How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [42]
“Mom.” Sue grinned, relieved. “Let me at least drive you home.”
“Then how get back work?” I shook my head, embarrassed now, embarrassed at all the people waiting for a big show. “Get me wheelchair cart. I finish shop.”
Spaghetti sauce is the easiest American recipe to make, as long as you remember all the steps and do it far in advance. Letting it sit overnight in the refrigerator is best for developing its flavors. Add sugar if the sauce is too acidic.
Your husband will be amazed when he comes home to a big pot of spaghetti sauce. It is also a crowd-pleaser. Even little babies and Japanese people like spaghetti sauce.
—from the chapter “Cooking Western-Style,”
How to Be an American Housewife
Eleven
Back at home, I rested on the couch while Charlie brought the groceries in. He and Mike had come to get me after Sue called. “No way you’re driving home,” she had said.
Charlie had been mad. “You’re impossible, Shoko-chan, you know that?” he had shouted. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
I had to agree. How could I go to Japan if I couldn’t even make a trip to the Commissary?
But Charlie’s anger passed, a brief rainstorm. The nice thing about Charlie was he never held a grudge in his life, even when he should have. Once a drunk driver hit our car and cried so hard that Charlie took pity and didn’t report him. “Everyone needs a second chance,” he said.
I wasn’t like that. I believed that if someone wronged you once, they would do it again. They shouldn’t be given the chance to try. Taro was just like me.
WHEN IT CAME TIME for Sue to arrive for dinner, I waited for her in the yard, watering the brown-tinged ice plant. I feared I had neglected it too long this time.
I hoped Sue would like the spaghetti. It was once her favorite. But perhaps her favorite had changed and I had not asked what her new favorite was.
For Sue’s birthday, every year, I would cook whatever her favorite food was.
No matter what it was, she would get it. Most children wanted pizza every year. Not Sue. Once she asked for a ham with pineapple slices stuck on it with cloves. Once for sushi rolls. And often for spaghetti and meatballs.
I always made her the kind of cake she wanted, too, devil’s food with chocolate frosting, though privately I thought chocolate with chocolate was too much chocolate.
“Why is it devil’s food? Is it evil?” she had asked when she was five. We were having a party for her kindergarten classmates. She had invited the entire class and it looked like they were all coming. I had Charlie borrow kid-sized chairs from his church, and we put a linen tablecloth over our coffee table for the kids to sit at. She wore a pink party dress and had her hair in a ponytail that was sliding out.
“Probably because make you want to be a big devil and eat whole thing, ’cause Mommy’s cake oishı̄.” Delicious. I laughed and so did she. I fixed her ponytail again. Back then, her hair was red and slightly curly. It had darkened and straightened over time. “Your hair too slick, Suiko-chan. Never gonna stay.”
“I’ll take it out.” She pulled the elastic free. “It’s pulling my hair, anyway.”
All the little kindergartners sat around the table, just like a Norman Rockwell painting, wearing party hats and laughing. Even Sue, usually so shy and quiet, whooped and hollered. “It’s just what I wanted!” she screamed after she opened each gift.
“Sit down, I’ll serve the cake,” Charlie whispered to me. I did, and watched later as he led them through Pin the Tail on the Donkey and then outside for leapfrog, Sue’s face smiling in the sun.
Looking back, I wondered why we didn’t do this every year. But later it seemed like her birthday came and went and the most I could do was make her a dinner, not a whole party. We were either too broke or I was too overwhelmed with my health, or both. Sue had other parties later, small ones when she could entertain her friends on her own. I forgot to miss that joyful little girl until she was already grown