FortuneChapter OneI’m in my future mother-in-law’s Formica kitchen, raking bits of belahat soaked rice and eggplant heshu off of dinner plates and into the garbage bin. I hand the plates to Marta, my future mother-in-law’s long-standing housekeeper, to be cleaned with Palmolive and water. The future mother-in-law doesn’t believe in dishwashers and for that reason, among many others, she reminds me of my grandma Fortune, who we call “Sitto.” Like Sitto, my future mother-in-law, my MIL, believes in doing everything by hand. Shortcuts are for the lazy and incapable. The MIL calls Marta into the dining room to help clean the challah crumbs and wine-stained napkins from the table. Saul and my future father-in-law are already reclined in the den, poring over the Post and last night’s Knicks game.
The MIL is no dummy, and it’s only a matter of time before she catches on to my lie. The hard truth is that I’ve been pawning off grocery store–bought knafeh as my own for six weeks now. What would Saul say if he found out that my “Best in the Community!” knafeh wasn’t mine at all but the product of a multimillion-dollar goliath of kosher baked goods? Would he still have asked to marry me? It would cost my ring a carat, at least, if he found out how I unwrapped the (parve) margarine-glued kataifi square from its frozen casing, tossed it in the oven, and waited exactly seventeen minutes until it browned. He would never trust me again if he saw how I sprinkled crushed pistachios on top to create the illusion that the store-bought pastry was mine.
In the other room, I can hear Saul over the exhausted hum of the Frigidaire say, “Ma. This one’s gonna fatten me up, Ma. I’m a dead man.” The MIL has finished clearing the dining room table, which means she has retreated to the den and I’d better get started on dessert.
I move from the garbage bin to the kitchen island, where cookies and pastries wait in their still-warm tins. I begin to plate the mamoul in symmetrical rows of four, wiping the excess sugar from around the silver tray. I feel the saliva collect inside my cheeks as I imagine sinking my teeth into one of the date-filled pastries. This, too, the MIL made from scratch. She made them from scratch like she makes everything from scratch. Mamoul and atayef and sambusak and yebre. Her freezer is its own supermarket, packed to the gills with Costco-bought Ziploc bags full of readily defrostable “pickups.” She can whip up a meal faster than you can decline her invitation. This is a fact, and it’s one she takes great pride in. According to my Sitto, there are only two things in a woman’s life that should never be kept empty: her womb and her freezer. And you’d do well to remember that the contents of one of those won’t grow up to talk back.
I decide in this moment that I absolutely will not tell Saul about the knafeh. Ever. But she knows, the MIL. I know that she knows and she knows that I know that she knows. And do you know how I know? Because she still hasn’t asked me for the recipe. Then again, why would she? Would Cher ask Gaga for voice lessons? Instead, the MIL got to work and baked the most exquisite looking knafeh that this side of Brooklyn has ever seen. I tiptoe into the den and set the tray of mamoul down on the coffee table.
“Sit honey, please.” The MIL taps the spot on the couch next to her. But I’m not dumb; I don’t take the bait. Some women might think that a ring on their finger guarantees their security. Those women did not grow up with my Sitto, and they would be wrong. A daughter-in-law only stops kissing ass when that ass is six feet underground, and even then, it helps to continue the tradition.
“Just a couple more!” I chirp, and retreat back into the kitchen for a fruit plate and some sweet kaak. Marta follows with the rest and when every dessert is on the coffee table, I take a seat next to my fiancé, Saul. The vinyl-covered floral sofa squeaks as I shift and I pull my cardigan tighter around my body. In the center of the dessert spread is the MIL’s knafeh, brimming with the iridescent pride of one thousand G-D-damn suns.
“G-D forbid your mother should measure up to your bride, Saul, but here, don’t kill me for trying,” my MIL says. She kneels to reach the cake knife laid beside the Pyrex and feigns heaviness, as though her knees threaten to buckle beneath her weight, all 175 pounds of her.
“Here, Ma. I got it, sit down!” Saul jumps to take the knife from his mother, as if she’s decades beyond her fifty-two years. This is the way the MIL carries herself at all times, as if her undying commitment to her children might break her at any moment. She welcomes the pain. I imagine her saying:
“Throw me on the pyre!”
“Epidurals are for women who own bread machines!”
“Let my tombstone read: Marie ‘I will always get the last word’ Dweck, Beloved Wife, Mother, Grandmother, and MIL.”
My MIL pulls the knife away from Saul and proceeds to cut into the knafeh. Rose water pools inside each sliver. This is not a cake that came frozen from a box. As she hands Saul the first slice, the MIL tells us her new diet is working—she is down to 165 pounds as of last Thursday. Which means she’s no longer seeing the old doctor, a miracle worker before he was a liar and a crook and, eventually, as these things tend to go, an anti-Semite. How quickly the consensus around him had shifted over a plate of kaak and a particularly spirited game of canasta. Which brings me to the second lesson Sitto has taught me: Only two things can happen to a professional who stakes his reputation on women who play canasta; they’re either broken or made over the game. There is no in-between. My mother-in-law tells us that somebody in her group got wind from somebody who was buying mazza from somebody, that the real miracle worker is two offices over in the ramshackle building in Sheepshead Bay that houses sixteen holistic dietitians and not one working scale. She had her doctor of three decades fax over her medical records within the hour.
The MIL hands a slice to her husband and smooths her skirt, then shifts an oblong platter of green grapes and cantaloupe two inches to the right. “The rules of the diet are simple,” she says. “I can’t even believe I have to pay a grown man to tell me not to make my own plate.”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars a visit for a quack doctor to tell you to eat like one of my grandchildren.” Saul’s father spits. He motions for my MIL to put some fruit on his plate. I catch a whiff of stale cigar smoke as he points a tanned finger at the mango, and I’m immediately reminded of my grandpa Jack.
“But I swear to you, it works. You really will drop weight if you vow never to make your own plate,” Marie says, paying him no mind.
“She just eats off mine,” Saul’s father says, rolling his eyes.
“Well G-D knows there’s usually enough on your plate for two.” The MIL spears a piece of cantaloupe and wraps it in a napkin for her husband. “I mean, shoof, it’s working, isn’t it?” Marie smooths her sweater over her hips and looks at Saul with wide eyes.
“You look great, Ma.”
“I got no high cholesterol, blood pressure. Nothing,” Saul’s father says, eyeing the plate of mamoul I brought out.
“We know,” the MIL says, rolling her eyes. “You’re the regular picture of health.”
I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The MIL hasn’t made her own plate since I said yes to Saul’s proposal. She doesn’t order an entrée at restaurants. Instead, she watches her company eat, and only after they’re done does she dig into whatever scraps are left over on their plates. If the plates have been wiped clean, the MIL does not eat. If the plates have been prematurely whisked away, the MIL does not eat. If a stray hand strikes a glass of water and the contents of the plate are drowned, the MIL does not eat. She would rather starve than settle for soggy rice and blanched string beans.
The nature of the diet has severely impacted her social life, as you might imagine. “What would people think?” I’ve heard her tell my future father-in-law. Of course, my FIL doesn’t want to seem complicit while she scavenges for leftovers. People would label them insane, or worse, cheap. G-D forbid. He wants her to eat like a human, not a sewer rat. But to fight his wife on this would only strengthen her resolve. So like the rest of us, he stays quiet.
“Anyway, it’s obvious your father likes my knafeh,” she says, turning her attention to Saul. “Don’t tell me you’re watching your weight for the wedding, too. You’re too thin as it is. Yalla, take a bite already, honey. Let me know if it measures up to Fortune’s.”
Copyright © 2025 by Esther Chehebar. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
