Mama, I suppose you remember Syracuse, but there's something I never told you. It happened when we lived on Green Street, so I have to remind you what was happening. That's when the winds whipped through Salina Street carrying scraps of paper around street corners, and into the sky, and the cold was bitter for the apple sellers sitting on street corners with little cans of sterno in front of them, making tiny yellow lights in the black night and their caps pulled over their ears, and their apples nearly freezing . Ten cents said their signs, and the men with their skimpy pants, pulled their tattered sweaters tighter, and blew on their hands.
They didn't smile, these poor men. They all looked alike. The lips pulled tightly across grim mouths, a two days stubble of beard, and they rubbed their faces and tried to understand They stayed until one or two a.m., looked at their take and then to an all night newsstand for a paper. Sometimes the newsboy sneaked them a paper if the boss wasn't around. They slept in their underwear, but they kept on their clothes too, slept in boxcars, and under overpasses right near the downtown streets to be ready for the next day. They slept in their clothes and kept their apples under them to keep them from freezing. Those apples were pretty and one time you bought us a couple, and that's what I want to tell you about. It wasn't his fault, though never think that. He had it rough I suppose, like the rest. I stuck my tongue out at Charlie, and told him he better not talk to you or I'd call the police. Those applesellers looked at you, Mama, and when I looked at you, there you were smiling and throwing your head back and forth and I felt like something bad was happening, but I didn't know what.
Sometimes they drew a picture out of their pocket; pictures of their wives or their kids, and held them close for a moment, and the grimness fell away. Then that black feeling would come back in their stomachs again. Shit, they'd say. They'd fall asleep, the little can of Sterno near their face to keep the cold air from entering their nostrils. The train thundering by , and the cold slice of moon in the jet black sky was their bedroom. The police of Syracuse let them go if they found them sleeping. "Might be somebody's father, you know, " and the drifts of snow sometimes covered them. They didn't sell apples some days. The streetcorner was unoccupied, but nobody noticed or cared. The police found a body now and then and looked for identification. "It might have been my father," they thought, and the policemen were scared.
If you were some little girls, and your father had a job, the wind was still cold in Syracuse, but you just went to the girls club in the afternoon, or your mama curled your hair in sausage curls and took you roller skating or to the Lowes State Theater . Maybe you saw the parrots in the theater lobby, so you didn't really think much about the skittering bits of paper in the arctic wind, or the apple sellers or the Solvay Process, where the sign said No Help Needed. Or maybe you just went to dinner in The Syracuse Hotel, or for a special treat you had your fortune told in the old Chinese Restaurant over Woolworth's Five and Ten Cent Store. Your Mama read you to sleep and you had cookies and milk before you went to sleep.
But if you were other little girls, your mama didn't have a real job, she just managed to get by, by the skin of her teeth, and you didn't go to Loews State Theater, you went to the Green Street double feature movie for ten cents while your mama worked in a restaurant if she could get find a place now and then, or maybe Dey Bros. Department store, but mostly just door to door selling face cream, which took a lot of bookwork at night and your Mama would fall asleep trying to figure her sales slips and you'd pretend you figured sales slips, stamping and jabbing away while your mama snored.
And you wished you had a real winter coat instead of your cousins' leftovers. Mother, I hated you in that coat of yours. You know , the one with the fur collar, the one I called your fur coat. You wore it so often I hated it. Well, that's the coat you had on when you left that night. We didn't have food in the house. We never did have enough, did we? Remember the two cans of water you always added to the Campbell's Tomato Soup instead of the one can of milk it said on the can? "Mother, just read to me," I said standing before you, hands behind my back, my usual defiant position.. "What do we care about silly food." I said rubbing one shoe against the other.
"Sometimes I don't care if school keeps or not, but we have to have food," you said, putting on your hat. "Please Mother," I started to cry, rubbing my hands across my eyes.. You handed me a handkerchief.
