Chicken Blood Rice

If there was one thing Edith never gave up, it was her recipe for chicken blood rice. Natalia had drawn out some of the ingredients from her sister—obvious ones like chicken blood and rice, but also a few Natalia would have never guessed on her own. Red wine. Vinegar. Bay leaves. But no matter how often Natalia made the recipe, tinkering and toying with measurements, she could never get it to taste quite like Edith’s.

Natalia suspected something was missing—a crucial step Edith guarded like a feral dog—and so she tried to coax it from her sister. When that didn’t work, she tried unearthing it from Edith’s mind by talking about their childhood in Portugal. How Natalia had smoothed Edith’s hair into neat little braids at night so it wouldn’t tangle, and how she’d washed Edith’s laundry, even though Natalia always had extra chores. And when that didn’t work, Natalia tried bribing her sister.

“You can have Avô’s old journals,” Natalia said, her arms spread, palms up as if the journals would drop from the shelf in her closet and into her arms at any moment. “You know the ones Mãe gave me? I still have them upstairs in a box untouched. All yours.”

Edith jabbed a needle into a tomato-shaped pincushion and side-eyed her sister. “What’s this? You know how to make arroz de cabidela.”

“Yes, but I don’t know how to make yours. Connie asks for it whenever she’s sick or tired or—,” Natalia waved a hand above her head, “mau humorada.”

Connie had been moody and withdrawn for nearly a year now, since they’d returned from their brief family vacation in Restoule, Ontario, and Natalia suspected her niece Louisa was to blame. Born a month apart, Connie and Louisa fought and competed like sisters and Natalia was sure Louisa was like her mother: nitpicking over every little thing.

The past two times she had made chicken blood rice for her daughter, Connie had pushed the plate away, spilling it onto the table and floor. “I don’t like chicken blood rice,” she yelled at Natalia, storming down the hall toward her bedroom, “not anymore!”

It must be the recipe. I must be making it wrong, Natalia thought after the last outburst. And now Natalia was desperate to get Edith’s recipe. If Louisa was involved, it was the least Edith could do.

“You see? That child wants to know her language, her people. You should put her in Portuguese school!” Edith said.

“Bah,” Natalia said, swatting muggy air, unusual for early July, away from her clammy face. “Besides, even if I wanted to, it’s summer now.”

“So?”

“Are there Portuguese classes in the summer?” Natalia asked, waving the new summer dresses she was sewing for her younger twins, Jackie and Sofia, in front of Edith’s face.

Edith reared her neck and Natalia could see the coarse chin hairs she had missed in her regular plucking. “There are other ways for her to learn. She’s so smart but it’s always English, English, English. Imagine how good her Portuguese would be if she had just a little bit of time with it. Probably better than Louisa’s,” she said, shrugging.

Natalia’s body shook. Edith always dangled it over Natalia that her girls weren’t fluent in Portuguese. It was all Edith had, and she gorged on it whenever she could. Your kids don’t speak Portuguese. You’ve forgotten where you came from. She had no idea how Natalia had tried, how she had woken Connie at five in the morning on Saturdays and brought the twins along to take Connie to Portuguese school in downtown Toronto. How she layered her knitted sweaters on Jackie, and squeezed close the buttons of Sofia’s snow pants, the ones that were once Connie’s, so they could all board the TTC and make the two-hour trip on three different buses just to get to Portugal Square and the red-brick elementary school tucked behind a church of the same name. Did Edith have any idea, any idea, of how sick Natalia was of screaming at the girls so they wouldn’t be late, swiping her thumbs across their cheeks to wipe their tears so no one would look at her twice? Didn’t Edith know how sick she was of being the bad guy, so sick that she’d rather hear these unending lectures from her sister than force Connie to sit in a classroom and listen to other kids laugh at her because she mispronounced bacalhau or livros?

“You think it’s easy?” she asked Edith now, the thimble on her finger trembling. “I’ve tried.”

Edith shook her head and threaded a button onto her husband Miguel’s Sunday shirt. “I could do it.”

