The Kitchen Daughter (16 page)

Shannon says, “I don’t like dogs. I like cats. I have them on my suitcase. Aunt Ginny, you have a very pretty cat. Where is your cat?”

“She’s probably upstairs,” I tell her. “Midnight is very shy.”

“So is Shannon,” says Amanda. “They should get along fine.”

“Shannon, are you shy?” I ask her.

She shrugs and says, “Long-haired cats are the prettiest. There are also short-haired cats and they sometimes call them domestic short-hairs. There are also cats without any hair at all.”

“They’re called Sphynx, right?”

“Sphynx, yes, that’s right. But most cats have soft fur and that’s why I like them. Hairless cats aren’t pretty.”

Amanda says, “She has very strong opinions about cats. And not just the domestic kind. You should hear her talk about the fishing cat we saw at the zoo.”

“It comes from Asia. It’s not white like your cat, Aunt Ginny. It’s gray with black stripes. And bigger.”

Amanda suggests, “Maybe you should draw Aunt Ginny a picture of a fishing cat later. Then she could see what it looks like. Maybe you girls could both sit in the dining room and color with crayons, how does that sound?”

The girls agree it sounds fun. The dining room table is broad and solid, and we need to place books on the chairs so the girls aren’t sitting with their chins at table level. Amanda sets out a coloring book for Parker and a few sheets of blank paper for Shannon.

“You girls stay put, and if you need anything, you just shout for me, okay?”

“Okay,” they say in chorus.

To me, Amanda says, “I’m going to get started on the library.”

“Okay.” I join her. When she reaches for the boxes of photographs, I have a moment of panic, but then remember I’ve hidden away the pictures of Evangeline. No, they’re not here. They’re safely under the carpet in my closet.

She sets a box up on Dad’s desk and starts going through the photographs. “Why aren’t these in albums? They’re gorgeous.”

“I know.”

She turns a photo over, holds it up in my direction. “Is this one Nonna?”

“Yes.”

“Gorgeous, gorgeous,” she says, shaking her head. “We’re lucky they’re not damaged, just all tossed around like this. You think they’re all Dad’s?”

“I think so.”

“He was … amazing. We can just put these in their own box for now, but I’m probably going to want these. I can scan you copies.”

I’m only half listening, because I notice the picture in her hand is different from the others. It’s black-and-white. The wall, the collar, the face. Evangeline.

In this one she is looking straight at the camera, and it feels like her eyes are boring into mine, which I don’t like. I have to look away, even though she isn’t real. As if I didn’t want to look away, thinking of her ghost in my kitchen, howling in a ruined voice, crying out to understand something I couldn’t explain to her: why people can be cruel.

I hid them, but I missed one.

Amanda looks at it and says, “Who’s this?”

I realize it doesn’t mean to her what it means to me. Of course it doesn’t. So maybe this is a good thing. Her memory isn’t as good as mine in general, but she’s better at faces.

“I don’t know. She doesn’t look familiar to you?”

“Not at all. Was it just this one? She’s not in any others?” Amanda begins pawing through the box.

“No,” I say, which is technically the truth. None of the other photos in the box is of Evangeline. The other twenty-eight upstairs are her, but down here, it’s just the one.

“Well, I don’t recognize her. There’s not a lot to go on. They’re a little grainy, so maybe ten years old? Fifteen? Dad always had a great camera, so they could be older. Definitely not digital. Definitely film. It’s so hard to tell with black-and-white. She doesn’t look familiar to you either?”

“No, not at all. I mean, maybe. I thought maybe she could have been a nurse at the hospital?” The lie comes easily. I have information I shouldn’t have, so I find a way to pretend I came by it honestly.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” she says, handing it back to me. “Dad never took me to the hospital, so I didn’t get to know anyone there.”

She pulls a picture of the four of us out of the box. Ma then her then me then Dad. The whole family, together.

In a soft voice, Amanda says, “I don’t think he liked me very much.”

I say firmly, “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I always felt like I came in second.” She covers up the half of the photo with her and Ma in it, leaving just Dad and his other daughter, me.

I’ve never heard her say this before. I tell her, “Don’t feel like that.”

