Kuharimisha
A collection of memoir essays
By Karen Celestan
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Karen Celestan/Mosaic Literary LLC
All rights reserved.
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Published in the United States.
ISBN: 978-1-4524-2881-9
Cover art by Healing Light
Kuharimisha
A collection of memoir essays
By Karen Celestan
¤ Slipko’s
¤ “I love cooking, me!”
¤ Calvin
The author wishes to acknowledge the following people,
without whom this book would not be possible ~
Nikki Lee, Amy and George Celestan, Gregory Celestan
Joanne Tremont and Bryce Celestan
Calvin Wilson (for his kind and generous permission)
Cassandra Lane-Rich (writer and sister-friend, for editing this manuscript)
Hobie Anthony
Sweaty Monkeys
The Faculty and Staff of Queens University MFA Program
Love and thanks to my aunts Minerva “Tootsie” Simmons, Doretha Willis (West Coast cake!), Emily Sylva (New Orleans cake!) and Myrtle Sargent, my uncles Albert Victor, Jr. and
Melvin Victor, and my cousins (too numerous to name, but at last count, 100 strong).
I’m grateful for all of the love and protection sent from the spiritual realm via my elders:
Alma Belcher Celestan, Evelyn “Mother” Victor, Ida Rene Williams, Bertrice Richard,
Edna Belcher, Harold Belcher, Emily Rose, Frank E. Celestan, Albert Victor, Sr.;
and via cherished friends: Mrs. Thelma G. Amedee and Jane Nelson Irving.
Rest in peace, Ernest “Ricky” Lampkin, Jr. (1957-2009) –
his passing lit the fire for me to share a few stories.
¤ ¤ ¤
For the word of God is alive and active.
Sharper than any double-edged sword,
it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow,
it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12 (NIV)
For Baby Boomers
and Christian wild women
© 7 July 1998
Junior Walker’s Shake and Fingerpop came on the radio today and made me realize how much I love to dance, how much I miss the socialization and rituals of music and dancing.
In the mid-1960s, my parents bowled in a league every Saturday night. The circle of league friends always wanted to keep the evening alive, so the post-pin-busting party would rotate to a different house each week. The gathering was dedicated to eating, drinking beer or Old Grand Dad, playing music, and engaging in boisterous games of bid whist. Kids were welcomed, and we could be seen and heard, long as we didn’t “dip into grown folks’ business.”
Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell’s basement had dark wood paneling, tile floors and a wet bar. A set of speakers that hung from the ceiling were connected to their living room stereo. They didn’t have children, rocked the older-folk-hip style of dress, and had command of some of the latest slang. They offered me and my brother the leisure of calling them by their first names. We could take a chance and respond as directed, but the Mitchells’ first names better not have left our lips. We were familiar with the fierce mama/daddy look that could cut across the room and bore into our backs; a super-heated stare which carried the threat of a belt-whipping when we got home.
The best Saturday nights were at Mrs. Caver’s luncheonette on 13th Street – her place was perfect for bid-whist parties since tables were already set up, and she had glasses and ice in abundance. Bowls of potato chips and pretzels were set out on the counter. Someone brought pig feet, pig lips, hogshead cheese, sardines and Ritz crackers. Mr. Gibson loaded his plate and invited the kids to watch as he ate. He teased us, saying how spoiled we were for not wanting to eat the briny porcine parts in front of him. He said we had never been hungry enough. We would watch in horror, screwing up our faces and making retching sounds as he proceeded to suck everything off a drippy, gelatinous hoof in an instant. The grown-ups would howl with laughter.
If Mrs. Caver had bowled well that night, she would heat up the grill and fryer to serve hamburgers and French fries, but folks had to pay as she pointed sassily to the menu/price list posted above the cash register. The lights would always be dimmed because Mom said Mrs. Caver didn’t have a liquor license, but the spirits were definitely flowing on those winter nights in Niagara Falls, New York when the sky looked like a mass of gray marble and the cold snatched your breath.
