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| Chocolate Cheesecake topped with semi-sweet chocolate chips, chocolate syrup and shaved dark chocolate bits |
The first one to be baked was a dark chocolate, both the color of our skin and one of the first instances of my grandmother's hatred. Maybe hatred was too strong a word - or maybe it burned down to slight dislike as the years passed and she realized I wasn't going anywhere. Well, at least not until after her. Even if hatred was too intense to describe her attitude towards me, it was ideal for her demeanor towards my poor mother. Why my mother tried to please her in the first place is beyond me. I wasn't going to try to please her; she trapped me in the house each afternoon when all I wanted to do was play in the sun with the servant's children. At the age of nine, tanning is hardly the end of the world. When I was younger I decided she was just a mean woman, or she didn't like children. There were people like that, Roald Dahl had assured me. In fact if I met more of them, maybe I would be able to move things with my mind too! Matilda was a lucky girl. Of course when my brother came along six years later, chubby and cheerful, my grandmother's affection proved my theories wrong. I would have been jealous if only I cared more. Instead I decided she only liked males, since my father, brother and grandfather were the lucky ones, and I could live without her approval - I'd been doing fine so far. My mother still laughs whenever she tells me the story, and I had to admit I find it pretty amusing too. I was a child, after all.
She walked into the living room and there was my grandmother on the rocking chair. In retrospect, I'm not sure why we had a rocking chair back then, but it stuck with us for a few years. I remember falling off it once and scaring my mother half to death with my screams. Anyway, it really creates the perfect setting for this story, although we didn't have a cat for her to stroke as she rocked back and forth. So there she was, and as soon as my mother walks into the living room (where yours truly is innocently toying with her latest Barbies) her voice slices through the air. No really, if it could have physically sliced, my mother would have required a few stitches.
"Why are you turning her against me?"
"I'm sorry, what?" Confusion clouding mother's face, anger darkening the rocking grandmother's. Rock, rock. For the effect of the story, let's pretend it was creaking. Creeeak, creeak.
"You are turning her against me!"
She can't help it; mother's fighting a smile. Still no idea what is going on, so rather than repeat this a few times she just waits.
"Mihi asked me why I'm so chocolate. So chocolate! I know this is your doing!" Oh dear, the hysterical pitch was hit.
Poor, fair (she's not too chocolate herself - definitely getting darker as time passes, but way back when she was mistaken for Italian a lot) mother pulls me away to 'berate' a very confused four-year-old Mihi; but really, to leave the creaking, croaking crone and laugh. I was a curious child and hadn't yet experienced the Indian shame of being dark-skinned just yet. Innocent little Mihi. Oh the years to come would teach me all right, especially since I was the darkest of the family (woe is me!) but ignorance was no excuse; that was the fateful day my grandmother decided I was on my mother's side. Oops.
Nearly twenty years later, I quite like being brown - I don't need no tanning beds, Snooks. This, however, just may be the reason I still don't eat chocolate. Or maybe I just don't like the feeling of being in love.
