The only way I know of moving through the world is as a Haitian American, a Haitian daughter. A Haitian daughter is a good girl. She is respectful, studious, hardworking. She never forgets the importance of her heritage. We are part of the first free black nation in the Western Hemisphere, my brothers and I were often told. No matter how far we have fallen, when it matters most, we rise.
Haitians love the food from our island, but they judge gluttony. I suspect this rises out of the poverty for which Haiti is too often and too narrowly known. When you are overweight in a Haitian family, your body is a family concern. Everyone—siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, cousins—has an opinion, judgment, or piece of counsel. They mean well. We love hard and that love is inescapable. My family has been inordinately preoccupied with my body since I was thirteen years old.
My mother, who stayed home to raise my brothers and me, did not teach me how to cook, and I had little interest in being taught. I just enjoyed watching her prepare our meals from the periphery of the kitchen—the efficiency with which she pursued the task always impressed me. Her brow furrowed in concentration. She could hold a conversation, but when something demanded her attention, she hushed and it was like the whole world fell away from her. She did not enjoy sharing the kitchen space and did not want help. She always wore latex gloves, like a doctor—to avoid contamination, she said. She was known to add a drop of Clorox to the water when washing meat or fruit or vegetables. She washed a dish or cutting board or bowl immediately after it had been used. Save for the aromas wafting from the gas stove, you would never know my mother was cooking.
Throughout my childhood, my mother prepared a bewildering combination of foods—American dishes from the Betty Crocker Cookbook or The Joy of Cooking one night, and a Haitian meal the next. The dishes I remember, the ones I love most, are Haitian—legumes, fried plantains, red rice, black rice; griyo, or pork marinated in blood orange and roasted with shallots; Haitian macaroni and cheese—everything served with sauce (a tomato-based sauce with thyme, peppers, and onions) and spicy pickled vegetables, everything made from scratch. This was how my mother demonstrated her affection.
My mother didn’t believe in processed foods or fast food, so I have never eaten many foods people take for granted—TV dinners, Chef Boyardee, Kraft Mac & Cheese. She was ahead of her time. Her stance infuriated my brothers and me because our American friends got to eat magical foods like sugary breakfast cereals, and snack on Cheetos and Chips Ahoy and Little Debbie Snack Cakes. “Fruit is a snack,” my mom would tell us. I vowed, when I grew up, to decorate my home with clear glass bowls filled with M&M’s and she laughed.
The older we got, the laxer my mom became. By the time my youngest brother arrived, junk food had breached the perimeter of our home, though in the moderation entirely characteristic of my parents.