By Sophia Hall
Grab soup pot and fill with water.
Set on top right burner.
Turn stove on.
Birthdays, deathdays, anniversaries. Rainy days in November. My brother Viktor’s snuffled nose. Breakups and band-aid knees. My mom uses any excuse to make soup. She always uses the same pot––a large pot as old as I am that’s big enough to fit a chicken.
The soup is incomplete without garlic. Our fruit basket always has bulbs of garlic nestled among Gala apples and California oranges.
She outsources garlic production to Vik and me. He peels apart the bulbs. I use the flat ends of sharp knives to crush individual cloves. The cloves then molt their skins––moths emerging from their chrysalides.
We pass them along the assembly line to our mom, who then inserts the naked clove into the bucket of the garlic press. She presses hard. Through the holes at the bottom of the bucket, streamers of garlic squish out as if coming through a showerhead. Each bowl of soup requires three or four cloves of garlic, at the very least.
Without garlic, and without the garlic press, my mother’s soup wouldn’t be the same.
Let water boil.
Rinse whole chicken.
Cut it into pieces and add to gurgling water.
Twenty years ago, my mom bought the garlic press for a couple dollars at a yard sale. A French family was moving and had cardboard boxes filled with junk. The flotsam and jetsam of the stuff of life: school flyers, silk scarves, clunky toys, old baby clothes.
Gleaming and glinting silver in the sun, the garlic press caught her eye. She carried it home to the kitchen and placed it carefully in the drawer full of other kitschy, but necessary, contraptions. Now, it’s dull. The surface worn smooth, the shine marred by many fingers sticky with garlic juice. It’s blackened with use, much like a flintstone axe reflects the many trees it’s cut, much like how a human body reflects how much love and life it’s experienced through wrinkles and smile lines.
Add two yellow onions.
Make broth clear by collecting white foam on top.
Let it boil for an hour before adding salt and pepper.
One summer, she brings the garlic press to Rehoboth Beach. It’s August, the last two weeks before school. We stay at the Edgewater House, unit five-seventeen, the realtor intones. Only a thin strip of driftwood-plank boardwalk separates us from the water.
The beds are hidden away––one inside the closet, the other inside the couch. Vik and I sleep on the pullout. My mom and Joe sleep in the murphy, the closet that opens and out tumbles a full-size mattress. The pristine white sheets and carpet quickly dirty with sand, as prickly underneath our feet as Joe’s rough beard. I could hear him mutter underneath his breath about the filth. With the windows open, the ocean crashing against the shore felt as loud as cymbals. The tumult and froth of foam boiling over onto the shore.
We spend hours diving into the cold brine, swimming out to the buoy that marks the end of where boats reach. We play mermaids and practice handstands. My mom calls us in for a meal, roasted vegetables and boiled corn from the Tuesday farmer’s market. Before serving us, she crushes garlic over each steaming plate. We eat like puppies past the point where our bellies fill and it only hurts. Then, once the sun sets, we hunt ghost crabs on the wet beach with flashlights. The days melt away in a haze.
“We gotta go!” Joe yells, hand over eyes, squinting, blinking away sand. He leans up against the red Honda.
My flip-flop feet are still wet and sandy from one last dip in the ocean.
“Did you pack everything?” My mother frets, counting the bags again.
“Of course I did,” Joe snaps. We load in and drive out. I watch the Edgewater House grow smaller and smaller. The three-hour drive takes us across the Chesapeake Bay and several state lines.
Add peeled potatoes.
Add little red lentils.
Add chopped carrots.
Back on Calvert Street, my mom unpacks the Whole Foods bag with kitchen supplies, paper towels, salt shakers. She shrivels like a sundried tomato when she realizes what we were missing.
“Has anyone seen the garlic press?”
No response in the car.
“You said you packed everything,” my mother turns to Joe.
“I did,” he says, not meeting her eyes.
“You said you did.”
I hold my breath.
Joe shrugs, dismissive. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just get another.”
I can’t believe she didn’t slap him right then and there. I can’t believe he was the one who left.
The next summer, we return to Rehoboth, back to Edgewater, back to unit five-seventeen, but one person lighter. My mom throws open the drawer. There, cluttered and cozied up with the spoons, knives, forks, and bottle openers, rests the garlic press.
Add laurel leaf.
Add dill, but only at the very end.
Turn stove off and place lid on top.
My mom struggles with clutter. Maybe she’s always been afraid of losing something, or someone, valuable to her. Maybe she relates to all of the objects she owns, and she doesn’t want to carelessly discard them––as she was by Joe.
Joe saw my mom as an object––easily discardable, carelessly shoved, left behind and lost in a drawer. But life is not a kitchen. And people cannot just be left inside drawers. The garlic press is my mother’s weapon and magic wand. It is her ultimate protector against illness. It is her shield.
If only my mother had enough garlic to turn the entire sea into soup. Then, the whole world would clamor and line up, bowls in hands, just begging for a spoonful. Spoons out, my mom would declare, there’s plenty to share here.
Let sit for five minutes before serving in blue china.
Crush garlic on top.
Enjoy.
The Woodlands 