Natalia soughed, then stilled. Yes, she thought, that was it. She would send Connie to Edith’s and get Connie to sweet-talk Edith into making her chicken blood rice. When Edith pulled out the recipe—Natalia was convinced that with Edith’s bad memory there was one—Connie would memorize the recipe like she did all those facts in that encyclopedia her father, Manny, bought her last year. Yes!

“You know what?” Natalia said, turning to her sister, threading a new needle, “you should try. Connie loves you. She’d do anything you asked.”

Edith notched her chin over her shoulder. “I’d need a week,” she said, smirking, “at least.”

“Fine,” Natalia said, relieved. “A week is fine. She’d stay as long as you let her.” She worked her fingers across the double-stitched hem of Jackie’s new dress and knew it was true.

That night, as she hugged Connie before bed, Natalia told her daughter about the weeklong visit Natalia and Edith had planned for Connie. The hallway light suffused a glow into the dark room, and Natalia saw the look of suspicion creep across her daughter’s face.

“Why?” Connie asked, stretching the word like it was an elastic band.

“For vacation!” Natalia patted Connie’s legs under the quilted bedspread she had sewn when she was pregnant with Connie.

Connie thought for a moment. In the muted light, Natalia studied the twitch in her daughter’s bushy eyebrows, the way she hitched up half her face when she was thinking. Natalia wondered whether Connie would see through the offer.

Finally, Connie shrugged. “Okay. When?”

“Tomorrow,” Natalia said, and Connie yawned and nodded.

~

The following morning, as Connie dangled her legs from the kitchen counter and licked the cinnamon sugar Natalia planned to shake over the malasadas that were rising in a warm clay bowl, Natalia sent Jackie and Sofia downstairs to watch Saturday morning cartoons.

“Are you excited to go to tia’s house?” Natalia asked.

“Yeah,” Connie said, her heels kicking the lower kitchen cabinets.

Natalia placed a hand on her daughter’s knees and squeezed gently. “Filha, please,” she said, softening her voice so as not to upset Connie. She had to keep things light with her daughter so she could ask Connie about the recipe. If she was too hard on Connie about tapping the cabinets with her heels, she’d never sway her over to her side. But thumps and crackles of noise irritated Natalia to no end. It was just another thing she couldn’t control, the knock of heels on the counter, the squeal of the television rising from downstairs. It all sounded like a loud parade marching through her head.

“Want to go swimming at the community center later?” Natalia asked.

“Not really,” Connie said. “I want to finish my book. Once I’m done, I’ll have read nine books this summer so far. If I read ten, I get a prize on the first day of school.”

“How nice! What’s the prize?”

Connie shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe something from the book fair?”

Connie sucked up books the way Natalia’s vacuum sucked up dirt on the Saturdays she wasn’t stitched to her sewing machine. Natalia marvelled at how Connie would do almost anything with the promise of a new book. She read so voraciously that Natalia had signed her up for a library card at the age of eight. She drove her daughter to the library weekly, walked with her down the aisles while Connie pulled out each book with her finger and read the back cover, then the first few lines, before deciding which five she’d bring home. The library didn’t limit how many dusty books Connie could borrow, but Natalia did. She worried—irrationally, she knew—that Connie would read through everything that interested her at the library, and then Natalia would be back to buying her books with the money they needed for cleaning supplies like Pine Sol, and the extra bag of milk Jackie and Sofia were drinking now that they were four.

Natalia was punching down the dough in the clay bowl before shaping it into small frisbees to fry in the hot oil when the idea simmered in her mind. “Well, if you don’t get the prize, I’ll get you a book at the fair this year,” she said.

“Really?” Connie stopped licking cinnamon sugar from her finger. The fingernails on Connie’s left hand were edged in brown and Natalia wondered how long it would take to scrub her daughter’s hands clean.

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I buy you a new book?”

“I thought that’s why I got a library card.”

“Bah,” Natalia said, waving at the mess on the countertops she couldn’t wait to scrub while the malasadas were cooling, when both the kitchen and Connie’s hands would be clean again. “A library is good, yes, but everyone deserves something new once in a while.”

