Sunday Buttered Toast
Last night around ten o’clock, Jess drank a mug of Horlicks with a Hershey’s Kiss dropped inside, scavenged from an expired bag she found in a cabinet. It was white and fossilized by now, but with some vigorous stirring, she managed to melt it into a blob which she ate at the end with a vanilla cream wafer biscuit.
That night, she dreamed she was driving Husband 8’s car as if she actually knew how to drive. As if she did it every day. In the back row were the teenage triplets who lived at the end of her street, just before the cul-de-sac.
Husband 8’s cousin had just brought a freshly slaughtered and cleaned goat from a local goat farm. It was a once a month tradition in his family to celebrate the existence of meat and alcohol with top-to-tail goat cooking and plenty of whiskey and sodas to wash it all down.
When they arrived, the goat’s head had been displayed upright on the gas grill. It wore a tall hat wrapped in American flag bunting. The eyes glared at them, accusing. Jess’ stomach lurched, and she rushed to the garden fence where the triplets were already retching.
A hot column of liquid traveled upwards, wrenching its way from her throat and showering the wooden slats of the fence in searing hot goat’s blood. Her throat suddenly constricted, her body trying to expel more as her muscles strained against something trapped inside.
With two fingers she pulled out gold earrings, gold nose pins, and rings, one after the other. A long, gold chain followed and she gagged as it slowly emerged, clenched in her two bloody fingers.
Jess’ eyes snapped open and met the darkness of the ceiling. Its blankness instantly relaxed her muscles.
Kitne stupid vaale sapna. What a stupid dream.
It was four in the morning, and once again she was left debating between switching on the ancient television on her dresser or trying to read from the stack of children’s books on her night table. As usual, the debate left her too exhausted to move until her alarm went off an hour later.
But it was Sunday and that was always a day to look forward to. Jess sat up with a lightness in her heart that seemed lacking in the other days of the week. Ever since her second marriage, Sundays had been a day when people came over for breakfast. The chatter and good mood lasted so long the breakfast usually stretched into lunch before people went home.
Pushing back the thin duvet, she pressed her bare feet into the plush carpet. It was still the same, fresh color of a cut pear. For as long as she had been in this house Jess had the carpets shampooed once a month by one of the triplets and she vacuumed every other day.
Ever since Husband 8 had passed away four months ago, vacuuming became something of an obsession. When the bedroom was still cloaked in early morning darkness, the vacuum tracks looked like paths, leading in different, unknown directions. She liked to see the clean, fluffy tracks lifted away from the usual neatness of the carpet fibers.
Jess lifted her arms, raising herself from the bed for a long satisfying stretch. She winced as a series of cracks shot through her like errant fireworks, though it sounded worse than it was. At sixty five, Jess prided herself on being in overall excellent health. Especially when many in her dwindling social circle were afflicted with the ailments of people ten years older.
Husband 3 had been a talented wrestler in his youth with more interest in visions of glory as opposed to focusing on the training that might have gotten him there. As a husband, he spent a lot of time drinking and expounding on wrestler’s wisdom that today’s youth would never understand. Although Jess often called him a harami because he passed out more often than he went to bed, he was the one who had taught her to stretch. From him she learned awareness of the different muscles in her body; when to push and when to accept her limits in order to avoid injuries.
It became a private practice after long walks and in the evenings when she showered before bedtime. Something done behind closed doors because all of the husbands afterwards had laughed at her.
Are you training for the Olympics?
Do you want to have bigger muscles than me?
But, since being alone, she reveled in her long stretching routines in the living room, often stark naked.
She padded into the bathroom to shower and brush her teeth, content to face her darkened reflection with its blurry edges. Autumn was already underway and so the light was struggling to break through in the mornings.
After showering, she went back to the bedroom so she could stand on the warm carpet while she rubbed herself with cocoa butter and splashed on some powder. Some of it tumbled from her skin and onto the carpet where it rose in little puffs of sweet baby scent under her steps.
From the walk-in closet, she selected a pair of black trousers with creases ironed like razors and a cheap, nylon blouse in an ugly olive green. It was something she’d picked up years ago during one of many superfluous shopping trips that she used to take with Husband 7. Like a number of things she owned, the price was so reduced it seemed silly not to buy it.