"Sit down," you said hurriedly, putting on the black coat with the little fur around the neck." I wished you called me honey, sometimes." Just sit down and look at the pictures of Heidi and the Alm Uncle til I get back." You slipped into the fur collared coat, and looked out the window. I looked out too. The wind blew streaks of snow into the darkening sky. Next door bright lights and the Paramount Movie theater was just letting out the crowd from the six o'clock double feature. Mostly kids straggled out. I watched to see if they smiled. That way I could tell how they liked the movie, but mostly, I watched them because I was lonely and they were kids like me. I wondered if Clark Gable was playing and felt a little tingle in my stomach at the thought.'
Maybe I could stay in the movie while you're gone," I said hopefully.
"Now wait, let me see, " opening the black skinny handbag with the missing strap. "I have a penny, here's a penny, that's all I have, if it's a good night I know I'll have more. Enough for ice cream maybe. Tomorrow get a licorice whip. So when I go out, play the Victorola, not too loud, though, 'til I come back. " you said, winding the arm of the victrola. You kissed me and I felt the soft of your skin brush lightly against my face, and the warmth of your body against mine.
I ran to the window and saw your slight form disappear down Green Street and around the corner. You sold Azisa Cream from door to door. If you could sell enough, it would give us two dollars. That would last a week. I thought I saw you standing on the corner, a shadowy figure, in the mist of white snow. Sometimes you sold two dollars worth, and we'd eat more than canned soup. But it was only just now and then you sold that much. Usually your take amounted to fifty cents to a dollar, enough for soup and bread. Sometimes you used it for rice and tomatoes. If you added an onion, the casserole lasted a week or so. "Never go hungry as as long as you have rice," you said, "Spanish rice, and you'd whirl me around the kitchen and slap at a pan for a tambourine. I knew I was happy when those tomatoes and yellow bits of onions burst through the crusty top, and filled our apartment with the sweet smells even seeping inside and reaching all about the hallways and up the four flights of stairs, even on cold nights and I would forget about the cold, saturated with the pungent odor. But tonight even the rice was gone. Just a little flour, and what could you do with that?
I went to the kitchen and thought of ways to please you, mamma. "A cake," I thought. I had never made one, but I watched you. I knew of some flour you had hidden in the back of the cupboard. And I had saved an egg once from when I had tried to hatch it over the register. "This ought to make a cake," I thought. I pulled out some pans set them on the old gas stove. The egg was high in the cupboard behind all the tall pitchers we seldom used. I climbed on a chair, and reached back into the cupboard where I had hidden the egg. I pulled the egg out and felt again its smooth surface. I held it against my cheek, it was large and oval shaped, pearly white. I shook it to see if I could hear any life inside. It was heavy, the largest egg I had ever seen.
Then I started to climb off the chair and I dropped the egg. I climbed down from the chair and observed the yellow mess on the floor. I was frightened, because I had hoarded the egg, and now I would have to confess my terrible sin to you, Mamma. I cried and swore. "Mein Gott in Himmel!" I said. Then I was more frightened than ever. I knew God was going to punish me for breaking that beautiful egg, and now my punishment would increase even more for swearing. I sat on the floor and cried.
I took a spoon and slid the yellow part of the egg onto a saucer. The yellow had some red marks through it, the white shell floated along the top, and the odor made me cough. It was to have been my baby chicken, and I wondered if the red was blood and I had killed an animal. I threw it in the toilet and stared at it for a long moment, remembering my times of turning it carefully on the register to hatch it into a baby chick. I pulled the knob and the water gushed down over the egg and carried it away. It was gone, nothing left but little yellow specks on the white toilet bowl. I took a brush you had and swished it around to get rid of the yellow marks. The guilt made me sick, for a moment. I put my head over the toilet, but nothing came up. I measured two cups of flour into a bowl, a half cup of water, and some vanilla, a bit of molasses sticking to the bottom of one of the bottles. I found an apple you had bought from one of the apple sellers, and we hoarded for special occasions. I looked at the apple longingly. It had a red, shiny surface. I decided to peel it and eat the peelings myself before I cut up the apple. I cut the apples into slices, only eating a few, and poured the rest of the slices into the mixture. I stirred hard as I had seen you do, and poured it into the baking pan. The stove needed repairs. Sometimes it gave our an odor of gas which made you worry. It sat high on its four legs, four burners and a mean looking oven which only you knew the secret of regulating.
