Being bizarre for the Rose family was bittersweet because it caused a series of problems for them all.
-
Abhaya
My Mother cooked dinner.
Most people would appreciate that their Mother cooked, but it was different in the Rose family.
It was bizarre.
My Mother loathed cooking with intense passion.
When I was a child, I asked my Mother to bake
a blueberry pie as that was and still is my favorite dessert; she told me she would instead buy one.
Curiously, I asked her why never cooked as all
my other friend's mothers cooked for them, but my Mother never did. When I asked, she began speaking as if her mind had traveled back into time.
The conversation we shared that day was one of the first times my Mother had ever opened up to me about her troubled past. She told me that cooking brought her back to childhood. It reminded her of when she was just a little girl. Her Mother died when she was only ten years of age; her being the only daughter amongst six brothers was forced to take her Mother's place. She did all the cooking, all the cleaning, all the emotional labor. Her childhood was snatched before her eyes, and she never really got over it.
But who could? That had was a traumatizing experience for her.
The only time my Mother cooked a family dinner
was when she wanted to call my father out for his deceitful actions. After multiple undercook steaks and cold mash potatoes, father still didn't seem to learn his lesson."This looks great, mom." I lifted my head with a smile as she placed a nicely cooked steak down on the beautiful oriental-designed china plates. "Thanks, mi amour.", she then put two more steaks down, one against my sisters then hers.
The last to receive a steak was my father, who sat at the front of the table; my Mother was outcasting him.
When it was his turn to receive a steak, She rudely dropped it down, nearly missing the plate by a few centimeters. Unlike the rest of the steaks, his was
very undercooked. One bite into that steak, and you
would probably receive a parasite in return.
"You know what this steak reminds me of, honey?
It reminds me of the dead bodies I cut open daily,
so red, so raw." He chuckled a bit, unphased by Mother's actions.
Without a word of acknowledgment, she joined us
all at the table.
"Bow your heads, everyone." My sister and I
bowed, but father continued to hold his head
up proudly. "Atheists don't bow." He spoke. My
eyes shifted between Mother and Father, waiting
for an inevitable dispute to arise.
"Of course you are; atheists don't believe in anything. They have no values, no morals, nothing but a soul damned to hell." A theatrical laugh escaped her lips before she bowed, "Thank you for the food we are about to receive in the name of our body; in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen"
"Amen." My sister and I simultaneously stated as
our heads raised in sync.
The room became quiet; all that was heard was the clanking of silverware amongst us except for father, who looked down at his food with slight disgust. He reached out for the bottle of red wine before pouring it inside of a crystal glass.
6. The Roses Are Bizarre
Start from the beginning
