Arguing the Curriculum: ColeslawAuthor(s): Carol BarrettSource: Feminist Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, Constructing Gender Difference: The FrenchTradition (Summer, 1991), pp. 266-268Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178334 .

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CAROL BARRETT

ARGUING THE CURRICULUM: COLESLAW

My mother is chopping the cabbage for slaw, coiled heart held in the spray of her hand, the blade mincing slivers, infinitely smaller than my own crude renderings. Fit for a toddler's teeth, fragrant strips brushed to one side of the honey- colored board. She's convinced: "They don't know what they're talking about. Opportunities for learning are not enough." I study her nimble cabbage, creamy green, wrinkled like her wrists, the heart holding, bright as the sugar she will sprinkle into tartness, the broad knife thap thap as she worries her words toward the table where I sit. She begins another head. Thomp. "We have to be sure they can learn. All the fancy courses in the country ..." (perhaps what I teach?) thap thap "won't help a child if he can't communicate." With this, her brows curl, as if pleading safety for some unknown waif handing her a cabbage. I have seen this same face hover over missing buttons, hooded carcoat, her thumbs coaxing the needle toward certain warmth. Nudging the slaw into a heap, readying the bowl,

Feminist Studies 17, no. 2 (Summer 1991). ? 1991 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 267

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M.C. Carolyn, Queremos la Paz, limestone, 17 x 24 x 13 inches. Photo by Breger and Associates.

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Carol Barrett

she persists, "Humanities don't matter if you can't figure the groceries. Some kids nowadays don't know their letters. They don't even know their colors." I consider this: the child I found crying at the airport, unable to give me her name. It was snowing. When she calmed to the rainbow of promises I spoke, she told me this was her very best dress. Her mother would be mad if it got lost. On the counter, the container of sour cream sweating into the wood, bottle of vinegar, its tint like plums outside my mother's kitchen, sunlight clear to the core. What is the greater wisdom, the greater need: the fat letters on their ruled lines or the grace of the cabbage? My mother opens a carton of milk, squirt for the slaw. It will finish this. Prints of lost children fit into her palm.

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