Connie beamed, and Natalia let her daughter sit with it for now. She couldn’t ask Connie to get the recipe at the same moment she offered her a new book. That would have to come later, she decided, like waiting for yeast to activate and rise.

“Why don’t you go and read?” Natalia lifted her daughter off the counter. “Then I’ll take you to the library so you can get some books before you go home with tia tonight.”

Seeing Connie’s face sparkle in the early morning sun, Natalia felt guilty she didn’t do this more often—promise her daughter more books or her time. As she watched Connie wipe the cinnamon sugar from her hands onto her shorts, Natalia wondered why she simply couldn’t give her daughter what she wanted without the strings, without the caveats. Aren’t parents supposed to do things for their children without expecting anything in return? But then, she thought, weren’t the strings what tied us together? What kept a family cross stitched so securely it wouldn’t come loose and fall apart?

~

Four hours later, the sun high and bright in the sky, ready to burn their skin in a few minutes if they were without sunscreen, Natalia and Connie pulled into the library.

“So, which books are you getting?” They had parked and were walking up the concrete steps into the brown-bricked building that always looked like a parched front lawn. How Connie found life in such a place, with its stale smell and crinkly pages, Natalia did not know. But Connie hurried up the steps, her legs moving like pinwheels on a windy day, and answered over her shoulder, “I don’t know. Maybe something about horses?” In the end, Connie borrowed several books about trees and botany, and thumbed through them on the car ride home. By the time they pulled into their driveway, Connie had declared she wanted to be a naturalist.

“A what?”

“A person who studies nature.”

Natalia nodded. She could picture Connie spending her life exploring the outdoors. Often, while on her way to school, Connie caught frogs in the creek that ran behind the townhouses across the road. Natalia was sure she was jumping the creek too, even though she told Connie to use the trails and pedestrian bridge. She worried that one day Connie would fall into the creek when it was swollen, get swept away, and Natalia would never see her again. But she tucked those fears away as she turned to Connie in the car.

“Remember how I said I’d get you a book at the fair?”

“Yeah,” Connie said. One of the books was open on her lap, a picture of a stalk with bright pink petals climbed up the page, the word “fireweed” blazed across the top in big letters.

Natalia reached over and fingered the page. “That’s a beautiful plant. Maybe we could get it for the garden?”

Connie giggled. “That’s fireweed.”

Natalia blinked.

“It’s toxic.”

“Oh, maybe not for the garden then.”

“It takes over areas that have been burned,” Connie said. “Don’t you think that’s cool?”

“Fires are terrible.”

“Not forest fires. They bring new life.” Connie looked down at the fireweed. “Don’t you think it’s amazing how something could grow so fast and beautiful in a place that looks like it’s been destroyed?”

Natalia nodded and smiled at her daughter, at her wonder. “I do.” She cupped Connie’s face in her hand, rubbed her soft skin with her thumb, and thought about how her daughter always saw the good in everything.

“I need you to do something for me,” Natalia said, dropping her hand from Connie’s face and running her fingers through her daughter’s hair.

“What?”

“I need you to get tia’s chicken blood rice recipe—but don’t tell her I asked you,” she added quickly. “Maybe see if Louisa knows where tia keeps it and write it down or memorize it.”

Natalia twisted a piece of Connie’s hair in her fingers, away from her face so she could better judge how her daughter was processing this request.

“Can’t you just ask tia for the recipe?”

So practical for a ten-year-old. So innocent, assuming that just because you asked for something meant you’d get it exactly how you wanted it. Natalia wondered whether to deflate this balloon of innocence Connie had tied to her wrist, or let it float there until it withered on its own.

“Sure, but it’s more fun this way. Like one of those riddles you have to figure out.”

Connie looked up from the book on her lap and scanned Natalia’s face. “But you hate those riddles. Whenever I ask you for help, you always tell me to ask my teacher.”

Natalia dropped the spiral she’d made with Connie’s hair. “If you don’t want to do it, no problem. I’ll ask your tia. Probably easier that way.”

Natalia looked at the fireweed page opened on Connie’s lap and the drawing of a blazing forest beside it. She had an idea. “What about camping?”

