Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet (5 page)

9

“M
a, Grandma, the kitchen's yours,” Ana calls, walking down the hallway. The house is as calm as she feels. Maybe the fourth time making a family dinner really is the charm. She checks the living room. Ye Ye is dozing in front of the television.

“Ye Ye, have you seen Ma and Grandma?”

He startles at her voice and shakes his head.

“Thanks.”
Great.
Dinner is in a little more than two hours, and all the cooks have deserted. She runs upstairs and stuffs the
huen bao
into her nightstand drawer. She'll give it to her parents later, and they'll put it in her college savings account, no doubt.

She runs downstairs again and checks the backyard. The Shens' yard is a big empty space, towered over by two sycamore trees that drop their hard, bristly seedpods down on the family every summer. Ana and the Samoan used to take turns throwing them at each other, a Southern California version of a snowball fight.

The folding chairs for tonight's dinner are leaning up against the fence that borders the street. Sammy and her dad are struggling to set up the tables.

“Hey, sport,” her dad says.

“Have you guys seen Mom or Grandma White?”

They shake their heads.

At the back of the yard, the garage door is open. Ana can hear the fryer going full speed. What she wouldn't do for a piece of chicken!

“Grandpa, are Mom and Grandma with you?” she shouts.

“Nope,” he calls back.

“Chicken ready?”

“Great art takes time, grasshopper. You should've had that sandwich like your father asked.”

“I didn't think I was hungry until I smelled the chicken,” Ana says.

“Well, then, I'll be sure to let you all know when it's done.”

“ ‘Kay. Thanks.” Ana goes back inside.

“Ma? Grandma?” she calls.

Nai Nai is coming down the front hallway in a funny little crouch, a huge plastic bag of rice in her arms. “This stupid bag,” she says to Ana. “This is not my rice. And why is it plastic, anyway? This sharp rice pokes right through.” She waddles toward Ana and the kitchen door. “Don't stand there, get the door—” Before she finishes the sentence, the kitchen door flies open and Grandma White strides out, holding a bag of jasmine rice between two fingers.

“Helen, baby, this ain't my rice.”

Bam!

Ana winces.
If one grandmother leaves station A traveling at five miles per hour, and a second grandmother leaves station B traveling at seven miles per hour, who blames whom for the collision?

“Aiyo!”
Nai Nai screams.

“Lord have mercy!” Grandma White shouts.

“Oh, crap,” Ana says out loud.

The hallway turns into a shaken snow globe, white grains of rice flying though the air and showering down over everyone.

“My head!” shouts Nai Nai, clutching her right eyebrow.

“Mm, mm, mm.” Grandma White shakes her head and gives her chin a rub. “I think I fractured a denture.”

Ana runs toward them. “Are you okay?” She grabs their hands.

“No, we are not okay. But you are okay. You are plenty okay. Go get me some ice,” Nai Nai shouts, waving Ana away.

Ana gives up and turns to her other grandmother.

“Get me some ice too, honey. I swear this woman's trying to kill me.”

“How can I kill you? You are like a big ox compared to me.”

“What did you call me?”

“Nothing. I said you are
like
a big ox. Like. It's a smilie.”

Ana tries not to laugh.
A smilie? Really?
She rushes into the kitchen, taking the time to prop the swinging door wide open. She scoops two handfuls of ice cubes into a couple of kitchen towels and takes them to her grandmothers, who have both found their way to the kitchen table.

“Are you guys okay? Can I get you anything?” Ana hates herself for wanting to laugh, because it really must have hurt. But the vision of her two locomotive grandmas colliding keeps replaying itself in her mind like an award-winning funny home video. She stifles a laugh.

The kitchen door swings open and Ye Ye enters at a slow and steady shuffle. Ana looks up to see him straddling the spilled rice in the open doorway. “What happened?”

Ana blushes involuntarily. It's not like it's her fault, but if it actually got Ye Ye's attention, it feels like a bad thing.

“Just a little accident,” she says.

“No accident,” Nai Nai complains. Suddenly, she waves her towel of ice in the air. “Sabotage. Yuan, they spilled my rice everywhere and tried to take my head off too. It's no wonder we can never have a nice meal at home with our own granddaughter. No wonder at all.”

“Just a minute now,” Grandma White says, one hand still clutching ice to her face. “Nothing here was intentional. You simply didn't watch where you were going and we ran into each other. Simple as that.”

“Yeah, Ye Ye. Just an accident.” Ana stands up, wondering if she should have held her tongue. Her grandfather regards her without expression.

“You will clean it up, Ana,” he says finally. He turns to Nai Nai and says something in a stream of Chinese too fast for Ana to follow. She glances at her other grandmother, but Grandma White has her head down, concentrating on her ice. Ana shakes her head.

