Kitchen Fire…

They say “if you play with fire you get burned.” I was never one to follow someone’s advice just because they were giving it, even as a little girl.  So here’s the thing… this recollection falls somewhere between the ages of 5, 6 or 7. I was curious… had just mastered the art of ‘Eggs a la Jack’… my very own recipe for scrambled eggs (the first thing I ever learned to make)… of course looking back on it now the recipe was pretty much as follows:

Salt

Black Pepper

Eggs

Butter

Burn it

Short and sweet. No? Lol, well… what do you want… I was 5!  My mom had this HUGE empty white paint bucket I used to stand on.  I would Cha Cha my hips standing on that thing and swing that spatula with the best of them… all while burning the hell out of those eggs. These were the days BEFORE smoke detectors.  You bet your azz I would eat them though… BECAUSE I made them … of course as time went on my palate became a bit more refined… and runny charred eggs lost their appeal.

Now to get back on topic, I had a… not so little… fascination… with fire (hot and pretty) and I thought knives were beautiful (shiny and sharp).  Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t a baby serial killer in training or anything.  I just liked looking at these things, and sometimes handling them. Never to hurt myself or someone else… just to… you know… play with (and yes that is exactly how Baby Nova thought of it). My adult self cringes to think of the damage I could have done…but hey… God protects Babies, and Fools right? Did I mention that after I learned to walk whenever my sister and I would play Hide and Seek I’d climb into the stove to hide?  Yes, you read the right… THE STOVE! We had one with a glass door, and I’d lay face down with my fingers curled around the grate, my feet touching the back of the stove and watch people walk around in the kitchen, and giggle.  My mother says whenever someone looking for me would ask “where is she?” she’d hear those giggles.  Till this day my mother is paranoid about turning the stove on without checking first. Yup… God protects babies and fools.

So on this particular sunny day my Grandmother and sister were in the living room watching The Muppet Show.  I found myself in the kitchen alone and bored… (Hear that?  It’s the movie background going dun… dun… dun… duuuunnn!) Lmao sorry I just fell into fits of giggles.  To explain… anyone who knows me… knows a Bored Nova is a Dangerous Nova.  I mean well but… damn if I don’t always get myself into trouble!  Ok back to the story.  I decided I wanted to burn spaghetti, don’t ask me why but that was one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen. I used to climb the counter, grab the box of pasta, climb down and turn all of the stoves gas burners on. I’d then take out handfuls of pasta and set them one at a time on the stove… with the ends in the flame. (I know I know). I found it fascinating the way the shaft of that pasta went up in flames; kind of like the way stick incense burns.

Well my faithful pastime of burning pasta wasn’t enough so I decided playing with one of the kitchen knives a bit (mothers… watch your kids!) would keep me occupied. I pulled out one of our kitchen chairs.  You know those old sets with the thick hard vinyl and the metal feet.  I dragged the chair to the entrance of the kitchen so I could stand at the door to hear if anyone was coming, and I took the tip of this knife and started poking holes into the vinyl. Poke… poke… poke… into the chair’s backrest and seat cushion (I’d done this before) but on this particular day… I poked into other holes I’d poked before and made them bigger. The holes in the seat cushion began to split open… the stuffing was showing.  This was an interesting change of pace… so I poked some more… and before I knew it there was a nice sized hole in the middle of the seat of the chair.   “Hmmmm….” I used the knife to pull some of the stuffing out.

Bright Idea!!!!  I ran over the sink, dumped the knife and pulled out some more pasta.  Once I got a nice burn going on a few pieces… I walked over to the chair and set the stuffing on fire.  I repeated this several times with several different results. I watched the vinyl bubble then char. I watched the stuffing blacken then melt… then out of nowhere the whole thing pretty much went up in flames. WHOOSH!  Picture my little self standing in front of a smoking chair with flames shooting up taller than her head, holding a piece of burning spaghetti between her fingertips. Hmmm… my mother raised no fools… after the initial panic I ran over to the sink, dumped the pasta, grabbed a cup and filled it with water. I then ran back to the flaming chair and reached in quickly to pour the water directly onto the seat.

Just like that the flames were out. I breathed a sigh of relief… then I heard my Grandmother calling my name… and worse heading toward the kitchen!  I ran to the counter, grabbed the cutting board, covered the burned seat and quickly sat on it. Just at that moment my Grandmother entered the kitchen sniffing the air suspiciously. “What are you doing?”  She asked me in Creole.  I swung my little legs back and forth on the chair “nothing…” I answered her in my sweetest sing song of English.  I then watched as she started inspecting the kitchen, opening this, closing that, looking in the trash, gazing into the sink frowning at the burned pasta while shaking her head and mumbling under her breath about ‘Crazy American Babies’ (my sister and I were first generation Americans in the family by the way). She cleaned out the sink then turned to me with what I could tell was a ready lecture (we’d been down this road before). I just sat there swinging my legs silent (which was probably a dead giveaway since I argued with this woman about everything)

