Chapter 9. The Kitchen

An unusual interview for a room in Rainwood House

Rainwood House - Juliana Barnet

Still working on reading these chapters to you aloud, but you can listen to a text-to-speech reading on the Substack App in your phone. It’s not quite human, but close.

Belatedly, Demetrius realizes he should have picked a simple name closer to his own, like Dean or Devon. 

Samantha suddenly bursts into screechy song. “Old King Cole was a jelly old roll and a jelly old roll was he…” 

“Right!” Demetrius exclaims, then coughs. Turning to the girl, he says, “I’m a merry old soul, not a jelly old roll.” 

Samantha twirls a lock of hair. “You’re merry ‘cause you eat a lot of jelly.”

“Hey, you are absolutely correct!” To Marlie he says, “Please call me Cole.”

“Okay, Cole, help yourself. I’ll get the tea.” She steps toward the back of the kitchen.

Demetrius lifts his fork, then stops. The arrangement of foodstuffs on the table appears as unapproachable as a museum exhibit. 

Samantha looks from the guest to the food. “Hmm,” she says, laying a finger portentously on her chin. She goes to a cabinet, pulls on the green ribbon dangling from it, and carefully takes down several plates. She places the orange cheese on a green plate and the white cauliflower on a red plate. Next she stacks the blue bagels on a yellow plate, surrounded by crackers. Finally, she picks up the can of refried beans, sniffs it delicately, then replaces it in the refrigerator. 

At the table, she solemnly lays a serrated steak knife by each person’s plate. “These are good for cutting bagels,” she explains. “Also fingers.”

“Thank you very much, Samantha,” he says, picking up the knife carefully. “You’d be great in a Japanese tea ceremony.”

The girl grins with pleasure. 

Nearly adding, “I’ll invite you to our next one at the Arboretum Bonsai Collection,” he stops himself and begins cutting pieces of cauliflower, red pepper and cheese to put on his blue bagel. He tightens his muscles to keep from tearing into the food like a hungry lioness. Marlie, meanwhile, has slipped behind the left-hand tie-dyed sheet. Reappearing with a tray of tea boxes, she notes how Samantha has improved their repast. “Gracias, chulita. You’re a treasure.” She sets the tray in front of Demetrius. 

He squints at the boxes. “Tension Tamer,” “Tranquil Tummy,” “Moon Balance,” “Colon Comfort,” he reads aloud. Samantha approaches, gripping the steaming teapot with a frayed crocodile-shaped pot holder. “Guess I’ll go for the ‘Tension Tamer.’” He tears open a packet and drops the tea bag in his mug.

“Good choice.” Samantha tips the pot to pour water onto the tea bag, her face intent behind a cloud of steam.

The Kitchen - Juliana Barnet

Demetrius wraps both hands around his mug and feels them warming up. The mug sports a picture of an irritated-looking cat and the words, “An injury to one is an injury to all.” He likes the sentiment, but mistrusts it. Would Marlie feel that the racial profiling of Black men injures her? 

Samantha plops herself down on a chair and contemplates Demetrius seriously as she gnaws on a bagel. After a long moment, she says, “Do you know how to live under adversity, such as a depression or kidnappers?”

Demetrius chews meditatively. “Where I grew up, there was always a depression,” he replies. “Never dealt with kidnappers, though. Why do you ask?” 

“In my experience, boarding houses have adversity, kidnappers, mysteries, things like that.” Samantha keeps her gaze fixed on him.

Marlie snorts. “In your experience? You mean, in your books, chulita. Boarding houses are actually very dull, which is why I want a collective community. And we won’t have a depression if I remember to take my medication.” She throws an arch glance at Demetrius, who can’t tell if she’s being serious. “Anyway, the mystery that puzzles me is why we all put up with an unfair and ridiculous system like capitalism.”

“Abue, we have that mystery every day! Boarders bring brand new mysteries.” 

Marlie turns to Demetrius with an apologetic laugh. “In Samantha’s mystery stories, nosiness is a virtue, but I disagree.” 

He gives a vigorous nod.

“If you’ve finished eating, amor, go do your homework and get ready for bed.” 

Samantha ignores her grandmother. “Were you ever in a war, like World War Two or Iraq?” 

Demetrius swallows. “Well, I’m not quite as old as King Cole, so I wasn’t in World War Two. And I’d never take part in the Iraq War even if I were in the military, which I’m not. Nor the Afghan War.” Out of the corner of his eye, he notes Marlie’s approving expression as she swallows her last bite of bagel and reaches for another.

“I wrote George Bush to stop invading countries.” Samantha grimaces. “He didn’t write back.”

“I’m not surprised.” 

“I have another question.”

“One more, mi vida,” Marlie puts in. 

“Do you like bats?”

He searches the girl’s face for clues to the correct answer. Finding none, he answers honestly. “I think they’re kind of ugly. And sometimes they carry diseases.” 