“You should know as well as anyone, you can tell someone how to feel, but it doesn’t make them feel that way.” She drops both photos back in the box, puts the lid on, and pushes down gently on each corner in turn.

“You’re right.”

“Anyway. No, I don’t know who that woman is, or why we have a picture of her. Dad probably didn’t even take it. It was probably just mixed in with our stuff, like the developer was doing ours and someone else’s and put this one in the wrong pile.”

It amazes me how logical she sounds. I know what she says isn’t
right, but it sounds so much like it could be. Maybe Ma was right, at least about one thing. Maybe my cross is that I’m gullible.
Gullible
is on a page with
gull
, of course, and
guidance
, and
gyre.

“Anything else?” asks Amanda, setting the black box of photographs on Dad’s desk, not back where it belongs, but not in the pile of things taken care of. “We should get back to work.”

“Oh. Yes. Can you write a check for groceries?”

“For next week?”

“No, this is for the ones that already came.”

“What would you do without me?” She sees my mouth opening and hastens to add, “Don’t answer that. Just write it yourself and bring it to me to sign. My checkbook’s in my purse, in the kitchen. See how the girls are doing while you’re down there.”

Shannon and Parker are coloring quietly, and don’t even look up as I go by. When I bring Amanda the checkbook I tell her so.

“Thank heaven for little girls,” she says. “If they were boys I’d be a basket case. My friend Lily has two boys. They’re always falling off things or spitting in her hair or peeing out windows. It’s crazy.”

“That does sound crazy!”

“But what can you do,” she says, leaning over Dad’s desk to sign the check. “Kids are kids. They have their own personalities. Like Shannon and Parker. They’re so different. They have the same genes, but they’re night and day. Shannon’s so quiet, and Parker’s just so outgoing. Thank goodness I don’t have two like Parker, I guess. Two Shannons, okay, but two Parkers, no thanks. But I’m happiest with exactly what I’ve got, of course. Listen to me babble, I’m sorry. Believe me, you wouldn’t want kids. They make you a fool.”

“I want kids,” I say.

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” she says. “That’s the last thing I need right now, you getting yourself pregnant.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I tell my sister. “I’d get married first.”

“You’re not seeing anyone, are you?”

“No.” I don’t remind her it’s a stupid expression. Who don’t we see?

“Have anyone in mind?”

“No.” I’ve always wanted a husband and kids, but haven’t really visualized the steps between here and there. It always seemed like there was plenty of time.

“Well, you know, I shouldn’t laugh. My friend Lorna, she came to my wedding with one guy, and she asked me to be in her wedding six months later, and it was a totally different guy she was marrying. And Angelica, she got proposed to by a guy while they were both jumping out of a plane, you know, skydiving? On their second date! People do weird stuff. Not that I think you should do that.”

“I’m not going to.”

“Marriage isn’t a cakewalk. And kids are no picnic,” she says, tearing the check off and setting it on the corner of the desk for me to take. “Don’t fool yourself.”

I slip it into my pocket. “I don’t fool myself.”

“No, I guess you don’t. I’m sorry I get freaked out. I just don’t want anything to happen to you. Mom was so worried that something would.”

“And nothing has,” I say.

“Not yet,” she says. “But how will we make sure that nothing does?”

I ask her, “Has anything bad ever happened to you?”

“Lots of times.”

“Then how can you expect to keep me safe? Bad things happen to everybody.”

Amanda says, “That doesn’t help me feel better, you know.”

I’m at a loss.

She says, “Listen, before the girls get sick of coloring I want to get this whole shelf packed up.” Her gesture covers the entire west wall, rows of textbooks and reference books and histories stretching up
toward the ceiling. “You can help me, or you can go through the stuff in your room instead.”

“My room?”

“Your old room,” she says. “I went through a bunch of stuff in my old room, and there was plenty of it, so maybe you should go through yours too.”

If I go through my room, she won’t, so I’m happy to go along with her suggestion.

Before I go upstairs I take a look in my parents’ room, to make sure Amanda hasn’t been poking around the fireplace. The red geraniums in the rectangular pot are exactly where I left them, undisturbed. When I look in the closet, I notice the shoes are gone, so I find the box labeled
SHOES
in the stack against the wall. The two pairs of shoes I care about are on top. I put them back in their places again. Maybe this time she won’t notice. If I need to crawl into this closet, which I hope I don’t, but if I really need to, I want the shoes to be there.

