The Fact of a Doorframe: A Food Story and its Otherwise

 

Increasingly, I find myself giving particular shape, weight and density to the most recent beginnings of a scholarly project that is focused, in part, on people's histories, experiences, and memories of food, particularly as it relates to the at-home preparation and serving of food.  This version of my food story begins when (and probably because) three things happened, and in rather quick succession, in December 2016: (1) I bought an old cookbook for fifty cents at a nearby resale shop; (2) I bought a set of decorating tips at a restaurant supply shop, and (3) my father died--rather suddenly and unexpectedly. As a way of coping with the last of these events, I baked. And baked. And baked. And then not knowing what else to do, I baked still more. That this is what I chose to do is puzzling since I'd not grown up baking or being around bakers. But the cookbook came in handy, providing me with ideas, measurements, times, and temperatures, and the decorating tips helped me learn to make what I baked look much better than they might otherwise have looked. And so I baked. And then I baked some more. 

I remember a conversation with a former student around this time. "I can't stop," I told her. "I should be doing something else--writing something, reading something, something scholarly. I am wasting my time." She told me to trust where I was at, what I was doing, and to be okay with not knowing why, or what it was all for, at least for now. 

With time and in between bakes, I continued to selectively develop this particular version of my food story, forging connections between this new project and one I'd been interested in exploring some 20 years ago when I entered grad school in 1997: Examining late 19th-century/early 20th-century American cookbooks as a form of women's narrative.  

 *

Years before I began stabilizing this particular version of my food story, I began searching for a poem I had read while taking a community college course. The year was probably 1992 or 1993. Knowing that the poem was about a door, I thought the poem might have been "The Fact of a Doorframe," but upon finding that poem, I realized it was not the one I'd hoped to find. My memory had tricked me. Again. 

At some point, years later, I was able to find the "door poem" I'd been hoping to find. And while my memory was half-accurate (the poet was, in fact, Adrienne Rich), it wasn't that poem, but a poem called "Prospective Immigrants Please Note."

This is that poem: 

Prospective Immigrants Please Note
Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.
If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.
If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily
to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely
but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?
The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.

*

Increasingly, I find myself giving particular shape and weight and density to a story about a food project that begins in December 2016--one that selectively, simultaneously, also begins in 1997. It's a story that I'm not ashamed to tell, one, in fact, that I am proud of telling, a story that makes sense in an academic context and is in keeping with the person I've become. Yet in choosing to tell it this way, I fail to acknowledge the potential of what, following Wittgenstein, might "also be otherwise." 

*

An otherwise: After (barely) graduating from high school in 1981, I applied for a waitress position, suspecting that it was not a job I'd be good at, but reasoning that this was precisely why it would be good for me. I got the first job I applied for and would spend the next 13 years at that restaurant.  

This thing I'll describe was not the first or last (or even the very worst) thing of this sort that I'd experience in those thirteen years, but it is the one I think to tell about now, perhaps for no other reason than because, like Rich's poem, this one is also about a door. 

It happened on the morning of another bullshit 9am Saturday meeting. These meetings were rare, but always a waste of time. A time for the owner of the restaurant to gather us together to tell us that the register was coming up short (yet again, and by a lot) even though I suspected this was not true, but was just another way to divide us, to ensure that we'd all be watching each other closely, keeping tabs, suspecting one other, when he was away.

As I recall, it wasn't even my "time in the box,"** so I'm still not sure why he chose to do this to me that day. Perhaps (simply?) because he knew he could. And if he knew if he could, of course he should, and of course he would. He always acted. It was part of our job to absorb.

Our bullshit meetings were held in a windowed portion of the restaurant overlooking the parking lot. In my mind's eye, I see him pacing, waiting for us to arrive, keeping track of who was there first, second, third, and so on. It's likely that he saw when I arrived, noting also that I waited in my car until exactly 8:59 am to enter the restaurant. That I waited would be seen as a small act of resistance (and it was) and likely enough to set him off (and it was). Then again, it was only ever these little things-- most of us who stayed were only able to do so because we knew better than to ever initiate something big.

I'll never know if he made a big show of locking the front door, but I suspect he did not, knowing he'd appear more powerful if he did not, knowing that others would likely notice that I was not there. Or, failing that, they'd know when they heard the sound of someone pulling, but just once, against the front door. 

And so I sat there, on the cement, in the heat, in front of the door for the duration of his bullshit meeting, hating that I couldn't leave, feeling scared that I might--if not today, someday--but mostly feeling increasingly ashamed of all these years of not taking better care of me. "And so I just sat there and waited. Like a dog," I've said when describing this to the handful of people I've trusted enough to share this part of my life with. "Just like a dog."   

* 

It was years and years (maybe 20?) after finally leaving (and Rich's poem played at least a small role in helping me to do so) that I returned to that restaurant again. I went back mainly because I finally could--almost everyone I knew back then had been forced out or moved on--and because I just really needed to see that door again.

But the front door had been changed at some point, replaced. And though I can't remember exactly what the old door looked or felt like (but if bodily memory serves, it was large, solid, made of heavy wood), I knew this one was not it, not my door. This one was mostly glass, see-through, not the same door. Not my door. Not my door anymore. 

*

Yesterday morning, I read a piece of scholarship by Carole Counihan and made note of the following passage, thinking it might be useful for my current project: 

“Because food is so often the work and language of women, food stories emphasize the importance of woman and challenge the centrality of men. Because women are sometimes forced to serve and cook for others, food can be a channel of oppression. Yet through cooking, feeding, eating, and fasting, they can express their own views of self and others with creativity and power (Counihan 1999). Food-centered stories are a weapon against the silencing that has always been a central weapon in women’s oppression (hooks 1989) and a tool for feminist ethnographers who can collect food-centered testimonios and follow Zavella’s (2001, 354) goals to ‘render all of these testimonios into a narrative, theorize about their meanings in ways that the subjects would recognize, and make women’s lives accessible to wider audiences.’” (295-6) 

* 

Rich suggests that one risk associated with doors has to do with remembering your name. As an academic, I've finally grown to love my last name--it feels increasingly and precisely like who I am and it's how I identify. My last name is my research, my teaching, my publications, my writing; it's who and what I become through writing, as a writer, because I write. If memory serves, when I was in the restaurant, I wore a small plastic tag so that customers would know my first name. 

I am cognizant that there are so many other starting places for this particular food story--so many other decades, years, and moments (times when I was feeling good, bad, happy, sad, angry, silly, confident, or just indifferent) that I could draw together and shape into some kind of explanation of how this new project informs and is informed by my own history, experiences, and memories with food. 

The door is (another) one. 

**When it was your time in the box, he would ignore you, make you feel invisible-- a way of keeping you in line, keeping you small, reminding you that you were dispensable, that whatever you did (and often it was nothing, there was nothing) could get you fired and what would you do then because no one would ever hire you.  Sometimes your time in the box lasted a couple of days, sometimes it was longer. As much as it sucked being the one in the box, this, in my opinion, was always better than witnessing someone else being in box, because when that happened it was hard not feel grateful to him for not choosing you.