The doctors said my father’s carotid artery must have been closing up for years before he had a stroke that should have killed him. He was living in Phoenix at the time, and we had been somewhat estranged, but eight months earlier, we had patched things up over turkey and his special stuffing and a walk in the desert sun.
Within 24 hours, I had left the wet, hot washcloth of the St. Louis summer and landed in the soul-sucking dry oven of Phoenix. By the time I arrived, my older brother was there with the woman he would later marry; my younger brother arrived a day or so later. We camped out in my dad’s disheveled apartment in a slightly sketchy area of the city, our days filled with hospital stench and obtuse, vague doctorese, our nights with reminiscing and beer that never seemed to take effect the way I wanted it to.
Whenever our bodies and moods reminded us of the need, we searched for restaurants still serving whatever meal we had drifted past or already offering the one we were a little too early for. A day or so into the trip, my older brother suggested the Frybread House. He knew how to get there thanks to one of his seven AAA maps of the greater Pheonix area and knew it was serving, so off we went, rhapsodizing about fried food like the good Polacks we are.
Frybread is flour, water, baking soda, salt and sometimes milk, kneaded a bit, rolled into a disc and deep-fried, a blank slate of dough that is deliciously bad for you. When it’s topped with beans or meat and cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion, it’s called a Navajo taco. Locals love it so much that it is considered the Arizona state dish. It’s crispy and golden outside, with a snow-white interior that packs a minimum of 700 calories, hundreds of years of history and a bit of mysticism.
Some foods are conjured out of necessity and ingenuity. When the Navajo were incarcerated in New Mexico’s Bosque Redondo in the mid-1860s, they were given staple foodstuffs by the U.S. government: lard, flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, sometimes yeast, sometimes powdered milk. They were accustomed to living on corn and squash and beans and meat, but they started making frybread in order to survive.
The Frybread House is a restaurant by the people, of the people, for the people. Native American faces are the only kind you see taking orders and money, manning the massive mixers and busing the tables. The walls are crammed with contemporary Native American art for sale, as well as complimentary reviews and articles from local papers. It is not a fussy place – you place your order from a very short menu (beans, chicken, beef), fill your cup with the soda of your choice, sit down at a well-worn plastic table, and wait a few minutes for your paper plate of fried goodness.
I’d been in town a few days – no more than two – when we went there. We were still getting used to the idea that while our dad would probably survive, he wouldn’t ever be the same, and he would need a lot of help from us. The man had a degree from Harvard, but now so much of his brain was dead that he couldn’t follow the sequence of steps necessary to brush his own teeth. We were just beginning to talk about what we’d need to do and who would do what. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: We were numb.
But my numbness ended as soon as I took my first bite. Soft, chewy dough. Salty, savory beans. Cumin. Chili powder. Lard, definitely. Warmth and love and comfort wafted up from the plate. I took a big breath in through my nose, let it out, felt my body start to relax, and then I had the thought. Dad would love this place. Something small and insistent cracked open inside me. I felt it happen, and as I chewed, I struggled to put myself back together. But within the space of five seconds, I lost the battle. I started crying, heaving sobs, my nose running, one brother dashing for napkins, the other one holding me. I don’t really have a problem with crying in public, but I was glad the lunch rush was over as I let myself have a small breakdown in front of the plate of food that had helped me let go.
In keeping with our family brand of humor, my brothers and I refer to this as “the miracle of the frybread.” We’ve been back to the Frybread House since then, and I am thankful that said miracle has never been repeated. But I’m also thankful it happened. Some believe that frybread is a sacred thing to be consumed by the people until the earth has been purified. On that day, though, it purified me.
Heidi Dean is a professional word jockey who likes to mess with recipes the first time out. She lives with her husband in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood.
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This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2009.