“What are you waiting for?” Ye Ye jabs a finger toward the hallway. He pats Nai Nai on the shoulder and shuffles back to wherever it was he came from. Ana shakes her head.
Thanks a lot, old man.

“Go on, baby,” Grandma White says.

“Okay,” Ana says with a sigh. “Sorry.” She's really starting to laugh. “I'll get the vacuum.”

“No, no vacuum!” Grandma White exclaims. “That's good rice out there. Good rice. I brought it from Louisiana. You just pick that up and put it in a bowl.”

Nai Nai nods her ice-packed head. “Yes, a bowl. For mine, too. That is high-quality jasmine rice. Excellent for cooking. Do not waste a single grain.”

Ana stops laughing. “What? Are you serious?”

“Don't get sassy, baby,” Grandma White says. “I hurt right now. Just do as we say.”

“Grandma! Rice is rice. Plain and simple. Look at you, you've got half a bag.”

Her grandmother eyes her steadily. “Do not argue with me, Miss Ana. Get that rice off the floor and back in the bag where it belongs.”

Ana keeps her mouth shut. Her head is starting to hurt, and she didn't have to butt heads for it to happen.

She grabs the broom and dustpan from the pantry.

“Don't use that dirty thing on my food,” Nai Nai says.

“Fine,” Ana says exasperatedly. “God,” she mutters to herself. She grabs two bowls and stomps back into the hallway. “Like we've got all afternoon.”

“Ana.”

It's Ye Ye, just around the corner in the living room, waving her over. She stifles a sigh.

“Yes, Ye Ye?”

His eyes stay on the TV, the volume low, but he waves Ana closer. “Ana, your grandmother is working very hard for you today. I do not like to see you be ungrateful.”

Ana leans back.

She thinks of the giant check in her nightstand and feels her face grow hot. “I'm not ungrateful.”

Her grandfather looks at her and Ana feels herself shrink about five inches. He grabs her by the wrist. Ana gasps in surprise.

“She asks for your help, you give it to her. Do not think you are smarter or better than your elders.”

“I don't, Ye Ye, honestly. I'm picking up the rice right now.” She hates the sound of her voice, like a whining little kid's.

Ye Ye looks at her a moment longer, then lets her go. “Good.” He settles back and turns up the volume a notch on the television.

Great.
She goes back to the hallway, her proverbial tail between her legs. This is the man who let her dad get away with shoving a sword into the ceiling.

Unfreaking-believable.

She glances at her watch. It's almost five o'clock and she's on the floor picking up rice. So much for a charmed dinner. She lets her arms and neck go limp in exasperation.

“Man, I hate my life.”

10

“H
ow is everybody?” Ana sings as she breezes back into the kitchen with both bowls. If they don't look too closely, her grandmothers won't know that she fudged the job until they're already eating. Jasmine rice has a nuttier taste she just can't hide.

“That was easier than I thought,” she says with the slightest prickle of guilt. Fortunately for Ana, Grandma White and Nai Nai have other things on their minds.

The kitchen has a distinct chill. Apparently, Nai Nai has gotten over her injuries. She is pulling the rice cooker out of the pantry. The big white and silver electric pot is almost as big as she is. Grandma White is still sitting at the table, looking forlornly off into space.

“Here, Nai Nai.” Ana hurries to take the rice cooker from her grandmother. “I'll make the rice. You just rest.”

“Good girl,” Nai Nai says. “Finally, you are respecting your elders.”

Ana forces a smile and dumps the mixed rice into the cooker. She does a quick search for any stray carpet fuzz before adding water and plugging in the rice cooker. Of course, they'll find out at dinner, but who knows? With Jamie's folks at the table, maybe nobody will say anything.

“There, all done. Now, anything else before I start the dumplings?”

“Watch the rice,” Nai Nai says.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Grandma White rises slowly and takes a glass from a cabinet. “I'm coming toward you now, so watch out,” she says to Nai Nai. Gingerly, she works her way around Nai Nai, who simply shakes her head. Ana hears the ice cubes clunk into the sink and watches her grandmothers, one tall and brown, one small and pale, washing their hands.

“Ana, don't forget the lion's head, either,” Nai Nai says, pointing at the pot of grapefruit-sized meatballs. “Cover it when it boils, then leave it alone.”

“Okay,” Ana agrees.

Nai Nai leaves and Grandma White breathes a little easier. Ana does too. Ye Ye's lecture still rankles a bit. Grandpa and Grandma White never make her feel so small.

“Baby, bring me some aspirin.” Grandma White is holding her jaw where Nai Nai clocked her.

