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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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How to
Cook Your Daughter by Jessica Hendra |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Abuse Jessica Hendra
chose to use as the title of her memoir, the one her father, Tony, used for a
1971 National Lampoon story, How to
Cook Your Daughter. A fine satirist and comedy writer, Tony Hendra has become better known for his 2004 memoir, Father Joe:
The Man Who Saved My Soul (which we rated with three stars in December
2004.) When Jessica read Tony’s book and its reviews, she became bewildered
by the significant omission from Tony’s list of major sins: his sexual abuse
of her when she was a child. In How to
Cook Your Daughter, Jessica Hendra moves back
and forth between her childhood and the process by which she ended up writing
this book. It’s a compelling and courageous story of a troubled life and
complex relationships. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 3,
“Pinkeye,” pp. 49-53: That’s what people do
when they love each other. I needed to remind myself
of that. To say those words over and over again—the words that Daddy had said
the night before. At least he had stayed. At least I had kept him from going into
the city and coming back who knew when. My dad rested on a white
wicker chair on the porch of the little house across the road from ours. We
called the place the Forge because it had once been the workplace of the
blacksmith who had built our home. When my parents bought our place, the man
who had been my dad’s comedy partner, Nick Ullett,
bought the Forge. But Nick never used it, so we kept it up for him. Kathy and
I loved the wide porch in back. It jutted over the river, and we could fish
from it, not that we ever managed to catch anything. The Forge was to be
rented out for the spring and summer to Daddy’s boss, Henry Beard, and Daddy
had taken me by the hand to help him sweep out the cobwebs of winter in
preparation for Henry’s arrival. We didn’t talk much while
we cleaned. I didn’t know what to say. And as the sun set and my dad rested,
I looked over at him and thought about what he had told me last night while
he lay next to me in bed: “That’s what people do when they love each other.” And I did. I loved him so
much. More than I loved anyone on earth. So why did I feel so scared? And so
ashamed? I tried squeezing my eyes tight against the tears, willing them
back. My lips started to quiver, and I pressed my mouth shut. My father must
have noticed. “Treasure, come over here
and sit with me.” I looked at him and
realized that, for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to. For the first
time, I didn’t want to be on his lap, in his arms, against his chest. But as
I had the night before, I did as he asked. I walked slowly across the porch
and sat stiffly on his lap. “I am an asshole, Jessie,
a drunken asshole.” I looked into his eyes,
and I could smell the cigars he smoked mixed with his sweat—just as I had
last night. Then I burst into tears. Daddy said nothing more, and when I
stopped crying, he took me by the hand and we walked back across the road. What was he trying to tell me? That he was sorry about what happened?
But why? Wasn’t it what people did when they loved each other? Why should he
be sorry then? My head spun. I didn’t understand what we had done. And I
couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to feel about it. Daddy wasn’t an asshole. It
must’ve been my fault. He must’ve
seen me there crying and thought that maybe I didn’t love him anymore. I didn’t know what to
think, how to feel. I just knew things had changed with my father. And the
nightmares came for the first time soon after. It’s dark and I’m in the
house alone, wearing the same nightgown he had made me take off the night
before. Every room is dimly lit, as though the bulbs have been switched from 175 watts to fifteen. I look out the
kitchen window and see a shape by the barn. It moves toward the house, toward
me, and I know that it wants to hurt me. Maybe it’s a man, but it seems like
a monster, and I run to the kitchen door. I try to lock it, but the bolt
won’t budge. The door flies open and becomes so heavy that I can’t push it
shut. So I run into the empty living room and try to lock the side door. The
old, rusty hinges break off, disintegrating in my hands, and I sense the
monster coming closer. I nm up the narrow stairs to my parents’ room. The
windows are wide open, and like the door downstairs, have become too heavy to
shut. I look out their window and suddenly a bright spotlight falls oil the
figure. It’s a man whose face I can’t see. I’m petrified. The kitchen door is
wide open. The hinges in the living room have fallen to dust. The windows
won’t budge. There’s no way to keep the man out. Or the other dream: I’m stuck in a deep hole,
a well maybe. I can just barely see the sky. The hole smells musty and damp,
and it’s so small I can’t lie down. My knees are pressed to my chin; my arms
are pinned to my sides. My hair covers my face, and I gasp for air. Then I
hear voices. My mother! My sister, Kathy! They’re looking for me, and I hear
them walking around the hole calling, “Jessie! Jessie, where are you?” I try
to call out to them: “I’m here! Look down! I’m right here in this hole! Help
me! Please help me get out!” But when I open my mouth, no sound comes. I
strain and strain, but I can only hear myself whisper. I know then that they
will never hear me, that I’ll be stuck in the hole forever. I began sleepwalking. Some
mornings, I woke to find objects tucked into the corner of my bed: a rolling
pin from the kitchen, a bar of soap, a wooden duck figurine that had been on
one of tile shelves in tile living room, the china eggs that went with it. I
never understood why I had taken them. I was like a six-and-a-half-year-old
Lady Macbeth. Of course, I told no one.
