How Sweet It Is (9 page)

The woman eyes her and states firmly, “That’s my question. I think you should let me use the coupon. Where is the manager?” Her eyes are beady, like little tan pellets, perhaps similar to the dog food she wants.

The cashier sighs, and the next thing I know, she shakes her head and punches some buttons on her keypad. The woman with the curlers is now wearing a smile as bright as the curlers on her head. She pays for the dog food and teeters out of the store like she’s just won the blue ribbon at the state fair, her bag of Kibbles’n Bits towering in her shopping buggy.

“I know that woman,” the man behind me says to no one, to all of us. “Marble Gray,” he spits out. “She’ll cheat you out of your underwear, if she can.”

Marble Gray with a dog named Sinatra? Aunt Regena Lorraine with a furry creature named Giovanni? What happened to the traditional pet names like Fido and Daisy? Sally and Jeannie will never believe these names when I tell them. Especially not Jeannie, believer that folks want
simple
in these parts.

————

I put on a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt and a denim skirt to wear to teach my first cooking lesson. The long sleeves are a must for me; they cover even my wrists. I don’t need middleschoolers asking me questions about my injuries.

When school lets out at 2:50, the kids will ride the bus from Swain County Middle School to The Center, arriving at 3:05. Miriam told me that my class will start shortly after that. She also said that about halfway through my lesson, I should allow one break so that the children can play basketball outside. “We like them to get their exercise,” she said.

I stare at myself in the round mirror with the mosiac frame. I smile, hoping to exude the confidence that the young man playing basketball exhibited. Forget it; I can’t cover up the truth. The truth is spelled n-e-r-v-o-u-s. I’ve never taught kids before. Well, once I did teach summer Sunday school to second graders, but that was ages ago. I haven’t been to church in months. I don’t broadcast this to just anyone, though. Mom would shake her head, certain I am on my way to hell. Dad would try to comfort her, and I’d want to crawl under the carpet and join all the microscopic critters that live there.

Smiling into the mirror, I push my shoulders back and try to show poise, grace, and calmness—everything that teachers are supposed to have.

“Cooking is my passion,” I say to my reflection. The words seem to float around in the room, and I grab them and let them rest inside me. If cooking is my passion, then telling someone else about it should be easy, right? Fluffing my hair, I smile into the mirror again, but soon break away because my look of fearful anticipation is making my stomach ache.

At the Presbyterian church, I park in front of the gray-stone annexed building that connects to the main sanctuary by a narrow hallway. Inside The Center’s hallway, laminated signs point to the right to indicate where the preschool classes are. These classes, Miriam told me yesterday, are held Monday through Friday from nine until noon. Down a corridor to the left, next to Miriam’s office, a sign announces
The Center.

I swallow three times, using Sally’s advice, and grip my Whole Foods bag. As I walk, I note the Bible verses on the walls. In bold black letters, suspended above a large bulletin board, are the words
God is love.
A sign on the wall next to the board reads,
Jesus said: I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
By a closed door on the right of the hall, a round plaque declares,
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5.
At the kitchen door, a poster lists the fruit of the Spirit: love, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, patience, self-control, peace, joy.

Hearing voices, I enter the kitchen by swinging open the large brown door. The kitchen is where Miriam told me the class would meet. It’s full—children are seated on metal folding chairs. Darren, the boy with the deep brown eyes from yesterday, is absorbed with drawing in a notebook that he steadies on his thigh. His felt pen moves quickly across the page.

Miriam is there, too, standing with her cell phone in her hand. She greets me with a smile and a flash of her blue eyes. Some people are really overly blessed in the good-looks department.

“Everyone, this is Miss Livingston,” Miriam says to the waiting group of middle-schoolers. “She has just moved here from Atlanta.”

twelve

I
’ve been to Atlanta.”

This is proudly spoken by a girl with a massive amount of curly hair and a Harley Davidson T-shirt. She is seated next to Darren.

“I saw a Braves game,” a boy with a buzz cut bellows.

“You did not!” the curly-haired girl squeals. “You are such a liar!”

“Your momma’s a liar,” says the boy.

Miriam claps her hands twice and the room comes to order. “Let me introduce the children,” she says to me. Starting with Darren and going around the room she tells me their names. “Darren. Charlotte. Lisa. Dougy. Bubba. Rainy. Bobby. Joy.”

I relax a little. Eight, I think. How hard can teaching eight kids be?

Joy, the curly-haired girl, raises her hand. “Are you related to Mr. Livingston?”

“Yes,” I say.

“He died,” she tells me.

“Yes.”

There is chatter and comments I can’t decipher, and then Miriam claps her hands again and the class settles. When her phone rings, she leaves me alone with them.

My stomach feels like a blender on high speed. I try to smile at the assembled group. They all look at me—all but Darren, who is focused on his notebook. Standing straight—how awful to slouch on my first day of teaching—I find my words. “We’ll start with the basics.”

I found a cloth Whole Foods bag in the cabin and have used it to carry the ingredients for today’s lesson. From it, I take a saucepan and place it on the stove. Then I pull out a stick of butter, a small sealed jug of milk, and a bag of white flour. I look into my saucepan, and for a second, I have no clue what to say next. I look out at the students. They’re surprisingly silent, just staring back at me. I finally say, “We’ll make a white sauce.”

“White sauce?” asks the one who I think is named Bobby. He is stocky, and his shirt keeps rising up to show his soft and generous white tummy.