Brushing out her salt and pepper hair, she braided it into a single plait before opening her box of everyday jewelry. These were simple pieces which befitted the image of a demure widow. Over time she had begun to confuse which husband’s family the various pieces had come from. There were more, scattered throughout the house and some in a safe deposit box at the local bank.
Sometimes, she liked to take out pieces from their hiding places and put them all on. It looked ridiculous, but as she examined her reflection, glowing through stacks of chains and rings and hair pieces, it was as if she were scrutinizing for any weaknesses in her armour.
Of course there was triumph in having wrested away such valuable things from families who never seemed to care about each other unless money was involved. But more than that, it was security. Jess was seventeen when her first marriage was fixed with little protest. It was the year before, when she was pulled out of school that she understood that being a good daughter meant practicing to be a good wife.
But that training left her ill-prepared for many of the situations she would face. She couldn’t drive, had never held an official job, and barely spoke any English. Because other women could do those things, she was considered backwards and simple.
Her cage had been built for her a long time ago and all she could do was try to thrive within it. Maybe she couldn’t work as a lawyer or an accountant, but Jess knew that she needed to have enough money to survive. Both of her parents had died while she was still married to her third husband. After he was gone, Jess knew she had to put her skills as a wife and carer to strategic use. It hadn’t started with the intention of taking her husbands’ money or valuables. But since they kept dying on her, it seemed like the smartest way to stay secure between marriages.
Widowers of her generation were the easiest. The ones who thought that getting your sick wife a cup of tea was the height of being a progressive husband. It wasn’t hard to get her husbands to change their wills. Jess had been taught the value of playing the meek housewife, arguably from the moment she had entered the world as a daughter. Her husbands certainly loved the idea that they were her saviour.
She had tolerated everything from being patted on the head for being unable to go to the bank alone, to being slapped in the face for daring to stand up for herself. These men who had held jobs, drove cars, and fertilized eggs, could also barely manage to heat up canned soup; without her, they were helpless. If it meant financial security, Jess was willing to sacrifice a bit of her pride in order to achieve it.
After some debate, she chose a simple chain of braided gold. Between her breasts hung a small, weighty pendant in the shape of an inverted crescent moon suspended by three rings. Last night’s dream was now a watery half memory, even as she ran a finger along the length of the gold chain. She couldn’t remember anymore which mother-in-law it had previously belonged to. But it would die with Jess anyway; Radha, her daughter, wouldn’t accept any of it.
On the way downstairs, she caught her reflection in the full-length mirror. It was always tilted slightly upward to flatter her figure. She looked sweet and demure as it was so often her role to be. The thought elicited a pained chuckle.
Downstairs, Jess began with her morning ritual of letting in the light and the fresh air. She pushed back the drapes, raised the blinds, and opened the windows and sliding glass door to the backyard. While the rooms aired out, she sat on the sofa in ‘her spot’ where she had always sat when Husband 8 was still alive. The sofa was a remnant of his previous marriage, and when she moved in, he continued to occupy the same spot, leaving her to take the one vacated by his late wife.
After the downstairs was sufficiently aired, the windows and doors were shut and some of the blinds drawn again. This was a trick Jess had found, to get the quality of the air and light just right in order to preserve the unique stillness of the house.
Her house was part of one of many non-descript clusters of housing developments that stretched through agricultural lands. Tiny pockets of suburbia flanked by stone fruit orchards, sunflower fields, and marshes for growing rice. There weren’t many disruptive noises that needed filtering out. But since being alone, Jess found that she liked the added layer of silence. Like living in a glass box. Skeptical of religion for most of her life, this was the closest Jess got to anything spiritual.
When the blinds were lowered to her satisfaction, Jess began laying out her ingredients on the bar countertop. She had to move quickly if she wanted to have everything ready before eight. She filled two small pots of water and set them to boil. In the first pot went cardamom pods, bashed open, cloves, fennel seeds, part of a cinnamon stick, and a peeled hunk of ginger. Four eggs waited in a bowl beside the second pot.
While she waited for the water to come to the boil, Jess focused on setting a beautiful table. Four plates, four sets of utensils, two tea mugs and two coffee mugs, four juice glasses, a butter dish with a faded seventies flower pattern, salt and pepper shakers in the shape of tropical fruit baskets, and a stack of paper napkins, thoughtfully rolled and tucked.
This was far less than the old days. In every house or apartment she had lived in, they would spread out woven mats and old sheets on the living room floor to accommodate everyone. But fewer people meant simpler food and Jess could concentrate on pretty little details, something she had never appreciated until now.
