Some people gather in living rooms or dining rooms. Some people sit on porches with kith and kin. At my Mama’s house, though, most times we congregate in the kitchen. Mama never has liked anyone in her kitchen while she’s cooking, but oftentimes we find ourselves standing around and leaning on the white Corian counters or even sitting on the dusty-pink tile floor with babies after the meals are made and the only thing is the biscuits in the oven.
See, if you’re family or you’ve been to my Mama and Daddy’s house before, you know to come in the side door—not the front door. The side door leads right into the kitchen, so part of the fun of being in the kitchen is seeing who walks in the door next. So many people have walked through that kitchen door, some of those people no longer with us on this side of Heaven. I once put a chicken bone over that kitchen door frame because my Granny told me that the first eligible bachelor to walk through the door with that over his head would marry me. Obviously, I must have done something wrong, because the old black magic failed me that time.
This kitchen has gone through changes. Once owned by my Daddy’s grandparents, Granny and Pa Johnson, the kitchen was less than half the size it is now. When my parents bought the house, they knocked off the little porch and made it into a long galley kitchen. Now, all of those cabinets are jam packed with dishes and cookware—some that go back generations. Not too long ago, Mama dropped and broke a white platter that belonged to my great-grandmother, Nan Nan. It hurt her feelings, but she realized that it was the price to be paid for actually using heirlooms. There is no sitting around in china cabinets gathering dust for our family’s passed-down possessions.
There’s a long list of meals my Mama is famous for, but it wasn’t always that way. Daddy said she couldn’t cook in the beginning, and in her defense, there are only so many ways you can transform a hot dog and a can of beans when its all you’ve got. Mama was only 17 when she married Daddy, so she had a little more studying to do in the cooking department. She learned mostly from Nan Nan, but also from her mother-in-law, a Central State Hospital cookbook published in the 80s, and magazine clippings. She makes an incredible eggplant parmigiana, cubed steak and tomato gravy, scalloped tomatoes, corn casserole, and the best Red Velvet cake I’ve ever tasted. Seriously, you think your grandma or Aunt So-and-So makes the best Red Velvet? Naw. This woman has made so many Red Velvet cakes on special request that she can whip them up with her eyes closed.
Mama will tell you that she has to measure when she’s baking, but she rarely pulls out a measuring cup or spoon for cooking. She hasn’t let me in her kitchen while she’s cooking long enough to learn what looks right, and therein lies the problem. How does she make Nan Nan’s fudge, you ask her? Til it looks right. Biscuits? Til it looks right. How do you know what looks right, Mama? I don’t know baby, it’s just what looks right to me.
Mama learned what looks right in Nan Nan’s kitchen. I had the privilege of knowing and loving Nan Nan until the day before my seventeenth birthday. She had a rocking chair in her kitchen, upon which she would sit and pick fleas off her dog, Poo Doodle. A spoiled little curly haired ivory-color dog, he feasted on boiled chicken. And that’s what her kitchen always smelled like to me: chicken. On those black countertops with the metal edging, she made many a biscuit, cutting them out carefully with her biscuit cutter. I remember butter beans on the stove. And ice cream sandwiches in the deep freeze. Always ice cream sandwiches that she kept there for us kids.
Worry is an inherited gene in our family’s DNA. I remember her sitting at her kitchen table crying. She always worried over something, be it money or something wrong she had said to a friend. I have watched my own mother cry similarly in her own kitchen, and Lord knows I have cried in mine.
My Granny’s kitchen smelled a lot differently than Nan Nan’s kitchen. It was an earthy smell of collard greens and sausage. But I also think of her when I smell oranges, and I can still see her peeling one with her paring knife. There was usually a few pieces of link sausage sitting on a little plate by the stove—I reckon in case someone wanted a snack leftover from breakfast. She kept her cheese and butter out on the counter, never in the refrigerator, and if a piece of that sweaty cheese grew mold, she’d simply cut off that part and keep using it.
I call it Granny’s kitchen, but it was just as much Papa’s. He had been a mess sergeant in World War II, and he did much of the cooking at home too. He had come up with all sorts of dishes born out of the lean times, like egg gravy and cantaloupe. He didn’t talk about the war much, but he mentioned a time when a General rode in on his horse for a visit and walked back. Either you were an adventurous eater in Papa’s kitchen or you went hungry. Brains and eggs? Yes please. Tripe? I’ll try it. Pig ear? Delicious.
Granny would cook big meals on Sunday afternoons and then leave it sitting on the dining room table with a sheet thrown over it for whomever else passed through and wanted a bite. Granny and Papa had a passion for feeding everybody. It was a way to share their love. One particular Sunday, Granny had cooked chicken feet in gravy. I’m not talking about chicken legs, I mean the actual feet they scratch the dirt with. Papa told me to go behind the kitchen door and eat it—this act, he said, would make me pretty. I said, “Papa, there ain’t no meat on this thing,” to which he replied, “There’s a lot of meat on it when it’s all you’ve got.” I remember this with tears in my eyes. And I remember Granny sitting in Papa’s chair at the kitchen table (always with the back of the chair against the wall and not pulled up under the table) calling relative after friend after friend and explaining to them that “Booster passed yesterday”.
