Southern Fried Sushi, page 23
receive praise, now certainly didn’t rank near the top.
“I know waitin’ tables ain’t your thing, and Staunton ain’t your kinda place neither. But ya stayed.” Becky’s voice started to choke up again. “I didn’t know if you would, with so much hard stuff in your life, but ya did. You got guts, Yankee! And I’m proud to know ya.”
I looked up, embarrassed. “Did you say you pray for me every day?”
“Sure I do. Look.” She pulled a notebook off her shelf and flipped through it. “Back here, last week. I prayed for you to smile. An’ ya look happier lately.”
“What day?” I demanded, laughing. “I don’t believe it.”
“Thursdee.”
“See? Nothing happened on Thursday. Just …” I chuckled. “Oh yeah. That’s the day Kyoko got her omiyage.”
“Her what?”
“A present. Souvenir. I sent her pork rinds.”
“Pork rinds?” Becky scrunched up her face. “What for? At least send somethin’ she ain’t never seen before!”
This time I laughed so much my sides hurt. If Becky could have heard Kyoko’s words over the phone, she’d be praying for her, too.
“What is this?” It was my turn to snoop. I reached for the notebook, but Becky had squirrel-like reflexes.
“And here.” She flipped another page and pulled it away when I grabbed again. “I prayed for ya to make friends, and the same day you called an’ tole me about Jamie and your new job.” She followed something with her finger. “I prayed for yer meetin’ with the Realtor to go good. Yesterday I prayed for somebody to do somethin’ nice for ya. Don’t know if it happened or not.”
Instantly I remembered the basket of garden vegetables Earl, my plumber neighbor, left on my front porch after he mowed my grass. I didn’t know what to do with a bunch of zucchinis and string beans, me being the supreme non-Southern cook, but
the thought warmed me.
“Does a gift on my front porch count?” I asked, feeling hair stand up on my neck, like when I found that book in my hands at Barnes & Noble. The one with the cross. Right after I prayed.
No way. I rubbed my forehead, glancing uncomfortably at the notebook. Don’t be silly!
“‘Course it counts! Then that’n’s answered!” Becky was beaming now, all tears gone.
“Are you serious?”
“Shore! Whaddaya think I do, make these things up?”
“No, but … isn’t that luck? Omens?” I remembered the omamori charm hanging from my rearview mirror. I had to admit it had been pretty useless the day some idiot dinged my parked fender, but it still mattered, right?
“Luck? Ain’t no such thing as luck, woman!”
“Of course there is.” I folded my arms, feeling chilly. “How else does all this stuff happen? And don’t say—”
“God.” Becky’s eyes met mine soberly. I gazed back at her sudden intensity, startled, then abruptly started folding up the shopping bags.
“I don’t believe He answers prayers like that.”
“Well, ya oughtta. ‘Cause He does.”
“Did you pray for me to get a job today or something?”
She flipped the notebook page and read. “Nope.”
“Well, what did you pray then? Let me see.” I held out my hand for the notebook. She didn’t give it.
“For you to know He’s with ya.”
Which is sort of what I prayed with Faye.
“Well. I’m … well.” I sat there tongue-tied. I hoped it wasn’t like voodoo. What if Becky prayed for me to get fat or marry a hillbilly or start growing a mullet?
“Does He answer everything you pray?” I got up and shoved a hanger in the closet.
“At least you recognize He answers prayer.” Becky flickedan eyebrow. “And no, He don’t give me ev’rything I want. Don’t ya think I’d have a houseful a kids by now? And a bigger house? Mercy, an’ all kinds a stuff!”
“Then I don’t get it.” I untangled some more hangers, feeling grumpy. “Either God answers prayers or He doesn’t. Which is it?”
“‘Course He does! But His plans and His timin’ ain’t always ours.”
I turned to face her. “You’re telling me God has plans for me? For my life? Here in the middle of nowhere, working at restaurants and shelving books?” My cheeks reddened with anger.
“I’m sayin’ exactly that, Shiloh Pearl Jacobs! But sometimes you gotta wait to see His answers.”
Her words hung there, over the littered hangers and discarded tennis shoes. I twisted the metal neck of a hanger back and forth, thinking.