“What are you hiding?” she asked.  “Nothing! I didn’t do nothing!” I quickly answered.  She gazed at me intently… now I’d probably say that look was appraising. “Get up.” She said finally stalking over to me. “Why?” I cried with alarm as she grabbed my arm and pulled me up. We stood side by side looking down at the cutting board. She eyed it… eyed me… then shook her head again mumbling about Crazy American Babies. “I’ll put it back!” I said when she reached for it. “Mmm hmm…” she said standing up straight and eyeing me. She shrugged her shoulders and made to walk toward the sink… just as I sagged with relief… she reached past me and picked up the cutting board… then paused.  She looked down at the blackened chair seat (that was now wet) and up at me. Back down… then back up.  That was all she wrote.  “Thalia!” She called my sister and told her to go get the belt (obviously this was before I’d trashed them all) My sister came in the kitchen to see what was going on, looked down at the chair open mouthed, looked back up at me, back down… then back up. Finally shaking her head she left the kitchen… presumably to see what the Muppets were up to.

I’ll keep it simple… my Grandmother gave me a spanking… a well deserved spanking.  I shudder to think what I’d do to my kids… So I ended up sitting on the floor in my room alone watching TV till my parents came home. My dad arrived first. I ran to greet him as usual, then returned to my room.  After a few minute I heard voices in my parent’s room. My dad sounded angry. My sister was in the room arguing with him (she was 11 or 12 by the way).   The door opened and my Grandmother rushed into the room and grabbed my hand.  She pulled me up and dragged me to the kitchen.  Surprised at first I just followed… confused I started to ask her what was going on but she just put her hand over my mouth and shook her head.  She opened one of the lower kitchen cabinet doors and pushed me inside… kinda… stuffed me into it.

I heard my dad marching through the house calling my name, he was looking for me.  My Grandmother stood in front of the cabinet door saying nothing.  When he finally came into the kitchen demanding to know where I was I looked through the crack in the door and saw he had a belt in his hand. My sister ran up to join my Grandmother in front of the cabinet.  Then the fighting started.  My Grandmother quietly told him to calm down and put the belt away, she’d already given me a spanking. He told her to shut up, it was his house and he was gonna give me a beating. (Note the difference between the two… spanking… beating… trust me… they are NOT the same) My sister chimed in with “she’s already got spanking Papi; Grandma already gave her a spanking!”

Through the crack in the cabinet I looked at my father’s face.  He was a light skinned black man… but in that moment he was kind of… I don’t know… purple maybe? Belt in hand of course.  I think it was then as I looked at him he realized I was inside the cabinet… “Get out of the way!” he shouted, grabbing my sister and pushing her aside, but when he turned to my Grandmother.  She looked down at him (yes down because he was a short man) and said very precisely. “You are not going to hit this child. I am not moving.”  Color me surprised… there was no love lost between me and this woman mainly because she would tell us that we weren’t her ‘real’ grand children… her ‘real grand children’ were back in Haiti… and she missed them. Believe me this story right here is one of my few fond memories of her.

My dad stood toe to toe with her for a while, shouting in her face. (He couldn’t stand her) Calling her all manner of things… things I know today to be obscene… things a man should never say to a woman… let alone to his mother in law. He waved that belt under her nose. He told her to mind her own business… to get out of his way his way… to get out of his house.  When he finally stopped his enraged tirade she just looked down her nose at him and said “I’m not moving.”  Finally he screamed at her… “Fine… you’re going back to Haiti!” hopping up and down. She looked at him some more… (She hated him) then quietly said, “That will be tomorrow. I gladly go back to Haiti tomorrow. Today Carlo… you will not hit this child. I am not moving.” He finally stopped shouting… peered up at her, breathing heavily… then turned and walked out of the kitchen.  A short while later we heard the front door slam. He’d left the house.

I’d watched this entire exchange through the crack of the cabinet door in my hiding place.  I was still too young to be afraid.  I hadn’t yet developed fear for my father… but I respected it when I saw it in others, and I knew my Grandmother was afraid.  She stood there for a long while quiet. My sister nudged her out of the way and helped me out of the cabinet, and my Grandmother stood there quiet and trembling. I looked up at her and realized she was crying. I wrapped my little arms around her waist and said “Don’t cry Grandma… its OK.”  My sister also wrapped her arms around her waist and hugged her.  She stood in that kitchen crying for a long while.  That’s how my mom found us when she finally got home.  She walked into the kitchen, looked at the three of us hugging… tears streaming down my Grandmother’s face. She asked sharply, “What’s happened?”  My Grandmother just looked at her and finally smiled for the first time in what felt like hours. “I’m going back to Haiti.”

True to her word she was gone in a couple of weeks.

 

– Nova