I lit a match, and now I had another sin, because this was strictly forbidden. I had to sit down on the floor and reach far back to light
I saw the match go out, but the oven wouldn't light. I lit another and then another until the last match was gone. I sat on the floor and cried. I knew I was going hell, and I wiped my nose, and went to the sink and washed my hands. I searched through a drawer and found one more match in a hidden place in a drawer. I wondered what you would do.
I found a newspaper folded neat and lovely on the kitchen table. I took two sheets rolling them long as I could. I lit the end of the paper roll and stuck it far into the black oven. The flames flew back, orange, yellow and red angry streaks nearly to my hand and dress.
I ran with the burning paper now nearly burning my hand, an arc of fire as I tossed it into the sink, and felt the flame coming. I turned on the two faucets, hard as I could. The newspaper wanted to kill me, I knew, it flamed high up in the sink. It stretched and reached and tried to get out of the sink, with little spurts of energy making it jump and leap, jagged orange red streaks snapping out like the tongue of a snake. I felt the heat now on my arms, and on my face.
I started to cry and backed away, The newspaper gave one last dash over the top, slunk down in the sink, black, soggy charcoal. I sat on the floor and cried.
The cake made a beautiful odor and I turned on the RCA Victorola, tipped the horn around so I could see the bulldog, and put on my special record. Nobody we knew had a victorola, not then, you remember. "Yes Sir, That's My Baby," Eddie Cantor, sang to me, and I felt better. I looked at the pictures of the Alm Uncle on the slopes of the Swiss mountain and Heidi and the Uncle eating cheese. I looked out the window, and the snow had drifted, the street, lonely with only a spattering of light from the movie next door spilling yellow lights on the piling snow.
When you came in, Mama and took off your coat carefully, and pulled off your hat, I knew it was your depression again, that lasted sometimes for a week. and I thought of that man you talked to on the corner, all those men, really Mother. When I didn't see your bag of face cream, I'd see you talk to men, Mama, and then you'd come home and cry. You sank into our old overstuffed chair with the fading flowers, and pulled off your shoes. I nearly burst with my big surprise. But that night you looked different. I didn't see your bag of facecream, and I knew you met that man again. Was that man, Charlie? I hated Charlie because Charlie was every man that could take you away from me. But all those men , Mama. Who were they?
"Get my slippers, Jean Louise," you said. I smelled the lavender of you as I sat rubbing your feet, loving your nearness. You hugged me for a minute and I wanted that to last forever.
"Wait, Jean, honey, don't go near the kitchen. I smell something. Must be that gas leak again." You called me honey! You went to the oven, opened it, and there was the cake. You took it out and looked at the two layers, flat and brown." You looked at me and frowned.
"Mama, I made a cake for you," I said, "Look at this, Mama," look at what I did for you." It stood there two layers of crusty brown, charred cakes, all flat and a bit of a rosy hue here and there. I ran my hand fondly around the top, patted them too.
"Baking powder?" you said to me. Baking soda?"
"No, Mama." I said at a loss. I didn't do that.
"Baking powder is what makes a cake raise. She was crying and I patted
her and kissed her cheek. "And we had that one egg, didn't we? That
gives the cake something to hold it together" wiping her eyeglasses.
She pulled on the flour bag she used for an apron. "I'll make some
coffee. We'll have Spanish Rice tomorrow.
Like the central character in "Mama, I Broke An Egg," many children find
themselves needing to assume adult rolls in today's society where single
mothers are the sole support of their family. Based on this thought, I
created Jean Louise in the depression period of history.
Along with being a part owner of a business, I write a company
Newsletter which reaches several hundred people monthly. I have also
been busy writing short stories. During the past year, I have written
eleven short stories, one of which was broadcast on the radio. I am
just now beginning to submit my stories.
(c) 1998 Mimi Carmen