Seattle 98, or Story Draft 1: finished!

A little piece of nostalgia. My only question: is it so saccharine as to be vomitorious? Or is it just sweet enough to stomach?

Jenny Silverman stood on the back porch of the student co-op kitchen, crying onion tears into a bar mop. She scooped up some snow from the railing and pressed it against each eye, shuddering as the beginning winds of a Nor’easter snaked through her jeans and the long johns underneath. She was so not cut out for this – for the isolation of southern Vermont, or a northeast winter. She hated the constant process of layering and unlayering her clothes as she walked from one blistering steam-heated building to another, and the dark gray days that ended before classes. She most hated her roommate’s cheerfulness. Nora seemed not only not to mind the cold and dark, but to actually revel in it.

At the first sign of flurries in November, Nora had gleefully begun knitting Jenny a full winter set – hat, mittens and scarf. Nora was a champion knitter, and was famous for once having excused herself from class to get more yarn in the middle of a lecture.

“No offense or anything,” Nora had said, taking measurements of Jenny’s head as she tried to focus on Principles of Macroeconomics, “but I’m just going to assume that you didn’t bring any useful winter stuff from Los Angeles.” She finished the hat in two days, and despite her resentment at being treated like an ignorant warm-weather wuss, Jenny wore it every day. Nora had thoughtfully made ear flaps, and left ample room for what she affectionately called Jenny’s Jewfro.

Jenny yawned and knocked on the kitchen door, cursing its automatic lock. Rachel, the only other person in the kitchen, ran from her sauté pans to open it, then skittered and slid back to the stove.

“Onions are a bitch this early in the morning,” Rachel called over the hissing and spattering. “I usually keep an empty bottle of dish soap on hand and squeeze little blasts of air at my eyes when I need to clear the gas away. It’s the only thing that works.”

Jenny considered the remaining pile of onions. If she could chop as many as she had before needing her first break, she’d only need two more. Rachel left the stove, and tossed Jenny an empty soap bottle.

“Seriously, try it,” she said. “Onion duty sucks, and you’re on it for the foreseeable future, so you might as well take my advice and do what works. Look, if you blast through this pile, and we get the enchiladas set up before noon, we can make the challah together.” Rachel paused at the spice rack – a teetering, wheeled monstrosity full of disorganized boxes and jars – and reached for cumin and coriander. Jenny shook her head and went back to her cutting board. The spice rack made her OCD itch.

Glastenbury College boasted a student population of just under a thousand; there were about thirty Jews on campus, according to the yearly demographics survey. Rachel and the others who worked in the kitchen guessed there were probably fifteen to twenty others, who hadn’t checked off the box, or were too secular to consider the “religion” section. The kitchen had been founded some years earlier, as a compromise – the college wouldn’t pay for a campus rabbi, but they’d create a Jewish space on campus, and pay a few student workers to run it. For Rachel, Sasha and Avigail, this was heaven’s version of work-study.

“After all,” Avigail had explained in her light Israeli accent, “somebody offered to pay me what I’d do anyway, for my friends. How could I say no?”

Jenny and Rachel developed a rhythm as they worked. As soon as Rachel tipped a panful of cooked onions into the bathtub-sized chafing dish, Jenny was on hand and ready with a bowlful of raw ones to replace them. Rachel sang and talked to the onions as she stirred them, occasionally breaking into a familiar tune.

“Oh I wish I were an Oscar-Meyer weiner,” she sang, shaking a pan in each hand. Jenny cracked up.

“Treyf! Treyf! Oscar-Meyer has breached the perimeter and no heksher is safe!”

“Oh yeah? Guess your mom had better watch out, then!” Rachel crowed. Jenny groaned. “Your mom” jokes were staple kitchen banter, but Jenny didn’t see the appeal. Half the time, they didn’t even make sense. She picked up the empty soap bottle and squeezed it under her left eye. It worked; the single tear rolled away, and her eye stopped burning. She slid a pace to her right and turned on the battered and flour-dusted CD player to avoid further mom jokes. Avigail made crazy mixes on Thursday nights and left them for the Friday morning volunteers. Today’s first song was Prince: I wanna be your lover, quickly followed by an old-timey sounding group Jenny had never heard of. Rachel sang along with the lyrics,

“Now won’t you tell it to me

Tell it to me

Drink the corn liquor let the cocaine be

Cocaine’s gonna kill my honey dead”

“Isn’t it awesome?” Rachel yelled. Jenny laughed.

“Who are these guys?” she shouted back.

