Smoke pervaded the first floor. Olivia had the oven set to 575 degrees for an hour. She had lattered the turkey with butter, oil, and green seasoning. In the meantime, she grated cheese while the rice and pigeon peas simmered in one pot and the macaroni in another. Diana placed candied yams and collard greens in Pyrex dishes and set them aside on the small kitchen table so that she could prepare the vegetables and salads.
“Make sure you wash the lettuce with baking soda and vinegar,” Liv reminded Di.
With an eye roll, Di strained the lettuce, and then did the same to the radishes, baby carrots and cherry tomatoes once the bubbles had settled. She cut and diced them, tossed them together, and placed them into the crystal salad bowl to chill in the fridge. Next, she turned her attention to the boiling potatoes and eggs.
“Your rice is burning,” Di warned. “You need to add a little water, lower the fire, and cover the pot.”
Liv left her iPad on the kitchen table and turned her attention to the macaroni and cheese. She would serve Cajun salt if there was such a dish. She loved to serve food, overcooked and salty, often burned, annoying Di to the brink of insanity. “Watch my iPad,” Liv cautioned, retrieving it and heading to the living room to watch a game show while the rice steamed on low fire.
Di finished the potato salad and returned to her work, spread out onto the dining room table. One more project to review and wrap up before she cleared out to free the space for their sit down dinner. Her cold tea, half finished, needed a quick minute in the microwave. Returning to the kitchen where Liv was also reheating breakfast for the twins, Di couldn’t help ruminate on the evening coincidences when her arrival home through the back door would occur just as Liv entered the kitchen to serve the twins dinner. Drained from the hour and a half commute, hungry from teaching with little to no time to eat, exhausted from a twelve hour day’s work, Di always wondered whether the timing was Liv’s way to ensure that they all ate together or whether part of Liv’s competitive streak to beat her to the microwave.
“You’re clearing the table any time soon?” Liv asked as Di gulped the warm tea, returning to the dining room.
Cutting her eyes at her mother, “Give me a chance to finish. I’m almost done.”
While Liv’s attention vacillated between her iPad, the TV, and the smoke emanating from the oven, Di called the twins to help her set the table and take her laptop and binders to her desk in the attic where their father slept. Hopper dispatched for 911 at night, and he was probably more tired than usual because he had spent most of the previous day assisting the plumber to rewire the furnace. The house was colder than outside, but it was an unusually warm November day, so they could endure the chill until the Hopper finished the furnace over the weekend.
“When they come back down, make sure they eat,” Liv told Di, who was spreading the fresh table cloth onto the table. “I’m not going to warm their plates again.”
“They are adults, Ma.” Liv whined.
Di humphed under her breath but within earshot of both the Liv and the twins as they returned from the attic. Liv and the twins looked at each other as if to reminisce momentarily on Di’s antic’s the night before when she broke one of the dining room chairs, dashing it repeatedly onto the tiled kitchen floor until it splintered and fell into irreconcilable parts. Fortunately, her rage culminated into aggression onto the chair instead of Liv, who had decided to rearrange the china cabinet and bookshelves to make space for the Christmas tree. It made sense to place the tree in the dining room where they would have more space after the holiday season passed. Di, resistant to change, resented that Liv had taken up occupancy with her sewing machine in the living room, exactly where they typically placed the Christmas tree.
Not long after the twins had their breakfast, the phone rang, and Di heard the answer machine in the living room announce the caller, “Virginia Espiritu Santu,” a third time. Di had finished the rest of the side dishes and was frosting the desserts. She wondered why her mother hadn’t answered the phone. Liv and Virginia were thick as thieves all their lives, but the politics, the pandemic, and the pressures of 2020 all strained their sisterhood to an impossible impasse.
“Why didn’t you take the phone?” Di asked as she joined Liv and slumped onto the loveseat.
Liv humphed and unrolled her bun, smoothed her thinning, grey bangs, ran her fingers through the length of her hair, and rolled her bun three times round before tucking the ends of her hair under the rolls. She would roll and unroll her hair so often in the course of a day that everyone, especially at family gatherings, would think she was casting one of her spells.
“Have you spoken to her since you asked her to stop texting?” Di persisted.
Liv rolled her eyes and her hair. She creased the corners of her lips but said nothing, changing the channel to the midday news. Virginia had been sending daily texts with a Bible reading, an inspiration, and a prayer. Every morning at 8:00AM and every night at 8:00PM, she sent everyone in the family these messages. Everyone, except Liv, appreciated the messages.
“I pray everyday, and I don’t need anyone to remind me,” Liv scuffed. “I don’t want to be part of any cult.”
“It’s not a cult,” Di defended her aunt. “She’s simply sending you a prayer. What’s cultish about a simple prayer?”
After Governor Cuomo’s Shelter in Place Order when New York became the epicenter of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Virginia started a prayer group with her sons, then their wives, then her nieces in Canada, then eventually everyone in her phone book. As the spring came to an end and then summer, the prayer chain grew into an intercontinental circle. By the end of the fall, Virginia had added everyone in the family to these messages.
Liv found mass messages suspicious. She hated the chain letters her sister-in-law in England used to post to her, giving her a US dollar and asking her to do the same by mailing a dollar to more and more others with each new chain letter. She hated the multiple calls that her mobile would identify as spam, never answering and routinely deleting the calls and any corresponding messages. She hated robocalls that placed her on hold or asked to speak with a vague individual, like the owner of a vehicle whose warranty was set to expire, the patron who frequented a luxury hotel, or the winner of prizes for which she never listened long enough to garner any interest. She hated Virginia’s texts, no different from chain letters, spam, or robocalls. By dinner, Virginia had called at least 6 times, practically on the hour.
As was tradition, Di asked her younger son to read the prayer, a simple verse on an orange paper they had received during the last year of catechism classes before the boys’ confirmation. Christian protested, because he had led prayer every year and thought they should have a change. Christopher reached for the orange paper, but Liv slapped his hand away. Christian and Di looked at each other, and then at Liv, who continued to rearrange the dishes set on the table. Christopher reached again for the paper, and she was about to slap his hand again but Di gave the look of a lion ready to pounce.
“The devil must really be on your tail,” Di couldn’t help observing. “We say this prayer every year. All it might have on it is a little dust. It’s not like it’s infected with COVID-19. It’s just a prayer!”
Liv sat silently, slipping the end of her hair through her fingers before rolling and re-rolling her ponytail into a tighter and tighter bun as Christopher recited the prayer. She waited until everyone had served themselves before dishing out her plate, a meager portion of everything she had prepared. They talked about past Thanksgivings, laughing that Hopper never joined them after their first Thanksgiving in the house. At least this time, he had an excuse: He needed to sleep. This excuse the boys could understand, though they still laughed at his unconventional way of escaping or breaking with traditions. As a fresh round of laughter ensued over the fact they had finished the meal and left the cranberry sauce on the kitchen counter, the phone rang again.
“Call from Virginia Espiritu Santu. Call from Virginia Espiritu Santu. Virginia Espiritu Santu,” the machine announced before Liv relented and answered.
Eduspirer's Griot 