by Michelle Nahum Albright

7 years old, lunchtime, I walk two and a half blocks alone and climb the side stairs. At the kitchen table, I play hide and seek with my mashed potatoes and taste my grandmother’s love tucked in a brown ceramic bowl.

I am hungry

Confectioner’s sugar mists the air, treasure leaves in a cardboard box. A clear window is inset in a green background crisscrossed with fine brown lines. A red and white diagonally striped string securely bands the Ebinger’s box. Round layers of moist darkness slathered with rich pudding peek through the opening. A sweetness of a dense chocolate childhood beckons. Blackout cake, yes, when Brooklyn was my world, chocolate smeared birthdays. Just the shadow of a sign remains.

I am hungry

A perfume of crisp potatoes fills the air. He peels and slices. When other Brooklyn households head for bed, Gambuzza arrives for a visit. He came to redo the kitchen. He stayed to become family. This midnight, the dining room table is still piled with textbooks and strewn with my scribbled loose-leaf pages. As he bends over the stove, the tight kitchen of lemon Formica and scuffed wood embraces him. A table crowded with daily life hugs the wall. We squeeze to open the refrigerator, a game of musical chairs. Gambuzza turns his charges in just enough sizzling oil. He laughs, transferring them to a bed of paper towels. I snatch a tender golden sliver just as it leaves an oily imprint.

I am hungry

In undershirt, boxer shorts, and flapping blue cotton robe, my father prepares his favorite recipe. The unwritten formula involves sautéed spinach, to be stewed with cumin, white beans, potatoes and beef. My dad’s enthusiasm fills the claustrophobic kitchen. The process is always punctuated with the rumbling of passing trains, and some sharp words from my mother concerning the scorching of pots. I was never fond of the dark green servings with white islands. I miss the joy within them.

I am hungry

I see her in a pink print housecoat and slippers browning meatballs near the window to the back porch. Whether it is to become meatballs, hamburgers or meatloaf, chopped beef is mixed with breadcrumbs, eggs and a breath of cinnamon, just as my grandmother did. My sister and I learn to sauté onions gently until they are soft and translucent, almost melting, brown on the edges. We know vegetable shopping as an essential skill and practice it often on 18th avenue. When the price and season are right, extra mushrooms or sauce can be prepared for later. Sauce is a base of crushed tomatoes over onions, celery and peppers sautéed in olive oil with tomato paste, a few capers and some olives. Everyday art requires no measurements. Perhaps you might add parsley, salt and pepper, but never garlic. Mom turns pale at the thought of garlic. Long after our mother dies, an untouched jar of her sauce remains in my sister’s freezer.

I am hungry

Each day razor shards surprise me, poking into the soft places. Disconnected and yet inexorably strung together…flakes, flashes, and remnants: fragments. These scraps of life… sustain me.

Michelle Nahum Albright teaches in the Fashion Program at Parsons. As a designer/writer, she is particularly interested in the future of the book as handmade, printed and digital object. She hand crafts limited edition artists books.