bread-making queen. Her dishes didn’t match, because she made them herself—not that her mother ever seemed that impressed with Daria’s pottery. Why did you have to prove you could bake bread when you made the plates you served it on?
But the next day, when the starter still miraculously burbled, she had relented and the plastic bag accompanied her on the weekend getaway, sitting in the backseat of the man’s car between their overnight bags like a small nervous child with a gastrointestinal disorder, surrounded by paper towels in case of eruption.
“Really?” the man she barely knew had asked.
“You said you liked me for my unpredictability,” she answered.
“Really?” he repeated.
The guilt-goo survived longer than the relationship, arriving home with Daria on Sunday evening. The car had been cold on the drive back but the starter seemed to be doing a better job of coping with the weekend than she was, even though once she read the directions she realized she was supposed to have made bread from it the day before. The stuff was impressive, Daria had to admit as she held the bag in her hands.
Sitting on her kitchen table was her grandmother’s bowl, creamy white inside, crimson on the exterior. Daria remembered the first time she had seen the bowl at her grandmother’s house when she was a child, how the sun coming in the back kitchen window lit up the deep red of the glaze and nestled in the ridges running up the sides, how she had gotten her hand lightly slapped for trying to sneak batter, when all she had done was reach out to feel the smooth surface, the edge of a ridge pressed against her finger. When her grandmother had died a few years earlier, Daria refused all objects from her house, claiming she didn’t have space in her tiny apartment, anyway. But as she had passed through her grandmother’s house while the other relatives were still talking in the backyard, she saw the bowl on the kitchen counter and took it.
Guilt bread made in a stolen bowl, Daria thought wryly. She divided the starter into four parts and poured one portion into the bowl.
The goo looked a bit gray, and Daria had already put in baking soda before she realized it should have been powder, but she put the whole thing in a loaf pan and dumped some cinnamon across the top and stuck it in the oven—from which it emerged forty minutes later, fragrant, lovely and forgiving.
SO WHY DID SHE have to do it all again now? Daria thought, mulling over Kate’s challenge. Hadn’t she already proved herself? She’d even taken Kate half the loaf of the Amish guilt bread—on a plate she had made herself, red for healing power.
Sometimes, Daria thought, that group of women was more trouble than it was worth. She’d only said yes to the do-one-thing-that-scares-you pact because she thought she would get something exciting like bungee jumping or sex on a houseboat. She should have known better. Kate hated boats. “Learn how to make bread”—that was classic Kate.
Standing in her pottery studio, Daria ripped open the plastic on a package of clay and got ready to prep it.
DARIA ALWAYS TOLD PEOPLE that unpredictability was her birthright, earned by her unanticipated conception on the night of her sister Marion’s sixteenth birthday party. Daria had often wondered what could have prompted her mother into such a display of sexual recklessness, as it was obvious to Daria early on that love or the desire to look down into the clear gaze of a baby’s eyes had had nothing to do with it. Maybe it had been all those lanky teenage bodies, sending their hormones ricocheting about the house. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Daria liked the idea that there might at least have been something passionate in her creation. Not that she was ever likely to ask her mother.
Daria often referred to her mother as the patron saint of perpetual disappointment. Daria envisioned her, arms outspread, welcoming the hordes of the ticked off, the
But the next day, when the starter still miraculously burbled, she had relented and the plastic bag accompanied her on the weekend getaway, sitting in the backseat of the man’s car between their overnight bags like a small nervous child with a gastrointestinal disorder, surrounded by paper towels in case of eruption.
“Really?” the man she barely knew had asked.
“You said you liked me for my unpredictability,” she answered.
“Really?” he repeated.
The guilt-goo survived longer than the relationship, arriving home with Daria on Sunday evening. The car had been cold on the drive back but the starter seemed to be doing a better job of coping with the weekend than she was, even though once she read the directions she realized she was supposed to have made bread from it the day before. The stuff was impressive, Daria had to admit as she held the bag in her hands.
Sitting on her kitchen table was her grandmother’s bowl, creamy white inside, crimson on the exterior. Daria remembered the first time she had seen the bowl at her grandmother’s house when she was a child, how the sun coming in the back kitchen window lit up the deep red of the glaze and nestled in the ridges running up the sides, how she had gotten her hand lightly slapped for trying to sneak batter, when all she had done was reach out to feel the smooth surface, the edge of a ridge pressed against her finger. When her grandmother had died a few years earlier, Daria refused all objects from her house, claiming she didn’t have space in her tiny apartment, anyway. But as she had passed through her grandmother’s house while the other relatives were still talking in the backyard, she saw the bowl on the kitchen counter and took it.
Guilt bread made in a stolen bowl, Daria thought wryly. She divided the starter into four parts and poured one portion into the bowl.
The goo looked a bit gray, and Daria had already put in baking soda before she realized it should have been powder, but she put the whole thing in a loaf pan and dumped some cinnamon across the top and stuck it in the oven—from which it emerged forty minutes later, fragrant, lovely and forgiving.
SO WHY DID SHE have to do it all again now? Daria thought, mulling over Kate’s challenge. Hadn’t she already proved herself? She’d even taken Kate half the loaf of the Amish guilt bread—on a plate she had made herself, red for healing power.
Sometimes, Daria thought, that group of women was more trouble than it was worth. She’d only said yes to the do-one-thing-that-scares-you pact because she thought she would get something exciting like bungee jumping or sex on a houseboat. She should have known better. Kate hated boats. “Learn how to make bread”—that was classic Kate.
Standing in her pottery studio, Daria ripped open the plastic on a package of clay and got ready to prep it.
DARIA ALWAYS TOLD PEOPLE that unpredictability was her birthright, earned by her unanticipated conception on the night of her sister Marion’s sixteenth birthday party. Daria had often wondered what could have prompted her mother into such a display of sexual recklessness, as it was obvious to Daria early on that love or the desire to look down into the clear gaze of a baby’s eyes had had nothing to do with it. Maybe it had been all those lanky teenage bodies, sending their hormones ricocheting about the house. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Daria liked the idea that there might at least have been something passionate in her creation. Not that she was ever likely to ask her mother.
Daria often referred to her mother as the patron saint of perpetual disappointment. Daria envisioned her, arms outspread, welcoming the hordes of the ticked off, the
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