WANTED: Love of my Life

11. Growing up - Hey, up I said! Up!!!

Apparently, my mother didn't think the same as Jen. In fact she had exactly the opposite attitude to my new interest in school work. When I returned home and showed her my grade, she hugged me and then ran off to call her friends. I heard her on the phone gossiping happily about how well her little Angel was doing and how grown up she was becoming.

I went into the bathroom and examined myself in the full-length wall mirror. Nope. My figure was growing in most the appropriate places for my age. My hips were wide enough for swinging, and my upper body anatomy could swing, too, when I moved right. But up? I looked at the ceiling far, far above me. No, I was definitely not growing up.

“Angela! Angela, where are you?”

My mother, utterly convinced, I'm sure, that I couldn't or at least shouldn't be doing anything in here that her eyes weren't allowed to see, threw open the bathroom door. “Oh Angela.” She beamed down at me. “Wait till your father hears about this. He'll be so excited. And Cathy!”

“Yeah”, I said. “I'll bet Cathy will be real excited that for once, I didn't flunk.”

My mother beamed some more. Did I mention that I have a really big problem with people who don't understand sarcasm?

“We have to celebrate this! What should we do? I know! I'll cook you something special, and you'll get an extra big helping. What would you like, my Angel?”

That's what you get for not screwing up once. I hadn't expected to be hailed as the new Einstein for my recent math achievement, but neither did I expect I would be punished for it. My first instinct was to say: “Nothing, mom. I'd like to go to bed hungry tonight. Do you think you could manage that? Yes? Thanks so much!”

But then I looked into her eager, childlike eyes and I knew I couldn't do that to her. I opened my mouth, ready to resign myself to my fate, when suddenly, an idea struck me. An ingenious idea.

“Do you think you could make pasta?”, I asked with an innocent smile.

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

My plan wasn't going to be quite as easy as I'd hoped – which wasn't exactly surprising, I told myself. After all, when I'd helped doing this in the shelter, we'd cooked for a crowd of over a hundred with pots and pans half the size of Montana. My mother was trying to do it in one of her normal kitchen pots for a family of four. And she was trying, really trying, I could tell. She smiled over at me nervously as I sat at the kitchen table, doodling in my notebook, and picked up the oregano shaker to salt the mincemeat. Trying, it seemed, wasn't going to be enough. The phone rang.

“O dear,” mom sighed. “I'll be back in a minute.”

I wasn't exactly sure whether she was talking to me or the mincemeat. The latter would surely have paid even less attention to her than I. As soon as she was out of the room, I sprang up and strode over to the stove. Taking a pan out of the kitchen cabinet, I emptied the pot into it and placed it on the stove. Then I added an appropriate amount of salt and pepper.

My mother was still on the phone. It sounded like another of her friends, and it sounded like that friend was telling her that she had heard from another friend that another friend's daughter hadn't done at all well in the math test – which, of course, promptly caused my mother to sing a lengthy hymn of praise about my recent accomplishments.

The mincemeat was turning a brownish color. It looked like it should look when it was ready for eating, so I carefully took up a spoon, picked up a tiny morsel and tasted. It tasted like it should, too! Not bad for a first attempt. I allowed myself a tiny grin of pride. In the living room, my mother's conversation seemed to draw to a close. Hurriedly, I hid all the spices that I could see on the kitchen counter in the cutlery drawer and ran back to the table. When my mother reentered the kitchen, I was doodling like a real doodler who has nothing to do but to doodle all day.