Excerpts

PROLOGUE My truck is full of thirty-five-dollar used chairs from an Italianrestaurant on College Street that's getting a facelift. I'm on my way to the dry cleaner where I'm supposed to pick up a whole whack of napkins that the seamstress was making from a ream of denim that I'd found a few months before. The seamstress doesn't have them all ready, although we'd agreed on a date weeks before, and I'm pissed. I think we'll have enough for the evening, though, so I get back in the truck and call Johnnie, who's at the restaurant patching and painting some spots we missed. It's opening night. Our restaurant, Saturday Dinette, with its whitewashed walls and black trim, with its black-and-white tile and elegant countertop isabout to open its doors. Johnnie tells me that it's no big deal, we'll have enough napkins, come home. And the restaurant really does feel like home. We've been working non-stop for three months to turn it into our dream restaurant, and we've spent way more timethere than at our studio loft a few blocks away. He's right, it's no big deal, and I choose to let the frustration escape through the windowand disappear along the Gardiner Expressway. I'm listening to the De La Soul song, "A Roller Skating Jam Named 'Saturdays,'" the inspiration for the name of our restaurant. And "Dinette" (definition: a dining alcove or nook) because we want it to be a small, family-style place where people can come for modern comfort food. A diner, with all the history that diners have represented since the era of sit-ins and the civil rights movement. It's 4 o'clock, and doors open at 7, so I'll have lots of time to put the finishing touches on the bites we are going to offer: Rosemary Socca, Zucchini Latkes, Sticky Ribs. We've sent invitations out to friends, family, and neighbours who've been watching us renovate for months, and we're hoping for some walk-ins, too. Sitting at the red light, waiting to turn left onto Carlaw, my phone rings. "Hey, Dr. Harris." "Hi, there. I have the results from the blood work we did last week." I'd been feeling a little light-headed and not quite myself, and they were testing my thyroid function, iron levels, and, also, forpregnancy. "It looks like you're pregnant, Suzanne." Green light and tears. So many tears. I can't stop crying. And I'm not crying for joy; I'm crying because I can't do this. I can't be pregnant. I don't want to be pregnant. I'm about to open my very first restaurant, and I can't do that and have a baby at the same time. I should pull over, but I can't think. Along Dundas, everything comes at me in waves--missing my mum, meeting Johnnie in France, moving to Canada while longing to be back in Brooklyn, finding a spaceon the corner of Gerrard Street East and Logan Avenue that felt likethe perfect place to open a restaurant. And then that final, sickening wave that threatens to drown me: Will I be a good mother? Our catering company, Pepper and Sprout, is how we pay the bills right now, and it takes up all of our daylight hours. At night, we renovate the Dinette. It's exhausting and beyond stressful, but it's exciting like nothing ever has been before. This is going to be my restaurant, and I'm going to knock it out of the park. I've always been a self-starter--a daughter of hard-working immigrants, I throw myself wholeheartedly into everything I do. Late nights after working on the floors, or cleaning the walls, or setting the place up, I can already feel Saturday Dinette as a busy place, music blaring,frying pans smoking, orders for our special brand of comfort foodflying out of the ticket machine. I pull up beside the restaurant and sit in the car for a little while, taking deep breaths and cleaning up my smeared mascara. I thinkof my mother, who had her first baby when she was eighteen and was pressured to marry the father. I wonder how profoundly alone she felt. I feel her and her great strength, and I savour the moment of deep communion. At the same time, I wonder if this pregnancywill break me. I don't know many people in Toronto. My sister, Tanya, lives across the continent in Los Angeles, my dad is in Plantation, Florida, where I grew up, and Amanda and Maria, my best friends, are in Florida, as well. I suddenly feel totally alone. It's a feeling that I'm used to, and that comes naturally, and it's a feeling that I'm trying to overcome. Home has always been hard to define. Is it Florida, where I grew up? Is it Toronto, where I was born? Or does it stretch further back than that? Is it land that I barely know, land where my ancestors lived in Jamaica? Is it in my memories of my mother? Johnnie and some of the young women who work for us at Pepper and Sprout, and who will become the backbone of the Dinette, comeout to the car, and he taps the trunk for me to open it. There's excitemen tabout the chairs and a general buzz of anticipation about the evening. Johnnie realizes that I'm not getting out of the car and hops into the front seat. "Are you okay?" "Yeah, but I'm pissed about the napkins. I wish I knew another seamstress. And Dr. Harris called to say that I'm pregnant." "Wait. What?" And then the tears come again and I tell him that I feel so alone and that I can't have a baby, we're about to open a restaurant. His arms feel good, and he says, "You're not alone. I'm here. We can do this together. I agree, it's not the best time, but, holy shit, we're going to have a baby!" He's crying too. I've only known Johnnie for a year, and we're about to become business partners as well as parents. I look at him, and I realize that I'm not alone. Maybe we can do this. We have to do this. We gather the staff together and say, "Let's get this restaurant open." Excerpted from My Ackee Tree: A Chef's Memoir of Finding Home in the Kitchen by Suzanne Barr All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.