I came across this today. I had written it in 2005, if the date on the file is to be believed. The events took place around 1996, so I think I must have written it out by hand long before I typed it up on a computer.
Reading it makes me sad, but happy that I’ve come as far as I have.
Still Life with Wine
Spanish Rice
1 cup rice
2 cups water or chicken broth
onions
garlic
green chilies
tomatoes (optional)
salt, to taste
When I add onions to the skillet the room becomes a different place. It's suddenly home. It doesn't matter what's waiting for me on the other side of the doorframe, inside the tiny kitchen I have a personal space created for me by the aromas of my hands' work. I don't grow onions, but I do buy them, peal them and then chop them finely before putting them into the pan. My favorite way to use onions is to put them in the skillet first, with just a tablespoon of oil, heated until it makes a ring around the outer three-quarters of the surface, with a dot in the center. That's how I know it's ready, that ring that the oil creates when it's just about to be too hot to use successfully. So before a visible cloud of smoke lets the rest of the household know that I've been lax, I add the onions and keep the oil too busy to make smoke. An invisible cloud forms, instead. An odiferous cloud that marks where my space begins. It's sacred, this space.
There's nobody waiting for me anywhere in the house at the moment. I have the place to myself. I could dance naked in the living room, and I have known myself to do it. I have put the stereo speakers in the window and danced salsa outside on the deck without a shirt on. By myself I can lounge and read, I can sing, I can paint or play the piano. With nobody around to question what I'm doing I'm free to do what I want. The problem is that I don't paint or play the piano enough. I don’t long to do those things until somebody's around me criticizing me for doing them.
I will have company before too long, and tonight I want to have dinner ready and waiting. Not that I'm one of those abused spouses that gets slapped against the wall if dinner's not waiting for the man as soon as he walks in the door. I just want that things go smoothly tonight. He has to work late and it always makes him so tired. He's not abusive, just quiet and sulky. I feel like a burden to him, sometimes.
We're staying at my place tonight, which is a surprise. We rarely stay here. I don't know why I still have a place of my own, except that he hasn't invited me to live with him. I suppose that he still enjoys having the only set of keys to his home, and a place to go to if he's too angry to be with me. It's funny, but I'm not allowed to retreat here if I'm just too upset or tired to deal with his miserably immaculate house. I have never, for one minute, felt comfortable there. And I've never cooked there, or seen him cook. He's heated frozen dinners, but that's the extent of his culinary ambition, which is fine because he would only have to spend the next week cleaning the kitchen if he actually used that lonely stove. Over there, I drink instant coffee in the morning.
I have my music playing on the stereo. I don't have to worry about him turning it off and turning on the television for at least another hour. Music makes my food turn out better. I don't know why I don't date somebody with the same musical taste that I have. It would be easier that way. I wouldn't have to wait until I was alone to enjoy the Caribbean rhythms and soulful voices.
Fortunately, my house is such that the stereo is on the other side of the living room and I can still hear it perfectly. It's only about six steps away. My kitchen and bathroom, which together make up about a 5'X10' space, are the only things in the house that qualify as rooms aside from the studio area, which houses my papasan sofa and my piano, my dining room table and my bed. There is no actual door between the kitchen and the dining area of the long room, which is my house. There is a door that folds sideways between the kitchen and the bathroom and right above the stove is a big window, which is always open.
The onions have now long since sautéed and I have added the green chilies and tomatoes and garlic to the mixture. Rice browns separately and as soon as it's ready I'll put the sautéed vegetation and two cups of chicken stock, which I froze last time I cooked chicken. Chicken backs and necks are good for making stock that I freeze and use later, with the few scraps of meat that come off of those pieces.
By the time he gets here the rice will be ready and still hot, the beans have been cooking all day, so they're ready, and I have just to put one more pan in the oven to melt the cheese inside the enchiladas. Then dinner will be ready.
Cheese enchiladas
corn tortillas
cheddar cheese
flour
chili powder
beef bouillon (optional)
3 cups water
While the rice simmers I soften the tortillas in hot oil. I'm not making that many enchiladas this time, so I don't have to add more oil. If we were going to be having others over I'd have to put more oil in two or three times and let it heat before continuing. I love having people in my home and I love cooking for people. But there are only a couple of my friends that he will tolerate. He's careful never to openly criticize my friends, so that I don't have any ammunition against him. He just uses the passive/aggressive tactics that he has learned very well to make sure that he's never around when they are. Plus, he gets very cranky if I have friends visit while he's at work. It's amazing that I have any friends left at all. The ones that he does like don't particularly care for him. They never say this, but I can tell in their demeanor. They are far more polite than they would otherwise be. My friends don't tend to be incredibly refined. I don't hang around ruffians, but we love to laugh and have a good time.
