Endling

The months leading to my grandmother’s death were enveloped in a constant buzzing.

As days passed by, each person who had decided to come to her house (not many—we were only three) became restless. One spilled glass on the dining table had been enough for unrestrained weeping to ensue, from which I had found refuge only as my mother lead Sara back to her room while showering her with vapid words. The next morning, the same cups and plates we’d drank and eaten with were still there, opaque with dried grease. If my grandmother had been strong enough to leave her bed, she would have been displeased. No leftover food had ever been welcomed in her home.

The way one cooks and eats not only reflects one’s relationship with one’s body, but with one’s soul too, she had once said. Being then only seven years old, I didn’t find it in me to do anything but shake my head in agreement.

Therefore, the only way that was left for me to show my respect for her was to, in turn, show my respect for her kitchen. Since she had begun losing herself little by little, the stove and oven had become my land to reign in, each and every meal an opportunity to make her tongue a little bit less heavy and her head a little bit clearer. On the other side, eating was less about fulfilling some kind of craving and more about seeing her face flush with color as she tasted the warm food I had just finished preparing.

Mom and Sara never really cared about what was on their plates, as long as they did not need to think about a thing as meaningless as cooking while grandmother was dying. I did not care about my plate either; certainly not as much as I cared about hers.

“You’re always in this kitchen.” It wasn’t the first time that my sister had sneaked up on me while I had my hands fully covered in flour and the oven was getting warmer by the second. Like every time before this one, I decided to ignore the reproach concealed by a seemingly neutral comment.

“Did you get any rest, Sara?” This diversion never really worked, but I was too engrossed in the dough in front of me to care about improving my small talk.

“Could you please stop kneading that thing while I am talking to you?” She dragged her feet and let herself fall onto one of the mismatched chairs around the breakfast table.

There was no reason for my attention on the bowl in front of me to keep this idle conversation from continuing, but I knew better than to be the cause of another one of her bursts of emotions.

I wiped my hands on the back of my trousers and turned around to meet her gaze. They were the same diluted shade of red that they had been since we had moved here. I sometimes wished mine could match them.

“Does mom need anything?” We both knew how ridiculous that sounded. If she had really required my help, she wouldn’t have sent Sara to fetch me, not after the strain she had been put under the past weeks.

Seconds filled with silence passed by. Sara’s brown hair fell to cover her face as her lungs filled sporadically with air.

“God, you’re so obtuse sometimes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’ve dug yourself a hole so deep that you can’t even get yourself out of it to spend time without dying relative!” Her cheek had flared scarlet. “You could have stayed home if all you planned on doing was playing chef.”

That must have been weighing heavily on her, because as soon as those words left her mouth the trembling of her shoulder began subsiding and her spine straightened with dominance. She wanted me to feel small. All I could do was comply.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said.

She huffed, still deflating little by little. “While you’re at it, grandma’s asked for a soup this evening.”

“It’ll be ready in twenty.” I didn’t look back while she exited the room and closed the door behind her.

I was already skimming the fridge’s contents before Sara had finished uttering the sentence. She hadn’t framed it as a question, not even a suggestion, but I knew what she meant. It hadn’t needed to be a request because no one else other than me knew what grandmother meant when she said “soup”. A “soup” could be many things: a blend of leeks and potatoes could be classified a “soup”, just like a bowl of boiling broth and rice.

But that wasn’t what she wanted. There was no point in trying to make her eat any of it, because she would become agitated and stay in that state for the next couple of days. Only a specific combination of spices, meat broth, and diced vegetables could satisfy her—and I had every intention of fulfilling her wishes.

***

The only times my grandmother called me by my name was when her mouth was full of sponge cake and spices filled the air of her bedroom.

Her fingertips, usually prune and white with age, would be coated with residual powdered sugar and though I would usually care about getting my hair dirty had it been anyone else touching it, it did not matter because, as my grandmother hand landed heavy on the top of my head, she finally remembered my name.

Sentences like, you certainly know how to make vanilla cream, Jade, or your cooked peaches could put a child’s tantrum to rest, would leave her mouth like warm breaths. Did words more beautiful than these ones exist?

Every evening, I sat on this rocking chair, a few steps to the right of her bed, and watched her devour the food I’d just finished preparing. Food had somehow become the only form of communication between us. She refused to talk unless I came into her room with the plastic tray and a trail of hot air following close behind me. In those moments, her gaze left the window overlooking the garden for the first time in hours to fix onto my hands clutched around my offering. When I was lucky, her green eyes keep climbing up until they meet my own without any annoyance. Those were the only times I had the luck to feel like I was talking to more than just a tarnished glass. She was my grandmother again.

Before her mind had become something too far away for me to reach, we used to stand together in front of the kitchen stoves, my shoulder against her upper arm, where she would speak at length about what her mother had taught her the same way that she was teaching me now, and how that had happened years prior with her mother and with the mother of her mother before that.