Something she could also do now was serve food immediately, instead of laying out heaping bowls of stuff that went cold while everything else was being dished up. The toast would be made at the very last minute, so that the butter, still slightly cold, would soften into rich puddles as it was dragged across the surface of the bread. Jess was devoted to hot, buttered toast.
On days when she had no energy to cook, she ate slices of it with scrambled eggs or boiled eggs dipped in hot chili sauce. Devilish was the only way to describe the fatty, salty taste of the eggs as they slid through a creamy slick of butter. She loved the glassy crisp-crunch of bread against her teeth and the way all of the flavors melded against her tongue. For all of her cooking skills, these days it was a stack of buttered toast that could make her lean back on the sofa and close her eyes in utter bliss.
The two pots were bubbling quite nicely by the time she finished with the table. In the first pot went two bags of plain black tea. Decently priced British stuff that came in a box of 160 bags. The kitchen filled with a tannic warmth as the water blushed a deep, reddish brown. When the brew was strong enough for her liking, Jess added a layer of milk which calmed the furious boil. She lowered the heat on both pots to a simmer.
In the second pot, with the help of a slotted spoon, she slid the four eggs one at a time into their waiting bath. There was an ominous click of eggshells. Jess’ muscles tensed involuntarily, but the eggs were still intact. Not that it had mattered for a while, but it was still a reflex she carried with her. The one that sensed an impending disaster whenever an egg cracked.
Husband 5 had been a strange, fussy man who seemed at all times, pained by her appearance and even more so by her daughter’s. From a long list of things he considered flaws in her cooking, he had a special hatred for swollen bits of white protruding from the shell of a boiled egg that had cracked in the pot. He had routinely demanded she cook for him and then refused to eat any of it. Often, he’d thrown food at her when she protested about the waste of time and effort.
After he died – alone, from choking on a fish bone – Jess’ seeming record was pretty hard to ignore. After a large stash of gold jewelry, which the late Husband 5 had never put in his will but had supposedly promised to his nieces was never found, the whispers began to take shape.
Nobody could actually prove that Jess had murdered all of her husbands. There was ample evidence to the contrary – although there were a couple of instances when Jess relented that she could have taken more preventative measures – but with eight husbands on the pyre, people had their opinions. It wasn’t so much the dying husbands as it was the money she ended up with that left people fuming. Why should someone who sat at home all the time instead of working hard, get all of the money?
The milk was frothing and rose steadily towards the rim of the pot. A layer of milk skin clung stubbornly to the foam. For such a delicate nature it held its shape, even as she scraped it off with a spoon and flung the spoon into the sink. Jess hated it, it felt like eating the dead skin off of her lips.
Before the pot boiled over, she pulled it from the heat and poured some of the tea into a waiting mug through a little sieve. All without spilling a drop. It was an art that few people appreciated, Jess often felt. In that first sip of tea, there was a sudden rightening of the world. No matter where in the world she might be, a pre-breakfast cup of tea was an unquestionable start to the day.
As a child, Jess’ Amma had served her and her little brother cups of weak black tea thickened with a bit of evaporated milk. At ten, Jess inherited the all-important task of making tea for the household in the morning.
After her brother died, Amma reclaimed the responsibility. She would make the tea and set an extra cup at his usual place at the kitchen table. Once, Amma caught her drinking from the cup and responded with a slap much harder than the crime merited.
Do you wish I’d died instead? She asked her mother later that evening.
Pata nahi. I don’t know, Amma had confessed as she picked through a dish of uncooked lentils, looking for any bad ones.
But we’re both your children! Jess cried, wounded.
I was always going to lose you, Amma responded listlessly.
A few years later, Amma did lose Jess when she fixed her daughter’s marriage. By then, Jess was familiar with loneliness, though she vaguely hoped it could be dispelled by her marriage. It would be one of the few times in her life that she would not be on her guard, surrounded by the warmth of his family. Her husband was a gentle man who adored their daughter Radha and though she didn’t exactly love him like in a movie, he had shown her what a happy family could be.
But he died when Radha was nine. Perhaps fearing that she might have to live with them again, Jess’ parents were quick to arrange a new marriage. But when the new husband announced that the family was immigrating to the United States, Amma refused to speak to any of them, even Radha.
You always said you were going to lose me, Jess reminded her, in hopes of softening her anger.