How could I? What would I tell them? That Daddy had made me do things I
didn’t understand? “That’s what people do when they love each other,” he had
said. In my heart, I so desperately wanted to believe him. But my head seemed
unwilling to let me. And that conflict, that irreconcilable conflict, began
to take its toll. I never liked Lebanon
Township Jail, but now I felt terrified to go to school. And to the ballet
class I had always loved. And of being outside at all. My ballet teacher
tried everything to get me to come back to the dance studio, but I went into
near hysterics at the idea. I clung to my mother and had to be carried
sobbing back to the car. I didn’t even understand why. I grew attached to my mom,
even though I never considered confiding in her. How would I explain
something I didn’t understand? I had always adored my father, and even if I
had thought that what he’d done was wrong, I had no illusions about my mother
standing up to him. So instead, I simply hid. When she took Kathy to school
in the mornings, my shame kept me in the Scout. All of us had conjunctivitis
that spring, and I had gotten a very bad case. I knew what pinkeye looked
like, so I used it as a way to stay home. I’d wake up in the early morning darkness
and sneak down the ladder of the bunk beds I shared with Kathy. Then I’d
tiptoe into the bathroom off the landing, shut the door, and switch on the
light. I was still too short to see my reflection in tile mirror, so I’d
position a stool to stand on. I’d lean toward the mirror and go to work on
my eye. I chose the right eye because I could barely see out of it anyway.
(Kathy and I had both inherited my father’s astigmatism). First, I would tuck
all my hair behind my ears. Then I’d use my index finger to rub all over the
eye—on tile lid and on the soft skin underneath. The rubbing burned, but I
needed to look convincing. When it almost glowed
red, when the white looked completely bloodshot and the skin around it raw, I
would stop to inspect. Then I would spit on my hand and rub the saliva over
the entire area. I hoped it would look like pus. Sometimes, if I had some of
the little specks of sleep on my eyelashes, I would carefully collect them
in the palm of my hand and press them into the corner of my eye to make it
look crusty. When 1 was satisfied, I
would climb off the stool and head back to my bunk. Then I’d lie down very
carefully, positioning my head just so on the pillow. It was critical that
none of the crust I’d created fell off my eye. If it did, I might be sent to
school. When I
heard my mom getting up in the next room, I would give my eye one final,
careful rubbing just in case the redness had started to fade. She usually
woke up alone; Daddy had begun spending entire weeks in the city. “Mommy,
my eye still hurts!” I’d tell her. She would
peer at me. “Well, it still looks bad.” The fateful pause. Then: “You’d
better stay home.” Relief. I was always nervous that
when we dropped Kathy off at school, one of the teachers might run out to the
Scout, grab me, and force me into the building. I would hide as best I could,
sometimes covering myself with my jacket. But no one
ever came out. They had clearly given up on me. There’s a raw sadness on the pages of How to
Cook Your Daughter. Tony Hendra revealed much
about his infidelity and drug and alcohol abuse in Father Joe.
There was more to the story, and in How to
Cook Your Daughter, Jessica Hendra fills in
those pieces, and adds her own story of courage and recovery. Steve Hopkins,
December 22, 2005 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/How
to Cook Your Daughter.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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