Read Online The Appetites of Girls by Pamela Moses - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pamela Moses
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depending on my mood. If they were not too busy, they let me watch as they cleaned redeye fish or gutted chicken cavities, wiping scales and blood across their apron fronts and singing songs about the island, about whalers out to sea and the heartbreak of poor Josiah Moody, abandoned by his cheating wife. When I joined in singing the parts I’d learned, they chuckled. “Funny child! Don’t you have better things to do than watch a bunch of biddies work!” I shrugged and then shook my head, which only made them chuckle more. “Will you sing the one about the fisherman’s daughter?” I would ask. Usually they gave in, sometimes sharing with me the hunks of papaya or toasted coconut they munched from bowls. Then when they tired of singing, I carried my plate to thebamboo love seat against the wall of the hotel. I took tiny swallows of soda and poked at my conch or chunks of lamb, trying to make my supper last, passing the time until the dinner crowd thinned and I could rejoin Mother.
When the families and couples began to disperse, Mother chose a table at the open end of the floor, closest to the sand, and faced the shore, inhaling the salt of the ocean.
“Surprise me!” she would say, throwing her hands in the air, when one of the kitchen staff asked what she wished to eat. Holding a fresh glass of ginger soda, I would slide into a chair beside her.
“Goodness, Opal, you scared me! I forgot you were still downstairs!” Her loud words confused me because I could not tell if she was annoyed or merely teasing.
“Where did you think I went?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Off with one of the hunky British boys!” She laughed, and I tried to laugh in her same careless manner, not wanting her to think how childishly, impatiently I’d waited for the end of her shift.
Then within a minute or two, it seemed, a man approached, looming over our table. Sometimes he was an acquaintance, a resident of the island who frequented the bar, but more often a stranger, a guest of the hotel or the skipper of a boat in the harbor. He had not yet eaten, he would say. Would my mother mind some company? He swirled a glass of pale brown liquid and handed her the cocktail stuck with slender straws. He was from France, he said, or Italy, New York, California, Brazil. As he sniffed, I could see into the dark nostrils of his carved rock of a nose. And Mother would smile, nodding at the wicker chair across from us, sipping at the straws in her drink. She waited until his dinner arrived before beginning her own. “Sharing a meal with a man is a gesture of intimacy,” I remembered her telling me once, and I’d wondered if she and my father had eaten together in this way; though I knew he’d been a part of her life only briefly, a season of just a few months while she’d lived in Europe.
In a man’s presence, Mother ate differently from when we were alone. At home, in San Francisco, she had made chicken cutlets or ordered mu shu pork and Chinese noodles from the Shanghai Palace down the street. And at our kitchen counter, we had piled the food onto our plates, scooping forkfuls almost without tasting as Carly Simon played on the stereo. Now she savored every bite, cutting delicately into kingfish or spiced shrimp.
“This is
divine
,” she would say, arching her neck so that I could see each swallow. And I noticed the man always watched, too.
“Try a bite of mine,” he would offer, and they would both stretch across the table, turning their shoulders from me so that she could reach his fork. Afterward, they might share a dessert—a slice of coconut pie, a bowl of orangey mango sherbet. In slow rhythm, their spoons dipped into the dish, and the man would regale Mother with stories. She would tilt her head to one side and lick at the corners of her mouth. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” the man would tell her, and they would begin to joke about things I struggled to understand.
“You don’t mind if I take your mama out for a
When the families and couples began to disperse, Mother chose a table at the open end of the floor, closest to the sand, and faced the shore, inhaling the salt of the ocean.
“Surprise me!” she would say, throwing her hands in the air, when one of the kitchen staff asked what she wished to eat. Holding a fresh glass of ginger soda, I would slide into a chair beside her.
“Goodness, Opal, you scared me! I forgot you were still downstairs!” Her loud words confused me because I could not tell if she was annoyed or merely teasing.
“Where did you think I went?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Off with one of the hunky British boys!” She laughed, and I tried to laugh in her same careless manner, not wanting her to think how childishly, impatiently I’d waited for the end of her shift.
Then within a minute or two, it seemed, a man approached, looming over our table. Sometimes he was an acquaintance, a resident of the island who frequented the bar, but more often a stranger, a guest of the hotel or the skipper of a boat in the harbor. He had not yet eaten, he would say. Would my mother mind some company? He swirled a glass of pale brown liquid and handed her the cocktail stuck with slender straws. He was from France, he said, or Italy, New York, California, Brazil. As he sniffed, I could see into the dark nostrils of his carved rock of a nose. And Mother would smile, nodding at the wicker chair across from us, sipping at the straws in her drink. She waited until his dinner arrived before beginning her own. “Sharing a meal with a man is a gesture of intimacy,” I remembered her telling me once, and I’d wondered if she and my father had eaten together in this way; though I knew he’d been a part of her life only briefly, a season of just a few months while she’d lived in Europe.
In a man’s presence, Mother ate differently from when we were alone. At home, in San Francisco, she had made chicken cutlets or ordered mu shu pork and Chinese noodles from the Shanghai Palace down the street. And at our kitchen counter, we had piled the food onto our plates, scooping forkfuls almost without tasting as Carly Simon played on the stereo. Now she savored every bite, cutting delicately into kingfish or spiced shrimp.
“This is
divine
,” she would say, arching her neck so that I could see each swallow. And I noticed the man always watched, too.
“Try a bite of mine,” he would offer, and they would both stretch across the table, turning their shoulders from me so that she could reach his fork. Afterward, they might share a dessert—a slice of coconut pie, a bowl of orangey mango sherbet. In slow rhythm, their spoons dipped into the dish, and the man would regale Mother with stories. She would tilt her head to one side and lick at the corners of her mouth. “Do you know how beautiful you are?” the man would tell her, and they would begin to joke about things I struggled to understand.
“You don’t mind if I take your mama out for a
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