MY ACCOUNT

May 22

Hi mum,
 

So… Bobbiny! I had completely forgotten about him. That day after the carnival, when I’d taken a break from doing recipe work, I ended up leafing through my old journal – the one I found in the box – and I found mention of him in there.

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I must have been young when I started that journal, because I wrote about Bobbiny in the earlier pages, and I was, what… five years old when you got him for me? He was that floppy, stuffed bunny doll, I think you’d said his name was Hoppity Bobbity, which I pronounced “Bobbiny”. I was clearly practicing my writing and spelling when I wrote about him, because my entries about Bobbiny were both very succinct and terribly misspelled.

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Entry #1: Bobbiny is my bestest frend. I tak him evry wer.

Entry #2: Bobiny got hert Mommy halped him. I luv Bobbiny and I luv Momy

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After that, I didn’t mention him again, and now I remember why. That summer I had met a boy my age when we were stopped somewhere in Texas, and when I introduced him to “Bobbiny my best friend”, he told me Bobbiny was a toy, and toys couldn’t be best friends. I was so dismayed to learn that my only friend didn’t count as a real one, I left Bobbiny right there on the promenade where we had parked.

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The entries in the journal after that seem to indicate that I started trying to be more like you. You used to write out a schedule or inventory for each day, depending on whether we were driving or staying parked. If we were driving, it was so that we could plan out stops for bathroom or gas breaks. And if we were staying put, it was a list of all the ingredients we had, dishes we could make and how many of each, and what we had left for new creations. I apparently wrote out my own schedule and inventory lists, and I think we should have followed some of my schedule, because if we had, we would have been tracking down the tooth fairy’s vale, making unicorn-hair cotton candy, and setting up shop at a place called Mermaid Cove. (Is that a real place, do you think?)

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The latter part of the journal seems to be odd, random entries of our days: where we went, what we made, what we sold, interesting customers we met, new flavors, new salts. Some detail about tourist attractions we visited, but nothing remarkable.

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I can’t be sure, but I think Jenna may have seen or read some of the journal when I accidentally left it out one day. I say I can’t be sure because even though she’s got no sense of personal boundaries - by her own admission, no less – she didn’t ask about the contents of it or even mention the journal itself when it was out.

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She did, however, ask me a question the other day about my having grown up on a food truck. Now, Jenna is a curious and tenacious character, but this is the first time in nearly two months of knowing each other that she’s asked anything about my past. I’m not sure if she just wasn’t aware that I had an unusual upbringing, or if it was hearing about it at the carnival that finally piqued her interest.

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Or maybe it was just because she saw how strangely I acted at the carnival when we met the other women. Jenna strikes me as the type of person who’s so free-spirited and happy that she doesn’t notice the strange things about other people. But I do know that she noticed my discomfort that night.

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And when she asked me about my growing up on the food truck, I surprised myself by sharing that part of my story with her. I’d expected myself to be evasive and change the subject, distract her attention away from me, but I found myself telling her about it without having consciously deciding to. I guess I feel more comfortable with her now than I had realized.

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So when she asked whether I had gone to school, or if I’d had any family or connections other than you, I told her I hadn’t, and explained what our daily life had been like:

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We’d wake up at six in the morning if we were staying in the same place for a while - which was usually one to two weeks, depending on how much we liked the place the first day – and get out early to go to the market for fresh, local produce. I told her that you taught me that local produce isn’t just what we use because it has the best flavor, but also for its connection to the people we’re feeding because it’s from the same place. It’s like eating food from home even when you’re far from it, you had told me. I’d never really understood that before, because my home had always been the food truck, so I’d never known what it was like to be away from it. But I think I get it now. It’s how I feel when I’m going through our old recipes.

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After the market, I told Jenna, we’d head back to the truck and start making breakfast, which was almost always something sweet, like pancakes or waffles or crepes, and the smell of warm food and caramelizing sugar would start to draw people in, curious about what we were cooking. The air just around the truck (thanks to the vents that you’d wisely installed) would get heavy and sticky, thick with the aroma of steamed milk and vanilla sugar and salty, melted butter.

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Though we didn’t officially open for another couple hours, you’d sometimes pop open the counter just after breakfast to offer passersby a coffee on the house, which almost always drew them back in later in the day for lunch or a snack.

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Then you’d start prep on the list of items you’d written up for the day, and you’d give me tasks to do, like inventory - to quiz me on basic math when I was younger; or putting me on pastry detail when I was older - to test my cooking chemistry. I didn’t go to school, I told Jenna, but everything I was taught was about function, even the basics like math and reading.

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Jenna’s expression changed a little then; her lips pursed, and her eyebrows knit together in what I think was concern or worry… I don’t know for sure - I’d never seen her worried before. And she asked, “But if you didn’t go to school, and you were only in each place for a couple weeks at a time… How did you make friends?”

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I paused, then shrugged. “I didn’t,” I responded. “In whatever way we’re brought up, we think of it as normal until we start to compare. I wasn’t around anyone other than my mother long enough to know or even question what other people’s lives were like, until I was much older. And in that kind of isolation, and with so much constant change as a distraction, my mother was my friend; I didn’t question our way of life, because we had fun.”

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“And after…?” Jenna trailed off. She paused, straightened up and looked me in the eye. “Is that why you seemed uncomfortable at the carnival when we met some of the others? You looked as much a fish out of water as the first day I barged into your house!” Jenna laughed.

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“Yes,” I answered sheepishly, again appreciating her boisterous nature. Her laughing at the situation made it feel a little less terminal.

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“Well, you have a friend now, whether you like it or not,” Jenna said with a wink, reaching out for a hot sugar cookie, fresh from the oven. She gave it two thumbs up, even though it crumbled instantly.
I told her it was too hot to pick up!

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Will write again soon.

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Love,

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Beatrix
 

P.S. I’m still working out the technique for the sugar cookies, so nothing to share with you right now, other than the key to these delicate delights: whip the powder sugar and butter until it’s as airy as a filled balloon! It’s magic. (With, of course, a generous sprinkle of salt!)