“They’re called Old Crow Medicine Show. I introduced them to Avigail sophomore year. She must’ve known I’d be here this morning to hear it.” Jenny raised her eyebrows and shook her head in the universal sign for okaaay…weirdo. Rachel caught her and laughed.

“When I was on onion duty, I had no idea why I stayed. Here I was, up to my elbows in snot and onion gas, with weird music and crazy chicks who seemed to speak more in in-jokes than in English. But I stayed – ”here, she threw her hands up, flinging a bit of onion from end of her spatula – “who knows why? But I’m glad I did.”

Jenny smiled to herself. She squeezed the soap bottle under her eyes again, and chopped the last onion. It came out perfectly diced, far from the uneven chunks of the first half. She tipped them into Rachel’s waiting pan and did a little pirouette back to her station. The cocaine song gave way to a standard woman-with-guitar number, and Jenny hummed along with the chorus as she swept the giant pile of peels into the compost bucket. She washed her knife and cutting board, and scrubbed her hands with half a lemon, as Rachel had taught her, to get rid of the onion smell.

Rachel finished the frying, and dumped all the pans into the sink. She checked the clock, then turned to Jenny.

“It’s ten thirty. What do you say we skip the dishes for now, and start the challah?” Jenny agreed, digging out the fifty pound bag of flour and the flat of eggs from the fridge. She headed to the coat-closet-turned-pantry for the rest of the ingredients. Rachel cleared off the kneading table, and opened the window a few inches. Immediately, a burst of snow blew into the kitchen. Jenny shivered.

“Come on, you polar bear! It’s freezing out there!” she called from the pantry.

“Just wait – you’ll know why I opened it when you get here,” Rachel called back. “Besides, the kneading will warm you up. It’s a nice workout for your arms and shoulders.” Jenny stepped back into the kitchen, arms laden with honey, yeast and salt. She put them all down on the kneading table and pushed back a few strands of hair, leaving a flour smudge on her forehead.

“So why, exactly, do we have to have the – ”

“Shh!” Rachel cut her off. “Listen. Do you hear them?” Jenny shut her mouth and strained to hear anything above the wind. She thought she might hear someone screaming – no, two someones. Or more. Was it just the wind? She furrowed her brow and looked questioningly at Rachel. Rachel grinned.

“It’s recess,” she explained. “You’re hearing the kids at the preschool on the other side of the fence. They’re freaking out because it’s one of the first big snows. I love listening to them while I make bread. Do you mind?”

“Aren’t they freezing?” Jenny asked, reaching for her wool sweater. She slipped it over her head, ignoring the way her hair crackled with static. Rachel shook her head.

“Nah. They wait all year for the snow. The yarn store downtown sells out of wool weeks before Christmas. I bet you every kid on that playground has a hat or a scarf or a set of mittens that somebody made for them.” She dumped a small mountain of flour on the table, made a well in the center, and started cracking eggs into it. “Measure out some warm water for the yeast, okay?” she said, nodding her head towards the recipe on the wall. Some industrious person had decided it wasn’t worth it to keep printing new copies of the bulk challah recipe, and had stenciled it straight onto the wall above the kneading table. It was signed “Anna Winters, 1994.” No one know who Anna Winters was, but the Jews of Glastenbury College ate her challah every single week. Sometimes Sasha switched the white flour recipe with whole wheat, which everyone politely ate, but the community cherished the fluffy, sweet white bread that was the mainstay of the Shabbat table.

Perhaps it was the challah that kept Jenny coming back.. Even though she paid for it with hours of onion duty, Jenny couldn’t give up challah. It was the only thing that really tasted like home, despite the fact her family’s challah always came from a bakery. Her mother preferred ahi tuna and mango salsa to brisket and kugel, but there was always a challah on Friday nights, and a bottle of Israeli wine.

Jenny mixed the yeast into the bowl of warm water and honey and set it near the stove. Rachel reached into the pile of eggs, salt, and flour, and shrieked.

“Okay, okay, Jenny, you win! Close that window before these eggs freeze to my hands and the yeast goes into hibernation.”

It took most of Jenny’s weight to pull the window down. She took off her sweater and checked on the yeast. It was bubbling and frothing; Jenny stuck her nose in the bowl for a good long whiff before she brought the bowl to Rachel. Rachel checked the progress of the yeast, and nodded for Jenny to add it to the mix. They split the mound between them and worked the dough. Rachel sang as she kneaded, a slow ballad that didn’t work at all for Jenny. It felt a little too precious, a little too goddess-of-the-bread-dough. A little too wholesome and spiritual. When Rachel finished, Jenny suggested they sing something she knew.