Now Granny and Papa lived next door to us growing up, but Grandmother and Buddy—Mama’s mother and step-father—haved always lived a good distance from us. They’re in the Virginia hills near Blacksburg now, but during my childhood, they lived in Pennsylvania, just outside Allentown. I loved going to visit them and remember one time in particular that I went to stay with them by myself. Grandmother made a salad for me with delicate daylily petals sprinkled on top, and I thought it was the prettiest thing I had ever seen. Her gardens were just outside the sliding glass doors of the kitchen, and boy, did she have a green thumb. She curated her gardens like she curated the things she fixed in her kitchen—carefully and artfully. There was always a sweet perfume about the place, and sometimes when I open the cabinets she gave me when they moved to Virginia, I can still smell it.
When I moved off to college at first, there was no cooking because I was in the only kind of dorm room there should be: a character building one. Nowadays, kids move into what is basically a souped up apartment building, but this doesn’t produce the kind of suffering that is essential to building a college-educated young person. You should have to share a bathroom with at least five people, and you should have to share a room with people you don’t know and get to learn all their quirks—there will be many. You should have to experience the power going out because someone on your floor plugged in their hair dryer at the same time as their curling iron. But I digress. The only cooking going on in Walker Hall was from our floor’s shared microwave, and half the time we were banned from popping popcorn in it because someone would inevitably burn it. Once the smell got to Mom Mary, all bets were off. I still remember Mom Mary’s opening speech to us freshman girls: “You have certain inalienable rights as a human being in America, but you do not—I repeat do not—have a right to have sex in your dorm room.” I can only imagine what confrontation led to such detail imparted to us.
My next living arrangement was with three other girls in a tiny little apartment. We had a kitchen, and I used it enthusiastically. I started making cakes for no reason at all. I made supper for a mystery dinner date. I ate half my roommate’s roll of cookie dough out of the refrigerator because I was eating my feelings, and she got mad and probably told half the school about what I had done. Needless to say, I gained a good bit of weight that year. My roommate Mindy, my favorite, always on a mission to keep her weight down, would microwave fish for breakfast. It was awful.
One summer, I rented out a room from a family in Tucker, Georgia, just outside Atlanta proper. They grew to love me being in their kitchen. Many mornings, I made them pumpkin pancakes for breakfast and a cabbage soup that I continued to make for people throughout my college years. The last time I made that soup was the night that my boyfriend Tim dumped me. I burned it on the bottom of my stock pot and it tasted like cigarettes and heartache. For the life of me, I can’t remember what all I put in that soup.
When I married Joey, we lived in a little white house with the ugliest kitchen you’ve ever seen. Joey and his Uncle Herman took out two layers of old linoleum that was put down with tar. My Mama and Daddy came over and helped me paint the kitchen cabinets and they put in shelving to make me a little pantry. Once the refreshing was done, it became the cutest little kitchen. I was never happy with the lack of counterspace, but I loved the kitchen window and the view of a dogwood tree it provided. I cooked supper for anyone willing to come over. Joey and I experimented with making new dishes like paella and homemade sushi. We even played “Chopped” one time where we had to use what was in the freezer. I cooked a lot of beef dishes in that kitchen, because my father-in-law would give us half a cow every year.
When I got pregnant, we knew we had to find a bigger place. We fell in love with the house we’re in now but had to wait until the sale of our little white house went through before we could buy it. I was 8 months pregnant before we were able to move in, and I cried. Oh my goodness, I cried so much. But I was overjoyed to have this great big kitchen. Just like at Mama and Daddy’s house, when we have friends and family over, they usually congregate in the kitchen. I get great joy from putting out a spread for visitors, be it comprised of old, passed-down dishes or something new and creative.
My brother’s wife remarked that it “looked like a baby was here” when she saw bottles drying on a rack in there. My sister-in-law had pumpkin bread baking when we came home from the hospital, and I baked oatmeal cookies trying to get my breastmilk to come in. My baby crawled in this kitchen and took some of his first steps in it. He bounced like a little frog in his bouncer, which hung from the kitchen doorframe. Now, he runs laps through it no matter how many times I tell him to stop, and the smooth floor provides the perfect racing surface for Hot Wheels cars. My child spends more time refusing to eat what I cook than he does actually eating, but I am keeping faith that will change with some age.
I have laughed in this kitchen and cried in this kitchen. My husband and I have had some ugly arguments in here, but we have also held each other and smooched on this kitchen floor. I have agonized here. I have mourned here. I have delighted here. I have lived here.
All She Wrote 