“What about it?”

“What if we go camping next summer and you can explore the trees and the flowers. Practice being a naturalist.”

“If I get the recipe?” Connie asked.

Natalia saw that Connie recognized it now, her desperation, and she wondered whether Connie would use it against her to get more—more books, more library visits, more camping trips with sandy tent floors and bugs and raccoons. More chicken blood rice.

Connie nodded. “I’ll get the recipe. But you don’t have to take me camping. I’d rather join Girl Guides. Some of the girls in my class are Girl Guides and they said you camp and learn survival skills.”

Natalia nodded. Yes, Connie could do that. Natalia didn’t even care how much it cost.

~

Natalia had just covered the tray of malasadas with a warm kitchen towel when Edith walked in, calling, “Olá? Natalia?”

“In here.” Natalia wiped cinnamon sugar from her hands on an old flower-patterned apron she’d brought with her during the move from Portugal. That first night in Canada, she had folded the apron into a makeshift pillow while she slept in a church basement.

“Can you put this in the oven to keep warm?” Edith handed Natalia two aluminum trays wrapped in foil.

“Bah, I have so much already!” Natalia said, taking the trays.

“It’s just rissoles and some fish.”

“This is too much! I already have shrimp and rice. And Manny made his feijão. We have fresh papsecos and salad.” Natalia shook her head. She expected one small dish, of course. How could Edith walk in here with nothing? But two large trays of food on top of what she’d already made? It was too much. Excessive. That was always her sister’s way. Natalia notched her chin sideways. Rissoles—Portuguese patties—were Sofia’s favourite and Manny salivated over Edith’s breaded fish. Her sister always had to top her, always had to make her feel like a stranger in her own home, like someone who didn’t know what her family liked best.

Edith was in her fridge rearranging things, pulling out a crate of clementines Natalia had forgotten to move to the cold cellar, jars of homemade hot and sweet pepper paste, and sliced banana peppers Manny liked to have as a side dish at every meal.

“Miguel needs room for his wine. He brought a few bottles,” she said, sliding the crate of clementines onto the counter. “Why do you have these in here? They take up so much space.”

Natalia blew up her face to keep herself from boiling over. “Oh good, good,” she told her sister. “I only have white wine and beer.”

“I knew you would,” Edith said. “You always forget the red.”

The truth was Natalia didn’t care for red wine, and she especially didn’t care for Miguel’s, which tasted like he’d squeezed the grapes with dirty hands and added their juice straight to the bottles. It was a strange mix of sweet and acidic that burned Natalia’s throat worse than the sambuca Manny liked to drink after dinner. But every respectable Portuguese person she knew had homemade red wine on the table, and since Manny preferred to make hot pepper paste and hot pepper rings, it was always Miguel’s red wine, like a glass bottle testament to the small empty piece of their lives that only Edith could fill, that landed on their table.

Natalia called Connie to bring the clementines to the cold cellar. Edith was sliding a Sumol bottle onto its side in the fridge when Connie walked into the kitchen, her face in a book about plants that she’d borrowed from the library that day.

“Connie, I brought Sumol,” Edith said, hip checking the girl as she kept reading, clawing around the kitchen counter with her free hand until she felt the clementine crate.

“Connie? Hello?” Edith had pulled the green bottle of carbonated orange juice from the fridge and was waving it in Connie’s face.

Connie looked up. “Oh, hey tia. Thanks.”

Edith leaned against the counter and bent toward Connie. “I bet I can find you a book just like that in Portuguese. We have so many beautiful flowers, even in the Açores, more than even here I bet. What do you say, huh? This week I can teach you to read some Portuguese?”

Connie shrugged. “Sure.” She anchored the clementine crate to her hip like it was a baby and left.

Edith turned to Natalia. “See? She wants to learn, you just have to ask her.”

