Life From Scratch Read Online Free Page B

in Jamaica Plain.
    Even in Barbara’s borrowed home, Mom had to improvise to make ends meet. She never lacked imagination.
    In my first memory, I am three, maybe four years old, sitting at a small metal table with a white Formica top, just big enough for two. In front of me is a small white bowl, filled only halfway with Os. Michael sits on the other side of me, hungrily eating his dry cereal, his cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk.
    “Where’s the milk?” I ask him.
    “I don’t think there is any,” he whispers.
    “But I want some,” I say, my voice drawn out in a whine.
    Before either of us can utter another word, Mom pulls a bottle from the fridge and splashes a tiny bit of red juice into each of our bowls.
    “It’s cranberry,” she says. “Barbara won’t mind if we borrow …”
    “Why are we always eating Barbara’s food?” Michael whines.
    “Try it,” Mom urges. As if to show us how good juice can be with cereal, she bends at the waist, spooning a bit into her own mouth. She makes exaggerated yum sounds, smacking her lips and making silly faces. Michael smiles up at her, despite himself.
    He takes a bite, then another.
    “Whoa, Mom, this is good ,” he says, and starts to airplane the food into his mouth, making loud buzzing sounds.
    I sit back in my chair, unsure.
    “Milk is boring. This is—” She takes a deep breath and then pats my hand, lifting the corners of her mouth like a curtain. “Not everyone can say they’ve had juice in their cereal. Not even the Queen of England.”
    That does the trick. I bring the spoon to my lips, only once pausing to look down at the now pink Os that look like candy. The tart juice squeezes at the inside of my cheeks.
    For years after, Michael and I beg Mom to add juice to our cereal instead of milk.

    Cranberry juice wasn’t what Mom wanted for us—she yearned for that bombastic kitchen of her childhood, that immigrant arena. She wanted to give us a heritage . But by the time we had our own place in Jamaica Plain, not only were her mother and brother gone, but her dad and sister had also moved away from Boston.
    My own name became the victim in this crisis of identity. Mom changed it multiple times before my tenth birthday. Though I was born Musashi, I became Sashi, then Sashann, then Sasha. Much later at my ninth birthday, I became Alexandra. My last name was my father’s, then my mother’s. When I was about three, Mom settled on giving me her late mother’s maiden name “Lombardi,” which rolled off her tongue like an Italian lullaby.
    The decision was both sentimental and feminist; Lombardi put the power of my female lineage behind me. From what I observed of my Italian cousins, whose homes we often frequented for Thanksgiving and Christmas, my new name gave me license to yell whether I was sad, happy, or anything in between.
    Each time the Boston courts awarded my foiled and stamped name-change documents, Mom sent out calligraphic announcements to everyone she knew in purple marker on scraps of card stock. She treated each reinvention like a festive occasion, taking us on the train into the North End, where we’d eat Italian subs to celebrate. For dessert we’d go to Maria’s for cannoli or tiramisu.
    When the festivities were over, if I complained about my new fate as “Sasha” or, later, “Alexandra,” Mom would look me straight in the eye. “Don’t you know?” she’d say with all the certitude of a weatherman, “You need a name for every stage of your life. Butterflies don’t go by ‘caterpillar’ forever. And they certainly don’t go by ‘pupa’ one second longer than they have to. You , my dear, are no longer a pupa.”
    Immediately all sorts of questions about butterflies would occur to me, and I’d completely forget about the name change.

    A name alone cannot keep a heritage alive. Mom shuttled Michael and me across town every month to the home of our closest living Italian relative, Great Aunt Fina. She’d boil hefty