DON’T LET YOUR FATHER IN THE KITCHEN [Leni Checkas] As a classic housewife who raised eleven children, my mom got little rest except when she was sick. Even then, she had to put up with my dad’s braggadocio about how he never got ill. In his words, he had too good a liver, which had something to do with ingesting oodles of cayenne pepper—the vilest spice known to kid-dom. In our household, it was assumed “the girls,” Margaret, Susan, and I, picked up on domestic chores whenever Mom was unavailable. During a particularly bad flu season, both Mom and Margaret were flattened, and Susan and I were set up to make the entire dinner one night. At the time, I couldn’t have been more than nine years old with a strong base of insecurity, which my siblings often reinforced with frequent reminders about my early cooking failures—I suppose I shouldn’t have tried cooking before I even learned fractions, so I’d understand the difference between a ¼ teaspoon and a ¼ cup of salt. Given my trepidation about being infinitely teased from my innocent past failures, I ran to my mother’s sick bed at every single step of the cooking process to reaffirm what I had to do to make mashed potatoes. “Peel the potatoes,” she said. I ran and did that. “Rinse them off,” she said. I raced back after completing that too. By the time the potatoes were on the blue and orange flame to boil, Dad had arrived home from work. I rushed to Mom to ask for the next step before he even got out of his Pinto. After telling me to reduce the heat once the water boiled, Mom’s fevered hand stopped me. “Most importantly, don’t let your father in the kitchen. He’ll try, I know he will, because I’m sick. But don’t let him near the food, or the spice rack, until everything’s on the table.” I was an overwhelmed child with an impossible mission. My fear worsened as my dad entered their bedroom. He had a notorious temper that was unpredictably triggered. No one told him what to do or they were backhanded, hard, for their sass. “What’s going on here?” Dad boomed. While Mom filled him in on her condition, I squeezed between him and the ever-present crib, strategizing to keep him out of the kitchen. I darted down our short hallway which was wallpapered with mock-Victorian images and veered into our utilitarian kitchen/dining room, where our thirty-year- old silver appliances were squarely laid out. While I stared at the pot to make sure it didn’t overflow as little bubbles escaped to the surface, Susan busied herself with 27 PLAINS paradox