Cecilia and I were given dye-kits with which to colour eggs boiled in vinegar. My mother had been indifferent to my aesthetical pleas to purchase white eggs. She claimed brown eggs more “natur’l”. In reality, they were five cents less.
Cecilia proceeded in a spontaneous manner, dipping the brown shell in traditional Easter colours, yellow, pink, sky-blue. I wanted to give each of our guests a more unique egg. A tricoloured German flag egg seemed suitable for Ursula. I dipped the thinner end in orange, then discovered to my dismay that there was no black in the kit.
“Black is not a colour,” smirked Cecilia.
I kept the upper part orange and gave the lower part blue eyes and orange freckles, for Tommy Tatta’s egg. Cecilia said this wasn’t nice. Taking her advice, I dipped it in blue, and the whole egg turned a dreary smoky purple, more suitable for Hallowe’en.
“It looks like a sparrow’s egg now,” Cecilia consoled with a forged smile and a somewhat humid pat on my shoulder.
It was out of the question that our mother would let us have extra eggs for the flops. Those cracked from overboiling, with outgrowths of egg white, we had to put in our own baskets. I thought the whole ceremony futile. Even the fanciest Easter egg was nothing but a hard-boiled egg when you came down to it.
Lucy and Rosa Minsky sat on the grass in the backyard, their knees opening and closing in their dresses like butterfly wings. Tommy Tatta and Timmy Tatta, Ursula must have been inspired by the Little Drummer Boy when choosing their first names, amused themselves by throwing our pebbles into the canal to make them skip. As soon as the adults proudly emerged with their camera, the children ran towards the boat davits where Easter baskets were conspicuously hung. My feet shovelled the gravel as I walked. The hiding places were an insult to human intelligence.
I chuckled inside. It was their first Easter at my mother’s. My mother wasn’t about to allow us to have chocolate bunnies, although she almost hesitated at white chocolate this year, claiming white more natural than brown. Unlike egg shells. She nevertheless abandoned the stiffly standing bunnies on the health food shelf. My mother refused to “throw hardworkin’ money out de window for dat junk”. “Hardworkin’ money”, meant money that accumulated interest.
The boys emptied their baskets on the dock. I watched their faces. Besides a boiled egg, each basket contained a pound of dates, unshelled walnuts and dried figs. Easter bunny must have turned into a health freak. Tommy picked up his handsomest walnut and threw it at the canal. It skipped five times, which was his record.
Timmy prepared to surpass him, when his father slapped him on the ear. Tommy, in wailing how much he hated nuts, only attracted a slap of his own. Both boys had to say thank you, audibly, to my mother. It was easier for the children that hadn’t been slapped.
My mother returned to the kitchen. Sharon and Ursula offered to help, probably wanting to discuss in greater depth Mr. Tatta’s potty-training problem. My mother said it would ruin the surprise and ordered me to set the table. I put out my mother’s most elaborate china, silverware and crystal, praying I would not have to sit next to Mr. Tatta.
I sat across from him. As we eleven tore apart our stuffed artichokes, my mother answering each compliment with “fresh from de tree”, I contemplated Mr. Tatta. I could not believe that a full-grown man with a pot belly, a Timex watch and a wedding band was not yet potty-trained. Then again, his baldness gave him the look of an overgrown baby. I imagined him wriggling on his back, his legs in the air, as Ursula wiped his bottom, sprinkled talc upon it and secured a safety pin into his nappy. Sharon Minsky had trouble looking at him, too. I supposed Ursula had let her in on the secret and she was imagining the same thing I was.
My mother presented the main course as a Lithuanian speciality her mother had passed on to her before she died, like hers had to her. She lifted the silver dome to reveal bony brown bits of meat with prunes mixed in. My mother warned there were stones in the prunes, but said they had more flavour that way. I was with her when she was shopping, she had wanted the stoneless ones but they were forty cents more.
Mr. Tatta blushed as he stared down at his plate. Maybe he thought my mother was trying to tell him something.
“Prunes?!” protested Tommy.
“You should not criticize before you try. Remember ‘Green Eggs and Ham’?” asked Ursula before adding with a defiant stare, “Yes I like them, Sam I Am?!”
“I won’t like ’em in any house, with any mouse,” Tommy broke off as his father’s face foreboded another slap.
Cecilia gave thanks for this day, the sunny weather, our health, named each of us present, including “mociùté” (“granny” in Lithuanian) already in heaven, then at last thanked God for the food we were about to eat. Stag Head and I exchanged a look of sympathy.
Everyone but me had dug in and was not unpleasantly surprised, when Timmy had to go and ask what it was. He was too young to know that what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you. My mother straightened up, stuck her chin as high as it would go to make herself appear taller (a technique she resorted to whenever she saw her reflection in a store window or a camera was aimed anywhere near her) and proclaimed, “Rabbit.”
“It’s a great specialtay, rabbit,” she bragged, “some German beer on de top and he cook wit’ prune … I clean him myself, he was very young, very fresh, beautiful …”
Lucy and Rosa began to weep, followed by Tommy and Timmy.
Rosa, usually the quiet one, blubbered, “You mean we’re eating the Easter bunny??”
My mother did not understand, “But it is Easter, no?!”
I guess she didn’t quite pick up the difference between eating chocolate and living, breathing rabbits across the nation.
“We’re eating the Easter bunny!!” confirmed Lucy, covering her face with her forearms.
The other children repeated this phrase endlessly, followed by funereal sobs. It was as if my mother had served Santa Claus on Christmas Day. Lucky they hadn’t come over that Christmas Eve when she had made venison with cranberries, Rosa would have accused her of brewing Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer and the cranberries would have probably glowed.
Stag Head looked as though he bore the weight of the world on his plaque and his antlers already were heavy enough. Ursula kept on nibbling to make light of the matter, and as a member of the German-American club, she had probably already eaten worse in her knackwursts. Sharon contemplated her girls, afraid they would be traumatized. They had sheltered lives, they didn’t have to live with my mother.
“Go eat what’s in your baskets. You can go outside,” Joseph Minsky advised.
“It’s more than de Indians, dey have, dey should be tankful to me,” retorted my mother when they were gone. She confused Easter with Thanksgiving.
“De more for us,” she added, her feelings hurt, which basically meant leftovers for me.
The following day, I suffered upon Fool’s Stool two hours before gnawing at Easter bunny’s hind leg in Stag Head’s company. I wondered if the land of milk and honey was a land of only milk and honey. I slipped off my sandals. They hurt my feet anyway. They would have to hurt more before I was given another pair.