six years later
chapter 2
“You will submit,”Chef Alice Sullivan said mildly, pushing her knuckles into the recalcitrant ciabatta dough, “to my superior strength and intelligence.”
Across from her, her childhood friends—Nina Hashim and Opal Griffith—had just sat down to mugs of fair trade Assam tea at Sullivan’s kitchen island.
Though rain was on the horizon, the early evening sunlight filtered through the Douglas firs in her backyard, illuminating the trays of microgreens in the windowsills. (She grew all her restaurant’s microgreens in her house.)
“You know there’s this thing called a…” Nina flourished acrylic nails that had never touched bread dough.
“You don’t even know what it’s called.” Opal was the sous-chef in Sullivan’s restaurant, Mirepoix du Bois. “Nina’s right though. You’ll give yourself carpal tunnel. Use the mixer.”
Sullivan’s hands ached from kneading, but it was good to feel the stick and pull of the notoriously hard-to-work-with dough.
“The more we do by hand, the smaller our carbon footprint.” Bands of gluten stuck to her fingers. “I know you think you can control this relationship.”
“Is she talking to us?” Nina asked.
“She’s talking to the dough.” Opal pushed her bright red glasses up her nose with her index finger. “They have a complicated relationship.”
“Drink your tea.” Sullivan tried to flick a bit of dough at Nina’s designer tracksuit, but the dough held her like quicksand.
“The goddess always protects me from uncooked evil,” Nina quipped as she whipped her curly hair back and forth. Each ringlet seemed to have a life of its own.
It was the perfect Sunday evening in May. Sullivan’s high-end eco-restaurant, where she worked alongside Opal, was closed Sunday through Tuesday, so her weekend had barely begun. Two more full days of hiking and testing low-waste recipes in her own kitchen lay ahead of her. Her best friends gathered at the kitchen island for tea before they moved on to drinks at Opal’s favorite bar and Sullivan wandered through the urban forest to the Oakwood Heights Neighborhood Association meeting. Not exactly a wild party, but a nice chance to reconnect with some neighbors she hadn’t seen in a while. Evening sunlight dappled the ciabatta dough. Often she forgot that May was close to the solstice. It was usually so rainy it felt like an extension of winter, but not tonight. Tonight felt like the beginning of summer.
“Check this out.” Opal reached into her Portland She-Pack women’s rugby satchel. “A Black woman won the American Fare Award. Youngest woman and the first food truck owner.”
“Ooh, shit,” Nina said. “Sullivan’s conniption fit in three, two, one.” She counted down on her fingers.
Food trucks were nomadic salt bombs, crawling across the country leaving plastic forks and environmental apocalypse in their wake. Sullivan pointed it out every time she saw one.
“She’s gotta be a rock star to get past that wall ofprime-rib-loving white guys on the award committee.” Opal flashed the magazine cover in Sullivan’s direction.
Sullivan glanced at it for the second the magazine deserved. The cover photo featured a woman with a loose Afro standing in front of a food truck. (It was the hair Opal wanted but never had the patience to grow.) Turquoise sunglasses shaded the woman’s eyes, picking up the specks of turquoise on her splash-patterned overalls. She beamed, raising both hands to form a heart. Why did this talented Black woman have to destroy the earth with microplastics? And of all the talented Black chefs, why didAmerican Farepick a food truck owner?
“It’s offensive,” Sullivan said.
“Because you didn’t win?” Nina asked.
“Because they didn’t pick Chef Gregory Bruselle of Maple Savor or any of the Renaud sisters or Tyron Hisaki.”
Opal opened the magazine and pushed it across the island toward Sullivan.
“They’re all old school. Look at her,” Opal said, her pointer finger stabbing the page. “She’s drippin’ style. Look at those glasses.”
Sullivan looked for real this time.
Behind the glasses.
Beneath the Afro.
Sullivan stopped kneading. And for a moment her friends and the dough and the sunlit microgreens disappeared. Sullivan was standing in the practice kitchen at the Jean Paul Molineux School of Culinary Arts. A fire she’d almost forgotten surged in her lungs.
“Kia. Fucking. Jackson. You little brat.”
The American Fare Award. Kia had gotten there first. Sullivan shook her head.