“Of course,” Rachel said. Immediately, Jenny’s mind went blank. She had only one thing stuck in her head, which seemed ridiculous. She told this to Rachel.

“Nonsense!” Rachel said in her faux-spiritual-leader voice. “The challah knows no bounds of ridiculousness! Sing out, sister, sing it out!”

Jenny flashed Rachel a smirk. “Okay…” she said, in a singsong you-asked-for-it-voice. And she began her song, pushing the dough to the rhythm:

“In West Philadelphia, born and raised

on the playground is where I spent most of my days

chillin out max and relaxin’ all cool

and shootin’ some b-ball outside of the school”

Rachel snorted loudly after the first few lines, but quickly joined in as they worked the dough. When they reached the end, they’d built up such a good rhythm that Rachel began the song all over again. After four rounds, the dough was ready to rise. They slid the covered bowls into the oven where it was just warmer than the kitchen and washed their hands.

“That was awesome,” said Rachel as they took a break and ate some quickly scrambled eggs. “See, that’s how stuff gets to be legend around here. I should add a line to the challah recipe – ‘Knead for four rounds of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Rap, or until supple.’” And with that, she rose from the table, grabbed a permanent marker and made a footnote just above the windowsill, crediting “The Jenny Silverman Method”.

“How do you like them apples?” Rachel asked. “You’re a part of the kitchen history now. Someday, a gaggle of challah-making mamalehs will look at that footnote and be totally mystified by this Fresh Prince business. It’ll be great.”

Jenny studied the recipe.

“Thanks,” she said, and got up to clear their plates. Rachel hated washing dishes, but Jenny liked the meditative nature of the slowly dwindling pile. They already knew this about each other. Rachel went to start chopping peppers and garlic for the next round of enchilada prep. Jenny settled in at the sink. Without fully realizing it, she began humming a tune she’d learned from Hebrew school back in LA, a three-part round with a soft, soothing melody. As her scrubbing got more vigorous, she began to sing the words, louder:

“elu finu malay shira kayam – let us have songs to fill our mouths as full as the sea.”

Jenny was so deep in the dishes she didn’t hear Rachel join the song until they’d sung a few rounds. As Jenny stacked the last of the clean onion pans, their voices found each other, adjusted the tuning slightly, and kept going. They didn’t look at each other – Jenny began to set the table for dinner and boiling water for rice, and Rachel kept chopping. Neither of them stopped singing when they heard the door open, but then they heard a voice.

“Um, excuse me? I don’t mean to interrupt, but they said this was the Jewish kitchen? And I was looking for Shabbat dinner? Am I in the right place?” A trembling freshman in thick-soled boots and a bright red pea coat stood in the doorway.

“Of course you are,” said Rachel, wiping her hands on her apron and walking to the newcomer. “What’s your name, mameleh? I’m Rachel.”

“I’m Sarah,” said the woman, smiling. She looked over at Jenny, “Let me guess – you’re Leah, or Rebecca?” Jenny grinned over the pile of dishes.

“Actually, that’s Jenny Silverman,” said Rachel. “Dinner’s not for a few hours, but have you come to help out?”

“I heard that’s the deal,” said Sarah. “What can I do?”

Rachel looked around the kitchen, and then at Jenny, who was folding napkins. “You know what?” she said. “I’m going to put you with Jenny. If you like working here, you can come back next week and she’ll show you how everything goes. She’s been waiting for someone to teach. Is that okay with you, Jenny?”

Jenny looked up. “Yeah, sure! Here, let me get you an apron and we can take a tour of the kitchen.” She showed Sarah the coat hooks, and grabbed a green apron with the words “Challah Back” scrawled in gold fabric paint across the front. “You can start by helping me get silverware out of the pantry. I’m afraid there’s not much cooking left this week, but next week there will be. Can you get here at 8 in the morning?”

“I think so,” said Sarah. “I’d really like to help. I miss cooking. And Jews. I didn’t think I’d miss Jews so much, since I came from a tiny town that had very few, but I do. Jews and sunshine.”

“Sunshine?” Jenny asked, heaping a serving tray with forks. “Where are you from?”

“Georgia,” said Sarah. “Just outside Decatur.”

“Oh man,” said Jenny. “No wonder your coat looked so new!” Sarah giggled.

“No kidding! I can’t stand the cold up here! Where are you from?”

“LA,” said Jenny. The two exchanged a knowing look. Rachel stuck her head into the pantry asked them to help glaze the challahs. Sarah looked dazzled by the dozen loaves, glistening with eggs and sesame seeds. Jenny finished the tour, skipping over the onion bins – there’d be time for that next week.