Pimento Cheese

I wrote this for my Aunt after my Uncle passed away.
I haven't gone back to read this in a couple years but I refuse to make any changes because that would change memories during a mourning period in my life. To my Navy friends, the button in my cover is for him.

Pimento Cheese

Today our car will be shadowed by a long trail of yellow headlights. Drivers will pull to the side of the road out of respect to the family and patiently wait for our long train to drive by. Mom keeps her eyes on the road following the headlights in front of us. The rain begins to strike our windshield and my stomach roars for pimento cheese.

The immense sky expanding over the Chowan River is grey today. Chills climb down my body as the wind trembles. I am not quite ready for this. This was always a favorite place of his. I sigh as a strand of hair sticks to my never applied lip gloss.   

I close my eyes and try to escape to a different place. A place where the whole family is together again down at the river, where I don’t need lip gloss. Granddaddy is dressed in mismatched socks. He sits at the table spitting tobacco into a red cup filled with bleak brown goop. Sometimes-well often times-he misses the cup. I can still remember squinting up my nose when the brown substance splashes into a puddle before my eyes. I chase my cousins on the beach with all of the dogs in hot pursuit behind us; they think it’s a game. My brother and Uncle Tommy are discussing the best bar-b-que joints in town. My aunts are getting lunch together with at least 12 red cups of sweet tea. We are having homemade pimento cheese sandwiches. It’s a southern delight but I don’t care what it is, I think it’s lumpy and it smells.

“Your uncle Tommy went to a lot of trouble making lunch for us today, Danielle. Be respectful and eat it alright?” Mom says.

I don’t know why everyone likes it so much. When you bite into a pimento cheese sandwich, the white bread sticks to the top of your mouth and gets hung up in your teeth. Sometimes the ratio of cheese to mayonnaise is off and Uncle Tommy puts too much mayonnaise in it.  This makes the gunk even more revolting. Mayonnaise is disgusting, anyways. With every bite, I crinkle my eyes and hold my nose. The red pimentos have a ghastly film to them, don't you think? They have this really vicious kind of twang. The bite is mushy and bland until you crunch into a pimento, that is. That changes everything.  It looks like spoiled orange cottage cheese with chunks of red mold.

            Uncle Tommy stands and pulls at his pants to rest them comfortably below his extended belly. He hasn’t always had the extra tub. Towards the end, I wish I could have seen him adjust his pants to right below his stomach again.

“You enjoying that pimento cheese sandwich, Danielle?” Uncle Tommy asks. I grimace, hold my breath, take another bite and swallow.

“Oh I love it. You will have to teach me how to make it sometime, okay Uncle Tommy?”

Mom begins dabbing her eyes, and I am brought back to the reality of today. I glance out the window and watch rain bead up on the windshield. My uncle Tommy must have had flaws, nobody is perfect,  but following this long line of cars I cannot think of anything bad about him. Every year for Christmas, he made trucks and tractors out of blocks of wood for all the little ones in the family. He liked to spoil me too. I spoiled him back with oatmeal raisin cookies. I must have made 4 batches of cookies in a month for him, it was the best I could do, at the time. The church really loved him as well; always the first to volunteer.  He lost his hair, even his course, brown mustache. It was one thing to see him without his hair but seeing him without his mustache... I couldn’t bear to see him without it.

I will never again have to eat it. My tongue will never twist with the vicious twang of pimentos. White bread will never get stuck on the roof of my mouth.  Regardless, as we follow the long train of cars, my stomach yearns for pimento cheese. I hate it but need to taste it again.

I glance out the window and see break lights in the distance.  There must have been at least 25 cars behind us. It makes you wonder about the kind of person he was. Up ahead, American flags flutter in the distance surrounding a white tent. Yes, today a flag will be folded while my family sobs, as two soldiers play taps on the French horns. I guess I never will learn how to make pimento cheese like Uncle Tommy.

It's weird now, years later, I love pimento cheese. He's probably looking down from heaven laughing at me eating the stuff. I eat it all the time. I miss him and whenever I eat it, I feel like he's there. I wish he was here to talk to me about the Navy. He passed away before I ever got to talk to him about this adventure, but when I have rough days I rub the dress blue button in my cover, and think of him. I think about how proud he would be of his kids, the funny time his wife (my aunt) got a flat tire, and all the memories he's missing with his grandkids. It's ok though. It's life. I just wish he knew how much that button saves my life out here, sometimes.