread Nation 1 explores the importance of traditions—the uses of corn; the picking and uses of peaches; the food brought to reunions; the canning of foods for the winter. In Robert Morgan’s poem “Canning Time,” there is a reverence for Aunt Wessie’s and mother’s canning skills: The floor was muddy with the juice of peaches and my mother’s thumb, bandaged for the slicing, Crab Orchard Review ◆ 253

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watersobbed. She and Aunt Wessie skinned bushels that day, fat Georgia Belles slit streaming into the pot.

Morgan recaptures picturesque moments for us to experience. “Canning Time” also illustrates Morgan’s quaint romanticism for those lost times of youth, along with a panoramic truthfulness for the immediate moment: …As Wessie wiped her face the kitchen sweated its sweet filth.

In that hell they sealed the quickly browning flesh in capsules of honey, making crystals of separate air across the vacuums.

The section “Things” gives readers a taste of the unique qualities of the South—how the peculiarities of the South can pit Southerner against Southerner, and why pride in Southern cooking is one reason Southerners are so unlike their Northern relatives. Many of the works here portray the deep pride in the Southern family and the ongoing love that crosses generations of Southern brothers and sisters, but there is often a comic side to these feelings. Fred Chappell advises that in ordering unsweetened ice tea in a Southern restaurant one must “demand it with pistol drawn and cocked” because “tea unsweetened is as abstruse a proposition to most servers as a theorem of Boolean algebra.” In Honorée Fanonne Jeffers poem, “The Gospel of Barbecue,” barbecue is sacred, as any true Southerner well knows, and Jeffers implies low-fat diets, high blood pressure medication, and the politically-correct fundamentalism up North do not concern a child of the South because: “Somebody got to die / with something at some / time or another.” Denise Gee wrestles with the conundrum of which is the best, Eddie Wilson’s Texas chicken-fried steak, or Lynn Winter’s Kentucky country-fried steak. And in Brian Carpenter’s “The South’s Thirsty Muse,” we are shown that bourbon deserves a history all by itself for warming the bellies of George Washington, Zachary Taylor, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner.

By the fourth section, “Places,” the stories have achieved a remarkable level of humanistic appeal. The authors in “Places” portray the voices of a determined few who have struggled behind the scenes, and who’ve made it possible for the community to enjoy the delicacies 254 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

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so cherished in our childhood memories. The stories revere the farmer, vendor, and businessman—entrepreneurial spirits for the sake of community and adventure. Anton Feuchtwanger’s problem of selling hot sausages opens the door for his brother-in-law, a baker, to invent the hot dog bun. Opportunity knocks and hungry Southerners (and their lucky visitors) become the benefactors of a wealthy history.

The last section of the book, “Southern Foodways,” opens with “The Southern Foodways Symposium: An Overview from the Editors of Cornbread Nation.” The editors capture the spirit of old family reunions, backyard barbecues, and wistful days of eating apple pie on the stoop of their grandparents’ country homes. This section is a testament dedicated to the ancestors who have made the editors’ lives better. It is a direct and indirect account of the common ground of family, where the spirit of togetherness was attained at breakfast, lunch, and dinner: “Nowadays, we like to think of the gathering as both an old-home week for Southern food folk and a forum for intellectual discourse. And, oh yes, we also eat very well.”

This anthology reads like a subtle conversation at the dinner table and shares with us the history of Southern cuisine as well as comforts the human spirit and celebrates its resilience. Cornbread Nation 1 gathers the ingredients we are made out of—food, family, community, and history—and whips them up as an entrée.

Sometimes we taste like a fresh-cooked crab cake, or a piece of tender falling-off-the-bone open-pit barbecue before it is served, and sometimes we can be strong like a swig of ruckus juice, or have the acquired taste of a Livermush sandwich. Nevertheless, Cornbread Nation 1 stands robust and full of surprises for those outside the coterie and genre of Southern cuisine.

—Reviewed by Curtis L. Crisler

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Contributorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Notes

Elsa Arnett was born in Saigon to a Vietnamese mother and a New Zealand father. Her poetry and personal essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Sierra Nevada College Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Pearl, River Teeth, and the anthology Documents of the Reconstruction: Asian American Essays on War & Conflict.

Rachel Berghash was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel. She lives in New York City where she conducts seminars on the interior life.

Her poems have appeared in Chicago Review, Blue Unicorn, West Wind Review, and Poetpourri. Her essays with co-author Katherine Jillson have been published in Journal of Religion and Health. She recently completed her memoir Without a River or Sea. Wendy Bishop teaches writing at Florida State University. She is the author or editor of sixteen books, including Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem: A Guide to Writing Poetry (Longman) and Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy (co-edited with Hans Ostrom; NCTE). Her chapbooks include My 47 Lives (Palanquin Press) and Touching Liliana (Jumping Cholla Press).

Lorna Knowles Blake was born in Havana and grew up in South America and the Caribbean. She lives in New York City, where she serves as Senior Poetry Editor of Rattapallax and Managing Editor of Lumina, the literary journal at Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Brilliant Corners, Calyx, The Formalist, Hudson Review, Tar River Poetry, and in the anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, edited by Agha Shahid Ali. Catherine Bowman is the author of the poetry collections Rock Farm (Gibbs Smith) and 1-800-HOT-RIBS (Gibbs Smith), which was reissued in 2000 by Carnegie Mellon University Press as part of its contemporary classics series. She teaches in the graduate program in creative writing at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Linda Casebeer lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and works in medical education research at the University of Alabama School of Medicine.

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Contributors’ Notes

Her poems appear in Slant, Earth’s Daughters, and Hawai’i Pacific Review, as well as on her website, <www.Amazonpoems.org>.

Victoria Chang is a poet and writer living in San Diego, California.

Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Nation, New England Review, North American Review, DoubleTake, Massachusetts Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Cream City Review. She is the editor of Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, an anthology due out in 2003 from the University of Illinois Press.

Huan-Hua Chye lives in Berkeley, California. Some of her favorite foods are ice cream, hash browns, chicken cilicia, and pumpkin ravioli.

Geraldine Connolly is the author of two poetry collections, Food for the Winter and Province of Fire. Her poem “Darkness with Lantern” was awarded the 2002 W.B. Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize.

Chauna Craig’s work appears or is forthcoming in Descant, Connecticut Review, and Calyx. She lives and teaches in Pennsylvania.

Deborah Cummins of Evanston, Illinois, is the author of Beyond the Reach (BkMk Press) and From the Road It Looks Like Paradise (State Street Press). Her work appears in Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, and New England Review. She is president of the Modern Poetry Association.

Chad Davidson’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, DoubleTake, Paris Review, Pequod, and Poet Lore. His first collection of poems, Consolation Miracle, was the winner of the 2002 Crab Orchard First Book Prize and will be published in Fall 2003 by Southern Illinois University Press.

