I peel an apple and I think of you

gestures as welcome ghosts

My friend Noémie likes her apples peeled. Whenever I peel an apple, watching its thick skin fall like birch leaves onto a cutting board, I think of her. When I worked on her farm, I used to watch her sitting cross legged and peeling her apple at lunch time. She would peel then slice it and line the slices up on her knee. Then she would slice cheese, and line those slices up with the apple slices. She would eat each assemblage one by one. 

Memories are locked inside of objects. Proust wrote all of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu after taking a bite from a single madeleine cookie. In a recent New Yorker On and Off the Menu, Bonnie Slotnik — cookbook collector & seller in New York City’s West Village — explains the power of a salt shaker: “I have this little tomato-shaped salt shaker that’s like the quintessence of my mother [—] it’s all I need to remember her.” I am currently visiting my own mother and objects inside her home remind me of times and places in childhood. I walk into her room once more before departing, just to be held by their aura. The memories they evoke are like paintings, they are still and quiet. The objects themselves sitting in their places, wherever they once were. 

When I was peeling an apple yesterday, I began to wonder about the kinds of memories locked inside gestures. I am reminded of so many people when I cook — their ways of doing things. I always think of my mother’s hands whenever I baste the Thanksgiving turkey. I think of her as a golden blur, rushing around the kitchen to send every dish to the table. I remember a young cook I once worked next to in a restaurant, telling me to “commit!” every time I plated a delicate dish. Her dainty hands worked with so much strength and quickness. Memories of many chefs and friends follow me through a day of cooking. In one moment I am chopping onions and thinking of one person, and in the next I am deglazing a sauce and thinking of another. Cooking evokes a parade of mentors in my memory.

Unlike those locked inside objects, the memories flashing in my mind as I cook are intensely animated. I see people moving fast, their eyes flashing a knowing look. I hear their voices listing steps as they show me how to accomplish a task. Sometimes they make analogies, other times they simply move and I watch. It is this moving memory bank that I pull from when I cook. My body becomes a conduit through which memories can move and are brought back to life. 

Not all of the memories are fond ones. The apron of my life cooking in restaurant kitchens is stained with monstrous characters. A skill cannot be honed without mentorship, and any cook will tell you that excellent mentorship is often hard-won.  My first chef screamed through the open kitchen. He threw poorly plated dishes into the trash, porcelain and all. He made comments about my body. He sent me crying to the street corner outside the restaurant multiple times. Yet I remember the way he flipped his pans on the range, how he sliced ripe nectarines so thinly, how he used his two hands at once. The memory of him moves through me still and despite my low opinion of him, I keep him next to me when I walk into any kitchen.

It is strange to think of myself as this moving pastiche of characters. Like I’m some kind of glitchy, ten headed hologram. If objects inspire good memories, we keep those objects close to us. Then again, if they remind us of hard times or exes or memories we’d rather leave in the past, we can choose to hide or discard them. We do not possess this same control with gestures.  Those we pick up become locked inside of us. Possessed by ghosts of mentors past, I sometimes ask the question: how to set them free and in turn free myself?

At this time of year, when grey-washed skies provide a slate for glowing orange candelabras, it is easy to feel haunted. The channels to our ancestors, past lives, and deceased heroes begin to widen around the time of equinox. Our days slow with growing darkness. Scrying into the rippling night, we see the past wobble back into focus. Some of it contains warmth, times we yearn to return to but never can. Then a chill, horrors we hope to never again witness. When the day equals night, what does it mean to feel equally haunted by both light and darkness? 

I cannot help but think about the murder of Marcellus Williams in the days after his death. Friend, artist, and activist, Lukaza Branfman-Verrissimo, said something beautiful on the night of his execution, “may he journey into the wings and bones of all of us who continue to fight to abolish systems that kill.” Allowing a haunting can be an act of resistance. Although I never personally knew Marcellus, I can be sure that he carried himself with bravery until his last breath. How else can one face decades of life in prison, sentenced to death? Both his final statement and a poem written by him about the children of Palestine suggest to me that he was not only brave, but also gentle and reverent. I imagine him with hands folded in prayer in the moments before his passing. He must have prayed not only for himself, but for every innocent life exposed to the threat of death. May we all invite this character into our wings and bones, as Lukaza invokes. Let us be both haunted by injustice and haunted by the gentle and reverent bravery needed to combat it. 

The word “haunt” comes from a word in old French which literally means home. We still speak of “haunts” as places we like to frequent, where we feel at ease. Home is not an inherently blissful word for everyone. For those incarcerated for life, home is an ache in the heart and prison is purgatory. For so many living in the streets in our country, home is impossible and residing within the temporary dwellings built on their way is now illegal. Those of us with complex relationships to home sometimes turn to public parks, third spaces, or dark bars to feel at home. Some of us find homes in one another. Needing to haunt a place or a person is inherently human and home is a human right. With this in mind, allowing ourselves to be haunted is a way of opening the door to a home where there wasn’t one before. 

Perhaps setting myself free isn’t the point. Yes, it is important to be discerning around who we let in to our lives. Cruelty and wrongdoing are not characteristics I want to see in myself, so I must take heed around such characters no matter what knowledge they appear to offer.  Yet we are all complex beings, comprised equally of the pains and joys we have experienced.  It is an honor to be possessed by the gestures of those who have come before me, those who have imparted wisdom at whatever cost. Even those with questionable characters — who hurt them? It feels more important to carry their offerings forth, keeping old traditions and lessons alive, than it does to sit in confusion around whether they were worthy of such haunting. As I carry their gestures with me, I have the choice to build a new context around which to pass them on. We are all humans and we all deserve a home. Open the door. 

Graciela Iturbide, La Guadalupe en Chalma, Mexico 2005