The darkness of Mrs. Caver’s luncheonette let the jukebox light the room with bright, blinking colors like a tiny Ferris wheel. I loved resting my fingers on the glass to feel the machine’s warmth. The jukebox always had the latest and greatest hits. It cost a dime to hear one song and a quarter to play three selections. Her friend, Mr. Reid – whom I called Mr. Caver until I was a teenager, when Mom finally let me know what was happening – would fiddle with some switch or another in the back of the machine, ignoring Mrs. Caver’s objections, and we could listen to whatever song we wanted without putting in any money.
I was about eight years old and loved all of the Top Ten R&B songs. My favorite was D-7 – Barbara Acklin’s Love Makes A Woman, especially the instrumental intro. I don’t know if it was the bass, the guitar or the drums, but something moved me. I would shake my pre-pre-teen behind and start singing: When the fire/it was burning/and sweetheart, I know/I should have been learning…and on into the chorus, where my cohorts and I would also sing the back-up part: Well, it’s love (umm, sweet love) that makes a woman (umm, that makes a woman)/well, it’s love-oove-oove, that makes a woman (umm, that makes a woman)…
For hours, until my parents were ready to go, I would stand in front of the box, feeling the vibration of the music, letting the flickering lights cast a glow all over me, singing in a thin, high-pitched, off-key voice with my bowling-alley friends – Tonya and Tina Robinson, Keith Gulley and Holly Waters (my brother Greg’s best friend).
We would play-fight, slapping each other’s hands to take hard-won turns to press those ivory buttons with the circular indentation for your choosing finger. B-3 for Deon Jackson’s Love Makes The World Go Round, F-8 for Billy Stewart’s Summertime, A-4 for Marvin Gaye’s Hitchhike, I-4 for Aretha Franklin’s Ain’t No Way, C-7 and B-9 for our collective favorites, Wilson Pickett’s Land of 1000 Dances and Shotgun by Junior Walker and The All-Stars. When we heard the opening rifle blast of Shotgun, we jumped up to sing and dance in a circle, pointing our fingers as imaginary rifles at one another while shaking our shoulders and bodies to the beat. The song was loud, boisterous and had a driving beat. My other favorite was E-2 for The Dells’ Stay In My Corner. Although I was starting to let sepia Cinderella dreams swirl through my head, that song didn’t inspire any romance in my heart (I wasn’t quite there yet!). It was the challenge to try to hold that eternal ‘staaay’ note. I would fill my lungs with as much air as I could, then push and strain to get to the end. I never made it.
Sometimes we didn’t quite get all of the words to a song and we’d either make them up or slur over them to get to the point of the song that we knew; a practice which turned into some pretty comical versions of those hits. Aretha’s Since You Been Gone sounded like this: Baby, baby, sweet baby/there’s something that I just got to say/baby, baby, sweet baby/you love me honey in a so-so way/sweep my mane/and I feel a tree/you said a-do and I say a-fill… We rolled the rest of the words around in our mouths until Aretha got back to the “baby, sweet baby” part. We didn’t care; we were having too much fun. One of the pre-teen kids would saunter over, suck their teeth, and tell us the right lyrics before moving back to their tight circle.
Sometimes we’d sing so loud and so badly, the grown-ups would shoo us away from the jukebox and make us go play in the back dining room where there was a crackly-sounding speaker. I would get irritated because I wanted to hear music straight from the jukebox – clear and strong – even though the records had little pops and hisses from the needle hitting the vinyl too many times. We would peek out and laugh at how our parents would carry on over certain blues songs – swaying with their eyes closed if it wasn’t their turn to bid or dancing if they weren’t sitting at the table after losing a few hands. On those Saturday nights, they had a good time following a long week of work in the factories.
We never quite got the feeling for Little Milton’s Grits Ain’t Groceries, This Bitter Earth by Dinah Washington, Share What You Got by William Bell or Dakota Staton’s No Mama, No Papa because we didn’t want to dance to those songs. It sounded like those grown-ups were always whining about something or another. The blues singers would make us laugh when they mispronounced things – singing “main” when they meant “man” and dropping the ‘g’ off words; slangy, uneducated sounds that our parents never tolerated from us.