Susan Elbe’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Calyx, North American Review, Passages North, Laurel Review, Smartish Pace, Puerto del Sol, and in the anthology A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books). Her chapbook Light Made from Nothing was released by Parallel Press in March 2003. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she works as a Web content analyst.

Cherryl Floyd-Miller has held writing fellowships with Caldera, Crab Orchard Review ◆ 257

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Cave Canem, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Indiana Arts Commission. Her work appears or is forthcoming in American Muse, Open City, Flying Island, Essence, Maize, and Poetry Midwest. She is the winner of the 2002 Hughes, Diop, Knight Poetry Award from the Gwendolyn Brooks Center in Chicago. She lives in Atlanta, where she is a directing intern with Actor’s Express Theatre Company.

Jeffrey Franklin’s poems appear in Many Mountains Moving, Hudson Review, New England Review, Shenandoah, Third Coast, and in The Best American Poetry 2002. He teaches Victorian literature and creative writing at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Ana Garza earned her MFA at California State University, Fresno.

Her work appears in Gulf Stream, lichen, Concrete Wolf, and the anthology How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets.

Rigoberto González is the author of So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks, a National Poetry Series selection, Soledad Sigh-Sighs/Soledad suspiros, a book for children, and Crossing Vines, a novel forthcoming from University of Oklahoma Press. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has received residencies to Spain, Brazil, and Costa Rica, and currently teaches at the New School University in New York.

John Guzlowski’s poems are mostly about his parents’ experience as slave laborers in Nazi Germany. A number of these poems appear in his chapbook Language of Mules. Je∫zyk Mu¬oåw i Inne Wiersze, a Polish-English edition of these and other poems, was published by Biblioteka SÅ l a∫ s ka in Katowice, Poland. In 2001, he received an Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award. He teaches American literature at Eastern Illinois University.

Yona Harvey is the recipient of a Barbara Deming Award in poetry.

Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares and The Journal. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Ava Leavell Haymon’s poems appear in the Southern Review, Georgia Review, and Poetry. Two of her collections, The Strict Economy of Fire and Choosing Monogamy, are forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press.

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M. Ayodele Heath received an Emerging Artist Grant from the Atlanta Bureau for Cultural Affairs in 2001. He lives and works in Atlanta.

Christopher Hennessy’s poetry will appear this year in an anthology of new gay poets. His work appears or is forthcoming in the Writer’s Chronicle, Provincetown Arts, James White Review, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Lambda Book Report.

Julie Hensley is a Virginia native, but currently she makes her home in Arizona. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Fourteen Hills, Petroglyph, New Orphic Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. She is finishing up Landfall, a novel-in-stories that includes “Bread Pudding.”

James Hoch is Visiting Assistant Professor at Franklin & Marshall College. His poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Agni, Third Coast, Black Warrior Review, Quarterly West, Pleiades, West Branch, and on the websites Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. His book, A Parade of Hands, won the 2002 Gerald Cable Award and was published by Silverfish Review Press in March 2003.

He lives in New York City and Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Anna Maria Hong is the author of a nonfiction book, Family Abuse: A National Epidemic (Enslow Publishers), and the editor of an anthology of fiction and memoir, Growing Up Asian American (Morrow/Avon Books). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Fence, Gargoyle Magazine, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review.

Robin Leslie Jacobson founded True North Press, and teaches writing privately and through California Poets in the Schools. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Clackamas Literary Review, California Quarterly, Montserrat Review, and Poetry Flash. She received the Power of Poetry Chapbook Prize for her collection Eye Drops (Ruah).

Terry Kirts teaches in the Department of English at Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis. His poems appear or are forthcoming in the James White Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Green Mountains Review, Third Coast, Artful Dodge, Gastronomica, and the Crab Orchard Review ◆ 259

Contributors’ Notes

anthology Gents, Bad Boys, and Barbarians: This New Breed. An avid gourmand, he is the restaurant critic for Indianapolis Woman magazine.

Karen Kovacik is the author of Beyond the Velvet Curtain (Kent State University Press). Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Chelsea, and Salmagundi. She lives and works in Indianapolis.

Anya Krugovoy teaches in the English Department at Mercer University. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in North American Review, Many Mountains Moving, Cream City Review, and Southern Poetry Review. She is currently editing an anthology of RussianAmerican poetry. She and her husband live in Macon, Georgia.

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, Calyx, Cortland Review, Feminist Studies, Midwest Quarterly, WIND, and Wisconsin Review. She lived in Greece for many years and is now a freelance editor in New Jersey.

Gareth Lee attends the creative writing program at Brown University.

He spent his undergraduate years at Santa Clara University, where he received a Canterbury Fellowship for his poetry, and he taught K-8th grade students for two years at St. Lucy School in Campbell, California.

Joseph O. Legaspi was born in the Phillipines, and raised there and in Los Angeles, where he immigrated with his family when he was twelve. He lives in New York City and works at Columbia University.

His poems have appeared and are forthcoming in the Seneca Review, Crab Orchard Review, Puerto del Sol, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Tilting the Continent, an anthology of Southeast Asian American writing. He is a recipient of a 2001 poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Nan Leslie’s award-winning fiction has been published in more than twenty literary magazines. She is currently fiction editor of Web Del Sol’s In Posse Review and the Green Hills Literary Lantern.

She has published feature articles on crafting fiction in The Writer.

Her work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and studied in the Algonkian fiction workshops.

260 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Contributors’ Notes

Shara Lessley is a third-year MFA student at the University of Maryland. Her work was recently nominated for the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award and is forthcoming in Clackamas Literary Review.

Timothy Liu’s most recent book of poems is Hard Evidence (Talisman House, Publishers). He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Joel Long’s book Winged Insects won the 1998 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Seattle Review, Prairie Schooner, and Talking River Review. He lives in Salt Lake City with his two daughters.

Bob Lucky recently completed a year of traveling and tasting. Before that, he edited and published The Asian Foodbookery, a quarterly newsletter on Asian food and culture. His work, mostly nonfiction and some occasional poetry, appears in The Art of Eating and Petits Propos Culinaires. He lives with his wife and son along the Texas-Mexico border, where, he has discovered, enchiladas are a part of every decent Chinese buffet.

Jeff Mann’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies. Bones Washed with Wine, a collection of poetry, and Edge, a collection of essays, appeared in 2003.

He teaches creative writing and Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech.

Adrian Matejka’s first book, The Devil’s Garden, was a winner of the 2003 New England/New York Award from Alice James Books.

His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beacon Street Review, Elixir, Lake Effect, and Poetry Midwest. He currently teaches at SUNY-Geneseo.

John McNally is the author of Troublemakers, winner of the 2000 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and the 2001 Nebraska Book Award.

