How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [65]
It was a particularly sharp betrayal since so many of the English speakers she encountered daily treated her this way. In fourth grade, I made a new friend, Cindy, who invited me over to her house, which was about twice the size of ours. “Gotta meet mother first. Never know who people are,” Mom said. She took me to their house, wearing her finest dress-up clothing.
Mom rang the doorbell as I nervously waited. The mother answered. “Come on in.” She wore shorts, a T-shirt, and white Keds and had wide blue eyes. In the background, Cindy jumped up and down. “You didn’t have to get dressed up for me.”
“I always dress up,” Mom said, which was totally untrue. She stepped indoors and took her shoes off.
Cindy’s mother grimaced but didn’t say anything. “Well, come in and sit down. Have some tea.”
Cindy and I began playing Barbie on the floor. Mom sat on the couch and reached for a piece of coffee cake. She put it on a napkin.
“Oh, don’t you want a plate?” Cindy’s mother picked up one of the tea plates from the table.
“Napkin fine. Less dish wash.” Mom took a bite of cake with her fingers. Cindy’s mother sat down and put a piece of cake onto her plate and ate it with a fork. I felt horribly embarrassed, but said nothing.
“It’s great that you’re trying to learn English,” Cindy’s mother commented. “You must not have been here very long.”
Mom smiled coolly. “I here longer since before you born!”
Later, I would invite Cindy to my house, but her mother always had an excuse for declining.
Now that I was a mother, I understood how excluded my mother must have felt, at least in part. Last year, I was at a PTA meeting. We were eating store-bought cookies afterward and chatting.
“We’re going to Cabo for Ski Week this year,” one mother piped up. Ski Week was what they called the school’s vacation week surrounding Presidents’ Day. Public schools gave two days off, but Helena’s school gave the entire week off. The mother’s clothes were casual jeans and a T-shirt, but the sort of casual that sets you back several hundred dollars.
“Only you would go to a beach for Ski Week, Stacey!” another mother chimed in. She shifted on her too-high pumps. “We’re going to Sun Valley. It’s Jim’s favorite place.” She turned to me. “You going anywhere, Sue?”
I could never tell if they were being polite and trying to include me, or if they were baiting me. It had to be obvious to anyone with a pair of eyeballs that I wasn’t the one paying Helena’s tuition. “We’re going to kick it here in S.D., old-school,” I said. “Maybe we’ll go to the Mission Beach roller coaster.” I tugged up the waist of my own Target brand jeans, which always started out tight and got too loose by day’s end.
“Is that even open in February?” the mother asked.
I shrugged. In reality, Helena would be spending the week with her grandparents while I worked. I didn’t get a Ski Week.
The circle of conversation closed around me, and I backed away with my chocolate-chip cookie, unnoticed. I stopped attending PTA meetings. No one ever asked me why.
HELENA AND I , instead of taking a short nap, ended up sleeping through until the next morning. At eight, a quiet knock sounded. Slits of sun bordered the wooden blinds. A gray-haired woman bowed over a tray of food. Unfolding a low table from a corner, she set the food down. She smiled. As we stood, she rolled up our futon, opening the shutters to bright light. Then she bowed and left.
“Oh my gosh. What is this?” Helena poked at a square white bowl filled with brown beans on top of steamed white rice. As she lifted her chopsticks, trails of goo stretched like long ribbons of snot.
Nattō. I’d heard of this acquired taste—fermented soybeans. I’d also read that there were a lot of Japanese people who hated it, never mind gaijin like us.
Helena shuddered and put down her chopsticks. “No, thank you.”
I gulped and decided I would try it. “Nattō. It’s a traditional Japanese breakfast food.” It tasted like very slimy edamame beans. “It’s not