Modernity

A cell phone is her only connection to the present. She carries it wih her in a pocket. Within the long sweeping skirts that she wears each day — each skirt layered with patchwork fabrics or transparent crinolines, or sliky flying strips — within each skirt is a pocket. A lot of the time her hand is in her pocket fingering the phone. Holding it, waiting for a pulse. The messages from Enrique recorded in her voicemail are three years old. She’s expecting the new one. The new message that he never sends. He never calls.

Still…sometimes she speaks to him on the phone — into the phone. No one listens on the other end, but she talks into the phone anyway. That phone (it’s clunky and red with a ring like a hissing racoon) is her one connection to the past, to the outside world, to any orbits other than her own concentrated and small one. The phone is her only concession to the time in which she lives.

Mouse in the Brushes

All that was left of the pastry brushes were a few wooden handles badly bitten. All the brush hairs lay in a random pattern on the floor and in the storage drawer and some had blown out the window. Bettina is the one who found the droppings. She scooped up the little black pellets with a spatula and let them slide into a tiny burlap pouch. She used burlap pouches instead of zip-lock bags. There was not one piece of plastic in the whole “kitchen.”

When I came into work she had already cornered the mouse. A very small brown one, trapped in a corner near the icebox and frozen still in that way animals freeze to be less noticed. Bettina was frozen too and keep her stare close on him.

“Franny, get me the marble box.” The marble box sat on the counter near the sink. Sometimes we soaked weeds in there. Sometimes we filled it with nut shells. I picked it up (it weighs a ton) and brought it to her.

“Put him in it,” she said pointing to the minuscule furry beast.

“How?”

“Just pick him up and put him in.”

I was about to say no, I can’t do that. Actually touch him. A possibly slimy rodent with probably pointy teeth and angry and scared of me too. But then I couldn’t get the words out. Bettina never left any room in the place for words like that. You just had to do what she wanted. So, totally unlike myself, I took step after step toward the little creature. As I got closer I almost felt sorry for him. I almost started to like him. I got right up to him, the hard toe of my black clog almost touching him. He still didn’t move.

I picked him up by the tail. He didn’t squirm. I walked him over to the marble box I had set on the table near Bettina, and I put him in.

He didn’t jump out. He just stayed in there.

Bettina put the lid on. “Good,” she said, and put the box in the cupboard.

It’s Hot in Here

Bettina uses the brick oven even in the summertime. The heat wraps you in a sweat even though the kitchen is in the basement hidden from the sun. A film of stickiness covers Franny’s face as she mashes anchovy sauce with a mortar and pestal. Bettina doesn’t sweat. Even with her wild mane of hair swirling around her neck and stretching up toward the ceiling in curling tendrils like a sweet pea vine grabbing for a bit of fence. Bettina cooly chats on the phone with a mystery caller. The same one who calls every night. Franny knows it’s the same one because Bettina says the same things.

“Oui, oui , oui! …But no! I live here now. Si, si…je ne sais pas…ma dai!”

Franny only speaks one language but she knows three languages when she hears it. She got an “F” in French in high school and didn’t even try taking a language in college. She left college after one year. Failing. But culinary school let her in. She’s not very good at that either.

“Franny! That’s enough. We don’t want our guests to drink the garum, only to put it on the lamb. Time to twist the bread dough. Bring it here. I show you how to do it.”

She says “it” like “eet.” Franny prays that Bettina won’t notice how bad she is at all this. This internship makes her feel legitimate. Eases the struggle of class everyday. When she makes the broccoli soup too watery at school, at least she can come here and sweep the floor properly.

“You are a dough person. I can see that even if you cannot. Don’t be afraid of dough. It is just like you. Alive and fresh.”
She pulls off a piece from the mass of dough that overflows a large ceramic bowl and hands Franny a cantaloupe-sized portion.
“This piece you take home to keep. Use it like a pillow tonight, sleep into it, get to know it.”

She plops the dough in Franny’s hands. The cool flesh of the bread goo soothes her palms. She gives it a little squeeze. It squeezes back. Franny smiles in surprise.
“Yes,” Bettina says. “You can make friends with bread while it is new like this, while it is still a baby.”