The Book of Ralph, a collection of linked stories, is forthcoming in 2004 from The Free Press (Simon and Schuster). He has edited four anthologies, most recently Bottom of the Ninth: Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories. He is an assistant professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Orlando Ricardo Menes teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame. His poems appear in Chelsea, Crab Crab Orchard Review ◆ 261

Contributors’ Notes

Orchard Review, and New Letters. His second poetry collection, Rumba Atop the Stones, was published in 2001 by Peepal Tree Press of Leeds, England.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of Miracle Fruit, winner of the 2002 Tupelo Press Poetry Prize. Her work appears in the Southern Review, Mid-American Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is an assistant professor of English at SUNY-Fredonia.

Soo Jin Oh is a poet living in New York. Her work has appeared previously in Crab Orchard Review, Hanging Loose, and Sojourner.

She has new work forthcoming in an anthology edited by Elaine Kim. Lucia Perillo was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2000. Her last book, The Oldest Map With the Name America, can be ordered via <www.luciaperillo.com>.

Marilene Phipps is a poet and a painter who was born and grew up in Haiti. Her collection Crossroads and Unholy Water (Southern Illinois University Press) won the 2000 Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry Open Competition. She has also won the 1993 Grolier Poetry Prize and has won fellowships at Harvard’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute and the Center for the Study of World Religions. She has been both a Guggenheim and Harvard University Bunting Institute Fellow.

Rohan Preston is the theater critic for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

He is the author of the poetry collection Dreams in Soy Sauce (Tia Chucha Press) and also the co-editor of Soulfires: Young Black Men on Love and Violence (Viking Penguin). His awards include a 1996 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award in Poetry and the 1997 Henry Blakely, Jr., Poetry Prize, given by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Meredith Reiches is an undergraduate at Brown University. She is working towards a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature in French and Italian. This is her first non-scholastic publication.

Lee Ann Roripaugh’s first volume of poetry, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books), was a 1998 selection for the National Poetry Series, and was selected as a finalist for the 2000 Asian American Literary Awards. She was the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for 262 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Contributors’ Notes

Best Creative Writing, awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize.

Her poetry and fiction appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review, and the anthologies Poets of the New Century (David R. Godine, Publisher) and American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press). She is an assistant professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she is Associate Editor of South Dakota Review.

Gianna Russo has poems published or forthcoming in Florida Review, Karamu, The Bloomsbury Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, The MacGuffin, Calyx, Tampa Review, and in several anthologies. She was a recipient of a Hillsborough County Emerging Artist Grant in 1994, a Florida Artists Fellowship honorable mention in 2000, and a Hillsborough County Artists Fellowhip in 2001. She designed and currently co-directs the creative writing program at the magnet high school Howard W. Blake School of the Arts in Tampa.

Ruth L. Schwartz’s most recent book is Edgewater (HarperCollins), which was selected by Jane Hirshfield for the National Poetry Series.

She is a two-time winner of the Nimrod/Pablo Neruda Award, as well as over a dozen other literary prizes. She teaches at California State University, Fresno, and lives in Oakland. She can be found on the Web at <www.ruthschwartz.com>.

Rebecca Seiferle’s poetry collection Bitters (Copper Canyon Press) won the 2002 Western States Book Award and a Pushcart Prize. Her translations of Cesar Vallejo’s The Black Heralds are forthcoming from Copper Canyon in Fall 2003. She is the founding editor of the online magazine of international poetry and poetry-in-translation The Drunken Boat <www.thedrunkenboat.com>.

Amar Gaurav Shah’s poems have appeared in Asian Pacific American Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Crab Orchard Review. He is currently working on a novel.

Nancy Shih-Knodel has been teaching English at Rochester Community and Technical College for the past five years. She received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her work has appeared in Poetry Motel.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 263

Contributors’ Notes

Evie Shockley is the author of The Gorgon Goddess (Carolina Wren Press). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Asheville Poetry Review, Brilliant Corners, HOW2, and nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts. She teaches literature at Wake Forest University.

Renee Soto received her MFA in 2001 from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as poetry editor of the Greensboro Review. She has received an AWP Intro Journals Award and an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and her work has appeared in Cimarron Review. Currently, she teaches at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia, where she serves as managing editor of Southern Poetry Review.

Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. At the age of twelve, he arrived in the United States. He is the author of two new poetry collections, Palm Crows (University of Arizona Press) and Banyan (Louisiana State University Press). Guide to the Blue Tongue, his sixth collection of poetry, will be published in 2003 by the University of Illinois Press. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for poetry. He divides his time between Key Biscayne and Tallahassee, where he lives with his wife and daughters and is a full professor at Florida State University.

Ira Sukrungruang is a Thai-American born and raised in Chicago.

His work has appeared in North American Review, Witness, and Another Chicago Magazine. He is co-editing the anthology What Are You Looking At? An Anthology of Fat Fiction and Poetry, which is due out Fall 2003 from Harcourt Brace. He teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego and is working on his memoir, A Normal Thai Son. Margaret C. Szumowski is the author of I Want This World, published

by Tupelo Press. She is currently working on a new manuscript, Night of the Lunar Eclipse.

Molly Tenenbaum is the author of Blue Willow (Floating Bridge Press) and By a Thread (Van West & Company). Her CD of old-time banjo music is Instead of a Pony (Cat Hair Music). She plays with The Queen City Bulldogs string band, gives banjo lessons, and lives in Seattle, where she teaches at North Seattle Community College.

264 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

Contributors’ Notes

Jennifer Tonge’s poems have appeared in the Bellingham Review, New England Review, Denver Quarterly, and Square Lake. Her work will appear in the anthology Rising Phoenix, forthcoming from Word Press in 2004.

Judith Vollmer’s most recent book of poems is The Door Open to the Five (Cleveland State University Press). Her poems and reviews have appeared in Witness, Prairie Schooner, and Poet Lore. She co-edits the national poetry journal 5 A.M. and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Ronald Wallace’s seventh poetry collection, Long for this World: New and Selected Poems, is out in 2003 from University of Pittsburgh Press.

He co-directs the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and edits the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series.

Charles Harper Webb’s latest book of poems, Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies, was published in 2001 by BOA Editions, Ltd. In 2002, the University of Iowa Press published Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, edited by Webb. He has received grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim Foundations, and he teaches at California State University, Long Beach.

J. Weintraub has published essays and fiction in numerous periodicals and literary reviews, including the New Criterion, Ascent, Karamu, Bellevue Literary Review, The MacGuffin, and Chicago Reader. His one-act play, “You,” was recently performed in New York by The Theatre-Studio, Inc. Tina Wiseman is currently spending time on her work-in-progress, “Raising Five Kids.” It is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2016, barring any complicated revisions. She works as a volunteer at Hazel Dell Elementary School in Vancouver, Washington. She is also writing her first novel.

S.L. Wisenberg is the author of a collection of essays, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, and Other Obsessions (University of Nebraska Press), and a short story collection, The Sweetheart Is In (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press). Her website is <www.slwisenberg.com>.

