I love Sheila's ability to laugh. Hosting a foreign exchange student has brought her many new experiences, including this one.
ANTICS
AT AN INTERNATIONAL POTLUCK
Sheila
J Petre
They
arrived late to the international Thanksgiving potluck in Washington
D.C. They had left in good time, she thought, as she stood at the
locked glass doors with her family, awaiting entrance. But they had
run into a bottleneck at the end of Cabin John Parkway--and then they
had driven for almost an hour up and down one-way streets in a
confusing search for the American Councils building where the potluck
would be held.
Here
they were at last. She looked around at her family. One person
carried the bread, one carried the bucket which held butter and jam,
and one carried a triumphant casserole dish of dolma,
meatballs of mutton and rice packaged in grape leaves. It was the
product of five hours of labor, prepared for the international
potluck, and it nestled greenly in the dish, topped by three slices
of lemon.
An
attendant unlocked the door, they rode the elevator to the twelfth
floor, surged through another set of glass doors, and arrived at the
international potluck.
The
first seven minutes were a jostle of putting food on the food-laden
counter, hanging up coats, trekking to the restroom, learning what to
do when and how. Finally she found herself in the food line, while
one kind stranger held her baby and another kind stranger helped her
daughters navigate along with their plastic plates held high.
The
assortment of food was bewildering and delightful. A platter of
sliced turkey decorated by cranberries dominated the counter. A glass
dish of sweet potato pudding, crusted with brown sugar and
nuts--nuts!--stood near. A slow cooker held a bone-laden offering of
adobo
from the Philippines. She peered in. She partook. A bowl of parsley
and rice looked like an offering from Thailand. Kluay
buad chee?
She
moved on to the end of the counter. Georgian cheese bread jostled for
a place with the German Apple Strudel. Everything had been sampled
indiscriminately by the previous diners.
And
then she came to it. Blini
from Ukraine. It was a low round heap on a plate, with slumping
shoulders and a soft, pale brown center. Beside it was dish of
raspberry yogurt topping. Evidently you ate the yogurt with this
dessert.
Whatever
blini
was. It looked a lot like a cake, only not so high. And in the
countertop full of absent slices and half-empty pots, it alone
appeared untouched. No one had so much as cut a slice from it.
Well,
she would. It would be a shame if the person who had gone to all the
work to construct this dish of blini
would have no one to eat it. A plastic knife lay near the plate and
she picked it up. She might not be able to cut straight, balancing a
plastic plate in her hand, but she would do what she could. She hated
to see one plate un-tasted at an international potluck.
As
she sliced purposefully down through the shallow round, she noticed
it was in layers, like a cake, only far thinner slices and
innumerable more. Fascinating. It didn’t seem to have anything
between the layers, though. Interesting. She lifted her triangular
piece to her plastic plate, satisfied. She reached for a dab of
raspberry yogurt. Hmmm… Someone had already been dishing from it.
They must have used it on another dish--she glanced at the Georgian
cheese bread. Well, people do strange things.
She
moved on to the pumpkin pie.
She
herded her daughters to the table to eat and sat down to enjoy her
international meal. The turkey was good, and the kluay
buad chee.
The
dolma
was cold. She was sorry. It had been so tasty at home. The children
were picking at their food, skirting anything green, tasting anything
chocolate. She ate her adobo,
feeling brave. She talked to the woman on her left, who had a strong
accent and was accompanied by a daughter and the friend of her
daughter.
She
decided to tackle the blini.
She brought her fork down through the layers, stabbed a stack of
them, smeared them with yogurt, and brought it to her mouth.
Intriguing. It tasted like pancake.
She
thought she was a smart woman, but even then she did not guess it.
No, she ate the whole stack of triangle layers, and she even
suggested to her husband that the children might enjoy that dish from
Ukraine which tasted like pancake, but she did not guess what she had
done.
As
the evening wore on, she learned more about the exchange student
programs of which her host daughter was part; she was secretly glad
that the tea spilt near her was not spilt by one of her own children,
and as she poured four cups with apple juice at the drink bar, she
told a local community coordinator that no, she was not from
Lancaster County, but that was a good guess.