“How about Mom? Faye said she believed in God, but He let her die of an aneurysm in her own backyard. How’s that for an answer?”
The room fell silent as a Japanese subway car, nobody speaking above a whisper. I heard Gordon snore and roll over, crinkling a fallen bag.
“You don’t have any idea what God might a been doin’ in her life,” said Becky, face turning blotchy as tears swelled in her eyes. “We ain’t the judge.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have answered her that way.”
“You ain’t God! An’ how are you to know what she prayed for?”
“Not this,” I retorted, gesturing out the window at country pines.
“All’s I know is that God loves ya, my friend.” Becky spoke strong and clear over her tears. “An’ He loved your mama, too, more than life itself. I’m leavin’ it in His hands. I trust Him.”
“Yeah. I said that about Carlos, too.” I turned back to the closet, but Becky snatched my hanger.
“God ain’t Carlos.” Her eyes flashed. “He loves ya, Shah-loh!
Don’t ya get it? What Carlos did ain’t love.”
I didn’t reply. Just rummaged in the closet, my eyes starting to water.
“Shucks, I done prayed for ya to come to church a bunch a times so you’ll hear how much He loves ya.” She whapped me facetiously with the notebook. “But He ain’t answered that’n yet.”
“Hmmph.” I shut the closet door. “Keep praying. But I make no guarantees.”
“Believe me, I will. And there are some other things I might show ya one day when they come true.”
“Like what?”
“Hmmph yerself! Reckon you’ll jest hafta wait.”
“Well, maybe I’ll just pray some things about you. What do you think about that?”
Becky stuck her chin out. “Go right ahead! I ain’t scared.”
“I’ll start by praying for you to name your little boy Arthur.” I tickled her belly.
“How do you know it’s a boy? And he definitely ain’t gonna be no Arthur, although you can pray all ya want! Lord knows He’d like to hear ya talk to Him ev’ry now and then!”
Chapter 31
You memorize the orders for each person, never ‘auctioning’ food,” Jerry was saying. I’d stumbled through two weeks of training, and my exhausted brain could barely cram in more information, much less scribble more notes. My writing sagged as I yawned, bleary-eyed.
“None a this, ‘Who ordered the tuna salit?’ and looking around for somebody to grab it. This ain’t a warehouse!” Jerry shook his finger. “This is The Green Tree! You remember what people order because it’s important. You’re friendly but not chatty. You serve, smile, and disappear. You refill glasses before they ask. You watch but do not loom.”
Dawn rubbed her eyes, and I reached down to massage my aching feet with my free hand. I wondered if I’d ever snubbed a waitress. Or a bookseller. They sure worked a lot harder than I realized. Reporters, on the other hand, got to spend much of their time in comfortable office chairs.
My head crowded with plates. Salad dressings. The grills where the cooks sweated, yelling orders. Flash’s grin, missing a tooth. The dishwashing area clouded with hot steam and smelling of sanitizer. The frosty freezer room opening with a big metal door.
When Jerry finally spit us out with a friendly good night, I could barely keep my car on the long, winding country roads and stumble into Mom’s house. I threw myself on the living room carpet in sheer exhaustion, peeling off my shoes and sliding my sore feet into comfortable Japanese house slippers.
I tried to rid my head of whirling images of plates, wineglasses, and shiny metal kitchen counters. The odor of frozen cheesecake and pungent black olives. The soda machine’s hissing roar. Clinking of glasses and ice.
My humiliation as I practiced taking orders then delivered the wrong glass of soda. The shiny blond customer with too-cute Dolce & Gabanna sunglasses, probably younger than me, turned up her nose and shot me a hateful look. I wanted to ring her scrawny, California-wannabe neck.
And all of this back-to-back with Barnes & Noble shifts, changing clothes just to go to work again. I fell asleep this morning at the break-room table.
I flipped wearily through the CDs in Mom’s tower, neatly stacked in the corner, to see if I recognized any of her tunes. Nope, nope, and nope. Christian artists, probably, judging from their names. I twisted my head to read more. The Beatles, toward the bottom, and the Statler Brothers.