So, we amused ourselves with hand-slap games (‘Mary Mack’) or tag games (‘It,’ ‘Red Light’) until we heard the first chords of James Brown’s Licking Stick (Part 1), Cool Jerk by the Capitols or Get Ready by the Temptations. We would leap up like we had springs in our feet to start dancing. Of course, if a song by the Supremes dropped on the jukebox, the girls and I would immediately put on our best Diana Ross-Flo Ballard-Mary Wilson imitation, complete with broad, fake smiles and stiff-armed, precision movements. We would entertain the grown-ups with artists’ moves from The Ed Sullivan Show or Hullabaloo. They would applaud at the end of the song as though we had given some grand performance, make us feel like stars for a minute or two, then send us off again to the back room so that they could listen to Mable John or Brook Benton, as if we couldn’t hear those sad, draggy songs on the crackly speakers.
Anytime I hear one of those songs from the ‘60s, I’m transported back to Mrs. Caver’s smoky luncheonette with the worn linoleum. Swaying and singing without knowing any of what was coming out of my mouth, showing the grown-ups how to do the latest dances, dancing until I was thirsty. Running, playing, being loud, getting chastised, drinking orange Nehis or Cokes from little green bottles. Singing and dancing some more until we either fell asleep in a chair after sitting still on punishment or were rounded up to leave.
*******
Today, when I’m checking out the music collection of a potential gentleman friend, if I don’t see Stay In My Corner (a song which much later became a source of other challenges and pleasures!) or at least some James Brown squeezed in among the jazz catalog, well, that’s strike one. Strike two occurs if I get a strange look in response to the question that I pose while nonchalantly flipping through albums and CDs: Do you like to dance? There is a third pitch (only a finite few know what it is), but after the first two misses, I usually don’t bother throwing again.
I can fully comprehend all the longing and heartache associated with Etta James’ Sunday Kind of Love or the down-home, man-to-his-woman message in Wilson Pickett’s 634-5789 – and truly, I get the message of Love Makes A Woman. I still jump up and start swinging my much-bigger hips, popping my fingers when I hear the piano intro and those first bass-thumping notes. And I know all of the lyrics, too! With those memories firmly planted in my mind, it’s obvious that the “main” in my life certainly has to know something about shakin’ and fingerpoppin’.
¤ ¤ ¤
© 27 June 2005
Slipko’s was my mother’s favorite market and we arrived every Friday to buy groceries. It was the early ‘60s and as a six-year-old, I looked forward to those weekly excursions.
We would enter from the back parking lot and walked through thick, automatic doors into a breezeway, stopping to pull a shopping cart from its steel holder – the distinct, clangy-banging sound echoing like crashing cymbals. The cart’s wheels squeaked and creaked as we turned right to enter the store and reach the produce section.
I’d let Mom get slightly ahead of me with the basket so I could sneak a few green grapes or a couple of sweet black cherries. It wasn’t a problem – the employees said nothing as long as I didn’t take a handful, and if I did, someone in a white coat would give me a quick stink eye and disappear behind a set of doors, the heavy rubber trim thudding shut. Produce led to the deli counter, where all manner of appetizing meats and sausages were stacked with price tags – cream-colored squares inset with giant, raised orange numbers made dingy by finger smudges – sticking out of the slabs which were ready for slicing and weighing.
Stopping at the deli counter was a culinary education: kielbasa, salami, pimiento loaf, Italian and Polish ham, pepper loaf, prosciutto. Oscar Mayer and other national brands didn’t exist for us. It was the deli meat that was prepared by our local Polish or Italian brethren or nothing at all.
The ladies behind the counter would always hand me a cold, raw wiener wrapped in waxed paper to munch on while Mom made her selections. It was heaven to my mouth. Our usual order was a quarter-pound of Italian ham, sliced onion-paper-thin (a luxury because it was considered expensive), a pound of the cheaper luncheon meat for me and Greg to devour (which I loved on toast slathered with spicy sandwich spread), and a half-pound of liver cheese or bologna, which were Dad’s favorites. The opposite wall held the meat display case with an endless array of beef, chicken and pork, and the seafood counter was catty-corner. The layout of the rest of the store has faded into a hazy memory.
