Feeding the Hungry Ghost (22 page)

It knocked out our electricity by ten o’clock. The phone line went dead an hour later. With the windows shuttered, I couldn’t see out, couldn’t see what the hurricane was doing. But I could hear it. I did not know wind could scream. It keened like a banshee around us all night long, and it was all I could do not to scream right along with it. Gusts smacked the house and shook
the foundation till I thought we would twist and spin up and away like Dorothy’s house in
Wizard of Oz.

And then all fell quiet. The storm passed by morning. This was the moment for Benjamin and me to turn and embrace each other, grateful we were still alive. We didn’t. But together, we ventured from our dark, shuttered house into sunshine. The sky was clear, the air freshly laundered. As I looked up, it was as if the hurricane had never been. But down here on earth, fallen trees — some as high as homes — blocked the road; power lines were down; weird bits of debris — shattered roof tiles, jagged, splintered tree limbs, shreds of clothing, a single hubcap — were strewn all over the block.

The thing is, as bad as a hurricane is, you don’t know how bad until afterward. This happened at a time of few cell phones or laptops. Discovering how friends and relatives were, how the rest of Miami had done, was piecemeal and protracted, a slow, painful relay of information from person to person. My aunt had no roof and extensive flooding. A friend had lost home, car, belongings, everything. Houses were smashed along one southwestern stretch of the city, as though by a cranky giant. Citywide infrastructure was demolished, too.

It is hard to get up a good oh-woe-is-me-am-I-getting-what-I-need-in-my-relationship thing going at times like this. There were bigger issues.

After just a few unplugged hours, you realize how big a part electricity plays in our daily lives, how brilliantly we use it to insulate ourselves, how vulnerable we are without it. It didn’t take long to feel the full force of the subtropics. This was August. It was hot. And humid. And humbling. Within hours, everything felt sticky and saturated, including us. In these ideal hothouse conditions, mold and mildew blossomed on every surface. Food
promptly started to rot in the refrigerator. Ice melted before our eyes, and there was no telling when we’d get more.

Junk food consumption spikes at times like these. The first time anyone bothered documenting this was after the September 11 World Trade Center attacks. The phenom is called terror eating, when you’ve had enough and take to bed — or scurry beneath it — with corn dogs and Pop-Tarts and tell the world to go to hell.

It is not a time you think of having a party. Yet our house was central, still standing, and, given the condition of the roads, relatively easy to get to. So the night after the hurricane, friends, family, neighbors, and a few strays gathered here. And I was glad. We all needed to be close, as hot and sticky as it was.

This does not mean we were perky. I was a zombified version of myself, and the people who came that night were no better. We were overwhelmed, haggard, ashen, and a bit on the ripe side. Some showed up tearful, others were angry, but everyone came and surrendered the bits and bobs of food they’d brought from home, food as tired and sorry as we were. I’ve seen more and peppier produce when I served at a soup kitchen. Even with everyone chipping in, dinner for ten would be a challenge. We had no oven, stove top, refrigerator, or coherent menu; I had no coherent brain. But we are a species of adaptation, whether we want to be or not. When all else fails, there is pasta.

Benjamin corralled everyone out back and fired up the gas grill. I set a big pot of water on top. And waited. After half an hour, we got something approaching a boil. After another half hour, the spaghetti had cooked to just a shade shy of al dente, and I was one click from despair. It would have to do. I took the pot off and drained off the pasta by holding a colander over a patch of dirt, saving some of the precious starchy cooking water for the
sauce. Benjamin took everyone’s donated meat and threw it on the grill. Our friends and family staggered around him.

I took the drained pasta inside. The tile floor, like my bare feet, sweated. Outside, the daylight was fading. Inside, it was dark. This is something you tend to forget in a city so in love with electricity that the streetlights blot out the stars at night. But take away power, and when the sun sets, it really sets. Oh, sure, there are the pretty bits when the sun fades, the light plays golden, and the sky goes all art-deco pastel, but then two minutes later, bam, it’s black.

Alone in the kitchen, I lit a few candles to see by and chopped up the vegetables already wilting without refrigeration. I tossed them in a skillet with a glug of olive oil and gave them a stir and sauté over the Sterno stove — a flimsy little cardboard-and-metal stand erected over a can of flammable goo that provided some heat as well as noxious fumes. I held my breath. Then I sacrificed my last two lemons and squeezed them into the vegetables — my favorite way to zing up food. One lemon was so soft and tired, my thumb went right through it. I burst into tears.

A small, jewellike, rational part of me knew it was wrong to have survived a hurricane only to be defeated by a lemon. The rest of me told the rational part of me to shut up.

I addressed the universe. “Can’t one frigging thing go right? Is that too much to ask?”

Apparently, it was. Because a few minutes later, a weird light began making its jerky way into the house. A break-in? A poltergeist? Sterno hallucination? Aneurysm? All inconvenient options right now. I went from sweaty to cold-sweaty.

Benjamin called out, “Ellen? Where are you?”

“Paris,”
I shouted. “I’m in Paris. I’m having a wonderful time, thanks. I’m in the
kitchen
— what did you think?”

He stood in the kitchen doorway, holding a flashlight, the source of my light, a tall man casting a taller shadow.

“I heard your voice. I thought something was —” He broke off. “I missed you.” Or maybe he said, “I miss you.”

I could not for the life of me imagine why. I would divorce myself if I could.

It was too hot for a tantrum, too hot to cry, but I started blubbing about the lemon, the hurricane, us. He grabbed me in a clumsy hug. It was too hot for hugs. I dropped the wooden spoon and threw both arms around him.

