Cake and Comics

The end of winter melting into the beginning of spring was always a time of anticipation in Linda’s family. Tim’s and Dad Ted’s birthdays were still officially in winter, occurring before the spring equinox, March 21, and Linda’s and Gus’ birthdays followed near the start of April. Mom Nancy was born at an altogether different time of year, in the fall, and her temperament reflected the difference of her birth month from that of the rest of her family.

As special as receiving birthday presents was, nothing compared to the birthday cakes with sliced almonds on the sides and soft pink and yellow buttercream flowers winding around the cake tops on green frosting vines. The cake was always a yellow cake, and it came from the Galaxy bakery chain where Mom occasionally bought an almond coffee ring with caramel streusel. The ladies who worked at the bakery wore lacy hair nets that smashed their permed hair close to their heads, making them all look like their hair had been styled by the same hairdresser from the same salon.

Linda had a sweet tooth and craved chocolate from an early age. By the time Linda and her brothers had reached double digits, they had at least as many cavities in their mouths as they had years in their ages. A favorite snack after school was a 16-ounce bottle of cola and frosted chocolate cupcakes with a sweet white cream filling that surely contributed to the gang of three’s metal-filled smiles. One school year it seemed to Linda that she spent every Saturday in the dentist’s chair. How she hated the sound of the drill and the smell of tooth enamel being ground away.

On Sundays after church, Nancy and the three children would take two different buses to the West side where Dad was working as a restaurant cook to pick up the family car for their regular summer outing to Ford Island to meet Mom's ethnic lady friends and their children. The Ford Island picnics were the only opportunity for the women and children to gather to catch up on gossip and games, because everyone lived in different parts of the city, on the East side and the West side, on the South side and the North side. Mom often made fried chicken for their picnic basket, and the boys would bring their baseball bats and mitts to play with the other boys. The girls sometimes brought their dolls, but more often just brought themselves and their ability to make up and tell stories to one another. The mothers played Mahjong on card tables brought from home.

At the downtown block where they transferred buses after church, Linda, Gus and Tim were each allowed to spend one dime on comic books at the corner newsstand. The boys invariably chose superhero comics, while Linda’s choices reflected no single interest, although Wonder Woman comics were definitely a favorite, followed by comic books about Katy Keene, a triple threat model, actress and singer billed as "America's Queen of Pin-Ups and Fashions" by Archie comics. The occasional odd choice for Linda would be the comic books that contained two or three horror stories in one issue, and she would remain scared from those stories for months after reading them.

Linda liked to dream about how an ordinary career woman like Army Lieutenant, Diana Prince, hid a secret identity as princess of the Amazons and Wonder Woman. As a superhero, Wonder Woman belonged to the Justice League of America, fighting in the company of Superman, Batman, Aquaman and the Green Lantern, to name just a few. The comic book covers described Wonder Woman as “beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules,” which whetted Linda’s appetite for stories about the Greek gods and goddesses. Linda’s new favorite book would soon become Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes.

Nancy and the children always stopped at a nearby donut shop to have a snack after they got off the second bus, near the restaurant where her husband, Ted, worked. Those were the days when donut shops and bakeries typically had lunch counters that served great American sandwiches such as egg salad, ham and cheese, and hot turkey and hot roast beef sandwiches for not much money, and lunch counter waitresses wore white uniforms and hair nets topped with white half caps. For the children, eating such American food represented a treat and a departure from their usual fare of ethnic food prepared by their mom at home.

The glass case at the donut shop held the specialty donuts, the ones covered with chocolate, white and pink frosting and different colors of sprinkles and shreds of white sugared coconut. Mom always chose a French crueller donut with its eggy taste and holey insides like a cream puff pastry. Gus and Tim favored the no-hole donuts filled with cream and covered with frosting and rainbow sprinkles, because you got more donut than the ones with holes. Linda’s choice was chocolate through and through with chocolate filling and chocolate frosting. The family would sit at the lunch counter to eat their donuts and drink hot chocolate for the children and coffee with cream and sugar for Nancy. Most Sundays were spent this way.

There are more stories about Linda’s family’s sugar-filled appetites, which we’ll have to save to sweeten another night of storytelling.

The Girl with a Hole in Her Heart

Linda was reading the newspaper with Dad one morning, as she did almost every morning, when a story about a little girl, who had come from China to her Midwestern city for an operation, grabbed her attention. The little girl’s picture in the newspaper showed a very tiny five-year old. The reporter said that the little girl had been born with a hole in her heart that would kill her before she had the chance to grow up unless the hole was repaired. She needed a special operation. Such surgeries were very expensive, and the little girl’s family lived in a poor Chinese farming village that didn’t have a modern hospital or any doctors who knew how to perform such an operation. The doctors at Linda's city hospital had volunteered to do the surgery for free, and a church had raised the money to bring the little girl and her mother to the city for the operation.

Moved by the story of the little girl, which the reporter wrote about everyday that week, Linda decided to visit the little girl in the hospital. Linda didn’t know what she would say to the little girl or even if the little girl would understand her, since the little girl spoke Chinese and Linda spoke English. Linda had never been to a hospital before, and she couldn’t have explained to anyone why she wanted to visit this little girl.

At ten years old, Linda didn't have the words to say what filled her heart so fully, but her passion was strong. This would not be the last time that Linda would read something in the newspaper that would cause her to take action. Linda, it would turn out, had the ability to read stories that many people read and find in them a call to action, as if the writers were talking directly to her.

Perhaps Linda was influenced by the books she had read about famous nurses like Florence Nightingale, the English nurse who took care of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. Or maybe it was the stories of Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, in a series of mystery books that Aunt Blossom, Linda’s favorite aunt, sent for her birthday and at Christmas. There was a whole set of Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, books, and Linda collected, read and loved them all.

