The Woman Who Adopted Me Makes Dinner

Jumbo cod loin, battered in plain crumbs, frying in oil. A Dinner of Significance. What will Janelle’s mood be? Will we have some mother/daughter bonding time, the two of us, neither of us wanting the titles: mother, daughter.

I mean, Janelle and I do have that in common. Sometimes our eyes meet and there is this look that gets passed, from me to her, her to me, and the best way I can describe it is that we know. How shitty everything is. That those moments of graceful loving feelings wrapped up in gratitude, they are fleeting, fickle. Hard to come by and never owed. 

The oil pops and bubbles in the pan, raindrops on concrete, a steady rain on a city night. I do my homework at the kitchen table while she makes dinner. Cooking is not her thing, never has been. Dad and Margo babied her with food. Varied approaches. No particular style. Cooking, an act of spiritual exchange.

Dad was the one who adopted me with Janelle (I was the puzzle piece that makes us a family, his voice, his words, I can hear them it playing back;, a perfect recording), and then — after some years; a cozy family of three — he’s killed in a Tedeschi’s. I am nine. He’s there because Janelle has a craving for salt and vinegar chips. The part about her being high and having the munchies is always left out but I know it’s true. He’s shot when he tries to reason with the teen who pulls a gun. Two police officers drive to our house to tell us. 

Janelle meets Margo when she takes a Yoga for Grief workshop, because she falls apart after my dad is killed and falters in a bad way. During this time, while my mom is falling in love with her yoga instructor, I stay with Gram, who tries to keep things normal; I go to school, now from a different bus stop, and teachers are mostly nice to me and so are the kids. There’s always one kid who has to yank his eyelids into slits, who has to say something like: ching chang chong or pork flied lice, then cackle at what an unfettered genius he is. When it happens, I’m deeply embarrassed, for the both of us, but those boys never look ashamed.What do they know that I don’t?

Anyway, since Dad was murdered, most of the kids leave me alone. 

A final gift from him, the one person who loved me. I think Margo did, too — but not anymore because she is also dead. That was another outing courtesy of Janelle. Except this time it was a fight. She and Margo were fighting. What was the fight about? I was thirteen. Not that long ago. 

Then get the fuck out! That’s Janelle, screaming. She has a terrifying scream. It is powerful, can cave in a room. 

And Margo leaves and is gone for a while and it is when she is finally on her way back, after having stopped at a gas station to get a pack of Starburst, that a drunk driver swerves into her lane, early twenties, uninjured, texting.  

Janelle and I look at each other sometimes, for long stretches, neither of us saying a word. How did we get here?  

It is what I wonder now as I watch her use silver tongs to prod the fish, a signature dish of both my now-gone parents, who used different techniques, served it with an array of toppings and sides. But the substance of it, that was the same. 

Does she ever ask herself: What if I didn’t . . . 

What if . . .  

I could bring it up but I don’t because something like that might wound Janelle, badly, she is way more delicate than she realizes, and maybe that is another thing that my dad and Margo had in common—they know how to keep Janelle safe while at the same time making her feel impervious. 

Homework break? she asks. The sizzling sound has been reduced to just a few spitter spatters; Janelle stands next to where I’m sitting, a plate in her hand. The air smells burnt, over-salted. Along with the fish there is some baby lettuce and sliced cucumber. Janelle looks at the plate, frowns. 

I forgot to make rice, she says. Or is it potatoes? What the shit is supposed to go with this? 

Rice is what Margo made, a spicy pilaf with caramelized onions. My dad would have sliced potatoes into long strips and baked them in the oven. 

It looks great, I tell her. Janelle’s face contorts but she does not cry. The fish will probably not be fully cooked on the inside, the way most of what Janelle makes is either under- or overdone, but tonight, I will eat it and say nothing at all.