From Rikers Island To American Pie
“With ritual, I punctuate my days till they no longer belong to who I am today but who I’ll be when I look back in days and years to come.” ~Andre Aciman
Ritual has become us these last several weeks and will continue its gentle grounding into our lives for the unknown weeks to come. From our morning coffee ceremonies to our nightly 7pm gathering of cheers across train tracks, avenues and over courtyards for frontline workers throughout this grand city. We have become a city of eccentric home dwellers. Holders of hope. Left to ourselves, left to imagine the unimaginable, left to our own beautiful devices. Everything becomes possible in our hidden ecosystems.
Caleb never intended to live with his estranged mother. Theresa left when he was 4 to finish her nursing degree, the fight for custody was too hard and, strapped with student loans, cost of living, long hours of work and school and the added pressure from Caleb’s dad, she agreed to give up custody. She had to make a decision. She chose herself. They hadn’t seen each other in 12 years. He was one of the 300 non-violent inmates released from Rikers Island in late March. “I thought I’d move back in with my dad in Harlem, but he left for North Carolina to stay with his mother, at least that’s what my mom said. He isn’t answering my calls. I don’t have money to leave so I’m here. I don’t have any other family. My mom said I can stay if I help out while she’s at work. I have to follow the rules. I have to contribute. I can do that, I been doing that for 18 months inside. I had to quarantine in my moms room for two weeks while she left food outside the door, kinda like jail, but she’s a better cook” He cracks a smile and endearingly draws his eyes down to his slippers. “I feel so blessed to be out. When I left everyone was getting sick, even the guards. I seen hard criminals scared for their lives. There aint no way to kill this enemy in there. There ain’t enough soap.”
Caleb is tall, sweet faced and incredibly polite, calling me Miss Naomi and making eye contact to confirm his sincerity. “I don’t want to waste this time I was given. I don’t want to be a burden to my mom or my sister. This is my chance to make something of myself. I really struggled in the beginning, after I came out of quarantine. I was anxious and angry. I fought with my mom everyday, she would get on me for sitting around, drinking too much, not cleaning up after myself. I wanted to work but that ain’t happening with my record, not right now. I was depressed. What kinda man can’t take care of his family?I haven’t seen my mom since she went back to work at the hospital even though we still share the same apartment. She’s too worried that she’ll get me sick. We found a way to make it work, she wasn’t offered a hotel like those Manhattan nurses, she ain’t even got proper gear all the time. But we figured it out. We made a schedule.”
Caleb goes into great detail describing his mother’s evening ritual of peeling off her scrubs outside the apartment and leaving them in a cardboard box marked ‘Covid’(to be washed by him the next day), stepping into her house shoes, putting her purse and coat into a large trash bag she puts in her bedroom. She then showers, washes her hair, body and hands with great attention, dries, puts a bandana covering her nose and mouth, wipes down the bathroom with a rag from one of the three bleach buckets placed strategically around the apartment giving special attention to doorknobs, surfaces, shampoo bottles, toilet, cabinets. She wipes the front door handle and sprays lysol in the bathroom and hallway as she walks backwards into her bedroom covering her etheric tracks with a germ killing mist. Once in her room she will stay there for the rest of the night until she leaves for work in the following morning. A covered dinner awaits her on a TV tray and on the table nearest the door is breakfast and lunch packed for the next day. The beginning was hard, forgetting to wipe some things down, forgetting to open the bathroom window, forgetting to bring her purse and coat into the room. It has since become a comfortable routine.
“Last week I was cleaning the apartment and had a panic attack. I ain’t never had one before. I thought I was having a heart attack or something. I couldn’t breathe, it was like I was outside my body. I was crying and I got really dizzy. I collapsed in the kitchen. I locked my eyes on a cookbook on the shelf. The Joy of Cooking. I grabbed it and just started reading recipes. Cream scones, buttermilk biscuits, roasted chicken. It calmed me down reading about it all. How to knead bread and braid challah. How to scale a fish. The care it took to make a pie crust and why you have to let it chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before you roll it out. Eventually I pulled myself off the floor and made an apple pie. It was the first time I ever baked anything. It took me all day. But when I was done I was calm again. It didn’t taste too bad either. I cook something or bake everyday now, I’m mastering myself through every loaf of bread, every cream puff, you know? I fucking lost it the yesterday, threw a whole batch of muffins out the window. I sobbed for like thirty minutes, and then made them again. Through the process I realized I just needed structure in my life. I never had that growing up. Every dish is a fight to restore who I wished I could have been. Who I can be.” His face calmed and he looked up at me. He looked different from the first time we met. He stood taller, and held a sense of pride and purpose like an invisible crown. Baking a cake will never hurt him or anyone he loves. Making gnocchi won’t land him in Rikers or get him involved with the wrong kind of people. Cupcakes don’t break your mothers heart.
Everyday I smell the delights of my new found gourmet neighbor taunting me and my half assed boxed mac and cheese or plain omelette eaten with haste standing in my tiny kitchen. It was hard to relate to him, not being a person of rituals myself. Any semblance of structured daily behavior has left me. I found myself becoming jealous of his meditative humm and quiet joy. My sleep and wake schedule is as erratic as my eating habits. Popcorn for breakfast, boiled peas for dinner. I no longer maintain my daily workouts. I drink more wine, I watch too much TV and coffee time is a fucking free for all. Listening to this reborn man talk about how he found himself through baking bread made me feel lost. Desperate for something to look forward to, to break up the days. Yesterday I made an apple pie from scratch. Delicately peeling each apple, mixing with sugar, lemon and cinnamon. Chilling the pie dough for thirty minutes in the fridge. Pinching the crust just ever so. I slept like a baby last night and woke up this morning feeling a sense of calm success I’ve not felt possibly ever. This morning I made my bed, stretched for 20 minutes and began what I hope to be the first of many daily meditations. There is no such thing as a quick fix and I don’t believe homemade apple pie can change the world, but I’m happy to try.
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