Gizzard Soup

by

Rich Bullock

Penny Jeffers lifted the battered pot from the cupboard and set it on the front left burner of the equally ancient gas range. She ran her fingers along the dented rim, touching its history. How many times had it been used in Aunt Edna’s eighty-one years? It seemed fitting Penny continue the tradition—at least until the house sold.

Penny swiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and told herself the tears were from the chopped onions. She didn’t want to think about selling the house. Located only a short distance from her folks’ home, she’d practically grown up in this old place. It didn’t seem right that someone else be in this kitchen, with new, or at least different, pots and pans filling the cupboards.

She picked up the cutting board and scraped the offending onions into the pot, along with celery, potatoes, and two cans of chopped clams.  Spices and the red contents of a large can of stewed tomatoes finished the mix.

A wooden match from the holder on the wall—hung there by her Uncle James when he and Edna first moved into this old house—ignited the gas. She bent low to see the flame and adjusted the knob for medium heat.

Penny pushed the hair from her face with her fingers and surveyed the room with almost painful awareness. Everywhere she looked, the bright yellow kitchen conjured up memories of happy times when she was a little girl. Favorite potholders hung ready on a hook below the matches, one a glove decorated with a stamped handprint of Penny’s own hand.

High on the wall, a painted tin pie plate covered the hole where the previous wood-burning stovepipe exited. Her only memory of Uncle James—she couldn’t have been more than four years old—was asking him why there was a plate nailed to the wall. She remembered him saying, “That’s to keep the cats out,” and he wiggled his eyebrows at her, causing her to laugh.

The burning gas gave off a peculiar wet odor, unique to Aunt Edna’s stove. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but Penny inhaled. It smelled comforting, if that were possible, and reminded her of cold days, a warm humid kitchen, and Aunt Edna’s Gizzard Soup.

###

“Ewww! Gizzard Soup!” Ten-year-old Penny would always shout as she pinched her nose and ran from the kitchen whenever her Aunt Edna removed the lid to stir the lumpy concoction. Penny was fourteen before she learned her aunt’s carefully guarded secret—it was really clam chowder. Penny’s dad let it slip one time when they were visiting.

Aunt Edna laughed and beckoned Penny to sit at the table with them.

“Time was when I really did make a soup with gizzards in it,” she explained. “I was nine years old. We were so very poor and my mother was already six months gone from polio.

“I have to tell you that times were tough back then.” Edna shook her head slowly from side to side, as if letting the thought settle in her memory.

“We were still mourning the loss of my mother, and figuring out how to keep the household going. I was in school until afternoon, and then there were chores to do. It fell to me to do the cookin’ more often than not. Father left money for me to go to market and pick up supplies for dinner.

“One particular day, it seemed like all the meat was too expensive for my limited funds. I had just turned to leave when I spotted the package—chicken gizzards. Now, I didn’t know what a gizzard was, but I figured it was chicken, so it would be okay in a soup. I snatched up the package, paid for it, and walked home, triumphant in the fact that I’d made the money stretch another day.

“I put a pot on and dumped in some of our canned tomatoes and spices. I waited for my dad to come home so he could try it. I just knew he’d be pleased.”

“Was it good?” Penny asked doubtfully around a mouthful of her always-safe favorite: American cheese sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise.

“Well, Father took a big bite and started to chew. And he chewed, and chewed, and chewed. I was sitting across the table watching at him, waiting for him to say, one way or a’tother.” Aunt Edna laughed her familiar ‘hee, hee, hee’ at the memory, shaking her head. “Fact was he couldn’t get those gizzards down, they were that tough and gritty!”

Penny and her dad roared when Aunt Edna described her father’s contortions as he tried in vain to be a good sport.

“Not one to waste food, it nearly killed him to spit out that mouthful into the trash. But he said swallowing it certainly would have killed him. The next day he gave me a little more money and told me to buy some stewing beef to make another soup.”

###

Smiling at the memory, Penny set two bowls and spoons on the painted kitchen table. She trailed her fingers along the scarred edge, remembering all the good times impressed into its surface. The old table was the centerpiece of dining, coloring, boisterous card games, eating popcorn, and even a few tears during Penny’s high school dating years.

Penny spotted Edna’s loose-leaf cookbook on the shelf above the stove and lifted it down, careful to keep all the stuffed-in scraps of paper from tumbling out. She spent the next hour reverently paging through it, reading all the notes in the margins. Aunt Edna attended church her whole life and it seemed she made as many notes on these pages about God’s goodness as she did in her worn-out Bible. Penny read the beautiful flowing script of Edna’s handwriting. Always remember that God is faithful. When times are dark, He will provide a way.

The words blurred and she turned in her chair to stare out the steamy window. She blinked to clear the view. Lord, it hurts so much to think about losing all this history. Help me figure it out, please.

Penny closed the cover on the cookbook where every page evoked sad yet cherished memories. She stood and moved to the sink to look out the window and rested her elbows on the draining board. Aunt Edna’s large lot held a small copse of trees at the back. From it she heard barking and her son’s loud shout.

The treed area was only about 30 feet by 50 feet, but in her child’s mind she remembered it as a giant forest, filled with wonder and hours of adventure for her and her cousins. Old ropes, strung from high branches, became vines for Tarzan and Jane. Downed trees became bridges over treacherous chasms. Rough boards became a secret tree house.

A flash of white and brown streaked through the trees. Penny worried what to do with Skipper. He couldn’t come to their small apartment. The manager didn’t allow pets. As she watched, sunlight split the dark clouds that had threatened rain all day. It splashed over the yard and lit up the new spring grass to a brilliant green. Yellow daffodils seemed to stand taller and glow against the darker background.

The thick envelope on the counter drew her attention and she rubbed her fingers over the printed label. Edna D. Sperry, Last Will and Testament.  The document stated clearly that Aunt Edna wanted Penny to have the house, but Penny still wasn’t sure she could afford the upkeep. It would be hard on her limited salary.

Sunlight reached the window and bathed Penny with warm yellow, as if determined to chase away doubt and fear. When times are dark, He will provide a way.

###

“Billy! Time to eat.” Penny held the back door open for her son as he emerged from the woods and tore through the yard like a tornado, zigzagging around a shrub here, a faucet there, Skipper yapping at his heels. The two of them pounded up the back steps and into the warm kitchen.

“Hmmm. Smells good, Mom.” Billy peeled off his coat and gloves and hung them on the crooked coat rack by the door.

“Hungry, huh?” Penny carried the bowls to the stove and filled them with thick, steaming broth.

“Sure am.” Billy plopped into a chair while Skipper lapped up some water, and then found his favorite spot by the stove. He circled twice, then settled on the faded rag rug.

“Did you guys have fun out there?”

“It’s great! Skipper spotted a squirrel and chased it up a tree.”

Penny set the bowls on the table and took the opposite seat.

“What is it?” Billy put his nose close to the bowl and inhaled.

Penny held the cookbook up so he could read the title on the open page. “Gizzard Soup,” she smiled.

“Ewww!”

Penny grinned.

Somehow she would make it work.

***

Gizzard Soup – Copyright, Nov 2006 by Rich Bullock