Read Online Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found by Allegra Huston - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Allegra Huston
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the garden in front of his house, wearing shorts and a shirt unbuttoned all the way, a big spiky fork in one hand. Smoke leaked out of a shiny contraption in front of him. His French wife, Aunt Dani, was laying out platters of coleslaw and other salady things in the kitchen. I was handed a plate made of paper. Its floppiness worried me.
“This,” said Uncle Nap, forking it off the grill and onto the bun that Nana had laid open on my plate, “is a real American hamburger.”
It was weirdly flat and compacted, as if an elephant had sat on it. I wasn’t at all sure how to handle it.
“Put the top on and pick it up! Wait a minute, don’t you want some ketchup?”
My cousin Martine, two years older than me, was staring in amazement, as if she couldn’t believe that anyone could never have seen a hamburger bun before. Self-consciously I bit into it. The bun was cottony and cardboardy at the same time, how a box of Q-tips would taste if it had been ground up and baked. I could barely swallow it. I saw Nana’s face as she watched me pick at the hamburger patty with a fork, and I knew I’d disappointed her.
I’d never been in a house as informal as Uncle Nap’s. The kitchen bled into the living room (no “drawing room,” no “study”), and my cousins had the run of it, getting their own food when they wanted it and eating with the grown-ups as if that were normal. The Lynches’ house at St. Cleran’s was the closest to it that I’d known, but that was different: the Lynches worked for us and they had seven children, which I realized was, in Mum’s and Daddy’s world, unseemly. In the houses I knew, the children had their separate spaces and separate routines—and it was the same in the books I read, like Peter Pan and The Secret Garden. I’d always felt peripheral: not unwanted or unloved, but I knew my place. I was drawn to my cousins’ freedom, but I knew it wasn’t mine.
I felt like a freak. My voice, my clothes, the food I was familiar with: nothing fit in here. This was my family, I knew, but I was a stranger. I’d never get the hang of being American, I thought, and I decided I didn’t want to. I was only there for the summer, anyway.
On Sunday mornings, all the cousins would come up to Nana and Grampa’s house. Grampa would kneel in the middle of the livingroom, lace his fingers tightly together with his forearms flat on the floor, nestle his head into the cradle of his hands, curl into an upside-down fetal position, and finally, methodically, power up into a headstand. Six or seven or eight pairs of legs would fling themselves up into the air next to him, in a raggedy line. Grampa would kick it off with the enthusiasm that was his almost delusional spiritual practice:
“OH what a BEAU-tee-full MORRR…NING!”
As Grampa blasted it out, the tempo thudding like a battering ram, the cousins droned along dutifully: “Oh what a beautiful day…”
One verse was all that was required. I’m not sure I ever heard Grampa sing beyond that, even by himself. Then seven or eight or nine pairs of feet would hit the floor, and Grampa would dole out a quarter to each cousin in pocket money. It seemed measly, even to a little girl who had never had pocket money before.
Nana tried to teach me to stand on my head so that I could join in this family scene. I could barely put my head on the floor. When I finally built up the courage to kick up my legs, with Nana holding my ankles, it was the worst combination of feeling lost in space and on the verge of crashing to the earth. I was afraid of Grampa’s contempt, so after that first Sunday I made sure I wasn’t in the living room when my cousins arrived.
The singing was for the benefit of prana , because it encouraged deep, regular breathing. When Grampa was right way up, he hawked up mucus from his throat every few minutes and spat it with great force and satisfaction. Old newspapers were spread out all around him—changed daily by Nana, I suppose, as
“This,” said Uncle Nap, forking it off the grill and onto the bun that Nana had laid open on my plate, “is a real American hamburger.”
It was weirdly flat and compacted, as if an elephant had sat on it. I wasn’t at all sure how to handle it.
“Put the top on and pick it up! Wait a minute, don’t you want some ketchup?”
My cousin Martine, two years older than me, was staring in amazement, as if she couldn’t believe that anyone could never have seen a hamburger bun before. Self-consciously I bit into it. The bun was cottony and cardboardy at the same time, how a box of Q-tips would taste if it had been ground up and baked. I could barely swallow it. I saw Nana’s face as she watched me pick at the hamburger patty with a fork, and I knew I’d disappointed her.
I’d never been in a house as informal as Uncle Nap’s. The kitchen bled into the living room (no “drawing room,” no “study”), and my cousins had the run of it, getting their own food when they wanted it and eating with the grown-ups as if that were normal. The Lynches’ house at St. Cleran’s was the closest to it that I’d known, but that was different: the Lynches worked for us and they had seven children, which I realized was, in Mum’s and Daddy’s world, unseemly. In the houses I knew, the children had their separate spaces and separate routines—and it was the same in the books I read, like Peter Pan and The Secret Garden. I’d always felt peripheral: not unwanted or unloved, but I knew my place. I was drawn to my cousins’ freedom, but I knew it wasn’t mine.
I felt like a freak. My voice, my clothes, the food I was familiar with: nothing fit in here. This was my family, I knew, but I was a stranger. I’d never get the hang of being American, I thought, and I decided I didn’t want to. I was only there for the summer, anyway.
On Sunday mornings, all the cousins would come up to Nana and Grampa’s house. Grampa would kneel in the middle of the livingroom, lace his fingers tightly together with his forearms flat on the floor, nestle his head into the cradle of his hands, curl into an upside-down fetal position, and finally, methodically, power up into a headstand. Six or seven or eight pairs of legs would fling themselves up into the air next to him, in a raggedy line. Grampa would kick it off with the enthusiasm that was his almost delusional spiritual practice:
“OH what a BEAU-tee-full MORRR…NING!”
As Grampa blasted it out, the tempo thudding like a battering ram, the cousins droned along dutifully: “Oh what a beautiful day…”
One verse was all that was required. I’m not sure I ever heard Grampa sing beyond that, even by himself. Then seven or eight or nine pairs of feet would hit the floor, and Grampa would dole out a quarter to each cousin in pocket money. It seemed measly, even to a little girl who had never had pocket money before.
Nana tried to teach me to stand on my head so that I could join in this family scene. I could barely put my head on the floor. When I finally built up the courage to kick up my legs, with Nana holding my ankles, it was the worst combination of feeling lost in space and on the verge of crashing to the earth. I was afraid of Grampa’s contempt, so after that first Sunday I made sure I wasn’t in the living room when my cousins arrived.
The singing was for the benefit of prana , because it encouraged deep, regular breathing. When Grampa was right way up, he hawked up mucus from his throat every few minutes and spat it with great force and satisfaction. Old newspapers were spread out all around him—changed daily by Nana, I suppose, as
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