12.23.2011
afternoons in suburbia posted at 12/23/2011 05:50:00 PM
On days when I feel particularly vulnerable—days when I feel like myself when I was twelve and holding myself together in suburbia—I try to make myself an egg salad. My neighbor made it for me one soft afternoon when my mom left me outside with no key and took my brother with her.
It’s not a very interesting story—you have to understand, this was suburbia. The sunlight always hit the rooftops just right, never too bright but never too dim, everything was saturated, everything was quiet, save for the chirping birds in the afternoon sun, a piano tinkling from the distance. This day in particular was my brother’s high school graduation, and a few days ago, my mother took me to the department store to buy new shoes for him, and myself, for the coming school year.
I’d insisted on a nice pair of Florsheim loafers made out of black velvet. They were gorgeous, and it was heaven to walk in them. On the morning of my brother’s graduation, we woke up with no breakfast and I watched him get ready.
This was going to be his big day. From the window in my room I watched the robins on the aluminum roofs flutter, the sun blinding in its refracted light. I think I remember what I wore: a white long-sleeved button down, denim jeans, and black shoes. I remember how I felt clearly that time: hollow and flat. As if I was watching the world through a shell of myself; I wanted nothing but to lie down and watch the afternoon fade.
My mother saw me walking towards the gigantic and foreboding front door and stopped me in my tracks.
“Why aren’t you wearing the new shoes I bought you?” she asked. Reluctantly, I answered, “I just don’t feel like wearing them, and I don’t want to dirty them yet.”
The truth was she had warned me that the shoe might not fit in time for the school year, when my feet had become big, and to my horror the shoe wouldn’t fit properly after a few days. I couldn’t tell her it wouldn’t fit because she would have an actual fit, and it would leave me marked again. Not my thing.
She started getting angry, “wear the shoes, do it!” and I wouldn’t budge, she started pulling my hair, hitting me on the head, screaming at me—but I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t because I knew that the moment she knew it wouldn’t fit me, this would get worse and carry on until the school year.
Finally she got tired of forcing me, and she said, “I don’t care anymore,” and took my brother and told him to get into the car, opened the gate, sped off without even looking at me. Over her shoulder she shouted at me to make sure the gate gets closed, and that she hoped I would be thirsty and hungry. “You deserve it,” she said, “for being disobedient.”
I watched her speed off and felt left again, and in a rare moment I felt like I hadn’t in a long time: that I was a kid. Turning thirteen in November and still unsure, I had no idea what it was like to feel okay, except to shut off. I cannot even begin to tell you how strange that feeling is, especially when you look back as an adult and understand that no child should have ever felt that way.
But for that moment, I was soft and I wanted to cry. Nothing more. The gates of the garage locked me out into the subdivision street. I climbed over a part of the fence that was small, sat down and watched the wall-less garage with its garden showing the vibrant blue sky and the wonderful cumulus clouds, the chirping robins dusting themselves off the dried soil, the kamias tree with its fragrant smelling fruit, the sharpness of cut grass, the glint of light from the neighbor’s windowpanes, their windchimes hanging from their star-apple tree, the piano notes from their living room.
I breathed in and for that five minutes, let myself understand what vulnerability meant. No food, no water, only hard cement and hot afternoon sun, my sweat trickling down my neck and all alone, I couldn’t even get into that imposing house of ours, walls the color of washed-out peach.
I had to think of how to get in. I considered breaking the screen from the big windows open again, or breaking the sliding glass doors, but the former would only make my mom more furious, and for the latter, the sliding doors had shatter-proof glass.
I sat on the ground and watched my neighbor’s house through the grills of our gate. I wished I lived in a house that looked as soft and accommodating as that one. But I had to be somewhere, I couldn’t just wait here. I knew she wasn’t coming back until evening, and it was far from that. I was hungry and I hadn’t eaten or drank anything the whole day. I had to go somewhere.
I climbed out of the fence and onto our driveway, I looked around slowly, felt the breeze and decided to just walk. Maybe I could beg for food at one of the small food shops. One thing I’ve learned is that no one says no to a child, even a well-dressed one when they look pitiful.
As I started to walk away from my house, the old neighbor, a woman my mother knew from her childhood, went out and told me to come into her house, since I was locked out. I’d always wanted to see what was inside her house, because her house looked cozy and wonderful—old and with character.
It was picturesque from the outside. The owner was an old piano teacher, and her husband some doctor or something, her now adult children flitting in and out of the house occasionally—one had a band, and played the piano, another the drums, the other one had her car over every weekend and she dressed wonderfully: like an Indian mistress.
And always her house smelt of baked cookies, or cooked fish, star-apples all played to the backdrop of windchimes, evening or night, frightening storms or sun-kissed summers.
As she ushered me in, I saw the piano that I always wanted to play since we moved back to that village. It was old and I asked her if she still played. “Oh sometimes, but usually my daughter does, the one who comes over every weekend.”
Her husband came out and welcomed me, and as the piano teacher told her husband to look after me, because she was going to get drinks for us, he took me to their kitchen out back and asked if I was hungry.
I just nodded. I never expected to talk to an adult who was very polite yet caring, and who wasn’t family. It was a good feeling to understand what kindness was. I looked around. Their kitchen was a separate shed from the rest of the house, and there they used a stove that used only wood. They had a stack of chopped wood and logs in their backyard, and after he loaded their stove, he took out a fork and handed it to me.
“Here,” he said, “I’ll show you something interesting.” He rinsed his hands under the water, and opened the boiling pot. Inside were hardboiled eggs, and on top were steamed eggplants sliced into strips. He put some opened eggs into a bowl (one for him and one for me) and put a scoop of mayonnaise on top.
“Watch,” he said with a smile, and he started mashing the eggs with the mayo. Then he took a strip of eggplant, ate a scoop of the salad, and with his teeth pulled out the eggplant from its skin into his teeth, and chewed.
“Try it,” he said after swallowing. Reluctantly, I did, and found that I liked it. Not the taste, but more for what it stood for—it was comforting. For the first time in ages, I felt safe. After I swallowed, with the bravado of an old uncle, he said, “What do you think? Good, no?” and I laughed my yes’s as he led me to their living room and told me stories about my grandmother and my mother during the 80’s.
As evening approached, I watched from their lace-curtained windows to see if my mother would come back, and when she did, I ran out—partly to show her that we had good neighbors, and partly to show her that I did okay without her, and other people were kinder.
She thanked them with a polite smile, fake laughs and thank you, thank you for taking care of my son while holding me in a stiff hug by her side. As we walked in the front door, and the door shut, she let me go and said, “That was embarrassing. You were embarrassing. You should say thank you, and ask pardon. Look at what you did; because you were disobedient you inconvenience other people. Embarrassing.” And she went to change into her room.
Outside, their windchimes sung, and I walked to the kitchen to wash the dishes and get our dinner ready.
***
These days I never seem to be able to re-create that same taste, even though I’ve tried many a late night, or quiet afternoon. Always too salty, too alone.
This morning, as the sun rises, I feel very vulnerable, like that child again. And I don’t know where to seek comfort—there is no sadness like the sadness of knowing there is nowhere to hide, or at least, feeling that.
Labels: blame it on chemicals, memory, sad
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