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Fried Corn Meal Mush By Gail Jeidy October 17, 2007 I thought about fried corn meal mush yesterday because I looked at the calendar and noted it was my childhood friend's birthday and though I haven't seen her for eons, I remembered the huckleberry pie I made for her fourteenth birthday. I ordered the huckleberry seeds from the Burpee catalog in January, pulled them out of the mailbox in March and planted them in April in the icy wet dirt alongside the chicken house. I wrapped my pie in aluminum foil, took it on the bus to school, and stashed it in my locker all day, then met up with Christy after school just inside the glass doors. We had history, she and I. In fifth grade we changed the last letter of every swear word we knew, making them not-swear words, then used our secret dialect to comment on our horseshoe game until my brother ran inside and lied to mom about what we were saying. I learned two things that day: close counts in horseshoes and my brother's deaf. Inside the glass doors of the high school I held my books flat like a table for my pie, which I kept close to my chest with my crocheted vest as cover. Christy peeked through the loose yarns, took one look at the shape of my gift and quickly as if in answer to an oral math quiz, said, "It's a pie. Did you make it?" and I shook my head and said, "No, no, it isn't a pie." And she said, "Yes it is. It looks like a pie. Definitely a pie." And I said, "Well, it's a surprise. You'll just have to take it home and see." And she looked at me with a quiz on her face, but patiently like how a nice girl looks at someone who's fast becoming not her best friend anymore because she's found a new best friend, Carmen, at church and there's that boy in her life now, John, who's a youth group member too. The moment hung like when you have a special gift for someone and you're waiting for a special gift back but they didn't bring a gift and it's not your birthday so why would they bring you a gift anyway. I handed off the pie, ashamed at having made it in the first place, then embarrassed when she looked at my white shirt and said, "I knew it was a pie" and I felt wet smudges of purple red juice against my chest. Not long after, I confided in Christy that my family didn't go to church and hadn't for years, which is of course why I never talked about church in the four years we'd been friends. And I admitted I was ashamed of my mom that we didn't go to church especially after last year in Junior High Math when weird Mr. Bloom kept mulling around asking everyone what church they went to. Old Bloom would assign us story problems, then slink around in his baggy suit and thick striped tie, stop and stare down at one bowed head after another with a sacharine smile and inquire, "When is your confirmation?" I prayed to be invisible and succeeded. With perfect scores on every test, somehow I still got a B, but at least he never asked me about church so I didn't have to admit we stopped going after the priest halted his sermon and stared until my father walked out with my wailing baby brother. That after my father studied all those little blue books and converted for mom. Christy didn't miss a beat when I told her my secret. She said it didn't matter that our family didn't go to church because in America you don't discriminate against people because of religion. Americans have a right to choose what you want to do, where you want to worship, how you want to be. There's this thing called separation of church and state. "It doesn't matter," she said and looked at me patiently. My family moved two counties away not long after that, and Christy and I kept in touch, but with each letter she wrote more and more about He and Him and soon I realized she wasn't talking about her boyfriend John but that she was using capital letters as literary devices like the way A.A. Milne wrote about a Complaining Song, for example, in Winnie the Pooh. Still, I didn't get why she felt the need to write so much about Him, and I realized we weren't on the Same Plain. True, we weren't Best Friends anymore anyway and I was in a Different Town Altogether but anyone ever special to my heart still is and so that summer, my parents and hers arranged for her to come up for a few days to our farm. We camped behind my house in Gooseberry Woods and the first night we made Corn Meal Mush and poured it in tin cans and left them to cool in the Rushing Creek. Early the next morning, I tapped the bottom of our makeshift mold and watched as the cooled corn cylinder oozed onto a dented old plate. We cut thick slices, fried them in bacon grease over the open fire. The grease splattered, Christy said, "Oh shik," and we laughed, then slathered our slices with creek-cooled butter and maple syrup. We may have said Grace, I can't remember, but we had A Great Time and lost touch after that. And yesterday on her birthday, I threw away two boxes of corn meal from the cupboard because the weevils have returned. They come every season. Our cupboard is a regular Axis of Weevil. I need to buy some fresh corn meal because it's been decades since I've made Fried Corn Meal Mush and I'm hungry for a slice. I wonder what Christy's doing, thinking now. About the author: Gail Jeidy has made her living as a professional writer for over 25 years, crafting ads, brochures and scripts to promote selfless corporations, amazing products and incredible services. Four years ago, her work became less about fulfilling client needs and more about fulfilling her own. Gail currently spends her time writing essays, stories, two novels, multiple drafts of one screenplay and a poem here and there. | | | |
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