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 265

Contributors’ Notes

Terry Wolverton is author of a memoir, Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman’s Building, a novel, Bailey’s Beads, and two collections of poetry: Black Slip and Mystery Bruise. A novel-in-poems, Embers, will be published by Red Hen Press in 2003. She has also edited twelve literary anthologies. She has taught creative writing in Los Angeles, where she offers several weekly workshops in fiction and poetry. She is also a certified instructor of Kundalini Yoga.

Jake Adam York is a contributing editor for Shenandoah and the poetry editor for storySouth.com. His work has appeared or will appear in the Southern Review, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, and DIAGRAM. He was the official poet of the 2002 Southern Foodways Alliance symposium on barbecue.

Zhang Er was born in Beijing, China, and moved to the United States in 1986. Her writings have appeared in publications in Taiwan, China, and the American emigré community. The full-length collection of her work, Seen, Unseen, was published by QingHai publishing house of China in 1999. Her poems have also appeared in English in a number of American journals, including Five Fingers Review, Talisman, River City, First Intensity, Tinfish, The World, and Poetry New York. Her chapbooks in translation, Winter Garden (Goats and Compasses), Verses on Bird (Jensen/Daniels), and The Autumn of Gu Yao (Spuyten Duyvil) were published in recent years. She currently resides in New York City.

266 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Title Index After Thirty Years, I Meet My Highschool Sweetheart in the Cookbook Section at Safeway (ptry). Charles Harper Webb Almost Equinoctial (ptry). Marilyn Hacker Anecdote, The (ptry). Rebecca Seiferle Apples (ptry). Ruth L. Schwartz Are You Making Dumb Cake? (ptry). Aimee Nezhukumatathil At the Lapin Agile (ptry). Ryan Fox Atmosphere (ptry). Amy Bleser Balducci’s, Greenwich Village (ptry). Meredith Reiches Basement (ptry). Carolyn Beard Whitlow Beautiful Things (fctn). Sharon May Brown Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, The (ptry). Jeffrey McDaniel Blessing Blue Crabs (ptry). Yona Harvey Blue Ware (ptry). Geraldine Connolly Body of a Deer, the Body of Jesus, The (ptry).

Dennis Hinrichsen Bog Town (ptry). Huan-Hua Chye Boiling Point (ptry). Elsa Arnett Bread (ptry). Chad Davidson Bread Pudding (fctn). Julie Hensley Breath (fctn). Terry Wolverton Bursa Peach, The (ptry). Jennifer Tonge Call Up the Dead and They Come to You (ptry). Myrna Stone Careless Fish (prose). Nicole Louise Reid Catalpa (ptry). Karen An-Hwei Lee Chameleon (ptry). Lory Bedikian Chez Noir (fctn). Nan Leslie Coffee Line, The (ptry). Judith Vollmer Columbia Basin Child (ptry). Heather Brittain Bergstrom Compass (ptry). Maria Terrone Con Leche (ptry). Adrian Matejka Confessions of a Kaya Eater (prose). Bob Lucky Conversation with a Friend in Mourning (ptry). Maurya Simon Cookin’ with the David Jones Trio (ptry). Jeffrey Franklin Cosopt (ptry). Karen An-Hwei Lee Daily Bread (ptry). Rohan Preston Discerning Demons (prose). Gale Renée Walden Distance (ptry). Amy Bleser Doctor to His Apprentice, 1727, The (ptry). Trevor West Knapp

8(2): 208 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1):

98 167 165 147 90 47 156 214 1 164 71 32 102

8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1):

27 36 38 3 130 204 207 222 162 42 42 205 44 208 144 224 205 63 160 154 233 46 154

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 267

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Dragon Inn (ptry). Victoria Chang Dreamlife of Dr. Bledsoe’s Inner Pickaninny, The (ptry).

M. Ayodele Heath Duke’s (fctn). John McNally Dulce de Leche (ptry). Lorna Knowles Blake Durian (ptry). Gareth Lee Early Morning under Persimmon (ptry). Antonio Jocson Eating Cactus from a Jar (ptry). Ana Garza Eating Ortalons (ptry). Terry Kirts Elegy for the Breath in a Broken Lake (ptry). Andrea Scott Elegy for the Set of Mint-Condition 1944 Britannica My Mother Threw Away (ptry). Bethany Edstrom Enter Mecca (ptry). Jesse Lee Kercheval Entering the Bath (ptry). Kasey Jueds Essence of Cardamom, The (ptry). Virgil Suárez Expulsion (ptry). Lisa Williams Facts (fctn). Doris Iarovici Few Days after Halloween, A (ptry). Gerry LaFemina Fiorentina, La (ptry). Margaret C. Szumowski Fire (ptry). Jake Adam York Fish Fry at Harry’s Tap (ptry). Susan Elbe For the Cuban Dead (ptry). Ricardo Pau-Llosa French Toast (ptry). Anya Krugovoy Galatoire’s (ptry). Jeff Mann Gizzards (ptry). Gareth Lee Grandmothers, The (ptry). Amy Lingafelter Hamburger Heaven (ptry). Ronald Wallace Haunting of Glenn Earl Horton’s Teeth, The (fctn). James Gill Helpmeet, The (fctn). Eran Williams Homeland (fctn). Cris Mazza How One Food Leads to Another—A Recipe from Memory (prose). Wendy Bishop Hunger in the Labor Camps (ptry). John Guzlowski I Am the Woman in Dong Xuan Market (ptry). Jennifer Richter Ice Kacang (ptry). Gareth Lee In France fourteen and skinny (ptry). Huan-Hua Chye In Restaurants (ptry). S.L. Wisenberg In the Beginning (fctn). S. Brady Tucker In Winter (ptry). Chi-Wai Au Inside (ptry). Elsa Arnett Journey for the Bread (ptry). Donna J. Gelagotis Lee Juego, El (ptry). Kevin A. González Just This Once (ptry). Peggy Shumaker King Sugar (ptry). Lorna Knowles Blake KitchenAid Epicurean Stand Mixer (ptry). Victoria Chang

268 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

8(2): 24 8(2): 73 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1):

52 17 113 103 66 105 199 89

8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2):

150 106 196 215 17 158 198 212 59 166 110 142 114 163 206 6 118 63 178

8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2):

67 196 116 26 210 108 37 34 111 96 203 18 23

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Late-Talking Children (ptry). Joanna Smith Rakoff Leesha (fctn). Tayari Jones Lip Prints (ptry). Elton Glaser Little Feasts (ptry). Catherine Bowman Lost Summer House (ptry). Geraldine Connolly Luscious Things (ptry). Lee Ann Roripaugh Madrigal for Gardenias (ptry). Iris Gomez Magdalena at the Prado (ptry). Jesse Lee Kercheval Making Dumplings (ptry). Nancy Shih-Knodel Man with the Buddha Heads, The (fctn). Ira Sukrungruang Martín (ptry). Renee Soto Meat (fctn). Marilene Phipps Meat (ptry). Christopher Hennessy Mexican Cooks Return, The (ptry). Jennifer Tonge Morel Hunting (ptry). Geraldine Connolly My Mother’s Recipes (prose). J. Weintraub My Neighbors’ Dogs (ptry). Patricia Jabbeh Wesley My Sister, Who Died Young, Takes Up the Task (ptry).

