APRIL
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10
“Brown Butter, Baby!” I articulate before my face sets.
“I still like it,” Zwena utters stiffly.
“¡Callad, chicas!” Gloria attempts to shush the two of us and taps one of my spoons against Zwena’s forehead. “The mask hasn’t hardened enough to crack. Stop talking and lay still,” Gloria instructs, like she’s baking a cake and it needs a few more minutes to cool before serving. “Once it’s set, it needs to stay on another thirty minutes, then basta.”
“I like the name too.” Prideful, I shimmy from the neck down, careful not to move my head. Lying on my living room floor, propped up on throw pillows from the couch, I stretch my arm out straight and poke Zwena’s shoulder so she can give me a high five without much movement, fearful of another reprimand from Gloria.
After several weeks of polling Zwena, Krish, Dieting Donna, my boss, and even Mr. Chen to consider a laundry list of possible names for my company, I held a vote last Thursday. We were all working the same shift, and I was picking up Mr. Chen from visiting his homecoming queen. There was only one dissenting opinion among the group, but I’m pretty sure Donna was just in a bitter mood from suffering through her juice cleanse, so I went with the group’s vote for Brown Butter, Baby! Now that I have registered the name as an LLC with the State of California, it’s official. I’m a company with not one sale to my nameand increasing debt. But I love to hear myself say Brown Butter, Baby! out loud any chance I get.
I texted Mrs. Eisenberg with the hope that sharing the list of name options would give her something to focus on during her convalescence, and to engage her greatest strength, doling out opinions. Plus, I figured she would get a kick out of a few of the odder choices, all of them submitted by Zwena. My assumption was that someone would check Mrs. Eisenberg’s phone for her, since most likely her hands aren’t dexterous enough to do it herself. But I never heard back. When I left the hospital the night of Mrs. Eisenberg’s stroke, Ash promised he would keep in touch with me concerning his grandmother’s recovery, but the past few weeks it’s been quiet. A time or two I’ve held my fingers over my phone poised to bombard Ash with the extensive list of questions I have on how our desert bird is doing and to investigate the care she’s receiving, but I’ve held back. Ash is surely guaranteeing his grandmother is in the hands of the best healthcare professionals the Bay Area has to offer, and I imagine that in addition to her doting family, Mrs. Eisenberg has loads of friends checking in on her and what I can presume is a team of rotating therapists.
Though I think of her often, I have begrudgingly accepted that I may never see Mrs. Eisenberg again, her stroke most likely ending her traveling days. With the lack of communication from Ash on behalf of his grandmother, I’m beginning to believe that my relationship with Mrs. Eisenberg may not exist beyond the airport. If I’d known our friendship was going to come to such an abrupt end, I would have been more deliberate about writing down all her gems of life advice.
“Has Simon been back sniffing around since, you know?” Zwena asks. Her face stiff from the mask, she points to her nipples in case I couldn’t understand her. I shift my eyeballs far left toward my mother, hoping Zwena will pick up mynot nowgirl code signal.
“He’s been by a time or two,” I reluctantly admit, knowing my friend will react with prejudice. Zwena scrunches her nose, unable to itch it or not liking the smell of my answer, I’m not sure which. “Forthe most part I just have him picking the girls up from school when he wants to see them.”
“Pole pole, dada,” Zwena says softly.
I hear the loving concern in her voice, even if I can’t translate the meaning of the words.
“Go slowly, sister. Forward is the way your feet are pointing,” Zwena clarifies for me without having to be asked.
“I hear you.” I know, lying next to me, Zwena is unconvinced. “I promise, I hear you,” I say with 93 percent conviction.
“Did you know right and left shoes weren’t made until 1818 in Philadelphia? Before then, they were the same shape.” Glad to know as easy as we swung into the topic of Simon, we have just as easily swung back out.
“You don’t need to know the history of fashion for your test,” I assert. Since Zwena decided to become a US citizen, Krish and I have been assaulted with trivial American tidbits. Though I was interested to learn that there have been eight presidents who were left-handed like me, Zwena is doing a terrible job differentiating between facts that may be on the test and what might land her onJeopardy!.
“Back to you and Simon.” This conversation is making me dizzy. “Have you told Krish what’s going on with you two?”
“No, I haven’t said anything to Krish, he’s disliked Simon longer than you have.”
