I was eight when my mother taught me how to garden. Eleven when she taught me to cook. “The secret is garlic,” she would say, stirring the soup. “Your father thinks anything more than four cloves is too much, he doesn’t know that I really use six—you have to slip the other two in when he’s not looking.
When I was younger, I used to spend hours playing in the dirt. I remember digging up a head of garlic and breaking it apart. Mom was mad, naturally, but she tried not to show it. Showing me instead how each piece of garlic was like a family, with each clove as a different member. There were five in total. She told me the particularly small clove in the center was me.
I am the youngest of four, the only girl. Despite the presence of three older brothers, I grew up in frilly dresses and tiaras. Watercolors and finger paint kept me pacified, and kept my mother busy cleaning clothes. She told me the acrylic wouldn’t come out. I said I didn’t want it to.
I think people often paint their childhoods in idyllic colors, with pigments far too bright for the gray walls of reality. But I was right in using vivid pinks when painting the sky, adding sparkles to my mother’s bracelet, with one hand stirring soup, the other holding mine. Always did she offer a shoulder to cry on. Although, “crying is for babies,” Dad said when I fell and broke my leg. I wept still, my mother rushing to my side, cradling my calf like a newborn.
One by one, my siblings graduated high school and left for college. The house got quieter each year as they left, and the family portraits did too.
He eventually caught me adding the sixth clove of garlic to the soup and made me stop, saying, “that couldn’t possibly be how Mom made it.” A year later, I broke my leg again. Dad drove me to the ER, where we sat in the waiting room for three hours before I got help. This time I didn’t cry.
In time, I left home, too. There were a couple summers where I didn’t come back, but my brothers eventually wore me down. They said Dad had changed, that he was softer now. I didn’t believe them. The night after I arrived, I made soup once more. Dad never apologized, but he did add an extra clove of garlic while I wasn’t looking.