Jon Pineda Nathan’s (ptry). Lucia Perillo Nests, an Elegy (ptry). Peggy Shumaker Night in Lebanon (ptry). Lory Bedikian Not Enough Bread in the World (ptry). Adrian Matejka Object of Desire, The (ptry). Linda Casebeer Ode to Bombay Duck (ptry). Amar Gaurav Shah Ossi di Morto (ptry). Chad Davidson Palimpsest (ptry). Bruce Bond Palm Sunday Morning (ptry). Renee Soto party of two (ptry). Evie Shockley Pear, Apple, Peach (ptry). Christopher Hennessy Pilgrimage (ptry). Jake Adam York Piña (prose). Rigoberto González Poem about Sushi (ptry). Anna Maria Hong Poets in Posterity (ptry). Elton Glaser Pomegranate, The (ptry). Shara Lessley Poppy Seeds (ptry). Anya Krugovoy Preparing the Artichoke (ptry). Joel Long Ranns (ptry). Marilyn Hacker Red Pear (ptry). Robin Leslie Jacobson Red Sarong, The (fctn). Lyndane Yang Red Sweater, The (ptry). Joseph O. Legaspi Returning (ptry). Soo Jin Oh Ripe Fig (ptry). Ruth L. Schwartz Scars (prose). Doreen Baingana Season’s First Apples, The (ptry). Deborah Cummins

8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1):

171 52 91 20 31 158 94 152 190 85 194 79 76 202 30 233 210 168

8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2):

150 201 40 145 21 188 40 48 195 192 74 216 219 102 92 119 108 120 100 104 131 118 148 164 174 34

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 269

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Sendaga (ptry). Rohan Preston Show and Tell (ptry). Robert Wrigley Simple Campsong, A (ptry). Lucia Perillo Sisters (ptry). Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong Smoke (ptry). Peggy Shumaker Snake in the Trough, The (ptry). Robert Wrigley Snapper (ptry). James Hoch Song and Steam (ptry). Anna Maria Hong Song of the Sexy Kitchen Saints (ptry). Karen Kovacik Southern Accent (ptry). Nin Andrews Square du Temple (ptry). Marilyn Hacker Squid (fctn). Orlando Ricardo Menes Strozzapreti (ptry). Chad Davidson Sucking on Figs (fctn). Tina Wiseman Sunday in Little Taipei (ptry). Chi-Wai Au Taking Apart the House (prose). Susan Sterling Tangerine (ptry). Ruth L. Schwartz They Name Each Other Jesus (ptry). Jennifer Richter Thousand Years (ptry). Elsa Arnett Three Feasts in Florence (ptry). Gianna Russo To Joyce Howard, a girl from third grade who comes to me in dreams (ptry). Tara Bray To Taste (fctn). Chauna Craig To the Unconverted (ptry). Jake Adam York Truffle (ptry). Chad Davidson Until the Plane Drops (ptry). Patricia Jabbeh Wesley Vignettes from Without a River or Sea: A Memoir (prose). Rachel Berghash Walt Whitman’s Finches: of discretion and disclosure in autobiography and adoption (prose). Ned Balbo Watermelon Juice (ptry/trans). Zhang Er/Timothy Liu Weaned: Breaking the habit of pork (ptry).

Cherryl Floyd-Miller What She Isn’t: An Excerpt from the Novel Penelope Jones (fctn). Nicola Schmidt Why I Crave Ribs Tonight (ptry). Aimee Nezhukumatathil Witch Has Told You a Story, The (ptry). Ava Leavell Haymon Year of the Myriad French Bakeries (ptry). Molly Tenenbaum

270 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(1): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1):

169 217 152 156 200 218 78 100 106 32 99 55 37 121 38 228 166 198 16 161 50

8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(1): 8(2):

1 214 35 212 169

8(1): 180 8(2): 217 8(2): 61 8(1): 76 8(2): 146 8(2): 72 8(2): 200

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003

Author Index Andrews, Nin Southern Accent (ptry) Arnett, Elsa Boiling Point (ptry) Inside (ptry) Thousand Years (ptry) Au, Chi-Wai In Winter (ptry) Sunday in Little Taipei (ptry) Baingana, Doreen Scars (prose) Balbo, Ned Walt Whitman’s Finches: of discretion and disclosure in autobiography and adoption (prose) Bedikian, Lory Chameleon (ptry) Night in Lebanon (ptry) Berghash, Rachel Vignettes from Without a River or Sea: A Memoir (prose) Bergstrom, Heather Brittain Columbia Basin Child (ptry) Bishop, Wendy How One Food Leads to Another—A Recipe from Memory (prose) Blake, Lorna Knowles Dulce de Leche (ptry) King Sugar (ptry) Bleser, Amy Atmosphere (ptry) Distance (ptry) Bond, Bruce Palimpsest (ptry) Bowman, Catherine Little Feasts (ptry) Bray, Tara To Joyce Howard, a girl from third grade who comes to me in dreams (ptry) Brown, Sharon May Beautiful Things (fctn) Casebeer, Linda The Object of Desire (ptry)

8(1): 32 8(1): 36 8(1): 34 8(2): 16 8(1): 37 8(1): 38 8(1): 174 8(1): 180

8(1): 42 8(1): 40 8(2): 169 8(1): 44 8(2): 178

8(2): 17 8(2): 18 8(1): 47 8(1): 46 8(1): 48 8(2): 20 8(1): 50

8(1):

1

8(2): 21

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 271

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Chang, Victoria Dragon Inn (ptry) KitchenAid Epicurean Stand Mixer (ptry) Chye, Huan-Hua Bog Town (ptry) In France fourteen and skinny (ptry) Connolly, Geraldine Blue Ware (ptry) Lost Summer House (ptry) Morel Hunting (ptry) Craig, Chauna To Taste (fctn) Cummins, Deborah The Season’s First Apples (ptry) Davidson, Chad Bread (ptry) Ossi di Morto (ptry) Strozzapreti (ptry) Truffle (ptry) Edstrom, Bethany Elegy for the Set of Mint-Condition 1944 Britannica My Mother Threw Away (ptry) Elbe, Susan Fish Fry at Harry’s Tap (ptry) Floyd-Miller, Cherryl Weaned: Breaking the habit of pork (ptry) Fox, Ryan At the Lapin Agile (ptry) Franklin, Jeffrey Cookin’ with the David Jones Trio (ptry) Garza, Ana Eating Cactus from a Jar (ptry) Gill, James The Haunting of Glenn Earl Horton’s Teeth (fctn) Glaser, Elton Lip Prints (ptry) Poets in Posterity (ptry) Gomez, Iris Madrigal for Gardenias (ptry) González, Kevin A. El Juego (ptry) González, Rigoberto Piña (prose) Guzlowski, John Hunger in the Labor Camps (ptry)