It also could have been the lessons learned at home that motivated Linda to want to visit the little girl with the hole in her heart. Mom had taught Linda that she had a duty to be responsible, and Linda had observed the way that Dad helped people with translations and filling out official forms. Linda, as the eldest sister who was entrusted with the care of her little brothers, believed that she was also supposed to help other people.

Linda’s mom, Nancy, in her quiet way, understood her daughter’s tender heart and knew that this was something that Linda was determined to do. So, one night after work, Nancy and Linda went all the way downtown, taking two buses, and walking several blocks after they got off the second bus, to visit the girl with the hole in her heart. Linda brought a treasured doll of her own to give to the little Chinese girl.

The girl’s mother and Linda’s mother visited with each other, even though they did not speak the same language either, while Linda took the little girl for a walk down the hospital hall. The little girl let Linda hold her hand. She liked having someone who wasn’t an adult visiting her, because a hospital is a scary place with machines that beep and people in white uniforms rushing around. Linda couldn’t really communicate with the girl, but she could play with her like a big sister. Even with different languages, girls know how to play pretend games with dolls, and that is what Linda and the little Chinese girl did together. Linda made funny faces and made the little girl laugh and giggle. The little girl's happiness at her visit made Linda smile.

The hospital visit reminded Nancy of her own situation. Mom’s sisters and brothers still lived in the old country. Although Mom was very busy with her job ironing shirts in a laundry and taking care of Tim, Gus and Linda, she still missed the siblings with whom she had grown up. Linda once overheard Nancy say to another grown-up that she would feel like crying when a letter arrived in the mail and she could read about what her parents and sisters and brothers were doing in the old country. She would feel happy reading of their daily lives, but she would also feel sad, because their lives were so difficult in the old country. Then when Mom did not receive a letter in the mail for a few weeks, she would feel like crying, because she worried that things were not going well in the old country for her sisters and brothers, and she would feel sad that she wasn't there to help them.

The fact is, that Linda’s mother felt sad a lot when Linda was growing up, but those stories are ones we’ll save for another time.

Lady Phoenix Arrives

At that moment, Lady Phoenix was close enough that both the king and his councilor-cook could see that the great phoenix was not entirely black in color even though she was depicted by all the artists of history as a great black bird. For behold, the underside of her great wings were covered with feathers of every color in the rainbow, blue and red, and green and purple, and orange and yellow. It was true that her feathers were tipped in black, even the vibrantly colored feathers, because the phoenix’s feathers and wings were singed by the fires of the lower regions of Hell, her home.

A keening sound was soon heard carried by the wind to the ears of not only Storm King and Councilor Tam, but also to the ears on the sides of the tiny black head that had broken free of the gray shell fragments. The keening sound was low at first but soon became quite loud, as Lady Phoenix neared the place where Storm King and his faithful attendant were standing.

Just as the little baby phoenix was finally breaking free of the last of the eggshell, turning its head and picking at the shell fragments stuck to its back with its little red beak, the mother phoenix landed on the desert sand. She folded her great wings close to her body, hiding the colorful feathers so that she appeared black as coal and fierce as a thunderstorm, her movements kicking up the sand, which whirled over the king and his attendant. They had to lower their eyelids to avoid the gritty sand’s sting in their eyes. Lady Phoenix towered over Storm King and Councilor Tam, staring down at the basket in Tam’s hands.

The baby phoenix shook itself as it stepped out of the broken eggshell and then stopped to peck under its wing to scratch itself. It didn’t seem to notice its mother standing nearby until she called to it with a low cooing sound. Have you ever heard a phoenix cooing? It is a sound that makes the goosebumps on your skin appear, a sound at once low and sweet and yet mysterious and menacing. For the phoenix mother’s call is an affectionate call to its own birdling but a stern warning to any persons nearby to stay away from its offspring.

“Put the basket down!” whispered Storm King to Councilor Tam urgently. “Put it down right now.”

As Tam began to set the basket with the baby phoenix down between his feet and his king's feet, Storm King whispered even more urgently, “No, you foolish son of a foolish mother, not here, not near us. Over there, a distance from where we’re standing.”

The Councilor hurriedly set the bird and the basket down a distance about ten paces away. Lady Phoenix promptly walked over to the basket and bent her head to the birdling. With her large red beak, she gently picked up her baby and set it down on the sand, cooing all the while in her low, sweet voice. The baby bird turned its head to its mother and tried to answer, but could only manage a few short squawks, and then promptly sat down. It opened its beak wide and began to make a sound that could only be described as crying.

Storm King was puzzled to hear the crying of the little bird, but Councilor Tam knew what the crying meant. After all, as the king’s own loyal cook, he knew what a hungry person sounded like, and a hungry baby phoenix doesn’t sound any different. Tam thought, “What shall we feed this little birdling? We must not upset the mother phoenix by allowing her little baby to go hungry.” Then an idea came to the wise Councilor, who had regained his composure after his initial fright at greeting the great black Hell bird. Why, he would offer the mother phoenix the three small eggs that he was saving for his king’s dinner. Raw egg mixed with cooked rice from his supplies would make a fine meal for a baby phoenix.

Tam carefully set the raw egg and rice mixture before the mother phoenix and backed away quickly, all the while bowing to Lady Phoenix. He hoped that she wouldn’t peck his eyes out or rip his arms from his shoulders. He prayed to the gods and goddesses of the High Sky that the gift of the food he had prepared for Lady Phoenix to feed her youngster would be pleasing to her.

The councilor-cook began to worry, too, about what he would feed his still hungry king, whose dinner had been interrupted by the hatchling. Shall we find out tomorrow?