Now I go to shred the cheese. I shudder at the thought of his seeing me do this. Why didn't I have the cheese already shredded, he'd want to know. Everything I do makes him tired. It makes me tired that he's never happy with anything I do. I struggle to think of the last time that he smiled, so that I could believe it, anyway. I roll the cheese inside the softened tortillas and place them in a glass baking pan.
I discard all but about a tablespoon of the oil. In this I brown flour and make a roux. In that I briefly brown the chili powder and then add the water and beef bouillon. When it comes to a boil I turn down the heat and simmer until the sauce thickens. When it's thick I pour it over the rolled tortillas and set the pan aside to wait for him to get here. Just before I put them in the preheated oven I sprinkle more shredded cheese on top.
He's not cranky that I still have to heat the enchiladas. I've waited for him to get here before I heat those, so that they'll be fresh out of the oven when we sit down to eat. The griddle is hot, so the tortillas will also be freshly heated. When we do sit we don't face each other because there are only two chairs at the table that sit up straight. It's fine to sit across the table from my chair; one just has to accept that they'll be tilted. The floor is cracked down the center of the room, and few spots resemble level in this room. I've propped the table with wads of paper, so it's about as level as I am.
My music is now turned off and we eat to the sound of the news—no conversation. The television is on the station that perpetually broadcasts news. That is the station that I would watch were I to turn on the set, but I never do. And, even now, I look at my plate and at the table, anything to avert my eyes from the hypnotizing spell that the television has over my brain. I can't hide from the voices, though, and my enchiladas and flour tortillas are flavored with the stock market at the moment. In a while the beans will be seasoned with a plane crash, the same plane crash that they've reported twice, now, since he's arrived.
I drink my tea—wine and beer are frowned upon these days—and look at the ring that the glass is leaving on my Formica tabletop. From the benefit of the slanted room a ring once formed that looked as if a penis had been lying on the table and the water had dried underneath it. I liked that little piece of art that fate left for me as a gift, but he "accidentally" wiped it off when I wasn't looking.
Cheese and red wine
Cut sharp cheddar cheese into small cubes. Enjoy with a glass of red wine.
It's a new day. I'm not working today and I sit basking in the sun on the deck outside my house. The space between my garage apartment and the main house has brick laid on the ground. It's a living deck that we mow every week. I sit in a lawn chair and drink a glass of red wine. I have cheese cut into cubes inside, but I wanted to be outside in the sun for a few minutes. There is no music playing and this, my first glass of wine in months, burns my tongue. The sharp cheddar cheese compliments it perfectly. The sun isn't doing what I'd hoped it would … bring feeling back into my numbed body. I still don't get up and go inside. I sit back in the lawn chair wondering if the owner of the house is going to come home, and, if he does, whether he'll come around the back to go inside. The entire length of my room is inside the back yard, so I have a lot of privacy, if not space. The garage part of the building, which hasn't seen a car in it in years, is outside the yard, on the other side of the tall wooden fence. I contemplate turning the music on. That's all; I just contemplate it. Just like I contemplate getting more cheese from the dining room table. If I sit still enough it's like I have no feeling in my body at all.
The vine is growing up the brick wall of the main, two-story house. Even though the owner persists in tearing it down, the vine comes back, always, just like the grass grows between the bricks of the deck no matter how much we pull it and mow it. It's determined. The grass is almost thicker here on the deck than it is in the rest of the yard, which lies in the shade of the tall trees. Tall shrubs line the fence on the other side of the yard, so there's no worry that anybody will see me, or notice me. Not that I'm doing anything. I couldn't do anything if I wanted to; there's no music playing, there's no cheese in my hand and he won't ever be coming back here again. It's a good thing.
I didn't like it when he was here and I didn't like being at his house. He didn't like either of those things any more than I did, so why did it take so many months to make this break? And why do I feel the desperate need to call him and beg him to come, or let me come over, just like we did to each other seemingly endlessly over the past few months?