A Taste of Soul
Sabra Marie is in a writer’s club and resides in Pasadena, CA.
By Sabra Marie
Standing over the cast iron stove, Sally stirs methodically, intently, as she relishes the afternoon ahead; sacred time to spend with her family after a long week’s work. Her love language was always a home-cooked meal. She remembered her mama’s cooking and how loved she felt standing by her side, bare feet one with the dusty floor, watching Mama set the table for supper. A mama herself now, it was Sally’s turn to pay that love forward.
Sunday was the one day of the week they didn’t have to work. And Sunday Dinner was the highest reward Sally could bestow upon the ones she loved the most. A welcomed respite from the other unforgiving days of the week.
Stirring and humming went hand in hand for Sally. Spirituals seeping sweetly through the vibration of her lips…
Swing low…
Go down, Moses…
Sunday also meant Religion. But Church was only good when a Negro preacher came. That was the only time they heard anything about Jesus.
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” Melodramatically bellowed from the belly of the weathered preacher earlier that October morning. It felt promising.
Sally comes to as the pot comes to a boil and a smile spreads across her cheeks like warm Savannah summer. She takes great pride in her cooking. Antebellum flavors congealing together for a feast of flavors blue ribbon worthy. But Sally doesn’t know anything about accolades. Her praise is the satisfied bellies of her husband and their three children.
Her fingers, gnarled and pricked from hours hunched over in fields bristled with cotton bolls, shuck corn, clean chit’lins and snap black-eyed peas. The smell of greens simmering in the kettle with salt pork bring tears, salty, streaming down and pooling in the valley above her upper lip. Different from the tears that scorched her eyes the last time Master crept into her cabin after dark. Different from the bitter labor of Plantation ploughing, planting, and picking. This kind was a sweeter labor; one of love.
She had no idea she was performing alchemy. Taking this week’s rations… scraps from the Big House… and turning Master’s trash into a culinary treasure. It was more than “making do”; she was making magic. A masterpiece in delicacy that her descendants would enjoy for generations to come. Even descendants of the Master himself, would one day come for miles to fawn over this “soul food.” Full, but never fully understanding how food that was once discarded came to be known as food that feeds the soul.
It was autumn. The stove gave off an amber glow, warmly lighting the small cabin and warding off the outside chill… When meal time come, they’ll gather ‘round, legs crossed on dirt floor, and Sally will serve everyone with her beloved ladle – like the one in the stars that will one day lead them to Freedom.