Cooking as Fast as I Can (11 page)

My Wikipedia entry amusingly reads: “After receiving her bachelor of science degree in exercise physiology and biology at the University of Southern Mississippi, she enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.” It's not untrue, but makes the journey sound so straightforward, as though I sashayed through my graduation in Hattiesburg in the sweltering June heat one day, then packed up my knives and sped on up to Hyde Park the next.

But real life provides very few clear-cut aha moments. And there was no moment of clarity or clear turning point when I knew I'd make a life in the kitchen. I struggled to figure out what to do with my life.

My mom and dad had gotten up at dawn and gone to work every day. They had taken second jobs and weekend shifts and earned extra college degrees, and still, I couldn't quite figure out what adults did all day. Or, better put, what I was supposed to do all day, now that I had a college degree. I moved back in with my parents, a boomerang child before the term became popular.

It occurred to me that I could prolong my existential dilemma a bit longer by spending the summer backpacking around Europe. I'd been to Texas and a few other southern states, but otherwise I was undertraveled. My parents weren't opposed, but they were not about to foot the bill, so I got a job.

I had never worked in a real restaurant, but I have a habit of going big when I set my mind to something. So, without a lick of experience, I somehow landed a job at what was at the time the top restaurant in town, a white-tablecloth place on State Street in downtown Jackson, not far from the Old Capitol Building. I began as a waitress, but also worked as a cocktail waitress and then bartender. But during slow times I always found myself wandering back into the kitchen. I loved to cook at home, but the chefs and cooks were clearly up to something very different. It seemed as if they were doing ten things at once, with confidence and an air of nonchalance. The plates of food they produced were as beautiful as they were delicious. At home I followed recipes—one of my all-time favorite cookbooks had been the classic spiral-bound, red-and-white-checked Betty Crocker—but these guys, and they were
all
guys, held all the information they needed in their heads. I was both impressed and intrigued and thought how great it would be to have all those skills at your disposal.

As I was learning to serve food, my personal life took on a grounded feeling I'd never known to that point. My mom had finished her PhD program and had returned to Swan Lake Drive. Alma, who was getting up there in years, had grown accustomed to living with us, and stayed on in her floral-wallpapered bedroom. She kept right on doing our laundry and turning out her spectacular desserts. Joanne, my birth mother, was a regular part of my life. Then I met Hannah.

I was twenty-three, and in the four years since I'd come out, Jackson had opened a few more gay bars. One night some friends and I found ourselves at a place called—I kid you not—Carpet World. I started chatting with a cute blond girl at the bar only to learn after twenty concentrated minutes of flashing my smile and fluttering my lashes that she was straight. She in turn introduced me to Hannah, who to my great surprise was dressed in the outfit of the hard-core Pentecostal holy roller: knee-length skirt, cotton blouse with Peter Pan collar, and a long braid down her back.

What on earth was a Pentecostal girl doing in a gay bar? My family was Greek Orthodox, and active in the church community. We were churchgoers, as many good southerners are, but as I was to learn, Hannah's people were fervent, Bible-thumping Pentecostals, the type who spoke in tongues and practiced the laying on of hands. She'd spent her formative years in a trailer park in Slidell, Louisiana, a small town on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, with her parents and three sisters. Hannah moved to Jackson to live with her grandmother when she was in elementary school, and after she graduated from high school she got a job working for Allstate insurance company. She stayed with her grandma, and the thing that I found fascinating was that even though her people routinely damned her to hell for her sexual orientation, she just took it in stride.

Her parents begged her to talk to their pastor, and practically gave themselves hernias praying for her, but she would just smile and say no, thanks. I was impressed that she could stand her ground and be kind to her detractors at the same time.

It wasn't love at first sight, but we grew into an easy friendship and eventually something more. We hung out with the
same group of women, and often at the end of a party, or a night at a club, we would wind up together talking. Hannah was always the designated driver, and I always seemed to have my eye on her hot, straight best friend. One night I noticed that she'd cut her braid, had replaced her skirts with tight jeans, and was wearing mascara and lipstick. I saw she was pretty, with expressive eyes and a lovely smile.

New Orleans became our stomping grounds. Especially because after a night on the town we could crash at Hannah's family's place. Slidell was a mere thirty minutes from the city, over the I-10 Twin Span bridge, a trip that was always fueled by a peach daiquiri, extra shot, from one of Louisiana's roadside drive-thru daiquiri shops.

We had our favorite gay bars, where I would usually try to pick up a hot little Dixie chick and Hannah would function as my wingman. She wasn't happy seeing me with other girls, and would try to hook up herself, but without much success. After a night on the town there was usually a scene, with Hannah in tears and me racked with guilt, heartache all around. Eventually, Hannah tired of waiting for me and started seeing someone else. That got my attention real quick, and my feelings for her began to change.

I wish I could say that I saw her inner beauty before she started wearing lip gloss and curling her hair, but the truth is that only after her transformation did I realize maybe Hannah and I could be more than friends. Since the night we'd met she'd made no secret of her attraction to me, but over time I came to realize that I had someone special right under my nose, someone who loved me and would have my back.

