ricki nelson

She Fed Me Sweet Potatoes

Mama only cooked a big meal when she wanted to avoid talking about anything other than food during dinner. She didn’t enjoy unpleasant or honest conversations, so she cooked good food when she wanted to keep mouths full and quiet. The pantries were often bare, except when she stuffed them full of canned ingredients: diced tomatoes, creamed corn, red beans, black beans, and white beans. In the double-sided sink, she would run warm water and place frozen packages of chicken breast on the left and rinse sweet potatoes, shallots, zucchini, squash, and yellow peppers on the right.

Silence. That’s how she liked to cook—as close to pure quiet as possible, accompanied only by the sound of rinsing, as she washed veggies; chopping as she cubed meats; sizzling, as food browned in her cast iron skillet; and boiling, as it all simmered together in a pot. The pot. The pot was an heirloom passed down four generations—deep enough to stack three frozen turkeys and strong enough to withstand the homegrown spices of any grandmother.

When I was small, I joined her in the kitchen. I would make art out of potato skins, and she fed me wedges of sweet potato. I don’t remember the quiet. I remember her voice floating to the top of the rinsing, boiling, slicing, and sizzling. It was deep and sweet, like the South where she came from.

Mama moved a lot growing up, but she never lived in a big city. “Small town to small town,” she would say. Now living in the city, she was a foreigner; she tried hiding her accent behind a smile, a drink, a laugh.

Her voice was a caged bird, unaware its wings worked on the other side. I wondered what it would be like to hear her sing where she was not different or foreign or visitor. In the city, when she wasn’t called “Mama,” she was called “Lil Bumpkin.” It was a name given to her by strangers who would never taste any of the recipes she had acquired from her days in the South.

She pushed a ladle to the bottom of the pot, past the potatoes, chicken bones, and beans.  She stirred clockwise until it was time to taste. Mustard. Cayenne pepper. Brown sugar. She  added tablespoon of each. Stir. Taste. It was perfect.

We used the copper colored bowls for any meal made in the pot: soups, stews, and chowders. I placed one bowl in front of the far right chair and another in front of its neighbor. I set the silverware, glasses, and cloth napkins in their proper places.

She brought out the pot, holding the handles with red oven mitts. “Why are there only two place settings?” she asked.

“Because,” I said, “there are only two of us.”

“You forgot about your daddy,” she said.

I played with the extra napkins between my fingers. “Mama,” I said. “He doesn’t—”

“Set one for him,” she ordered.

She watched me as I walked to the far left of the table, where he used to sit. I placed one bowl, one knife, one fork, one spoon, one napkin, and one glass for one man who would not be joining us for dinner.

She watched me, her lips pressed together into a hard line. This will just make you miss him, I wanted to tell her.

Three months ago he left us alone in a house we couldn’t afford with questions we couldn’t answer. Setting a place for him at the table was like leaving the porch light on. And things that leave because they want to, never come back home for bowls of soup; in fact, they find new tables to sit at and new dishes to ask for and new bowls to eat from. He was now an empty chair at the dinner table, and nothing more.

Why can’t we forget him? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, off her chin, and into the pot. “Ma,” I said.

Then she dropped it. The pot, the soup, the sweet potatoes, shallots, zucchini, squash, and yellow peppers. She dropped the diced tomatoes, creamed corn, red beans, black beans, white beans, and chicken breast into a hot puddle on the floor, burning the soles of our feet.

It smelled like home, like memories, like everything I wanted to forget. I didn’t cry, but she did. And I let her.

Then we both sat at the table. The bottoms of our feet dripped with soup as we picked up our spoons.

“Mama,” I said, “this is your best yet.”

My mouth covered the empty bowl of the spoon, and I swallowed. 

“Thank you,” she said and did the same.

And we scooped and scooped and scooped soup from the copper bowls until we were full.