272 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

8(2): 24 8(2): 23 8(2): 27 8(2): 26 8(2): 32 8(2): 31 8(2): 30 8(2):

1

8(2): 34 8(2): 8(2): 8(2): 8(2):

38 40 37 35

8(1): 89

8(2): 59 8(2): 61 8(1): 90 8(2): 63 8(2): 66 8(1):

6

8(1): 91 8(1): 92 8(1): 94 8(1): 96 8(2): 219 8(2): 67

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Hacker, Marilyn Almost Equinoctial (ptry) Ranns (ptry) Square du Temple (ptry) Harvey, Yona Blessing Blue Crabs (ptry) Haymon, Ava Leavell The Witch Has Told You a Story (ptry) Heath, M. Ayodele The Dreamlife of Dr. Bledsoe’s Inner Pickaninny (ptry) Hennessy, Christopher Meat (ptry) Pear, Apple, Peach (ptry) Hensley, Julie Bread Pudding (fctn) Hinrichsen, Dennis The Body of a Deer, the Body of Jesus (ptry) Hoch, James Snapper (ptry) Hong, Anna Maria Poem about Sushi (ptry) Song and Steam (ptry) Iarovici, Doris Facts (fctn) Jacobson, Robin Leslie Red Pear (ptry) Jocson, Antonio Early Morning under Persimmon (ptry) Jones, Tayari Leesha (fctn) Jueds, Kasey Entering the Bath (ptry) Kercheval, Jesse Lee Enter Mecca (ptry) Magdalena at the Prado (ptry) Kirts, Terry Eating Ortalons (ptry) Knapp, Trevor West The Doctor to His Apprentice, 1727 (ptry) Kovacik, Karen Song of the Sexy Kitchen Saints (ptry) Krugovoy, Anya French Toast (ptry) Poppy Seeds (ptry)

8(1): 98 8(1): 100 8(1): 99 8(2): 71 8(2): 72 8(2): 73 8(2): 76 8(2): 74 8(2):

3

8(1): 102 8(2): 78 8(2): 102 8(2): 100 8(1): 17 8(2): 104 8(1): 103 8(1): 52 8(1): 106 8(1): 150 8(1): 152 8(2): 105 8(1): 154 8(2): 106 8(2): 110 8(2): 108

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 273

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Kwong, Bonnie Wai-Lee Sisters (ptry) LaFemina, Gerry A Few Days after Halloween (ptry) Lee, Donna J. Gelagotis Journey for the Bread (ptry) Lee, Gareth Durian (ptry) Gizzards (ptry) Ice Kacang (ptry) Lee, Karen An-Hwei Catalpa (ptry) Cosopt (ptry) Legaspi, Joseph O. The Red Sweater (ptry) Leslie, Nan Chez Noir (fctn) Lessley, Shara The Pomegranate (ptry) Lingafelter, Amy The Grandmothers (ptry) Long, Joel Preparing the Artichoke (ptry) Lucky, Bob Confessions of a Kaya Eater (prose) Mann, Jeff Galatoire’s (ptry) Matejka, Adrian Con Leche (ptry) Not Enough Bread in the World (ptry) Mazza, Cris Homeland (fctn) McDaniel, Jeffrey The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy (ptry) McNally, John Duke’s (fctn) Menes, Orlando Ricardo Squid (fctn) Nezhukumatathil, Aimee Are You Making Dumb Cake? (ptry) Why I Crave Ribs Tonight (ptry) Oh, Soo Jin Returning (ptry) Pau-Llosa, Ricardo For the Cuban Dead (ptry)

274 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

8(1): 156 8(1): 158 8(2): 111 8(2): 113 8(2): 114 8(2): 116 8(1): 162 8(1): 160 8(2): 118 8(2): 42 8(2): 119 8(1): 163 8(2): 120 8(2): 224 8(2): 142 8(2): 144 8(2): 145 8(1): 63 8(1): 164 8(2): 52 8(2): 55 8(2): 147 8(2): 146 8(2): 148 8(1): 166

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Perillo, Lucia Nathan’s (ptry) A Simple Campsong (ptry) Phipps, Marilene Meat (fctn) Pineda, Jon My Sister, Who Died Young, Takes Up the Task (ptry) Preston, Rohan Daily Bread (ptry) Sendaga (ptry) Rakoff, Joanna Smith Late-Talking Children (ptry) Reiches, Meredith Balducci’s, Greenwich Village (ptry) Reid, Nicole Louise Careless Fish (prose) Richter, Jennifer I Am the Woman in Dong Xuan Market (ptry) They Name Each Other Jesus (ptry) Roripaugh, Lee Ann Luscious Things (ptry) Russo, Gianna Three Feasts in Florence (ptry) Schmidt, Nicola What She Isn’t: An Excerpt from the Novel Penelope Jones Schwartz, Ruth L. Apples (ptry) Ripe Fig (ptry) Tangerine (ptry) Scott, Andrea Elegy for the Breath in a Broken Lake (ptry) Seiferle, Rebecca The Anecdote (ptry) Shah, Amar Gaurav Ode to Bombay Duck (ptry) Shih-Knodel, Nancy Making Dumplings (ptry) Shockley, Evie party of two (ptry) Shumaker, Peggy Just This Once (ptry) Nests, an Elegy (ptry) Smoke (ptry) Simon, Maurya Conversation with a Friend in Mourning (ptry)

8(2): 150 8(2): 152 8(2): 79 8(1): 168 8(2): 154 8(1): 169 8(1): 171 8(2): 156 8(1): 222 8(1): 196 8(1): 198 8(2): 158 8(2): 161 8(1): 76 8(2): 165 8(2): 164 8(2): 166 8(1): 199 8(2): 167 8(2): 188 8(2): 190 8(2): 192 8(1): 203 8(1): 201 8(1): 200 8(1): 205

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 275

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Soto, Renee Martín (ptry) Palm Sunday Morning (ptry) Sterling, Susan Taking Apart the House (prose) Stone, Myrna Call Up the Dead and They Come to You (ptry) Suárez, Virgil The Essence of Cardamom (ptry) Sukrungruang, Ira The Man with the Buddha Heads (fctn) Szumowski, Margaret C. La Fiorentina (ptry) Tenenbaum, Molly Year of the Myriad French Bakeries (ptry) Terrone, Maria Compass (ptry) Tonge, Jennifer The Bursa Peach (ptry) The Mexican Cooks Return (ptry) Tucker, S. Brady In the Beginning (fctn) Vollmer, Judith The Coffee Line (ptry) Walden, Gale Renée Discerning Demons (prose) Wallace, Ronald Hamburger Heaven (ptry) Webb, Charles Harper After Thirty Years, I Meet My Highschool Sweetheart in the Cookbook Section at Safeway (ptry) Weintraub, J. My Mother’s Recipes (prose) Wesley, Patricia Jabbeh My Neighbors’ Dogs (ptry) Until the Plane Drops (ptry) Whitlow, Carolyn Beard Basement (ptry) Williams, Eran The Helpmeet (fctn) Williams, Lisa Expulsion (ptry) Wiseman, Tina Sucking on Figs (fctn)