Natalia rolled her eyes and turned on the water. She soaped up her hands, scrubbing the malasadas’ cinnamon sugar coating from between her fingers before she was tempted to lick them. When Edith was around, Natalia just wanted to eat. When they were teenagers in Portugal, Edith was the carefree one, the one free of the responsibilities and expectations that Natalia carried as the eldest. Edith would always push Natalia to sneak out at night so she could meet with her boyfriend at a local café. When they were eventually caught—because in their small northern village it was impossible to get away with anything—Natalia’s stomach roiled as their mother yelled at her for being reckless. Later, Natalia would stuff her face with warm papsecos layered with butter until her stomach subsided. Even now, Natalia had to do something with her hands when Edith was around so she wouldn’t eat the tray of malasadas next to her or a dozen papsecos instead of the shrimp she had marinated overnight in sweet pepper paste and a splash of brandy.

~

On Connie’s second night at Edith’s house, Natalia called after Jackie and Sofia were asleep. She was sure dinner and Connie’s bath would both be over by now. But when Edith answered the phone, Natalia heard plates clattering and a frying pan sizzling.

“Oh, you haven’t eaten yet?” she asked. “But it’s so late.”

“Soon, soon,” Edith said. “We were at the pool all day and then stopped for popsicles on the walk home. Then I sent the kids to play in the schoolyard while I made dinner. We’re just about to eat. Can I call you tomorrow?”

Edith hadn’t left anything out, Natalia thought. Playing and swimming outside! Popsicles that stained their lips purple or blue! A day in the sun! A day free of the tedious rules that filled Natalia’s house and Connie’s day. But she also noticed Edith didn’t once brag about teaching Connie Portuguese.

“How’s the Portuguese coming along?”

Edith yelped and Natalia imagined it was because she was buying time and not because she had burned herself with the crackling oil Natalia heard in the background.

“Great, great. We practiced today on the walk to the pool and back. Listen, I gotta go, I’m burning these fries.”

“Fries for dinner?” Natalia pressed. Hearing Edith so easily and calmly parent her daughter better than she could, manage dinner and a phone call, Natalia desperately wanted to keep Edith on the phone to hear more about Connie’s day, a day in her eldest daughter’s life that she could feel slipping away from her. What if Connie didn’t want to come back after this week? No, that was ridiculous, she thought. More likely, Connie would make this an annual thing and she’d have to live with the embarrassment that her daughter so loved being with her aunt so much that she spent her summer vacation there.

“Fries, steak, and fried eggs,” Edith said.

“What?

“Dinner. Listen, I really gotta go. Let’s talk tomorrow.” Edith hung up, and Natalia stood in her quiet, clean kitchen where her countertops smelled like fresh lemons dusted with icing sugar. She listened to the dial tone bleep in her ear while she considered that she was likely going to lose both her daughter and the recipe after this little failed experiment. What if Edith didn’t make chicken blood rice this week? What if she kept Connie so busy with fun and games that Connie forgot to ask Louisa for the recipe? As Natalia placed the phone receiver back in its cradle, another thought tightened its grip around her throat: What if Connie actually learned Portuguese? What if she spoke it so well she decided to use it everywhere? Natalia could hear Edith’s voice rattling in her head now. You see, she always wanted to learn. You just didn’t bother to teach her. And that was true, she hadn’t bothered. She didn’t want her girls to stumble over English the way she did, to have to answer the “Where are you from?” question that meant well but set Natalia on edge while she was rushing to pack her groceries so the person behind her wouldn’t have to wait for space to free up on the conveyor belt. She hated the way the teenage cashier pushed everything down as if to rush Natalia, and how, in the process, the canned beans punctured the skin of the bananas and pushed in the egg carton. She didn’t want her girls to have to shop at the discount grocery store. She wanted Connie and Jackie and Sofia to walk the streets without wondering if they belonged.

But now what had she done? Lost Connie forever. And for what? A stupid recipe. Jealousy. The invisible competition she and her sister bantered over. Who had the bigger family, the brighter kids. Natalia had both. But as she poured herself a glass of white wine she couldn’t help feeling as if she checked off wins that she hadn’t won at all. That Connie would see the chips and the cracks that made up their lives. The time spent cleaning instead of playing. The time spent crushing peppers into paste in the garage. The time Natalia spent teaching the girls to sew small change purses with extra bits of fabric that she sold to the children of the business people she made custom suits for. And how her larger plan was to have the girls help her sew those suits when they were older, and dresses and gowns one day too. All the time spent working, working, working. Even Natalia’s attempt at fun, their camping trip to Restoule last year, had turned into a disaster when Connie got sick and they had to leave early.