Hain, so go live your fine new life and leave me to sit on all the sacrifices I made for you.
Jess and Amma’s relationship thawed after a few years, but the distance kept it from being anything more. After she was widowed, Amma immigrated to New Zealand with the family of a nephew. When she died, Jess did not go to the funeral.
As she sipped her tea, Jess sliced oranges and pears and fanned them out in a neat circle. Next, she sliced off rectangles from big blocks of colby jack and habanero pepper jack cheese. She stacked them on a plate, trying to make something like the Lincoln Logs that the kids played with at the local library.
Jess liked the local library, she visited every Tuesday and Thursday. The children’s librarian, a smiling blonde man who wore a different, fitted plaid shirt every day and drank tea from a thermos, knew that she was practicing her English. He always had a stack of books set aside for her.
Because of his kind efforts, Jess would try to make a show of struggling through the words. The Very Hungry Caterpillar had been helpful and she had been delighted by Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth, even though it was difficult to read. More often than not though, she lost interest and just flipped through the pictures.
After she got tired of pretending to study, she would take the stack and go straight to her favorite armchair. It was old and the green was faded from being next to a window that got a lot of sunlight. The window looked out along the road that led to the library’s back entrance, which meant that the strip mall on the other side wasn’t visible.
Jess liked to imagine walking down that sunny road, past rows of peach and walnut orchards, her granddaughter’s hand tucked securely in her own, maybe another little grandchild clutching the other hand. They would snuggle together in that big, comfy chair and read aloud in soft, library voices.
After leaving with one of those fancy canvas bags (all the librarians seemed to carry them) full of books, they would of course have to stop at the little cart where a man with his announcing bell sold Mexican paletas in different fruit flavours. They reminded her of milk ice block popsicles from Fiji and after The Very Hungry Caterpillar week, she’d finally had the courage to try ordering one.
Ices in hand, they would then walk to the little produce stand further along the road that sold boxes of seasonal fruits. Jess would buy one – peaches and strawberries were her favorites – and walk home with the books slung over one shoulder, a grandchild on each side eating their paletas with one hand and holding tightly to her sweater with the other.
It was a beautiful dream, which died the day Radha cut off contact with Jess. Mother and daughter had learned together that men could be damaged in so many unseen ways. Far more confusing was that for all the complexities of their pasts, anything bad would show itself in the same patterns over and over again.
Radha had, as a result, lived life in a state of constant anxiety when it came to trying to form any relationships. Even more so because Jess kept her close, never letting her make good friends or take part in activities outside of school. To Jess, it was for protection, but Radha accused Jess of making her an unknowing accomplice.
When Husband 8 died, the whispers in the community were impossible to ignore any longer. Not now that Jess owned a house full of possessions and a car that she couldn’t even drive. Husband 8’s children were in an outrage that the will had been changed only a few months before his death without their knowledge. On the day of their last conversation, Radha who was studying to be a lawyer told her mother with perfect calm, that she hoped one day to get some kind of justice for all of the families they had harmed.
Children and grandchildren were the ones who raised the biggest fuss over a will. The ones with good jobs, houses and cars, and the means to educate all of their children equally. They were the ones who discarded anything when it got too old – parents included – but were suddenly riled to passion when it came to claiming things that their own parents had often worked hard to earn.
It was hard to make her see, Radha who was educated, that Jess had never been offered a life outside of domesticity. Even if she had desired to study, trying to build them the biggest safety net possible was always the bigger priority.
Jess had tried to learn English – briefly. Husband 8 had sent her to the library for free lessons. They were all a group of all women, from places like Guatemala, India, El Salvador, Myanmar, and the Philippines. Many of them were learning English in order to communicate better with their grandchildren because most of their social circles were made up of people who spoke their native language. If anything, they communicated to one another, they should be responsible for rescuing their grandchildren’s fading mother tongues which had been colonized so neatly by English.
Even though English was part of the school curriculum in pre-independence Fiji, Jess only spoke Hindi. Her brief education at a government school had only given her a stockpile of somewhat useless phrases.
‘We are all very well today.’
‘The weather is quite wonderful.’
‘Perhaps we could go for a walk together?’
Her added-on patchwork of English words and phrases was mostly gleaned from movies and songs; sometimes from listening to other people. But her circles consisted entirely of Hindi speakers. There was no need to learn how to recite her favourite colour/animal/food/season.