When I reached my early teens, Mom would send me to Slipko’s with Dad to “pick up a few things.” I always said hello to the deli ladies. They would greet me warmly, chat a bit, and give me a sample or two of a new cold cut. I persuaded Dad to get “just a quarter pound” of cappicola ham as it delighted my tongue, potentially incurring the wrath of my mother, who only wanted us to buy what was “on her list.” (After all, she sent me along to be her budget-conscious voice in absentia.) Dad agreed that the cappicola was a winner after sampling his own morsel. We made a quick stop on the way home to pick up a warm loaf of Italian bread from DiCamillo’s Bakery. Of course, Mom fussed because we didn’t follow instructions, but she called Greg inside from playing and all of us gobbled up the bounty.
Those ladies, in their white uniforms stained with flavorful juices from the deli meats they handled, were drug pushers. I was marked. I would eat a sandwich filled with delicately spiced cold cuts instead of a hot plate of food. My desire diverted me from a more balanced, healthy way of eating, and I learned to associate cold cuts with comfort and nurturing.
I met one of my high school loves in Slipko’s. Darryl Bagley was seventeen and had a full, groomed beard. He spoke in a measured, gentle tenor, had smooth, cocoa-colored skin, and straight white teeth. He bagged the groceries. I didn’t want to succumb to his obvious charms, so I amused myself thinking of puns about his name and job.
I was behind my mother at the checkout one Friday in 1973 when he smiled at me. I could swear I saw a brilliant light and heard harps. I was sixteen, giggling stupidly. Mom took one glance at me at her side behaving like a love-struck fool and one look at him. He smiled the smile at her, but she let out a “humph,” finished her transaction, and pushed the cart past him toward the breezeway. The puns vanished from my head. I was quiet during the car ride home as I half-listened to another of Mom’s lectures about boys. I went to my room and scribbled a poem which let my imagination journey around Mom’s warning: Your brown skin is the same color/as the bags you offer/with kindness and a handsome smile. /Your voice sounds like the gentle hum of angel’s breath. /My breath catches, stops, when I see you. /I watch your hands, wish I could touch them.
I got a part-time job in my junior year and learned how to drive. One of my proudest moments was to be able to slip solo into Slipko’s and go grocery shopping, buying whatever I wanted without having to ask my parents’ permission – paying for the items I loaded onto the belt with money I had earned. Of course, I spoke to my deli ladies – who knew me by name – got some samples, had them slice up my favorites and headed to the checkout.
One Saturday, I put on my bell-bottom jeans with the snug fit, set them off with a scoop-neck top, and took extra time in the mirror shaping my Afro. My breath caught again as I entered the line where Darryl was bagging. His sleeves were rolled up into a neat, tight line just above his biceps – ooh, those muscles! – talking and joking as he worked. He held my groceries and waited for me to push the cart to the end of the aisle. Darryl’s smile had a distinct aura as he asked if he could take me out. I tried to show all 32 of my pearlies when I said yes. I sashayed out of the automatic doors with my purchases in Slipko’s thick, brown-paper bags, grinning because I was going to have a date with Darryl.
*******
My parents told me that the store closed briefly in the 1980s and reopened before closing for good in the early 1990s, falling prey to the influx of chain stores that had moved into the area. The building remains, so Slipko’s floors hold the imprints of my childhood.
Today, walking into a Wal-Mart Superstore takes care of my grocery needs, but I know that its narrow aisles won’t induce the same feeling as I had in Slipko’s. And I don’t ever go near the deli counter at Wal-Mart; I don’t have a taste for sandwiches anymore.
¤ ¤ ¤
(Photo by the author, taken July 2010)
Me (age 17) and Darryl Bagley (age 18)
on his class day, June 1974.
© 24 July 2002
My grandmother died as she lived – quietly and without fanfare. At 90 years old, she was alone in a rare moment in her hospital room and slipped away to Glory.
Mom and her sisters arrived as soon as the ICU nurse called. Each of them took turns kissing their mother and caressing her hair. Mom said when her chance came, she leaned over for a final kiss and realized that Mother’s skin was still warm like a biscuit, fragrant with her natural scent.