“That’s true. Then what about the girls? Do they know?” Zwena is as protective of Lou’s and Coco’s hearts as a blood aunt would be.
“Know what?” my mom pipes up, trying to get in on our business.
“Ehrm... know that you are really the brains behind my beauty line.” On the fly I come up with an answer that will no doubt appeal to the sweet spot of Gloria’s ego.
The past few months, while working through my cacao lotion formula and perfecting the match to my original four skin tones, my mom dropped at least a half dozen not so subtle hints that, in our family, she is actually the one with brown woman beauty expertise. Workingagainst her know-it-all nature to gloat, te lo dije, I believe the last words Gloria chose to plead her case to be involved with my project were, “Trust me, mi amor, it’s not just what’s on the inside that counts.”
My mother was thrilled when I finally called to invite her over and asked her to show me how to use the ground cacao shells as a substitute for clay powder when making a detoxifying face mask. Gloria jumped at the opportunity to play spa director and insisted I have Zwena over as well to get in on the cosmetic counsel she has been waiting her whole life to impart.
Arriving an hour ahead of when I invited her, with the bags she utilizes to transport all the makeup she employs on her Senior Connection clients, Gloria took the invitation a step too far. She thought we were going to have a full-on tutorial into the sacred practices of beautification, not something more along the lines of a lesson in restorative sciences. Zwena was game since she was heading from my house out on a mystery date, probably with an Alaska Airlines pilot she’s been eyeing who flies the SFO-Tokyo route. I, however, marched my mother back outside to leave her makeup cases in the car, to both of their disappointments.One step at a time.I successfully tempered my mom’s efforts and insisted on facials only. Surprisingly Gloria agreed to my terms, pleased, for now, to be included.
While my strategy is set to launch Brown Butter, Baby! with my four foundational lotion shades, face masks may be in the future if all goes according to my Pioneering Entrepreneurs business plan. Gloria riffled through the kitchen cupboards and found my measuring cup to make a ratio of one part milk to three parts water to mix with the cacao powder. I wondered aloud if it would be more nourishing for our skin if the mask base was all milk, or even better, half-and-half, to which Gloria shot me a look of alarm. Growing up in the rural hills of Puerto Rico, for my mother milk was a commodity not to be wasted as it wasn’t cheap unless you were milking the cow yourself. Adding water to the milk made the creamy mixture go further, allowing the paste to be shared by more women in the community.
Gloria added a tablespoon of cacao powder at a time to the liquid blend, stirring until the measuring cup was full of a thick paste the consistency of Greek yogurt. Once her concoction had thickened, cayenne pepper was added. Noticing the doubt on our faces, my mom assured us that the heat of cayenne brings blood to the surface of the skin, urging the pores to open up and breathe, creating a long-lasting glow. Just thinking about the heat, I nearly broke out in a sweat.
My mouth and my wallet protested when my mom cranked the thermostat before applying the paste, but Gloria insisted the pumped-in high heat would be the closest thing to relaxing in the Puerto Rican sun, thereby aiding the mask’s firming process.
With the concoction applied to our faces and hardening like Magic Shell, Gloria wiggles her body between me and Zwena, reminds us to lie as still as statues, and then scrolls through Amazon Prime until she has found her favorite Jennifer Lopez movie,Maid in Manhattan. There is nothing my mother enjoys more than a Puerto Rican rags-to-riches story, and we have watched this one together at least a dozen times. With the mention of J. Lo, Gloria points out that—objectively speaking, of course, given her genes—I’m prettier than Mrs. Affleck. Disagreeing is pointless, since nothing gives Gloria greater pleasure than believing J. Lo is a lesser version of her daughter, but I know this will end up being mocking material for Zwena. I’m annoyed it isn’t possible to snack on popcorn with my face plastered into place.
After we abide fortyish minutes in the mask, Gloria stops the movie just as J. Lo considers applying for the housekeeping managerial job in the fake high-end hotel where she works. I usually lose interest in the movie around then anyway, preferring that she be saved by her brains and hustle, not by her dashing costar. Gloria walks us to the kitchen sink, instructs us to lean over, hands both of us a spoon, and directs us to tap, tap, tap to crack our faces like an egg. A few solid knocks allow me to begin to move my jaw and then raise and lower my eyebrows, causing the mask to crumble into the sink on its own.