She was the lowest level student, simply because she had no enthusiasm for the subject. Husband 8 was a terrible tandem partner who liked to lecture her on her mistakes and correct her mid-sentence in his gentle, patronising way.
Under the supervision of their teachers, Jess was forced to make slow, agonizing conversations about the weather and her favorite movies. The other students were patient, but she could practically feel their teeth grinding in frustration. She knew they snickered about her with each other.
Most days, she left class feeling so deflated, that she began to fake an increasing number of headaches. Eventually the topic of English lessons stopped coming up. For a while, her English binder with its worksheets and colorful, laminated grammar charts was on its usual shelf above the rolltop desk.
One day, as she was looking for the letter opener she realized that the binder contents had been replaced. When she asked why, Husband 8 shrugged and replied, What do we need it for? It was a waste of space.
Cheese stack complete, Jess set it along with the fruit in the middle of the table. She knew without looking at the clock that her eggs were a bit over, which wasn’t ideal. But they were the last of the eggs and since she was going shopping tomorrow, they would have to work. Sometimes she overcooked them on purpose by a minute so that the yolks were firm but not powdery. Using a fork she would mash the yolks with butter and fresh red chili and spread it across a piece of toast.
The eggs sat in a bowl of water for a few minutes while Jess put on a second pot of tea. At five minutes to eight, there was an egg and a slice of buttered toast on each plate. She surveyed the full-laid table with glowing satisfaction.
Today’s food was simple, but the whole picture was homely and cozy. She sat down and slathered a generous amount of butter on her toast. The first bite was the perfect crisp, and Jess’ contented sigh sprayed crumbs across the table. Spending so much time alone was creating habits she would previously have found mortifying. But it didn’t matter.
Nobody was coming today.
Nobody was expected last Sunday when Jess made four, thin omelettes stuffed with cheddar cheese and green chili from the garden.
Nobody would be coming next Sunday when Jess planned to make scrambled eggs with dhaniya and garam masala.
Every Sunday it was the same ritual, even though people had stopped coming over years ago. Even those who took pity on her, or didn’t know or care about her history. Even this could have been bearable with Radha and her granddaughter. Without them though, the silence was too much to bear.
To try and counter some of the weight of her empty days, she threw herself into this weekly theater, lest she let this day pass in uncharacteristic silence. Her life had long ago seemed to lack any real purpose. But for those few morning hours, she could pretend to be remembered and needed.
After a slice of toast with colby jack, she ate the egg, scooping out the yolk and dousing it with pepper and hot sauce. Next, she ate orange and pear slices, then some pepper jack cheese slices. She gulped the rest of her cold tea and realized she’d forgotten about the second pot on the stove.
Thankfully she was able to rescue it before the water burned off completely. The bottom of the pot still bore a faint scorch mark from the week before. This time she made the tea with cardamom and cinnamon and raisins.
After laying more slices of untoasted bread on the other three plates, she settled onto the sofa with her tea to watch game shows. The sounds of excited contestants, the shrieks of victory, and the roar of shared laughter across the studio was comforting.
By the second round of Family Feud, tears were streaming down her face in long, wet trails. By the final round, she had dissolved into sobs that shuddered her whole body and made her stomach muscles ache. Jess cried herself to sleep before the next show started, curled in a tight ball, her mouth slightly open.
When she awoke, there was a wet spot on the cushion, again. Jess rubbed her mouth clean with a tissue and flipped the cushion over to hide the wet patch. The other side was still stained from two weeks ago. Today she’d managed to sleep until well past noon. Jess prepared a mug of strong, plain black tea to make herself more alert. She ate the remnants of last night’s jeera chicken between two slices of buttered bread.
The next day, Jess made egg and cheese sandwiches and fruit salad with cardamom with the leftovers. She packed everything up and gave it to Adriana, one of the triplets who drove Jess to the supermarket every Monday afternoon when she came home from school. Adriana wanted to be a firefighter after high school and her constant training meant she was always hungry.
She immediately unwrapped the sandwich in the car, wolfing down half of it in one bite. Thank you so much!
Adriana began chewing on the next half, even as she started the car with the other hand. You must feed a lot of people.
Jess gave what she hoped was an easy laugh. She wondered if Adriana actually believed this when the vehicle most frequently parked in front of her home was the mail truck.
What can I say? She flashed Adriana a motherly smile. I love to care for people.