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Viola opens the drapes in the living room to dust the blinds. She's cleaned our house since before I was born."That puts a glare on the television," my mother says from the couch. She's got her legs up under an afghan.
Viola flips the blinds shut. My mother is watching her tape of the royal wedding.
"You should have seen our wedding," she calls to me.
My mother's 64. Lately she's been talking a lot about her wedding. I tried on her wedding gown last night, but I'm not getting married anytime soon. I live in Maryland for the school year, and with my mother in the summer.
I'm sitting in the yellow kitchen, looking at the toaster in front of me. I look like a bird, my nose is huge. I rearrange the pencils and start to draw.
Viola brings a handful of dirty paper towels to the kitchen. She looks at my sketchpad and returns to the living room. So far it doesn't look like much I'm trying to draw the edge of the kitchen table. My mother switches to the news and the volume goes up .
Viola dusts the table next to the sofa. I can see her back bent over the magazines and ashtrays. I learned to walk following Viola around the house. My mother loves to tell people that my father left us before I could walk. I don't remember living with him, but I've got pictures of the three of us. I'm so little I look crumpled up on the sofa between them. Aunt Helen took the pictures. My father looks handsome.
When I was in third grade, I decided to become Japanese American. I'd sit for hours with my hands pressed hard against my temples. I'd heard about a bucktooth lady who pushed her teeth in and finally gave herself a pretty smile. I tried to almond-shape my eyes. Aunt Helen made me stop. She said I'd tear my face in half.
New Orleans in 1950 was exciting but mostly verboten for my mother and Helen. They grew up in a German immigrant family, settled outside the city, and rarely ventured in. Mardi Gras parades filtered past their houses and they collected bags of plastic beads. One year, my mother and Helen sat on the porch and sent me out with a neighbor girl to collect beads. We shouted at the neighbor girl's father on his float and he flung handfuls of long pearls at us.To get the good beads, you have to know someone on a float. If you're really lucky, which I wasn't, but my friend was, you get to be a Krewe Princess, or at least a float girl. Krewes are something like a civic organization. We didn't belong to one. Next Mardi Gras my friend was on a float. She wore a yellow dress with a black bodice. She was supposed to be a bumblebee. But the year we got long pearls, she wasn't anything special, Dust a girl whose father had good aim.
At one point we noticed a woman with her shirt unbuttoned, her breasts in a black bra. All the longest and best strands of beads landed at her feet. My friend's father slung a handful of red pearls right at her chest. She caught them, looked down and noticed her undone shirt. She grabbed her chest and turned to her boyfriend who laughed and buttoned her up. The lady turned to stare after the floats that had passed, took a handful of beads from around her neck and threw them into the sky. I caught a strand of blue pearls and wrapped them around my skinny wrist.
My mother and Helen looked over our beads when we got home. We told them about the lady with the open shirt. My mother rolled her eyes. Aunt Helen asked if she could have have a red strand. I put one around her neck.
My mother and her sister knew hardly anything of jazz, or voodoo. They talk a lot about cocktail parties. My mother says they drank martinis. My aunt says they drank Old Fashioneds. I remember eating both olives and cherries out of my mother's high ball glasses, so I maintain they drank both.
Viola is in one of the two bedrooms, stripping the sheets. My mother calls to me from the living room."There's a storm back East," she says, "I hope you put your windows up before you left."
"I did," I answer.
"This storm'll break right through a window," she calls back, "I hope you braced your windows."
Of course I didn't brace my windows.
The first time I said I was Japanese American was with a school friend, Vivien. We were watching a world-wide beauty contest on television. We sat with her father and watched women in evening gowns. Miss Japan had long hair, all the way down her back and wore a red silk sheath. Vivien's dad whistled at the television set and winked at me. His wink was friendly and ugly all at once. I stood up next to the television."I'm Japanese," I said. Vivien looked at me and laughed.
"Your mother's American," she retorted and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
"I'm Japanese American," I said. "My father's Japanese."
"She might have Japanese blood," said Vivien's father. "Let's see if you can walk like Miss Singapore."
"I'm Japanese American," I explained. "I've never been to Singapore."
"But you could try and walk like that. Show her, Vivian. Show her how to do the walk," He leaned forward in his chair.
"Dad, that's dumb. I'm not doing some walk."
I strolled back and forth in front of the television, swinging my hips. Vivien's father shifted in his chair. Vivien ignored me and watched the television silently.
"That's right, like that."
"Dad," said Vivian.