“Go sit down. I'll get it.” Ana ducks out to the downstairs bathroom and brings back the bottle. Her mom still hasn't shown up.

“How's that?” Ana asks after Grandma White takes her aspirin.

“Baby, that woman has the hardest head on the planet. Am I bruising?” She holds her chin up to the light. Ana looks down at her grandmother and kisses her on the forehead.

“Barely a bump, Grandma.” In a lower voice, she adds, “If she'd meant to hurt you, you'd be dead by now.” Ana and her grandmother share a smile.

“That woman!” Grandma White exclaims. “If I didn't know better, I'd say she's got something against long-grain rice.”

“No, just rice that doesn't stick together. Useless with chopsticks. And jasmine's got a different taste.”

“I understand,” Grandma White says. “Now to get this gumbo started,” she adds, and rises slowly from the table. “All right now, Ana, help me with these shrimp.” She pulls a bowl of unshelled shrimp from the refrigerator. Ana rolls up her sleeves and grabs a second bowl from the cabinet.

“Peel 'em and clean 'em for me.” Grandma White gives her a knife for deveining each little gray shellfish. Ana may not have learned to handle a knife from Nai Nai, but Grandma White has certainly given her plenty of kitchen skills in the “clean this” department. From peeling shrimp to snapping the tough parts off green beans and shelling peas, Ana is a world-class menial laborer when she goes to visit her grandparents in Louisiana.

The vein is the grossest part,
Ana thinks.
And not really a vein, either.
She stops thinking about it and gets to work, snapping off the legs and slipping the shrimp out of their shells like jackets.

“Do you just throw that away?” Nai Nai asks. Ana's skin tingles with surprise. Nai Nai is standing in the doorway, watching.

“Yep,” Ana says.

Nai Nai clucks her tongue. “You could make a broth with that. Some good broth, too. Save me the shells. I'll show you. Do not waste food.”

“It's not a waste, it's garbage.” Grandma White turns around from the chopping board where she's been dicing celery. Ana smells the faintly salted, watery scent of the greens hanging in the air. “You throw it away. I know how to stretch a dollar, but that's not the way to do it.”

Dear God, no,
Ana prays silently. Her head throbs and she wishes she had taken some of Grandma White's aspirin.
Please don't let them get into a fight,
she thinks.

“Did you need something, Nai Nai?”

“Water,” Nai Nai says quickly, and turns back to Grandma White. “You say you know, but it is wasteful,” she insists. “I could make ten dishes out of everything you throw away today. Look at that celery. The leaves, what are you going to do with them?”

“Dice them up and use them as seasoning,” Grandma White says.

Nai Nai frowns. “Oh, you just say that now. Now that you know I'm watching you.”

“Here's your water,” Ana says quickly, holding out a hastily filled glass. But the grandmothers aren't listening to her.

“No, I'm saying that because that's what I'm going to do,” Grandma White says in her I'll-be-patient-but-barely teacher voice. “We all cook differently, Mei, but that doesn't make it wrong.”

“The only thing I say is wrong is being wasteful. What's burning?”

“What?” Ana asks. She looks around the room. “Burning . . . ?”

Then she smells it.

“The cake! Oh, crap, the cake!” She grabs a pair of potholders and runs toward the oven, but it's too late. The cake comes out of the oven black on top and sunken in the middle. “How can that even happen?”

“Oh no, baby,” Grandma White says, waving the smoke away. “Shut that oven door and turn on the vent.”

“Take it outside,” Nai Nai says. “You can scrape the top when it's cooled down.”

“Scrape the top!” Ana exclaims. “It's a brick. A black brick. We can't serve this!”

She stomps outside, smoking cake pan in hand, and drops it on the flagstones in the backyard.

“My cake!”

Ana's mother comes running across the yard from the garage, a bucket of ice cream in her hands.

Ana's shoulders drop. “Sorry. I lost track of it.”

“Oh.” Her mom stares at the cake.

“Mom, where were you?”

“Sammy and I ran to the store for ice cream,” Ana's mother explains. “I told Ye Ye.”

“Open this door, get this smoke out,” Nai Nai insists, shoving the door into Ana's back. Ana lets out an exasperated sigh, props open the door and follows her mother back inside.

Grandma White waves the rest of the smoke out of the kitchen with a dish towel. Ana's mom opens the freezer and tries to find a spot for the ice cream.

“Don't waste that cake,” Nai Nai says again. “You can cover it up with that ice cream.”

“Nai Nai, please,” Ana says. “We've got people coming over in less than two hours and nothing is ready. The war is over. We've got plenty of food. Who cares if we throw away a burnt cake and some shrimp shells?” The minute the words are out of her mouth, she regrets it.
Great. Here comes the corn story.
Grandpa White's stories are always better than Nai Nai's.