She leaned against the kitchen counter again and took a long, slow sip of wine. Tomorrow, she decided, she’d call Connie and tell her to forget about the recipe, to just have fun with her cousins. And when Connie got back, she’d take her to the library and help her carry home as many books as she wanted. She’d try again at parenting. Could you do that when your kids were already half grown? Even if you couldn’t, Natalia vowed to try. She’d be more like Edith and less like her own mother. More fun, less firm. If Connie came back speaking Portuguese, Natalia would turn to Edith, smile, and say, “thank you” because what could it hurt if Connie spoke the language of her parents and grandparents?

She was startled when the phone next to her rang. She checked the time: 9:30 p.m. The kitchen was coloured in a grey dusk.

“Hello?” she said, her voice an indignant question.

“Mãe?” The small voice on the other end was a whisper.

“Connie?” Natalia whispered back. She had never heard her daughter call her “Mom” in Portuguese before.

“I got it.” Connie sounded like she was in a closet or buried under blankets.

“Got what? Where are you?”

“I pulled the phone in the hallway into the linen closet. I’m sitting on all their dirty laundry.”

“Connie, get out of there—”

“I got the recipe, Mãe. Louisa helped me find it while tia was making dinner. Tia told us to play outside but we snuck back in. She keeps it in a box in her underwear drawer,” she said, giggling. “I’ve memorized it. Do you want it now?”

Natalia spun around the kitchen and opened the drawer where they kept the bills and pens or pencils. A marker? She’d take anything right now. She found the nub of a broken crayon and pulled out the envelope from the hydro bill she forgot to pay that day.

“Yes,” she said. “Give it to me.”

She wrote down each ingredient. Of course, she thought. Three bay leaves when Edith told her two. A teaspoon of vinegar. But when Natalia heard Connie say to add one cup of Miguel’s red wine, Natalia slapped the kitchen counter with the heel of her hand. That’s it, she thought, the missing ingredient. Natalia noted each part of the recipe, each careful step, as Connie rattled off like she had taken a picture of it with her mind.

“That’s everything,” Connie said, after she had described the last step.

Natalia released a breath and closed her eyes. “Thank you, Connie. I love you. Thank you so much. Now go to bed, okay? And have fun tomorrow. I want you to have fun.”

“Okay,” Connie whispered. “Love you, Mãe.”

“Connie?” Natalia rushed before Connie hung up.

“Yeah?”

“Do you like learning Portuguese?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was even smaller than before.

Natalia grimaced. Edith was right.

“But I don’t like how tia teaches me. She gets really mad if I make a little mistake. And today she bought me three ice cream cones if I promised to tell you I learned a lot. I was in the bathroom for so long because my stomach hurt.”

“Oh,” Natalia said. So, she wasn’t the only one bribing her daughter.

“But I want to learn. Maybe I could go to Portuguese school with Louisa?”

“Yes, sure, sure. Whatever you want,” Natalia said. “We’ll talk about it when you get home. Now go to bed. I love you.”

Natalia hung up and looked at the chicken blood rice recipe she had scribbled in pink crayon. When Edith dropped off Connie on Saturday, Natalia decided she’d make a big batch of it, arrange it on her best platter and feed it to her sister. Let her taste for herself how right Natalia had gotten the recipe this time. And Natalia would watch with satisfaction how her daughter feasted on what she had to offer once more. But for now, she secured the recipe to the side of the fridge with the twins’ kindergarten pictures they had ordered as a magnet last year. Jackie and Sofia, both smiling, hair combined neatly, the white collar of their matching dresses bleached and ironed into stiff perfect triangles. Natalia finished her wine, placed the glass in the sink and headed to bed. It was the first time she had ever left a dirty glass in the sink overnight. She’d wash it, she decided, in the morning.