276 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

8(2): 194 8(2): 195 8(1): 228 8(1): 207 8(2): 196 8(2): 85 8(2): 198 8(2): 200 8(1): 208 8(2): 204 8(2): 202 8(1): 108 8(2): 205 8(1): 233 8(2): 206 8(2): 208

8(2): 233 8(1): 210 8(1): 212 8(1): 214 8(1): 118 8(1): 215 8(2): 121

INDEX TO VOLUME EIGHT — 2002/2003 Wisenberg, S.L. In Restaurants (ptry) Wolverton, Terry Breath (fctn) Wrigley, Robert Show and Tell (ptry) The Snake in the Trough (ptry) Yang, Lyndane The Red Sarong (fctn) York, Jake Adam Fire (ptry) Pilgrimage (ptry) To the Unconverted (ptry) Zhang Er (translated by Timothy Liu) Watermelon Juice (ptry/trans)

8(2): 210 8(2): 130 8(1): 217 8(1): 218 8(1): 131 8(2): 212 8(2): 216 8(2): 214 8(2): 217

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 277

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003 All Saints: New and Selected Poems by Brenda Marie Osbey. reviewed by Jon Tribble All Shook Up: Collected Poems about Elvis edited by Will Clemens (with photographs by Jon Hughes). reviewed by Jon Tribble And Her Soul Out Of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis. reviewed by Maria McLeod Archetypal Light by Elizabeth Dodd. reviewed by Douglas Haynes Bellocq’s Ophelia by Natasha Trethewey. reviewed by Melanie Dusseau Blues Narratives by Sterling D. Plumpp. reviewed by Jon Tribble Born Southern and Restless by Kat Meads. reviewed by Kathryn Kerr The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan edited by Suzanne Kamata. reviewed by Betsy Taylor Cabato Sentora by Ray Gonzalez. reviewed by Jon Tribble Celebrities in Disgrace: A Novella and Stories

by Elizabeth Searle. reviewed by Tabaré Alvarez Chick-Lit 2: (No Chic Vics) edited by Cris Mazza, Jeffrey DeShell, and Elizabeth Sheffield. reviewed by Beth Lordan Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing edited by John Egerton. reviewed by Curtis L. Crisler Crossing the Snow Bridge by Fatima Lim-Wilson. reviewed by Paul Guest The Dance House by Joseph Marshall III. reviewed by James Gill Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand by Steven V. Cramer. reviewed by Josh Bell Dipleasures of the Table: memoir as caricature

by Martha Ronk. reviewed by Mary Stepp Donkey Gospel by Tony Hoagland. reviewed by Cynthia Roth Dry Rain by Pete Fromm. reviewed by Greg Schwipps

278 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

4(1): 240 7(2): 255

5(1): 250 7(2): 260 8(1): 266 5(2): 232 3(1): 247 3(2): 264

4(2): 261 7(2): 249

3(1): 245

8(2): 252

3(2): 267 4(2): 258 3(1): 242 8(2): 243

4(1): 239 3(1): 244

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003 Fakebook: Improvisations on a Journey Back to Jazz

by Richard Terrill. reviewed by Adrian Matejka Fire From the Andes: Short Fiction by Women from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru edited and translated by Susan E. Benner & Kathy S. Leonard. reviewed by Jenni Williams Funk Lore: New Poems (1984-95) by Amiri Baraka. reviewed by Robert Elliot Fox Galileo’s Banquet by Ned Balbo. reviewed by Melanie Jordan Rack Girl Reel by Bonnie J. Morris. reviewed by Brett M. Griffiths-Holloway Hammerlock by Tim Seibles. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka) Hell’s Bottom, Colorado by Laura Pritchett. reviewed by Tabaré Alvarez Her Kind of Want by Jennifer S. Davis. reviewed by Anne Clarkin The Hour Between Dog & Wolf by Laure-Anne Bosselaar. reviewed by Kathryn Kerr Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color edited by John McNally. reviewed by Adrian Matejka It’s Only Rock and Roll: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Short Stories edited by Janice Eidus and John Kastan. reviewed by Alberta Skaggs Leaving Saturn by Major Jackson. reviewed by Adrian Matejka Living On the Edge: Fiction by Peace Corps Writers edited by John Coyne. reviewed by Chris Kelsey Lost Wax by Heather Ramsdell. reviewed by Paul Guest Messenger by R.T. Smith. reviewed by Matt Guenette Middle Ear by Forrest Hamer. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka) The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture edited by Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta. reviewed by Melanie Martin Miracle Fruit by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. reviewed by Jon Tribble Misterioso by Sascha Feinstein. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka)

7(2): 246

4(2): 264

3(1): 239 5(1): 249 7(2): 245 5(1): 256 8(1): 250 8(1): 249 3(1): 241 7(2): 251

5(2): 234

8(1): 259 5(1): 258

4(1): 242 8(1): 264 6(2): 229 8(2): 249

8(2): 247 5(2): 227

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 279

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003 Muscular Music by Terrance Hayes. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka) Naked by Shuntaro Tanikawa. reviewed by Kathryn Kerr Near Breathing, A Memoir of a Difficult Birth by Kathryn Rhett. reviewed by Kathryn Kerr Never Be the Horse by Beckian Fritz Goldberg. reviewed by Melanie Jordan Rack News from Down to the Café: New Poems by David Lee. reviewed by Brett M. Griffiths-Holloway Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam edited by Linh Dinh. reviewed by Joey Hale The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings About New York City edited by Bino A. Realuyo. reviewed by Terri Fletcher Ocean Avenue by Malena Mörling. reviewed by Ruth Ann Daugherty Of Flesh & Spirit by Wang Ping. reviewed by Paul Guest One Above & One Below by Erin Belieu. reviewed by Douglas Haynes Open House by Beth Ann Fennelly. reviewed by Melanie Martin Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan edited by Michael Steinberg. reviewed by Ira Sukrungruang Prospero’s Mirror: A Translator’s Portfolio of Latin American Short Fiction edited by Ilan Stavans. reviewed by Michael McGregor Rise by A. Van Jordan. reviewed by Adrian Matejka Rouge Pulp by Dorothy Barresi. reviewed by Melanie Dusseau The Secret History of Water by Silvia Curbelo. reviewed by Kathryn Kerr Selfwolf by Mark Halliday. reviewed by Cynthia Roth Sherpherdess with an Automatic by Jane Satterfield. reviewed by Fred Von Drasek Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

by Luis Alberto Urrea. reviewed by Tabaré Alvarez Sixty-Seven Poems for Downtrodden Saints by Jack Micheline. reviewed by Robert Elliot Fox