Ana braces herself. Her mother rolls her eyes and deliberately hides behind the freezer door.

“Who cares? Who cares? Do you hear this one, Mrs. White? I will tell you who cares, Miss Ana ‘I eat too much’ Shen.
Starving
people care.” Ana winces. “When Ye Ye was a little boy in China, he had to eat moldy corn, moldy corn in the fields because of what the Japanese army did to the crops, burning and taking everything. Do you understand? And he was lucky they didn't burn the fields, but left so much food to be gleaned. Or else he would have starved to death and you would not be here now. So do not ask me what is the big deal. The deal is very big. Very big indeed.”

“Huh. Moldy corn,” Grandma White says. She neatly folds the dish towel and starts chopping onions for the gumbo. Ana marvels at how onions never make her grandmother cry.

“That is right. Moldy corn.” Nai Nai nods, satisfied.

“It's a wonder he even likes my corn bread,” Grandma White says. Nai Nai frowns.

“He is just being polite.” She grabs her glass of water from Ana and leaves the kitchen.

From behind the freezer door, Ana's mother starts to laugh.

“Don't laugh, now, Helen. Ana's granddaddy could tell the same story, but it's white beans. Navy beans. Ate so many of them when he was little that you'd think he had
joined
the navy. That's how his mother made ends meet during the Depression, and he hates them. Hates them to this day.”

“We know, Mama,” Ana's mother says.

Ana stays quiet. Her head is starting to really pound and there's a little muscle jumping over her right eye. She's heard the moldy corn story before, and the navy bean story, too. If she hears them again, she will scream. Time for a deep breath and polite conversation, she decides.

“Anything I can help with?”

“Aww, thank you, baby. Bring me those shrimp and get started chopping that sausage.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Ana watches her grandmother begin the roux for the gumbo, dissolving flour in an equal amount of oil at the bottom of a big black Dutch oven, identical to one in Grandma White's house in Louisiana. Ana's mother wasn't allowed to leave home without a pot like that. One day, Ana will get one too.

“Now, close your eyes while I work my magic,” Ana's grandmother says.

“That's not fair. I just saw you make the whole thing.”

“Not all of it,” Grandma White insists. “I still have my secrets.”

“What. Ever,” Ana whispers to herself, and turns her back to her grandmother. At least dinner is getting started.

“Aside from my beautiful cake,” Ana's mom asks with a wry smile, “how's it going in here?”

“All right,” Grandma White says. “We had a bit of a rice accident, and I'll have a lump in the morning, but it's fine right now.”

“Rice accident? Do I even want to know what that means?”

“No,” Ana says. “Just a spill.”

“Just a spill?” Grandma White says indignantly. “More like an act of violence followed by an act of stupidity, and a whole lot of busywork.”

Ana smirks and turns back around. “Yeah, well. It's over now.”

“Uh-hmm.” Grandma White turns the soup down and pours herself a glass of water from the refrigerator pitcher. Ana's mom dances out of the way, frozen pork chops in either hand.

“Mama, will you cook these, too? We've got no room in the fridge.”

“Ah, baby, now, you know we've got enough food for today. And they're frozen, besides.”

Ana's mom does something she only does in front of Grandma and Grandpa White. She pouts. Ana can never believe it, no matter how many times she sees it. It's exactly the sort of response that she'd get in trouble for.

“I just don't want to take these back to the garage. I'm tired. I just want to sit down and make this stupid cake again.”

“Mom, we don't need a cake,” Ana starts to say, but Grandma White cuts her off.

“Are you whining?” Ana's grandmother asks. “Because if you're whining, I've got plenty of work for you to do. This is your daughter's day, and that cake better not be stupid. It better be as smart as my grandbaby is. And you should be grateful you've found a way to get everybody else to do the cooking. We've got people coming over tonight and they want to see a happy, smiling Helen, not some old grumpy thing. Isn't that right, Ana?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Ana says brightly. She tries not to laugh as her mother scowls. At least the attention is off her for now.

“Fine, I'm not whining,” Ana's mom says. “I'm not complaining at all.” She drops into a chair and goes limp.

Ana laughs. “Here, Mom, I'll put the pork chops in the garage.”

Ana pushes through the door just as Nai Nai comes the other way.

“What are you trying to do, kill me all over again?” Nai Nai hollers. “Oh, it's you, Ana. I thought it was your crazy grandmother with her bowls of cheap rice.”

“Nai Nai!” Ana exclaims.

“What did you say?” Grandma White demands, a tea bag shaking in her hand.

“Hey, now.” Ana's mom holds up her hands.

Ana's headache resurfaces. She clutches her pork chops and runs.