Samantha’s brow wrinkles. 

“But most are benign,” he adds hastily. “They eat mosquitoes and sh—poop organic fertilizer. Though I haven’t yet gardened with guano.”

“Maybe you could do it here. We have lots of bat lodgers.”

“Not that many,” Marlie says.

“They like living up under the roof.” Samantha smiles proudly. “I’m sure one is Stellaluna.” She skips over to the bookcase, pulls out a picture book, and carries it to Demetrius. 

“We practice peaceful coexistence with them,” Marlie says, watching Cole leaf through the book, a delicately illustrated tale of a baby bat adopted by a bird, “but we want to up the ratio of humans.” 

“An unusual reason for seeking housemates,” the man remarks, with no apparent irony, “but understandable.” 

“All right, chulita, ve a lavarte los dientes.”

 Samantha pops out of her chair, grabs a small broom by the stove, mounts it and gallops out of the room. 

He turns to the woman. “Did I pass?” 

Marlie smiles. “Evidently.” She stands and twists her curls behind her head, uncertain what comes next. As she clears the table, she watches the man gaze around her kitchen once again. He seems kind, she thinks. His face is engaging and open. He’s good-looking, but not overly so. Suddenly, Marlie thinks of Blake, boyishly handsome with his endearingly large ears and gangly limbs. How she had fawned over him. 

To hide her face, Marley stands and grabs items to put back in the fridge. Not all men take advantage of women, she argues with herself. But she doesn’t believe it. Blake’s betrayals had merely confirmed what Marlie learned from her mother, who’d learned it from her mother. Marlie’s grandmother had been born in a little town near Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico, in 1915, during the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. In 1934 she and a young male teacher, both working in a village school, were attacked by a band of Cristeros, a Christian guerrilla movement that persecuted teachers who taught the secular “socialista” curriculum. The attackers killed the young man, then kidnapped and gang-raped the young woman. 

Thrown out by her own family because of her “dishonor,” she’d been forced into the role of spouse—chattel, really—of the chief rapist. Thereafter she had viewed all men as unpredictable savages women needed to appease in order to survive, and had bequeathed this notion like a family heirloom to her daughters, including Marlie’s mother. Marlie has tried to shake off this outlook, but still often feels baffled and powerless around men.

Now, here one sits in her kitchen, asking to live in her house. What if she tells him she meant to write “women only” on the notice? She imagines the light leaving his kind face as he downs his cup, grabs his bag, and stalks out. 

She sips her chamomile tea, now wishing she’d selected Brain Booster (with gingko biloba) instead. If Cole were a White man, would she accept him more readily? Much though she hates to admit it, an honest answer might be yes. 

Again fearing the thoughts in her colonized mind will show on her face, she goes to pour herself some water from the faucet, which emits its usual brassy complaint.

The man springs to his feet. “What the f—?”

Samantha flies back into the room on her broomstick, sweeps over to the faucet, and jiggles it. The braying becomes higher pitched, then slides down the scale like a crazed clarinet. It moans darkly for a couple of seconds, then subsides. Samantha emits a squeal of her own, mounts her broom, and dashes away.

“Sorry,” Marlie says. “It does that sometimes. The house is so old, you know. It has um…quirks.” 

The man eyes the sink. “As in a herd of wild elephants in the basement?” 

Marlie chuckles apologetically. “Not a herd—just one or two. They’re friendly.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I’m, uh, sensitive to noises,” he adds, pulling on an earlobe.

Marlie’s nerves can’t handle being addressed by such a warm male voice. She opens the fridge again and shoves in the rest of leftover food so he won’t see her worry. Could the noisy plumbing be a signal of something dreadfully wrong? “No harm seems to come of it,” she says, frowning at the faucet. “And we can’t afford to fix the plumbing,” she admits.

Again Ana Violeta’s voice hisses in her ear: Don’t tell him your troubles! He’ll leave, or want to pay so little it won’t be worth it.

“Maybe it’s just, well, differential air pressure or something.” he says, nodding toward the sink. “Like a pipe organ?”

“That would be nice,” Marlie sighs. “I love Rainwood House, but she has a lot of unmet needs.” Feeling her face flush, Marlie crosses to the boombox on the orange bookcase. She turns on the radio, and strains of mellow jazz wash over them.

 “Hey, it’s ‘A Sunday Kind of Love!’” Demetrius exclaims. “One of my favorite programs on WPFW Pacifica Radio.” Now that he’s warm and fed, he no longer feels desperate, and would happily float along in an eternal present time of plants, ribbons, and colored trinkets, safe from the past and the future.

Demetrius continues his commentary about the radio station. “It’s cool how they mix music and social justice,” he enthuses. “I’ve met some of the radio hosts at cultural events and demonstrations and...” He takes a large bite of his third bagel to shut himself up. 