I stood next to his chair and made the beauty queen kiss, close to his mouth. His breath was sour in my face. He leaned forward slightly. I turned and walked out of the living room and let myself out the door.
I finally gave up the idea of becoming Japanese American when I went to a private girl's high school. I became fixated on the idea of becoming a nun, specifically, one of the Little Sisters of the Poor. I daydreamed for hours about washing the feet of lepers. When we studied saints, I fell in love with St. Beatrice, the most beautiful Christian devotee. She prayed that God would make her hideous to behold, so she'd no longer tempt men, or be hassled by them. When Beatrice became a bride of Christ, the Lord made her absolutely gorgeous.
I'm trying to angle the toaster so I can see my face. Viola left to make dinner for her family, and I'm making dinner for us."What are you making?" my mother yells, "I don't like anything too spicy." She doesn't like hot sauce, or cajun food. She'll eat crawfish, but only in a brine boil. Most crawfish boils use pepper. My mother won't eat that, it burns her lips up. I make the pilaf pretty mild, two cups water, one cup rice, shrimp, sweet onions and peppers. My mother picks onions out of everything she eats. She likes the flavor, but not the onion itself.
I bring a plate for my mother into the living room and we sit watching the mute television. After two bites, my mother puts her fork down.
"You have to eat more than that," I tell her, "I hardly gave you any to begin withy
"The rice is sticky," she says.
"Do you want something different?"
"I'll have grits," she says. I get up to go to the kitchen.
"I can fix them," she says and stubs her cigarette out.
"I'll bring them in," I tell her. The television blares back on.
"How much water did you use?" she calls.
"Two cups," I tell her.
You don't need that much watery she says and lights another cigarette. I won't even buy grits when I'm at school, because people think it's a funny thing to eat. I bring my mother her bowl, empty her ashtray and sit back down in the kitchen, staring at my big-nosed face in the toaster.
Viola stopped fixing our dinner when her husband had a stroke. Now she goes home earlier in the day to be with him. When I'm at school, Helen makes a little extra of what she has for dinner and brings it to my mother or she gets my mother and brings her over for diner. My mother would rather sit on her own sofa, television going, and eat dinner with her feet up.The kitchen light hangs over the table, it's three light bulbs strong. My mother takes three bites of grits and lights a cigarette. If you let grits sit too long in the bowl, they're impossible to wash out. They get like cement. My mother is practically subsisting on them these days. No wonder she doesn't have energy. She doesn't even like to get up and go to church anymore.
"They had it coming," she yells from the couch. The news is on again, and I have no idea who she's talking about. I'm cleaning out the pan with the rice pilaf, and eating the leftover shrimp.
Seafood is brain food according to my mother. That was before the toxicity reports were trumpeted across Louisiana, years after we'd eaten every crustacean and mollusk known to man. Lead and Mercury in high levels, said the reports. My mother blamed it on the Texas oil tycoons. She blames Texas for everything like that. Look at Beaumont, she says. She'd driven through Beaumont once. "You can smell it all the way to Florida," she claims.
My mother is falling asleep in the living room. She's got a cigarette in her hand and the ash is an inch long. When an advertisement comes on for car sales, she puts her cigarette out."I'm going to bed," she says. "You want the television on?"
"No thanks," I give my mother a lift from the sofa. I come back to the kitchen and draw myself a better nose. 'Better' in that it looks more like my nose. I take my driver's license out of my wallet and stare at it. The picture's awful, but it does look a little like the woman in the toaster.
The dead television is giving off a glow in the living room, if I touched it, the screen would prick my fingers. My mother comes into the kitchen to kiss me good night. When I was little she'd say, "Give me some sugar," and I'd kiss her on the mouth. Now she says, "Well, good night." She pushes her glasses up on her nose and motions to the sketch pad,"What's that?" she asks.
"The toaster," I tell her.
"Why are you drawing my toaster?"
"It's good practice. It's a self portrait," I show her. She leans down over the picture.
"Who's that in the toaster?" she asks.
"That's me," I say.
"It doesn't look like you."
I show her my driver's license. She squints at it.
"You don't look like that," she says. She kisses me good night and goes to her bedroom.
The picture is out of proportion. I think I look like a man. I draw a little mustache on my face. I draw chin hairs. It's awful. It's a really awful picture. It's beginning to look like my father. I tear it up and start over. The toaster is in front of me, and I'm staring into it. It's hypnotic: nose, eyes, chin. I want to sketch it exactly the way it looks. It would help if I could keep my face perfectly still.