And there near the top: Tomorrow. Really? I snatched it up in surprise, turning the artsy cover over in my hands.
I slipped it into the CD player and rested my exhausted head on the floor, listening as edgy guitar chords and voices swelled and filled the room, drifting through my cluttered mind. Pulling me back to that peaceful afternoon in Adam’s truck where all that mattered was God and eternity, life and light and faith.
It seemed so long ago now in the clatter of real estate agents and bills and jobs. It was August already. Back in Japan, August sizzled with festivals: fireworks, taiko drums, steaming food stalls selling shaved ice and hot yakisoba noodles. I’d put on a pretty cotton yukata robe, sash around the middle, hair pulled up.
Instead I modeled wrinkled, soda-stained pants.
“God, what on earth am I doing here?” I whispered, running a hand through my sticky hair. I couldn’t even pour the first glass without spilling, and Jerry laughed at me. “I’m so lost. Where are You?”
Even Mama Bird, swooping into the eaves in the deepening dusk, had a home. So did her fat babies, who bulged out of the tiny nest. Ready to fly away to bigger and better places.
And I could not.
No answer. Just silver chords of the guitar and a voice lifted over the lush notes: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair …”
Wait. Crushed? Perplexed?
Didn’t Christians live on a cloud with their pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by nonsense?
“… persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
The words wrapped me like a blanket. I thought of Mom and her heartache, our dark memories, and yet the music kept singing, weaving, unafraid—as if one did not cancel the other out.
No toy in every Happy Meal, like Becky said. Her unanswered prayers. But still her smile, her faith. Her miracle child.
Pain and beauty, strangely coexisting.
As if God, in His infinite power, could handle both without crumbling. The thought had never occurred to me.
I rubbed my forehead with a grimy hand, mystified by the smiles I’d seen gleaming from Mom’s pictures before I stowed them in boxes. Laughter. Hugs. Hands holding crooked arms. Peace softening the lines in her face.
What was your secret, Mom? I slid a photo album from the shelf and reluctantly squeaked it open. All this time I’ve been playing hide-and-seek with what it was. And, perhaps, even with you.
I traced the lines of her cheek with my finger as she laughed with a group of friends in this living room, a bouquet of snow-white roses on the table. Bad Polaroids of a boy with twisted hands grinning up at her. An African-American girl in a wheelchair, unseeing, Mom’s arm around her shoulder. Hiking. Gardening in gloves and trying to shoo away whoever was taking the blurry photo. Snapshots of her roses, looking neon-red in the sunlight, and dewy shots of pink and white buds.
A card fell out, tucked in the back of the album. Thank you for the beautiful roses for our wedding, read the handwriting. You blessed us with such beauty, and we’ll always remember your gift. God bless you.
A snapshot inside the card showed a radiant bride clutching a ribboned bouquet of white, arm around my smiling mother.
I sat back, chin in hand. I’d imagined Mom sometimes over our years of frozen hurt and anger, but these happy faces didn’t match. Giving hugs. Giving flowers. A completely different woman than I knew before … and I started to wonder if I’d ever really known her at all.
The house was quiet like after a snowfall, hushed, wrapped in cotton. I closed the photo album and walked down the hall to her room, which I always avoided. Switched on the light and just stood there, taking in all the details Lowell and I tried so hard to sponge away: framed paintings of roses, Bible verses, an antique trunk covered with a colorful gypsy-patterned cloth.
I ran my fingers over her brush and hair clips on the dresser, left just as if she’d put them down a moment ago. Touched my little elementary-school picture she’d tucked in the corner of her mirror. Her tube of lipstick. My favorite amethyst drop earrings in a dish.
I took the top off her golden-yellow globe of Avon perfume and smelled summer evenings in New York, elegant purse tucked under her elbow as she led me off the subway to a modern art gallery or weird museum … those amethyst earrings glinting. I could recall a few pleasant days.
A Bible verse on a card: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
I covered it with my palm, wondering over the words, which pricked me with surprising emotion.
And there, a little framed photo of Mom as a high-school graduate. Even in black and white, I could see her hazel eyes, multicolored like mine—the only thing about her that looked like me. And held just as much promise and sorrow.