Marlie is still standing in front of the open refrigerator. Finally, she shuts it, having chilled the room even more than it already was. She turns around. “I like them, too. I listen while I work, unless I have a machine roaring in my ears.” She makes a sour face. “Which is often, with all the weed eaters, leaf blowers, snow blowers, and so on, they force us to use. Fortunately, they haven’t yet discovered how to make us plant flowers and shrubs by machine.” 

“I brought most of the crafts from Mexico.” she says. “I was born there, but my mother, brother, and I came to Maryland when I was eight. My father was already here, working in construction. In Mexico he had been a union electrician but he was obliged to do less skilled work here.” She looks over at him. “As happens to so many of us. 

“After finishing high school,”she continues, “I went back to Mexico City to study anthropology and shared this teeny apartment with four or five other students. I guess that was my first collective.” 

Marlie pictures the sleeping bags spread on the floor at night, rolled and stacked each morning, the little blue table wedged into the tiny galley kitchen where she did her homework in the early hours, before going off to her various jobs teaching English or translating. She remembers the endless conversations, singing, cooking, making leaflets or team projects, even dancing together in that tiny space. With noisy students of both genders sharing the place, the neighbors undoubtedly imagined endless sex, drugs, and carousing, though what Marlie most recalled about the boys was that they teased each other mercilessly and always needed reminding to clean up after themselves.

This memory is reassuring; Marley has handled, and presumably still can handle, a male collective mate. She attempts to study Cole Robert Benson unobtrusively.

“So you’ve had experience living collectively, too,” he remarks.

“Yup. Most of it was great, but not all.” Marlie can’t bring herself to speak of her life with Blake and the union folks, or of its implosion. Instead, she complains in a light tone about her student collective: the roommate who drank all the coffee and never bought more, the other one whose dramas drove everyone nuts. The upstairs tenant who would stomp on her floor—their ceiling—when they got noisy. “One woman’s ceiling is another one’s floor,” Marlie sings before she can stop herself.

She flushes again, but Cole Benson merely smiles and nods, as if punctuating one’s talk with song is perfectly normal. 

Demetrius sips his tea, glad to be in listener mode while Marlie talks (and occasionally sings). However, soon a new discomfort pricks him. Like many people, Marlie evidently finds him easy to talk to; but drawing out a person he’s deceiving is, for him, a new and disquieting experience. 

While walking through Rainwood in the wee hours, just before the helicopter sent him scrambling, he’d seen an ornately lettered sign on a lamppost, which now suggests a promising conversation topic. “So Rainwood is a historic district,” he remarks. 

She smiles that upside down smile. “Yes, though I’m sadly ignorant about our history. I don’t even know if they named this house after the town, or vice versa.”

As she is talking, Demetrius rises to carry his plate to the sink, hoping this transition will nudge her toward the topic of the room rental. But when he turns he sees that she is leaning out into the hall. “Oye, Samantha! ¡Sourpuss dice que pasan de las 7:00!”

“Sourpuss?” Demetrius hasn’t seen or smelled a cat.

“My familiar of foul moods.” Marlie laughs, pointing across the kitchen to a blue cat clock on the wall between the two tie-dye sheets. The clock’s frowning face and eyes shift back and forth in time to its ticking tail. “She encourages me to complain.” 

Marlie has a vision of Cole Benson’s disapproving face as he sees her ranting to Sourpuss or belting out some rock song.

But he nods cheerfully. “My Granny Gus says complaining is a lost art.”

“She does? Wow, she sounds… wise.” Marlie almost says, “She sounds Mexican,” but thinks that might not be politically correct.

“She is,” he replies. “The wisest person I know.” 

“Well, she’ll agree Samantha needs to go to bed or she’ll be late for school.” Marlie rises. “And I get up at five.”

Demetrius groans inwardly. That has to be his cue to leave. With luck, she’ll tell him to come again tomorrow to talk further about the room. He'll have to sneak back into her basement and huddle on the bag of cement until morning. To delay the pain, he remarks, “You told her to get ready for bed a while ago.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Let me guess. Not much experience with kids?”

He has a lot of experience with teens—who, when left to themselves, stay up half the night and sleep past noon—but talking about his connection to young people seems risky. He shakes his head. “Now that I recall, as a kid I didn’t always jump to do what I was told.”

“Well, neither does Samantha.” Marlie steps out of the kitchen into the hallway, looking over her shoulder. “That girl always takes advantage of my distraction and sneaks off to read books. She’d never go to bed if I didn’t make her. And then she can’t get up in time to get ready for…”

She continues to address Demetrius, so he rises and tags along behind her as she walks, still talking, her fingers trailing absently along the wall of Samantha’s drawings. At the stairway, she rounds the newel post and begins mounting the steps, still chatting. “I always wonder if Samantha pretends not to hear me or if she’s truly so engrossed that she…” 

It seems rude to remain below, looking up at her through the ornate balusters, so he follows her up the stairs.