“You didn’t bring any food for yourself, so maybe you could say grace for my chow.”
Alvin grinned, a little relieved. Between the supermarket, and his role as a confidential informant, he was starting to get a little paranoid about someone blowing his cover.
***
“And that’s why you don’t trust a bum who offers you unjarred nacho cheese.”
Laughing, Alvin soon returned Bertram’s serious expression.
“Yeah. Seems like a big no-no.”
The old man was nearly done with his meal. He was always methodical when eating Alvin’s food, because as he put it, “Finding food isn’t hard. It’s maintaining some presence of decent nutrition that’s the challenge.” So the young cook was happy to provide something that had mileage behind it. And he enjoyed the conversations.
To an outsider, many would not be able to look past Alvin’s charity, but Bertram had become someone who he truly looked forward to spending time with. That was not going to change, no matter how many people he was answering to.
“How long has it been since you visited your grandma?”
“You know my grandma’s been gone the last few years.”
“I didn’t ask you that. I asked if you’ve visited her. You hafta take some time for your soul.”
“But I don’t need to visit her grave to remember her.”
“I’m not all that big on cemeteries either.”
Alvin was still recovering from the abrupt question about the last living relative he knew. He probably could have done a little more to reminisce his grandmother’s legacy. Especially since she was his muse in his cooking. Without acknowledging it that much.
He might have done his research during culinary school and gotten back to his cultural roots, but he was his grandmother’s grandson. And his aesthetic of approaching Caribbean cuisine differently came from her need to perfect what she thought was good, American food.
“You’re right. I’ve been a little terrible about that. But she is in that plate you’re about to finish. That’s for sure.”
Bertram thought to himself.
“Think I could have been your grandad if she were around. Food is the surefire way to my heart.”
“You watch it now,” chuckled Alvin. “That’s my grandmama.”
“I’m just saying…I might think about her more than you do. Next time, come with a story about her, and more of this,” as Bertram wiped a finger across the plate to pick up the last of the remaining gravy.
“Just so I can think of what could have been.”
Alvin turned his head away from the man for a quick grin. The retrospective sounded like the most fun he would have in a while. Between being squeezed to spy on Coco by the Feds and cooking for an enigmatic boss, he forgot himself – all while making sure he did not shoot himself in the mouth, with his foot.
“I would like that a lot.”
Formerly Unknown…
For some reason, rainy days at the afterschool program brought on better snacks. It might have been that ten-year-old Alvin was a tad more dehydrated since he drank less water when it rained. It just made sense to put less in his body when it was falling from the sky. So the carton of juice or milk, or bottle of water, when he resumed drinking it, was oh so satisfying with the personal loaf of banana bread or leftover coffee cake from breakfast. There was nothing better at those very moments.
He tried it a couple times. Making those same baked goods at home, but he suspected the ingredients he had to sound out on the back of the snack wrappers were the majority of what gave the loaf or the cake its irresistible flavor. Alvin’s versions of the afterschool sweets were worth eating for the effort. But the ones at school were the real treats.
The young boy was doing most of the cooking for his household by the time he was in the fifth grade. He insisted, so his grandma, still full in body and spirit, could not cook one of her American apocalypse meals.
Her food would not have been too bad if she did not add soy sauce to the mashed potatoes or plop in some peanut butter to the cooking ground beef on taco night.
Miraculously, he had actually come to appreciate the bloody eggs he would have died before eating a few years ago. Turned out, adding cheese and hot sauce brought out more of the eggs from the horrible crime scene it was formerly caught in the middle of.
Alvin also learned to tweak several of his grandmother’s other dishes with disguised, enthusiastic pleas to help out in the kitchen. A sprinkle of this or a few drops of that kept the food palatable. Just within the parameters of edible. But it gave Alvin some sort of inspiration.
Really, it enhanced his vision way beyond whatever he thought he could imagine seeing in front of him. There were figments in his mind that were actualized with the food he created.
He saw it as his super power. Being able to think of some dish, and then bring it to life became the most self-gratifying thing Alvin did from week to week. It was the perfect distraction from missing his pulverized mother.
He had pictures and old clothes that had his mother’s perfume on it. They helped him recall his mom in specific ways. But an embrace, a wholeness about his late mother’s presence that began to fill the hole in his heart was her island cooking.
Alvin always thought it was strange his mom was the gatekeeper of Jamaican cuisine. His friend’s grandmothers knew so much about the cooking where their families came from. The food was always so rich and full of stories and flavor. Grandma had to know how to cook all the things mom did, but she persisted at American cooking assuming Alvin, born stateside, would prefer it most. It felt like more of an excuse than a