280 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

5(2): 229 3(2): 266 3(1): 248 6(1): 266 7(1): 229 3(2): 263

6(2): 238

5(1): 254 3(2): 270 6(2): 228 8(1): 257 7(1): 239

4(2): 266

8(1): 261 8(1): 255 4(2): 259 6(1): 272 7(1): 234 8(1): 253

7(1): 231

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003 Smoke by Dorianne Laux. reviewed by Melinda Yeomans So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks

by Rigoberto González. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka) The Spirit Returns by Richard Burgin. reviewed by Carolyn Alessio Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology edited by Charles Harper Webb. reviewed by Melanie Dusseau The Stars, The Earth, The River by Le Minh Khue (translated by Bac Hoai Tran and Dana Sachs; edited by Wayne Karlin). reviewed by Vicky Kepple Tell Me by Kim Addonizio. reviewed by Amy Kucharik The Truly Needy and Other Stories by Lucy Honig. reviewed by John Wallace Turn Thanks by Lorna Goodison. reviewed by Kathryn Kerr Turtle Pictures by Ray Gonzalez. reviewed by Jen Neely 25 New Nigerian Poets edited by Toyin Adewale. reviewed by Robert Elliot Fox Under the Red Flag by Ha Jin. reviewed by Katherine Riegel Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City edited by Laure-Anne Bosselaar. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka) Vereda Tropical by Ricardo Pau-Llosa. reviewed by Terri Fletcher Walking Back from Woodstock by Earl S. Braggs. reviewed by Terry Olson What Happens to Me by Chuck Wachtel. reviewed by Fred Von Drasek Whitman’s Wild Children: Portraits of Twelve Poets

by Neeli Cherkovski. reviewed by Robert Elliot Fox Wild Greens by Adrianne Kalfopoulou. reviewed by Jon Tribble Winning the Dust Bowl by Carter Revard. reviewed by Linda Lizut Helstern The Women Carry River Water by Nguyen Quang Thieu (translated by Martha Collins). reviewed by Terry Olson

6(2): 233 6(2): 224

8(1): 248 7(2): 257

3(2): 261

6(2): 227 6(2): 224 5(1): 252 6(1): 268 7(1): 236 3(2): 260 6(2): 236

5(2): 230 4(1): 237 6(2): 234 7(1): 225

8(2): 245 7(1): 227 3(2): 268

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 281

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003 You Come Singing by Virgil Suárez. reviewed by Adrian Harris (Adrian Matejka)

4(2): 263

Book Review Policy Crab Orchard Review’s staff considers for review collections and anthologies of poetry, short fiction, and literary nonfiction published by small independent and university presses. Please send titles for review consideration to: Jon Tribble, Book Review Editor, Crab Orchard Review, Department of English, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901-4503.

All reviews are written by Crab Orchard Review staff. In the past six years, the following presses have had titles reviewed in Crab Orchard Review’s pages: Anhinga Press, Tallahassee, FL The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, New York, NY BOA Editions, Rochester, NY Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburgh, PA Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso, TX Cleveland State University Press, Cleveland, OH Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, MN Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA Curbstone Press, Willimantic, CT David R. Godine, Boston, MA Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA FC2, Normal, IL FMSBW Press, San Francisco, CA The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, NY Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN Green Integer, Los Angeles, CA Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, NY Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, Berkeley, CA Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD Limelight Editions, New York, NY Littoral Books, Los Angeles, CA Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA Lumen Editions/Brookline Books, Cambridge, MA Lyons & Burford, New York, NY Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, MN Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI New Issues Press, Kalamazoo, MI Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH Red Crane Books, Santa Fe, NM

282 ◆ Crab Orchard Review

INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS — 1997/2003 Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, CA The Roundhouse Press, Berkeley, CA Seven Stories Press, New York, NY Steerforth Press, South Royalton, VT Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, CA Tia Chucha Press, Chicago, IL Tupelo Press, Dorset, VT University of Akron Press, Akron, OH University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, IA University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Washington, DC Zoo Press, Lincoln, NE

Crab Orchard Review ◆ 283

Announcements Crab Orchard Review and Southern Illinois University Press are pleased to announce the 2003 Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry Open Competition selections.

Our final judge, Ralph Burns, selected Jon Pineda’s Birthmark as the first-prize winner. Mr. Burns selected Lee Ann Roripaugh’s Year of the Snake as the second-prize winner. Both collections will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in April 2004.

We want to thank all of the poets who entered manuscripts in our Crab Orchard Award Series Open Competition.

Crab Orchard Review’s website has updated information on subscriptions, calls for submissions, contest information and results, and past, current and future issues. Visit us at:

<http://www.siu.edu/~crborchd/>.

the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry 2003 title

Series Editor, Jon Tribble

Pelican Tracks Poems by Elton Glaser “Elton Glaser’s Pelican Tracks offers us an intimate and intricate portrait of gritty down-home life in Louisiana.

The characters and places that populate this book reveal lives thoroughly lived and remind us that whoever and whatever surrounds us quietly invades us—in the best and perhaps worst sense of the word— and, finally, becomes us.”

—Tim Seibles, author of Hammerlock and Hurdy-Gurdy

“These beautifully made poems—rich as redeye gravy, crystalline as Ohio ice—will delight anyone seeking a fresh understanding of the American soul.…Glaser is a national treasure.

His poems are at once gritty and reverent, profound and comic. If you worry for the fate of literature, read this book and take heart.”

—Alice Fulton, author of Felt and Sensual Math Copublished with Crab Orchard Review 91 pages, ISBN 0-8093-2516-0 $12.95 paper

photo by Betty Greenway

Available at bookstores, or from

southern illinois university press P.O. Box 3697 • Carbondale, IL 62902-3697 • 800-346-2680 • FAX 800-346-2681 www.siu.edu/~siupress

the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry 2003 title

Series Editor, Jon Tribble

Becoming Ebony Poems by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley “The poems of Patricia Jabbeh Wesley are fearless, eye-opening, breathtaking, and compassionate. She writes of a homeland devastated by war and violence, of a culture's survival beneath the flames of that war, and of the everyday courage of people whose stories would be lost if not for these poems. …These are political poems in the best sense of the word—wise, necessary, undeniable.”

—Allison Joseph, author of Imitation of Life and Soul Train “In ‘Requiem for Auntie,’ Patricia Jabbeh Wesley writes, ‘the mysteries of this world are…in the silence that the dead refuse to take along.’ Her new book is a translation of that silence into the vital song of poetry. Wesley epitomizes the poet as compassionate witness, and with such poets the answer to the question—Did this poem demand to be written?—is always a resounding yes.”—Stuart Dybek, author of

The Coast of Chicago and Brass Knuckles Copublished with Crab Orchard Review 79 pages, ISBN 0-8093-2517-9 $12.95 paper

Available at bookstores, or from

southern illinois university press P.O. Box 3697 • Carbondale, IL 62902-3697 • 800-346-2680 • FAX 800-346-2681 www.siu.edu/~siupress