Dough

personal essay

by Kaylee-Nicole Eyabi Merit Award Winner

It was the second half of my sophomore year, right after Winter break, when my German teacher informed me that I was eligible for going on a bi-annual class trip to Europe. There were no more than twenty students in the class that year, and it was my second year taking German so my teacher—we’ll call her Ms. C—was already familiar with me. My mom received an email from Ms. C that basically told her that I was one of a handful of students who were picked to go on the trip due to my academics and my character. I remember my initial reaction was surprise and excitement. I’d been to different states before but this would be my first time traveling outside of the country. But my optimistic feelings were short-lived. I had forgotten about my reality. This was years before my mom would get a new job that paid better than the Veteran Affairs. Not much has changed since then, but I live in a single parent household with just my younger brother and my mom, our only source of income. Even though money got tight at times, and we sometimes had to stretch leftovers because there was no time for grocery shopping, we were comfortable. My mom was also clever in her own way by not making it obvious to my brother and I that we were struggling financially. My excitement dwindled when I remembered this, and I tried to placate my mother’s own enthusiasm with soothing words.

“Mommy, it’s alright if you can’t afford it,” I said. I didn’t look up from the stack of papers that held information about the trip. My fingers fiddled with the corners. “It’s really not a problem if I don’t go.”

She and I sat at the dining table with only the orange light from the ceiling fan to brighten our surroundings. The blinds had been shut and the curtains pulled closed, signaling that night had fallen. In those days, other than when she was off, I only saw her in the mornings as my brother and I left for school, but mostly at night after she came home from work. I sometimes stayed up waiting for her. My mom was silent for a moment, then she spoke up.

“Do you want to go?” My mom asked.

“Yes, but if I can’t—”

“Do you want to go to Europe?” She asked again. She was more firm this time.

I finally looked up at her, and she was already looking back at me. I feel like mothers have a way of gazing at their children that we almost can’t help but want everything we hold close to our hearts to come flowing out like a river, capable of washing anything caught in its current away. Almost. “Yes,” I said. My heart overflowed. “I want to go.”

She slapped the wooden table with her palm, as if to set it in stone. “Then you’re going.”

I still had my doubts, but I would never voice them to her. A few days later, the two of us met up with Ms. C after school and my mom signed the necessary papers to register me for the guided tour.

One afternoon when the school bus pulled up to my neighborhood, I saw that my mom’s red Chevrolet Cruze was in the parking lot, which meant she wasn’t working that day. I stepped off the bus and walked around the apartment block to the back to reach our unit. When I unlocked the door and pushed it open, the sweet and familiar smell of a snack from my childhood flooded my senses. It was not uncommon for me to come back home to the smell of food being cooked, but this was new. Once again, the light from the ceiling fan shined; this time the blades spinning at the highest speed. The largest ball of dough you have ever seen, a light yellow–beige color, sat atop our wooden dining table without our usual tablecloth to cover it. A large metal bucket with even more dough inside it was positioned next to the mass. Strips of dough slightly longer than a foot and no more than an inch wide laid side by side in rows, and at the end of one strip were pieces of it that were deliberately cut into cubes. The cause of all this was no other than my mom, who was still chopping at the dough without a lapse in concentration. Muscle memory, I suppose, from all the times she did it back in Cameroon during the Christmas season as a young girl.

“Why are you making chin chin?” (this is pronounced cheen-cheen. A fried snack of West African origin. Made from dough that consisted of butter, flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and some water). I only ever liked eating my mom’s.

My mom looked up at me with a smile, as if the smell hadn’t nearly singed my nose hairs. “This is how I’m going to pay for your trip.” She was still chopping with her knife. “I’ll make some of this and sell it to people at my job.”

I wasn’t sure what the reception would be like from people who probably don’t consume much non-American foods. In my personal experience, they weren’t always pleasant, so I stopped offering. But I was waiting to see what would come of her idea.

This is what she would do every night she came home from work if she wasn’t too tired—I didn’t know if that was possible. For weeks, I went to bed to the sound of the spinning fan, the chopping knife, and let the sweet aroma of fried dough lull me to sleep. And to my surprise, her coworkers loved her chin chin and were actually buying it. I don’t think I ever asked, but I’m sure my mom was even putting aside some money from her paycheck every month. The lengths my mom had gone through to get me to go on this trip wouldn’t hit me until much later. Walking the extensive hallways of the historic Neuschwanstein Castle in south Germany, strolling the brick streets of the city of Innsbruck, huddling together for a group picture at the top of chilly Mount Pilatus in Switzerland, and drifting along the canals of Venice on a gondola delayed this realization. I hope she knows just how much those 10 days in Europe changed me and ultimately made me a better and more open-minded person. And I hope she knows that time of my life, both the trip and prior to it, is a memory I hold close to my heart. But, I think she got the message with the bear hug I gave her when we came back.