Why I Hate Yellow Peas

Why I Hate Yellow Peas
Creative Nonfiction


Yellow peas were never my favorite. I didn’t like the smell of them, but I loved to eat green peas straight out of the pod, picking them fresh from our vegetable garden. My mother often needed to warn me. “Don’t eat them all,” she’d say as I helped her get them ready for Sunday’s chicken soup.

The sweet tenderness, I loved, but when the peas were dry and yellow, I didn’t care for them at all. What made them yellow anyway? Were they a different kind? I wondered. Never seemed to be real answers, so I learned not to ask.

“Why does my father drink?” Another question I couldn’t figure out—at least not until I was an adult. My father carried his own burdens. They ate away at him. From age six, when he’d lost his father and soon became an unwanted stepson and half-brother, poisoning his life.
Then, a child, I discerned instinctively, if he loved us enough, he wouldn’t have gotten drunk every day of his free weekends, or any time he stayed at home from work. Now I realize that he couldn’t love himself.

My father loved those yellow peas, but Mom had to put meat on top of everything she cooked for him. The only way he ate anything else was as a side dish to pork or poultry. On the weekends, when Dad came home, Mom cooked meat. He was gone Monday through Friday. Someplace far, he worked. My sister and I accepted his absence and the absence of meat. We loved all kinds of pasta Mom prepared. Resourceful, she made pasta with sautéed potatoes and bacon, with cottage cheese and sautéed sour cream, with plumb preserve and cottage cheese. With farina and sugar, with poppy seed or walnuts, and with cabbage. Many variations of pasta that she had created of flour and eggs or from potatoes.
When I was around seven years old, Mom had to take us on a long trip to a faraway city. The night before, my father pushed us to eat the stew of yellow peas.

“Daddy, I don’t like this,” I pleaded, squirming at the table. “Please don’t make me eat it.”
His voice thundered, “Finish it all!” He lifted his arm, threatening.

Swallowing hard the hated stew along with the lump in my throat, I tasted the saltiness of my tears. I wiped them away in a hurry. Crying didn’t help. Always made things worse. “I’m going to give you something to cry about,” was my parents’ usual response. Mom would hug and kiss me after cooling down and say sorry, but not Dad. I believed she didn’t mean to hurt me. She did not have the patience anymore because of my father, she’d explain.
I had no choice but to eat the yellow peas.

My sister didn’t like them either, but she was older and better than me. Without tears, she ate, keeping her sobbing for the night when no one else would hear. Still, I heard. My heart broke for her as I lay helpless, without sleep. What caused her to cry for hours? I wasn’t sure. Quietly I’d listen until I could escape our dreaded reality. Yet my long-awaited dreams often turned into nightmares, too.

The next day, Mom woke us early to catch the 6:10 AM bus—to go to the train station in a city ten kilometers from our village. The stench of the exhaust repulsed me almost as much as the yellow peas. The bus shook. My sister and I began to show signs that something was wrong, and Mom noticed.

“Both of you look so white. Are you feeling all right?” One by one, she placed a hand on our foreheads. The first reaction was always to check our temperature, and without a fever, she deemed us healthy. With anything under thirty-eight Celsius, she used to force us to go to school. Even if we struggled with a terrible cold and constant coughing.
Once we boarded the train, my sister and I acted livelier again. To stand by the windows where we could poke our heads out, we left our cabin. Allowed the wind to blow our long hair. The gushes of air on our skin were exhilarating.

Then it came without warning. At the same time, we both threw up out the window. At first, I worried about what Mom would do if she found out what happened, but my sister’s face lit up in a smile, and we began laughing. Couldn’t stop. Her laughter lightened my soul. It was so good to see her happy.

I grew silent and gazed into her eyes.

Possibly already aware of the answer, I asked the question I was afraid to ask before, “Why do you cry at night?”

Wide-eyed, she stared at me. Quiet for a moment, she examined my face—a stern expression painting hers—before she answered, “You’re still too young to understand.”
“Less than three years younger,” I said. “Please, tell me.”

“I hate yellow peas, too, and I hate our whole life, but I never tell them, only cry at night.”

***

This is how I remember it. Did we actually throw up out the window? My sister might recall it differently. Still, to the best of my recollection, this was the moment we formed another, stronger bond. From then on, when she cried at night, in silence, I cried with her.

Why do I hate yellow peas today? Perhaps because it represents the lack of choice and the misery my sister and I shared. The word misery conjures up the color yellow in my mind. The memory of the stew’s odor I despise, still nauseating me.

Harsh words and the pain inflicted by the hands of the ones who were supposed to love and protect us tainted our childhood, but I don’t want to hate them. Only the peas.



First published by WOW! Women on Writing in March 2020.