She
talked about the food she was eating, and listened to the
recommendations for the various dishes. They were all good. She
noticed that on some of the other plates were crepes, thin pancakes,
rolled into tubes, or heaped, a supple spiral, by piles of yogurt.
Where had they come from?
And
no, she still didn’t guess.
Half
an hour later, as she was brushing back through the hall on the way
to change her baby’s diaper, she glanced at the dish from Ukraine
to see if anyone else had gotten a slice since she had--and paused.
There on the plate was a lone crepe, a thin pancake-like layer--with
a triangular notch in it.
Oh.
No. Oh, no. What had she done? It hadn’t been cake at all, or meant
to be cut into wedges to eat. It had been a stack of pancakes--and
she had mutilated them all.
Well
of all things. It was too late now. She kept on going. She had to
check on the children and she had wanted to talk to that interesting
lady in the blue shirt…
The
evening ended in a rush to return to the parking garage before the
time expired. They gathered the bread and the empty casserole dish
which had held the dolma,
and which now held but two slices of the decorative three slices of
lemon. They said good-bye to the people they had met and helped the
children zip their coats. They took the elevator down twelve stories,
straggled out the long hall, pushed through the glass doors and
emerged again on the streets of Washington DC.
In
the van on the way home, she and her husband discussed the evening.
The people had been friendly and interesting, they agreed. Maybe
folks who host international exchange students are more comfortable
relating to other cultures; the people had seemed so outgoing and at
ease. She enjoyed a moment or two of satisfied reflection. They, too,
were part of this group of out-of-the-box people. The food had been
good; none of it had been unpalatable.
And
then he came to it. “Did you see those pancake things, like
crepes?” he asked.
She
stopped breathing, briefly. She could predict his next words. “Yes…?”
“Someone
had just hacked a hunk out of the whole stack,” he said.
“That
was me,” she said, and she lifted her hands to her face to hide her
cheeks in the darkness. “I did it. I didn’t understand--I
thought--”
He
looked at her and in the glow of the dash lights, she saw the
disbelief on his face. He had married this woman, had he? “You just
ruined the whole pile,” he said, merciless in his incredulity.
“I
know, it was dumb, I didn’t realize what it was--”
She
decided not to add that she had done it nobly, her heart bristling
with good intentions.
He
didn’t say anything else as they shot triumphantly north on Cabin
John Parkway, and the children chattered in the back seat and the
baby slept. She didn’t say anything either. But the moment passed,
and soon they were talking again, discussing the events of the
evening and the plans for the coming weeks.
He
never mentioned it again. She did not forget, however. She remembered
it again the next morning and the embarrassment of her mistake
lowered like a supple crepe across the start of her day. It was too
bad she had done it, she thought. The incident had been, in its way,
amusing.
Her thoughts bottlenecked at the images: the wedge of thin layers on
her fork, the lone crepe left on the plate with its triangle-shaped
abruption. It must have disturbed every person who had partaken of
the dish. It disturbed her now.
She
wondered how many other times she had slaughtered someone’s
cultural offering with the plastic table knife of ignorance wielded
in a rush of good intentions. Oh yes, the story had some good
parallels; it would have been such fun to write about--if only she
hadn’t done it.
If
only she could write about it now. And then--she thought of it. She
could write it in third person.
She
would. She would chortle with the readers at the blunders of the
ignoramus at the international potluck.
Because it really did make a
great story.
And
no one would ever guess who had done it.
Sheila is in love
with words - and children of all ages. As if five children age six and under
were not enough in her household, this year Sheila and her husband Michael are
hosting a foreign exchange student from Azerbaijan. Sheila is the author of Transplanted and From Joy...to Joy, and a regular columnist in the
Ladies Journal. Somehow she finds time to edit The King's
Daughter, a small quarterly magazine for young ladies. You can
contact her about her books or The King's Daughter at sjpetre@emypeople.net.
