The Boy Who Ate His Vegetables
“Ma,” I yelled down the narrow basement stairs. I sat alone at our rectangular kitchen table, an empty porcelain plate with a floral design and metal fork staring at me. “I ate all my vegetables. I cleaned my plate. I didn’t leave anything.” Sinisterly smiling from ear to ear, I was sure my devious plot to make my bland carrots and peas disappear beneath the white and red K-mart bag in the kitchen trash can had worked.
At five, like most children, I despised vegetables outside of the crispy root vegetables known as McDonald’s French Fries. Carrots lacked the melt-in-your-mouth factor that freshly baked chocolate chip cookies prepared by Ma possessed, and peas were void of the sugar rush I got from Frooties sold at the penny candy store. I think God set out to torture children in the prime of their lives by making their parents feed them distasteful vegetables.
While eating dinner, I often daydreamed while gazing around the airy and spacious kitchen. It seemed to me a massive place that served as both a community area to dine on Ma’s home-cooked meals, and a revolving door that could take you to various other places in the house. It could spin you to the sliding screen door that led to an unclosed patio and backyard full of vibrant green grass, or to a small half bathroom with a seashell on the top of the toilet that told stories of great oceans. It could guide you to an unfinished basement that housed a deep freezer full of assorted meat and a talkative community of crickets. If your meal was complete, it could also steer you upstairs to play Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis or out the front door to ride your bike and meet up with friends to eat honeysuckle.
“You ate all your vegetables? You sure?” Ma asked as she slowly walked up the stairs to inspect my suspicious claim. Ma was not a rushing woman. As I often darted from room to room like a track meet, she was the turtle that beat the hare with a steady pace. Her dark chocolate skin told stories of West Africans from whom we descended, and her long and flowing hair made the stories of “Indian in the family” seem actually true. Her style was modest. Her mood was mild. Her most pronounced physical feature was her Colgate-commercial smile, which was a stark contrast to her dark complexion. It was so radiant that it almost forced you to smile back.
The time between Ma walking from the basement felt like at least half the time of an episode of Moesha. When Ma finally made it to me, my constant leg rocking caused her to turn an eyebrow as she hovered over my plate for inspection. “You ate it all, huh?” she asked again, before I quickly nodded without making eye contact. Moments later, as if secret cameras were installed in our kitchen, my plan was foiled. She walked to the trash can, moved the K-mart bag, and asked, “Well, what’s this right here then if you ate it all?”
Caught red handed my counterfeit confidence vanished. “Ma," I whined, "I don’t want them. I don’t like vegetables. They are nasty.”
Ma had never whooped me in my entire life. When I was in the car cursing with my friend Michael in the backseat after school, she chose a stern look over a leather belt. When I kept pricking my fingers on the real Christmas tree that stood in our living room last winter, she picked a conversation over a paddle. Today, she continued her nonviolent trend and talked to me for a few minutes about my fibbing ways. I cannot remember her words, but they likely ended with a hug that calmed my frightened soul — just like the one she had given me a few nights earlier when I jumped out of bed and sprinted to her bedroom because I dreamt a gray wolf was stalking me in the woods. My punishment? She made me drink eight ounces of V8. It tasted like freshly-harvested celery with a splash of tomato, so I squeezed my nose when reluctantly gulping the broth-like red juice.
And then, knowing her, I imagine she hugged me. After the hug, she likely held me out and in front of her and smiled. Undoubtedly, I happily smiled back.