It was as if stories about women and their wrinkle-strewn hands wove themselves to her recipes without her even realizing it, to then create a picture for my nose, eyes, and tongue to compete for. I could never get enough of anything that she ever let me reach for.

Only a year before the decline of her health did I discover that the magic enveloping our meetings wasn’t something only I was imbued with. Since then, I kept repeating those words in my head when my place here seemed fruitless.

I’ve never been allowed to indulge in the plate in front of me with your mother. Never has she thought about food as something to be lived—only as a transitional activity. Her tongue had come out to wet her lips, as if she could taste the words that came out next. But now, even when my mind doesn’t know how to anchor itself anymore, my mouth recognizes your touch as easily as it distinguishes the savory from the sweet. The warmth of her breath had danced onto my cheek. I might not always remember you, but it is second nature for me to always find you in everything I touch, my child.

***

The day I plated my grandmother’s last meal was the most harmonious of the year.

Twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness—what more perfect day to leave this earth? After all, grandmother had always liked balance and headstrong statements.

That evening had been an exception to my usual routine. Instead of being fast asleep in the guest room down the hall as I would be at this hour on any other night, I had decided to keep sitting on the rocking chair. It was far from being comfortable, the wooden seat dug into the bones of my backside and the arms were sharp with splinters—despite this, I kept my post all throughout the afternoon like a sailor on his deck as my ship kept going back and forth, back and forth.

I’d never been good at navigating any of the places I’d ever been in, but this one I knew by heart. The lump of my grandmother’s body hidden underneath the quilt stretched over the plane of her bed and which went downhill where her sock-covered feet emerged. The subdued light of the ceiling lamp showering every piece of furniture the same way the sea would glint when dawn finally came. Although mom and Sara may not have been able to see it, I made the perfect keeper; one with such devotion as I held was hardly replaceable.

“Jade.”

I had to make a conscious effort to keep my eyes from opening at a width of that of a bug’s. I hadn’t meant to show it so deliberately, but hearing her voice wrapped around my name made my heartbeat falter to a dangerous pace. Without thinking about the book that I had been keeping in my lap, I gathered my skirt in one hand and descended onto my knees near the edge of the unmade bed.

A tentative smile stretched the dry skin around the corners of my mouth. “Hello, grandma.” I combed my fingers through the short hair framing her forehead. They came out damp with sweat.

“Let me bring you some wa—”

“I’d like you to bake something for me, Jade.”

She had never been outright with her demands before this moment—most of the time she wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. But here she was, asking me—not mom or Sara—to do something for her. My palm came up once again towards her face, this time to feel the fever that already knew was there against my own frigid skin. The white around her irises had taken on the same hue of my sister’s, though I didn’t find myself cowering in front of them.

A pervasive calm seeped into my sternum, making each inhale a little less painful than the last. “Anything you want, I’ll bake anything you ask me.”

The back of her head tangled even further as she shook her head against the pillow meant to relieve her from neck pain. “I believe you know what I need, my child.” Her voice rasped wetly against the back of her throat. “I trust you to make the good decision.”

It wasn’t often that I found myself to be caught by surprise, certainly not often that I was left vulnerable to any form of contingency. But as I looked down on her face, on the hills and valleys of age, this unpleasant sensation soon dissipated and left space for a complete calm. Cooking, I knew. As long as I didn’t think about that one aspect of her request that kept nagging me, there was no problem at all. The kitchen and I, nothing new to behold.

“Well, you might need to wait for a little bit, then.” Knees cracking, I unfurled my hands from the duvet and made for the door. Before I could enter the hallway, her voice stopped my strides.

“Hurry, before the sun rises again.”

***

“There is no such thing as a last meal,” I muttered towards the counter. Not much time had passed, maybe ten or twenty minutes. All I could do was repeat these words like a mantra; they resonated louder than the ticking clock above the stove, much more urgent than the instructions I had been following since stepping inside the kitchen.

The two syllables rolled off the tongue too easily— they were too eager for such despicable words. They should have prodded and scratched on their way out, made outraged sounds of protest that would reflect their nature perfectly. But as I kept moving through the steps that I knew would lead me to my final culinary product, I couldn’t help but recognize what a lie that had been.

How could the feeling of sugar crystals under my fingers ever be unpleasant? How should I ever describe the humming of the heating oven as anything other than soothing? It wasn’t the meal that made my insides revolt as much as the last. It entailed too many things. Things I couldn’t stop nor start. To use the word decision, was to make me bear the worst of all the burden that there were, as I had no real choice to make at all.

I didn’t know death, not for the lack of occasional meetings between us, but because I did not care for it. Not for its obscure choices or its malicious intent. Certainly not for the tears and the tight knots it liked fastening around my neck when I least expected it.

Though—after all—what was death in front of the unyielding request of a well-cooked spread?