Until I was old enough to know better, just about every time I asked my mom, ‘What’s for dinner?’ or ‘What’s for lunch?’ or 'I'm hawngry. What's there to eat?', she'd say, "Air custard and love."
She's leaned against the mustard yellow Formica countertop in front of sink where the big picture window overlooked the driveway and the Joneses, our neighbors', sideyard. The Joneses were Pentecostal, which didn't mean anything to me other than the fact that the girls could never ever cut their hair and they always wore long denim skirts. They couldn't wear shorts, which in Louisiana, seemed to be the cruelest form of punishment for I don't know what.
My mom would stand there at the window, dishtowel whipped over her shoulder, taking long, slow sips from the dainty white coffee cup with the pewter blue trim that matched her daisy-patterned everyday dishes.
"Air custard and love," she'd say and, depending on how tired or frisky she was feeling, she'd either say it like I should know better than to ask such a dumb question and I should just make myself a sandwich, or she'd say it all sing-songy, like there might actually be such a thing as air custard and love. And when she said it like that, I'd have ths momentary daydream about a fictional custard.
It would be burnt sugar syrupy on the bottom, dense, sweet and egg-y like the kind my dad would make on special-special occasions. It was a big deal, custard. So when she offered it up so freely, so instantly, and with the heart-shaped surprise in the middle (maybe it’s chocolate-filled!)—as I always imagined the “love” part would be inserted into this special air custard—I’d indulge myself in this brief, delicious fantasy. Maybe, hidden in a corner in the refrigerator I hadn’t yet foraged, she’d pull out one of the clay, grey custard cups assigned solely to this treat, remove the square of plastic wrap with raindrops of condensation stuck to it, and hand it to me, along with the red Bakelite-handled spoon my siblings and I always fought over.
More than the custard itself, it was the offer of this treat when there were no other kids around that made it such a luxury item in my mind. There always seemed to be too many kids, too many mouths, too many school uniforms and outgrown shoes, to justify such such individual indulgence from either of my parents.
I'm not sure when it really dawned on me that "air custard" wasn't any kind of custard at all, and the love part didn't really seem so important unless it was somehow covered in chocolate. But I get it now.
Comments