Down the hall, staring into a different closet, I pull out an unlabeled, plain brown cardboard box. Old dried tape fails to stick it together at the edges. It reminds me of the one I found in Amanda’s room and labeled
AMANDA KIDHOOD
. And when I open it, it’s my own childhood that’s inside.

I sit down, leaning against a wall painted Chardonnay, and start pulling things out, putting them in piles. Pictures and notebooks, report cards and folders. Years and years of school. Years and years of Ginny.

I work down through the successive layers: second grade, third grade, fourth. Pictures of my tiny self, years ago, mixed in with my creations. Second grade, heavy bangs and a round face, an unreasonable shirt of red and white and navy stripes. Third grade, the year I wore nothing but black and white and gray, in various combinations.

I brace myself and reach for one of the notebooks. It’s just like I remember.

I sketched in the margins, but nothing like what Amanda had in her notebooks. No cartoons of the teacher, no hearts or last names. Even if I didn’t know from the squared-off Magic Markered number 2 on the cover that this is my second-grade notebook, the doodles clearly tell me exactly where I was.

“Aunt Ginny,” says a small voice, “is your cat up here with you?”

I look up. Shannon.

“I’m not sure exactly where she is,” I tell her.

“Is she okay, though?”

“I’m sure she’s okay.”

“What’s that?” She points at the notebook, which I’ve opened. The pages are covered with patterns. Clear evidence I was in my Turkish rug phase.

“Just some drawings I did, a long time ago.”

“Shannon!” calls Amanda’s voice. “Where are you?”

“I’m here with Aunt Ginny!”

“Come down!”

“I’ll watch her,” I shout back, and gesture to Shannon to come over and sit next to me. Maybe because she’s so small, I don’t mind having her in my personal space. She wiggles in next to me and lifts her tiny chin up to see over the page.

“What’s that one?” asks Shannon, and points.

The patterns don’t pull me in the way they once did. But the knowledge is still there. Deep down. “These are motifs that Turkish weavers use in their rugs. They each have a meaning.”

“Like a code?”

“Exactly.”

“I like codes. I learned the whole hobo code from a book, like where a cat means the lady of the house is friendly and the curve shape means it’s the house of a bad man.”

“Same thing,” I say. “This one that looks like an hourglass? It’s called the hair-band.”

“My hair-bands don’t look like that.”

“Well, Turkish hair-bands were different, I guess. Anyway, the hair-band meant that the woman who wove the rug was unmarried.”

“Like you.”

“Like me, but Turkish, and I don’t know how to weave. But yes. Unmarried.”

She points again. “This one?”

“The phoenix. They were wishing for rain.”

“I don’t like rain.”

“I don’t either, but the farmers need it.”

“That’s what Mom says when it rains.”

“Your mom and I both learned it from the same person.”

“From Grandma Selvaggio.”

“Yes.” I get ready in case she wants to talk about death again, but instead she points to the evil eye and says, “What’s that?”

“The evil eye.”

“Why does someone want evil in their rug?”

“It’s not really evil. The symbol means they’re glad that God is watching over them. They’re thanking God for keeping an eye on them.”

“But if it’s God who’s watching them, why is the eye evil?”

“You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that.”

Shannon starts turning the pages herself, looking over the symbols. I look down at them too. If I close my eyes I can still see an entire rug, the color and pattern and size, as if it’s in the room with me. But it’s a dead thing. Like the idea of ESP, and the letters written by nuns, the rug patterns are only artifacts. They’re nothing special. Anymore.

Midnight comes in and leaps up on the bed, and with a happy cry Shannon leaps up after her. While the five-year-old strokes the cat’s fur and sings her an endless, tuneless song, I empty the rest of the box. Once I’ve set everything in piles by what year it’s from, I pull the piles apart and change them. This time I reorder everything by type. The pictures with the pictures, the notebooks with the notebooks. The story is still clear. The early report cards say things like
Let’s get Ginny to come out of her shell!
and
Quite the little reader!
The later ones say things like
Unusually quiet in class
and
Fails to participate.
However you read it, they say I’m not quite right.