Then Benjamin, my guardian angel with a category 4 headache, shone the flashlight beam into the pot as I gave the pasta a last toss. He lit enough candles for a high mass, set them around the dining-room table, and called everyone in to eat.

We sat around the table, eating or not, the candles melting into mush, the flickering light casting monstrous shadows, the open windows bringing no relief of a breeze. The night and the tangle of fallen trees enclosed us all like a witch’s enchantment.

Someone knocked at the door. I screamed. Benjamin did the more conventional and useful thing — he opened the door. There, in the darkness, stood a friend holding up a dripping bag, the last bag of ice in the city of Miami. He came in, handed over the ice, and pulled up a chair. We toasted him with refreshed drinks and spirits; he ate the rest of the pasta.

I brought out the chocolate cake. Even those who’d been too miserable for dinner sat up at the sight of dessert. We divvied up the cake among us.

In the candlelight’s unsteady glow, Benjamin and I looked at each other from opposite ends of the table. Our problems were still going to be there. But we were here, with our friends and our family, in our house that was built to last. Maybe we were built to
last, too. I’m not saying we all felt lucky, spared, saved. We felt okay. We felt we’d survived. In desperate times, that’s a good first step.

It’s a tricky first step, too. I tend to find hope as elusive as an ice cube in August — I have it, and then I don’t. The big, cosmic lessons we each need to learn are the ones quickest forgotten — memory card full. But I have to start somewhere. Sometimes, it starts with making dinner.

I don’t make this pasta often. I can be superstitious enough to think it invites calamity. I make it when I’m tapped out. And I’m always glad. It is not showy and is of no particular cultural or culinary tradition, other than necessity. But it’s soothing, simple, and reminds me that even in disaster, there are shimmering moments of generosity and forgiveness and hope. Sometimes there’s spaghetti, too.

When-All-Else-Fails Pasta
(a.k.a. Ten-Minute Pasta with Zucchini, Tomatoes, and Chickpeas)

This recipe relies on vegetable workhorses (if that’s not a mixed metaphor) like zucchini, tomatoes, and chickpeas. Also welcome — any and all herbs and any green vegetables in your fridge or freezer. Give us your tired broccoli, your poor freezer-burned peas. Add them to the pasta. The only semi-arcane ingredient is nutritional yeast. It is not necessary, but do not scoff at it. Rich in vitamin B
₁₂
, nutritional yeast is a vegan’s best friend. It could be yours, too. Cheesy-tasting, dairy-free, and shelf-stable, it’s a nice thing when your real cheese is sporting a blue fuzz of mold.

Serves 8 to 10 (you can halve the recipe if you like, in which case it serves a more seemly 4 to 5)

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 or 2 pinches red pepper flakes

4 zucchini, chopped

4 tomatoes, chopped, or one 28-ounce can diced tomatoes

Any extra vegetables you have on hand, chopped (optional)

Two 15-ounce cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1 pound whole wheat spaghetti or angel hair pasta

Juice of 2 lemons

Any stray bits of fresh herbs, chopped (optional)

¼ cup nutritional yeast (optional, but excellent)

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes, and zucchini. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic turns golden, the pepper flakes sizzle, and the zucchini softens, about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and their juice, and any extra chopped vegetables you’re in need of using up. Stir and cook for another few minutes until the mixture comes together as a nice, simple pan sauce. Stir in the chickpeas. Reduce the heat to medium, stirring occasionally, while in another large pot, you boil the pasta according to the package directions.

Drain the pasta, reserving ½ cup of the pasta cooking water, and return the cooked pasta to the large pot. Pour the zucchini-and-tomato mixture over the pasta and toss until the pasta is evenly coated in the sauce. Add the lemon juice and, if desired, some of the reserved pasta water for the ideal sauce-to-noodle balance. Sprinkle in any or all the herbs and, if you like, the nutritional yeast. It adds
body, flavor, and oomph. Toss to combine and season generously with sea salt and a good grinding of fresh pepper.

GENTLE NUDGE
the
NINTH: GET CAUGHT UP
in the
RAPTURE

Vegetables get their name from the Latin
vegetare,
which means “to enliven.” It’s life force, chi, all that stuff. Processed food, on the other hand, must have its origins in the word
zombie.
So eat a vegetable — a fresh vegetable. It can change your life. Changed mine.

My mother used to be into Atkins (don’t get me started); my father is vegphobic. Fresh green vegetables weren’t part of my childhood. Vegetables came in a frozen brick — it was a benighted era; we knew no better. They were something relegated. An afterthought. To this day, my father will manage to choke down a fresh asparagus tip then give up and say the hell with it.

My childhood involved eating a fair amount of bad (that is to say, frozen) broccoli. And yet, in one of those mysteries of life, I grew to love vegetables, all of them, starting with broccoli, my first vegetable love. Like all true loves, it has endured. I didn’t go looking for broccoli but stumbled upon it, where it was waiting for me all along.

My sophomore year of college, I was home on summer break, helping to make dinner. I’d steamed a head of fresh broccoli, intending, as was family tradition, to bury it under buttered bread crumbs — the better to disguise it. I was separating the florets with my fingers when I absentmindedly popped one in my mouth. Everything stopped.

I surrendered to the taste, vegetal yet sweet, and to the texture, firm to the bite yet yielding. I fell upon the broccoli, unbuttered, uncrumbed, unadorned, like a woman starving. I could all but feel its phytonutrients working their magic on me, busting through bad college food and worse college habits. I’d been a vegetarian for years, but in that instant, I became something more — a broccoli believer, my life forever changed, redeemed, hallelujah.

Vegetable rapture can happen to you, too. But you’ve got to engage with the process. Start by eating a fresh vegetable.

Broccoli with Lemon and Mint (Broccoli for Beginners)