I could scarcely breathe, so thick were the images and scents of the past as I slid open her dresser drawer, staring down at the neat boxes of hair pins and earrings. Her slim gold watch still gleamed in its box, tick-tick-ticking as if waiting for Mom to slip it on.
“For we are God’s workmanship …”
For an instant I felt like an intruder, a stranger, invading Mom’s private spaces after years of absence. But I had to. Pain welled up, but it was good pain, like the sting of removing a splinter. She would have wanted me here, sifting through her colorful tangle of necklaces like all our memories, intertwined forever.
A covered velvet box hid in the corner. I pulled the top off, curious, and couldn’t believe what I saw: Mom’s gold wedding band and engagement ring.
I hadn’t seen them since New York as a little girl, after Dad left. Sure, she’d worn them a year or two longer, in vain hope, but they eventually disappeared. I assumed she’d pawned them or thrown them away, but no, they hibernated here, outliving even her. They still gleamed so bright I could see my reflection—and at the same time looked unspeakably lonely, cordoned off and lifeless all these years.
I took them out and held them, cold, in the palm of my hand until they drew warmth from my skin. Closed my fingers over them and then opened them again, watching the gold and diamonds gleam and sparkle as they were made to do for a lover.
It ached to see them, and I couldn’t explain why.
And then suddenly, as my eyes hovered over my empty left ring finger, I understood. Dad. Carlos. Good-byes. Mom felt that ripping in her chest, just as I had.
She knew how it felt to reach out for love, to feel her heart leap up at the sound of a name, the warmth of a hand in hers. To ride the subway through the city and know that out there, somewhere, across those millions of hearts, one beat only for her.
And then, in one horrible moment, to have it snatched away forever, like a blanket on a bitterly cold night. Promises broken, words severing in an instant what had taken years to build. Separation. Divorce. Arguments. Eviction. Alone.
No wonder she seemed to die not in Virginia but years ago, succumbing to the illness and depression that tormented her. Black and lonely nights. Reaching out for anyone and everyone who offered hope, no matter how shoddy or half-baked.
“For we are God’s workmanship …”
I squeezed the rings in my hands as tight as my eyes, remembering how I’d thrown Carlos’s ring in the mail within a week. Mom had kept hers for nearly twenty years, throughout all her moves and houses, and stored them close to her heart.
Perhaps Dad meant more to her than I ever realized.
I slipped the rings on my finger for safekeeping and sat down on her bed. Smoothed her blankets and bedspread. Wondered, for the first time, if she’d missed Dad like I missed Carlos. If she’d missed me, too, as she slept there, knowing she’d lost me just as surely as she’d lost Dad.
The weight was too heavy. I placed the rings back in their box and silenced their memories with a pop of the velvet lid.
I was just sliding the drawer closed when my fingers touched something hard and beaded, tucked loosely under a silk handkerchief. I thought there could be no secret more overwhelming than Mom’s rings, but when I brushed aside the silk to find a beautiful little book, I couldn’t resist.
The cover sparkled with tiny Indian mirrors, beads, and embroidery. Colorful and exotic—just Mom’s style. In fact, I’d seen lots of these books years ago in New York … in Mom’s eccentric collection of “mind help” stash, along with the Raelian pamphlets and self-hypnosis mumbo jumbo.
It dawned on me slowly at first then like a grim wave. A book of wisdom from some Indian guru, or Hindu life forces, or whatever. Another church. Another wisdom. Another sham.
Next time Faye says something about her “new life” with God I’ll …
I opened the cover and, to my astonishment, found no elephant goddess or guide to karma. It wasn’t a book at all. It was a journal—blank-paged, marked with a pale-blue silk ribbon—like the ones we sold at Barnes & Noble. Filled, from beginning to nearly the end, with Mom’s familiar blue ink handwriting.
Oh, Mom’s journals. I remembered those.
I flopped down on the bed, recalling her notebooks stuffed under chairs, shoved in wads, scratched on napkins—usually when Mom went off her medication. She’d rant about her problems with Dad, wanting to die, and waiting for her “celestial family” to take her from our cold and evil earth. I threw them in the trash and tried to sponge those words from my mind.