“Why can’t we make a brown sauce?” asks the girl named Rainy as she adjusts a pair of sunglasses over her large, round eyes.

“How about French fries? Can we make them?” A girl with long brown hair jumps out of her chair. I think her name is Lisa.

After that everyone talks at once.

“Let’s just go get some at Burger King.”

“Yeah, their fries are good.”

“Duh!”

“No, you have to go to McDonald’s. They have the best fries.”

“No way!”

“You’re making me hungry.”

“Kids!” I am amazed at the power of my own voice. I have their attention; now what do I do? “Sit down.” I point to the chairs as if they don’t know where to sit. My tone is like a tractor leveling the ground on a spring day. “We are going to listen.” I measure milk and butter with yellow plastic cups I pull out of the paper bag. I turn the heat on low under the saucepan and add butter, flour, then milk. Suddenly I realize I have brought nothing with which to stir the sauce. I open a drawer and find knives. I slide over to another and find forks. “I need a spoon,” I say. The sauce is going to burn if I don’t stir it soon.

“Look to your left,” says Lisa.

“No, her right, dummy!” Bobby’s voice booms across the room.

I look in both directions and find a wooden spoon in a canister filled with utensils. If the canister had been a snake, it would have just had to slither once to make it into the saucepan. Quickly, I stir the melted butter and bubbly milk. I lower the heat.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” asks the girl named Charlotte. This is the first time she has spoken. I tell her she may go.

“Are you Mr. Livingston’s granddaughter?” Joy asks. Flatly, she adds, “He never told us about you.”

“Can we play basketball now?” Bobby asks. I try not to roll my eyes at the group, or scold them like my mother would. “Please come here and watch this sauce.”

“Where do you live? Are you from here?” Joy seems to have a lot of questions.

“Dummy, didn’t you hear? She’s from Atlanta!” This is from the boy with the buzz cut. I now realize his name is Dougy because I see that
DOUGY
is printed across his green shirt.

“Please get out of your chairs and come here. Now!” I hope my voice sounds authoritative.

They all leave their seats to form a circle around the stove as I stir the white sauce. “It will thicken soon,” I say and just then I notice one child is still seated and shading in some drawing on a notebook page.

“Please come here.” I eye Darren, but he refuses to budge.

“Darren never participates during the inside stuff,” Lisa tells me.

“He’s afraid,” says another.

“He’s scared of stoves,” says Bubba.

Darren looks up. With fire in his eyes he shouts at me, “Cooking is a waste of time! Why did you come here? We don’t need you!”

His words slice a part of my heart.

thirteen

D
o not cry, I say to myself, which makes it harder not to cry. I am the only adult in the room— I can’t let them see me fall apart. I focus on the pan on the stove.

“It does get thick,” Lisa observes, chewing on a strand of her brown hair.

“What do you use it for?” Bubba is suddenly interested. I’m not sure why he’s called Bubba; he is one of the scrawniest boys I’ve ever seen, looking no older than a third grader.

“You can add cheese to it and pour it over broccoli or pasta.” I work hard to make my voice even and steady.

The kids don’t care. They just want to go outside. And find the nearest McDonald’s for the best fries.

I wonder what to do next. The clock on the wall says it’s 3:14. How long was this lesson supposed to be? “What do you all make at home?” I ask, hoping to take up some time.

“My grandma doesn’t like to cook.”

“We eat McDonald’s!”

“I like onion rings better than fries,” Dougy informs us.

Darren just sits and draws. When I ask to see his notebook, he slams it shut.

“Okay,” I say as I inhale. “Why don’t y’all go outside?”

This is just what they have been waiting for. They race outdoors, and I feel my frustration mount. I should have gone really basic and taught them how to boil an egg. Regret fills me, and to try to shake it off, I begin to wash out the saucepan in the large sink. Flinging open cabinets, I finally find the dish soap—Palmolive, the same kind we use at the restaurant. I squeeze drops onto a scouring pad.

The door swings open, and I glance over my shoulder to see the tall basketball-playing guy from the other day. He gets a drink of water from a plastic container in the fridge.

“You’re Deena Livingston, aren’t you?”

With the scouring pad still in my hand, I smile. “And you’re Zack.”

He nods. “Zack Anderson.” Placing the water container back into the fridge, he asks, “How did it go?”

“What?” I turn off the water.

“Aren’t you the cooking teacher? Didn’t you have a class just now?”

I sigh and sink my hands deeper into the suds.

He comes over to the counter where the Tupperware container of white sauce sits. He sniffs. “Butter?”

“White sauce.” Don’t these mountain folk know anything?

“White sauce?” The way he says it, I am so aware that this was not the item to prepare today. I have made a big mistake. What was I thinking?

He uses one hand to brush back his curly hair. I’ve always wished my straight hair would one day turn into a head of curls. Sally says for me not to be fooled, that curly-haired people have plenty of coiffure-related troubles. When I see her thick, red hair, full of lively curls, I can never think of one.

Zack asks, “So, did the kids do okay?”

I know we are in church, and I know that telling the truth is important. Even so, I lie. “They were great.” My smile is as plastic as the Tupperware.

“Terrific!” He produces dimples in both cheeks and light in his hazel eyes. Yes, some people are way too blessed in the appearance department. I bet he has no scars or moles or flaws whatsoever. I’m certain he models regularly for
GQ
.