Hannah, sweet and easygoing, was game for anything. Once I'd saved enough money, she thought nothing of quitting her job at Allstate and taking off for Europe for twelve
weeks. Our itinerary was based on the places I'd dreamed about as a girl, lying on my belly on the living room floor, perusing my dad's atlas: England and France, Spain and Portugal, Amsterdam, Switzerland and Germany, Italy and, of course, Greece.

We were on a strict budget, staying in youth hostels and one-star hotels. We purchased a Eurail pass and sometimes took an overnight train to save money. We ate the local bread, cheese, cured meat, and wine. If we ate out, it was usually street food. We dutifully phoned home once a week, but otherwise we were completely on our own. We were twenty-three. We traveled well together, a pair of pretty young things abroad, reveling in our adventures, which included not one but two incidents involving flashers—once in Naples and once in Saint-Tropez—and a misadventure that occurred on the train from Spain to Portugal.

Our Eurail pass was only good for economy class. It was mid-July and murderously hot. We sat in the last car with the train windows thrown open, dust, pollen, and flies circulating throughout the car. Hannah and I were tired and cranky. We bickered over something I've long since forgotten. I thought we could use a break and went to the bar car, where I ordered a sandwich and a cold beer. I struck up a conversation with a Spanish soldier. We passed the time nursing our beers. In those days there were no bullet trains, and our train lumbered across the countryside, stopping at every small station along the way. Eventually there came an announcement that we were reaching Lisbon, and I bid him farewell and started back to my seat at the back of the train. Except there
was
no back of the train. Somewhere along the route the train had been decoupled, and Hannah and all my stuff were gone.

I sprinted back through the cars to find the Spanish soldier before he disappeared. Sweat poured down the side of my face and I could feel my pulse beating in my throat. I caught up with him, grabbed him, and told him what happened. He was unruffled, got off the train with me at the next stop, explained my predicament to the person in the ticket booth, and soon I was back on a train headed in the opposite direction. I was so relieved after having been so frantic that I bought myself another beer, stuck my head out the train window like a happy retriever, and enjoyed the ride all the way back.

When we reached the station, I spied Hannah on the platform with a policeman. I could see she had been crying, and I waved out the window, happy that I'd been so quick on my feet and solved the problem easily. Hannah was relieved to see me, but also wanted to bean me for getting us into this predicament in the first place.

The high point of the trip was our pilgrimage to Skopelos, Greece, the island of my ancestors. I felt like a southern girl through and through, but part of me was always aware that my dad's side of the family was Greek. And not simply Greek immigrants who'd made their way from the Old Country to become Greek Americans who ran restaurants in Mississippi, but also mysterious and exotic aunts, uncles, and cousins who were born and died on the same small island in the Aegean.

Before Hannah and I had left, my dad arose in the predawn dark to make phone calls to Skopelos to arrange our visit. I remember awaking in the dark to hear him down the hall, speaking Greek to strangers who were not strangers at all, but family. The mere thought of it thrilled me to the core. Due east of the Pelion peninsula, the drumstick-shaped island of Skopelos is a mere thirty-seven square miles of mountainous terrain covered in pine and oak, and dotted with plum
and almond orchards. Karagiozoses have lived here for centuries, in a house on a hillside that my aunts, uncles, and cousins called “grandfather's house,” a modest white structure with a table outside beneath the olive trees, overlooking the blue-green sea.

When we arrived, my dad's cousin's wife, whom everyone called Aunt Demetra, had a spread waiting, the rustic table laid end to end with white platters of homemade bread, tangy tzatziki, spicy feta spread, artichoke hearts braised in lemon juice, and buttery, light spanakopita stuffed with fresh spinach and the most flavorful feta I'd ever eaten. Demetra was worried we were starving. Even though she spoke very little English, I watched her wring her hands a little, then she opened her palms toward a pair of wobbly chairs. She pushed the platters toward us, nodded, and smiled. Although we'd had breakfast before we'd boarded the ferry in Thessaloníki only a few hours before, we dug in. Without speaking the same language, our mutual happiness was apparent.

The next day we were introduced to my great-aunt Eleni, Dad's uncle John's wife, who lived in a tiny apartment overlooking the harbor, the best spot on the island. She brought us thick Greek coffee made in a briki pot and served with a spoon sweet—a thick dollop of syrupy fruit preserves—a traditional gesture of Greek hospitality. Maybe it was because we were tired of cheap hotels, cheap meals, and the general stresses of travel, but Aunt Eleni's coffee and sweets, simple as they were, restored us. We felt nourished and cared for. Hannah and I stayed on Skopelos for only a few days, but it was long enough for me to glimpse something simple and profound: that the joy and satisfaction of making and sharing food, whether you
are cooking and serving or receiving and enjoying, are universal. The passion my Greek relatives put into their food and the passion my southern family put into
their
food was the same. Good food, served with care, had the power to connect even people who didn't speak the same language. I was so moved by this that I felt a goal begin to materialize. Since I'd graduated from college I'd felt at loose ends, but on the long flight home I kept coming back to the same idea, that I might be able to make a living cooking, providing this kind of experience for others.

After Hannah and I returned to the States I got a job at Amerigo, a casual Italian establishment on Old Canton Road not far from the country club. They served what passed as authentic Italian in Jackson: scampi, lasagna, pasta pomodoro, and spaghetti in a traditional red sauce with a jumbo meatball. I waited tables for a while, and when there was an opening for a cook, I put in for it.