Amuse-Bouche: Good girls have ladles

I play this game. I keep trying to be a good girl. I’m not sure what makes someone a good girl – but I keep trying. To learn the game, I watch the women around me, placing invisible benchmarks on them, judging if they’re good girls. I watch how the world treats them, observing to figure out if they’ve won this game. Twenty years later, I still can’t figure it out. My mind often rewinds through all the years I spent attempting to play it, to spot a pattern – anything that would bring me closer to being a good girl. Now, I’m tired.

I watched everyone retreat into their groups: the men, the boys, the women and girl

I was eight and at a family friend’s house. They had invited my family over for dinner and as I walked around their living room peeking into the glass cabinets that housed the tiny tourist trap souvenirs they had collected from their travels, the men started talking about how the people needed a new political party at the centre. The boys had moved on to that part of the evening where they’d crowd around one PC and gawk over how this new game was somehow so much cooler than all the ones they’ve played before. There wasn’t a girl my age in that house, so I watched everyone retreat into their groups: the men, the boys, the women and girl. I wandered into the kitchen hoping the ladies would talk about something I could understand. I hovered over the kitchen hobs while my mom offered to help finish up the rest of the cooking. Ladies chatting over how their husbands liked their tea. I don’t know how long it took before they assigned me to carry dishes, cutlery and napkins from the kitchen to the dining table. I must’ve taken many trips, my small hands pinching the rim of the glass bowl tight, so I didn’t drop it on my way.

I felt her emotions bleed into me, through the ghost of the placenta that tied us together once

I was always asked to make those journeys from kitchen to the table, table to kitchen, hands full, hands empty, leftover rice, napkins filled with leftovers from the plates the men had left behind on the table after eating. My mom would have a meltdown every time she cooked for guests. Sometimes they were invited, sometimes they’d show up unannounced, eitherways happy to taste her cooking. I felt her emotions bleed into me, through the ghost of the placenta that tied us together once.

I was in awe of how my mother embraced the mundanity of the routine, sad, angry, lonely but always with a ladle

I was in awe of how my mother embraced the mundanity of the routine, sad, angry, lonely but always with a ladle. Every plate that showed up was a couple of hours that was stolen from what she could’ve done with her heart full, her heart light. I vowed never to find myself reheating food I’d started making the night before, alone in the kitchen, the echoes of men laughing within their own conversations. Their legs up on the coffee table.  

I keep trying to walk away from this, but I’m stuck doing laps on a hamster wheel. I can’t escape it. These days, I find my eyes lingering around the perimeters of the kitchen. Am I doing enough? Is she doing too much? How do I go in there to rescue her from the flames, the heat, the grease and walk out without being burned?

I daydream of her putting her legs up, reaching for a console instead of unwashed uncooked rice

I watch my best friend, her ankle tired, marinating big chunks of meat, limping around the kitchen while the boys and I played video games on the TV. She hears it too, the laughs from the other end of the house, I’m sure. I keep my laughs in my throat, the ones I don’t share with her.  I want to help, but the thought of getting on that hamster wheel again leaves a stinging, chemical nausea in my gut. I could bring leftovers from the living room conversations to the kitchen, so my best friend isn’t isolated from the rest. Or, I could trade places with her, become that woman, reheating food I’d started making the night before, alone in the kitchen, surrounded by the echoes of men laughing within their own conversations. I daydream of her putting her legs up, reaching for a console instead of unwashed uncooked rice.

But I refuse to move. Too scared that if I choose to move, a strong undercurrent would sweep me into laps I never agreed to do in the first place. So, I sit still, I feel the heaviness of guilt sweep me over instead. Guilt clouds my heart and blurs my eyes. The anxiety of not being a good girl resurfaces, sprouting deep my gut, wrapping its vines around my chest with piercing vigor. I can’t figure out this good girl game at all; does one with the ladle win? I yearn for the boys to drop their console, to end the video game and notice my best friend.

She then drops the spoon, wipes her hands and walks into the conversation. For a moment, no one is playing the game.