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When I ask my mother for her recipes, she is, at once, helpful and vague. She shares the basic ingredients and cooking instructions, but I can never quite replicate the taste of her dishes. Once I asked her for a recipe for soup joumou, which Haitians prepare for New Year’s Day, our Independence Day. This is what my mother offered.
Two heads of cabbage
Peas
Butternut Squash
Leeks
Potatoes
Turnips
Carrots
Onions
Cilantro and Parsley
Beef Tenderloin
Cook meat until tender over low heat. Season to taste with garlic, salt, black pepper and hot peppers.
Add water.
Add vegetables.
I have never attempted this recipe.
My mother always insists she is giving me or my sisters-in-law the complete recipe, but I cannot shake the sense she is holding back, keeping a secret or two to herself so what is unique about her cooking, her affection for her family, will always be in her sole possession.
Sauce is the staple of many Haitian meals—tomato-based, fragrant, delicious. Even when my mother makes American food, sauce is on the table. It goes with everything. If my dad sits at the dinner table and doesn’t see the sauce, he asks, “Where is the sauce?” and my mother scowls. Sometimes, she is simply teasing him and the sauce is in the oven warmer. Sometimes, she isn’t in the mood to make it.
I never seem to hold on to the most important elements of my mother’s recipes, so when I am in my own home trying to cook certain Haitian dishes, I call home and she patiently walks me through the recipe. The sauce, a simple but elusive dish, stymies me. My mother reminds me to put on my cooking gloves. I pretend that such a thing would ever find a place in my kitchen. She tells me to slice onions and red peppers, setting the vegetables aside after a stern reminder to wash everything. My kitchen fills with the warmth of home. The sauce always turns out well enough but not great. I cannot place what, precisely, is off, and my suspicion that my mother has withheld some vital piece of information grows. As I eat the foods of my childhood prepared by my own hand, I am filled with longing and a quiet anger that has risen from my family’s hard love and good intentions.
There is one Haitian dish I have mastered—our macaroni and cheese, which is filling but not as heavy as the American version. When I attend a potluck, an activity I dread because I am extraordinarily picky and suspicious of communal foods, I bring this dish. People are always impressed. They feel more cosmopolitan, I think. They expect there to be a rich narrative behind the dish because we have cultural expectations about “ethnic food.” I don’t know how to explain that for me the dish is simply food that I love, but one I cannot connect to in the way they assume. Instead of being a statement on my family’s culture, this dish, and most other Haitian foods, are tied up in my love for my family and a quiet, unshakable anger.
And still, when I am with my family, when we become that island unto ourselves, I allow myself to be a part of them. I am trying to forgive and make up for lost time, to close the distances I put between us even though it was necessary, for a time, for me to be apart from them. These are the people who know not all of me but know enough, know what matters most. They continue to love me so hard and I love them hard in return.
Every New Year’s Eve, we all convene in Florida and attend a gala at my parents’ country club. There is a five-course meal—lots of tiny, twee dishes. There is drinking and dancing. Even surrounded by a hundred other people, we are unto ourselves. We return to my parents’ house by one in the morning and the party continues—furniture moved, konpa music playing, more dancing, my brothers and cousin and me staring at the breathtaking spectacle of this family, the beautiful beast we become when we are together.
My hunger is particularly acute when I visit my parents. For one, they are minimalists when it comes to keeping food in the house. They travel a lot, so it doesn’t make sense to keep fresh produce around, knowing it will likely spoil before it is eaten. And though they eat and, I am sure, enjoy a good meal, my parents are not people who take exceptional pleasure in food. They rarely snack. Any food in the house generally requires some kind of preparation.
But there is also the paranoia I develop. I feel like everything I do is being watched, scrutinized, judged. I deprive myself, to give the appearance of conforming, of making some small effort to become thinner, better, less of a family problem. Because that’s what they tell me—my weight is a family problem. So, in addition to my body, I carry that burden too, knowing that my loved ones consider me their problem until I finally lose “the weight.”
I start to crave foods, any foods. I get uncontrollable urges to binge, to satisfy the growing ache, to fill the hollowness of feeling alone around the people who are supposed to love me the most, to soothe the pain of having the same painful conversations year after year after year after year.
I am so much more than hungry when I am home. I am starving. I am an animal. I am desperate to be fed.
67
I come from a beautiful family. They are thin, stylish, attractive. Often, when I am around them, I do not feel like I belong. I do not feel like I deserve to be among them. When I look at family photos, which I assiduously avoid, I think, One of these things is not like the other, and it is a haunting, lonely feeling, thinking you don’t belong with the very people who know you in the truest, deepest ways.
My father is tall, lean, and lanky, with a distinguished air about him. My mother is petite, beautiful, and elegant. When I was a child, her hair cascaded down her back and was so long she could sit on it. She loves to wear heels. My brothers are tall and athletic, handsome—one of them knows it and will happily tell you about all his charms. And then there is me, ever expanding.
I cannot enjoy food around my family, but to be fair, food is not something I can enjoy around most people. To be seen while I am eating feels like being on trial. When we do eat together, my family watches me. Or I feel like they are watching me because I am hyper-self-conscious, because they are concerned. Or, more accurately, my family used to intently watch me eating, monitor me, try to control and fix me. Now, though they have largely resigned themselves to this state of my body, I will forever feel like they are watching me and looking right through me. They still want to help even as they hurt me. I accept this, or I try.