I was frustrated, annoyed that she didn’t seem to grasp how
much time the task she took on would consume. I yanked out a wooden cutting
board, dampened some paper towel to put underneath to secure it, and began peeling
carrots with furious rapidity, my back to my mother as she cut cabbage at the
kitchen table. I finished peeling and began julienning them, quietly fuming
over my frustration that Mom would not let me choose what recipes we did for
church but I was still expected to somehow make them all come together in under
an hour.
Mom finished her cabbage, came behind me and grabbed some
peeled carrots and brought them to her board on the table. I didn’t look up,
just continued cutting, growing increasingly frustrated with my imperfect
matchsticks and the dullness of the knives in my parents’ kitchen. Drawn by the
sound of scraping, chopping and carrots rolling on wood, I glanced behind me
after awhile, and saw my Mom struggling to keep the carrots from rolling and
sliding as she tried to make neat lengthwise slices to reduce into small
matchsticks. I could tell her knife must be even duller than mine; I could
sense her frustration. In knifeskills we had learned to slice a bit off one
side of the carrot to create a flat surface. This was to keep the carrot from
rolling so we could make the rest of the lengthwise cuts more safely. Partly
from irritation, and partly from not knowing how to go about implying to my mother,
always so fast and self-assured in the kitchen, that she didn’t know how to cut
a carrot, I didn’t say anything. I turned back to the carrots on my board.
Still so many to cut. Why this recipe
for so many people? Why not something simpler? Church was starting soon. I
decided I’d just make slices on the bias and cut the matchsticks from that.
Rougher, less uniform matchsticks, but quicker, easier, and it’s not like those
goddam bachelors at church were gonna give two shits about the work that went
into this. I knew how this would go. People would show up to mass just for the supper
afterward, stay after to fill their plates and bellies with helping after
helping, and promptly leave my mother and her family to do the cleanup. I
resented the amount of effort my mother put in for these people.
I heard three sounds - a sharp chop, the scrape of a knife
on wood and my mother’s sharp intake of breath - almost simultaneously behind
me. My mother wasn’t one to make much of a sound when she got hurt. She was a
tough woman, with a high pain threshold, and more often than not she’d just set
her teeth on edge and breathe in sharply through them. I remember being about
thirteen and so hugely impressed that she didn’t even make a sound when wasps
attacked us and she got stung on the wrist.
I turned around. She’d set her knife down and was clutching
her left index finger.
I set down my knife and walked over.
“You cut yourself?” I said as I peered at her hand
“Yeah…” she said, breathing in through her teeth again, and she
removed her right hand so we could examine her finger.
It was bleeding a fair bit, but didn’t look like it needed
stitches. I was so used to getting cuts from school now, so much worse than
this, and relieved she hadn’t cut herself worse, so I automatically said, “Oh,
it’s not too bad” and started to walk away.
I didn’t realize how unsympathetic I must have sounded until
I her quietly say behind me “It’s bleeding pretty bad…I think I’ll need a Band-Aid.”
It was unlike my mother to stop her work and ask for a band-aid.
It made me think of a little kid, who perhaps wasn’t hurt so much by the cut but
by the fact that I didn’t seem to care about it. The unfamiliarity of that
simple utterance made me pause. She was so tough, so quick to tell her kids to
be brave little soldiers. She’d taught us for years to pick ourselves up and
dust ourselves off. She’d work and clean and scrub and not seem to notice
exhaustion or pain or cuts or scrapes or bruises or slivers until hours after
she’d quit.
I tore off a sheet paper towel for her to put on it while I
grabbed a Band-Aid, and walked back over to her. I handed it to her, she looked
up at me, and my heart broke.
It wasn’t irritation or indignation at my unconcern written
across her features – it was embarrassment. I wasn’t expecting that. My mom,
who so often seemed in front of her kids like she was unshakably sure of
herself, was embarrassed in my presence. She was embarrassed that she’d cut
herself in front of me. It didn’t occur to me until that moment how she must
have been feeling the whole time we were cooking together that day. Here I had
been coming home on sporadic occasional weekends few and far between, this big
shot culinary student from the city excitedly spouting off all the thing I’d
learned, all the new, more efficient ways to do things that I’d been taught,
and I had been making my mom scared to cook in her own kitchen. My mom, whose
cooking was raved about for miles, who taught me nearly everything I knew
before I left to go become a “real cook” was insecure, embarrassed, unsure of
herself in front of her daughter who supposedly now knew so much.
There were no words to describe how awful I felt.
I went and got my mom a Band-Aid. I don’t remember if she let
me help her put it on or not. Probably not. All I remember is the realization
that I never, ever, wanted to make my mom feel this way in her own kitchen again.
A week or two after she died, I was in her kitchen. I set a
carrot on my cutting board...
I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor, still crying,
hysterical with grief a full hour later.
Don’t ever ask me to julienne a carrot again.
