leaf around it to keep it moist and fresh. I unwrap the leaves, letting loose the fragrance of banana and exposing the pale pink meat within. “You got to cut this very thin,” I tell her. I pull a knife from a drawer and demonstrate on a cutting board, slicing a few discs of the sausage, then laying those on top of each other and cutting down through the middle of them, again and again, until I have a pile of tiny matchstick pieces.
She picks up the knife and goes to work. I pull a bag of bean sprouts out of the refrigerator and carry them to the sink to wash. Shelley and I stand only a few feet apart at different ends of the counter. She asks, “Who taught you to cook?”
“My mother,” I say, feeling vaguely sheepish. I will never be the cook my mother was, able to know, intuitively, that roasting a chili over flames will give your broth a smoky flavor, or that searing a chicken will hold in the juices. I never make up anything new, like she did. I just try to fol-low her technique and remember her recipes. “She could really teach you how cook for your kid.”
I glance at Shelley. She’s stopped cutting. “What’s funny?” I ask.
“ ‘My kid.’ ” But her words come out unevenly. They sound cracked and forced, which is how I realize that she’s crying. I keep my eyes on my bean sprouts, trying to figure out what to do. In my life, I’ve witnessed people crying of course, but I can’t remember what I did about it. You get out of practice. Who cried? My mother never cried. My father cried when my mother died, and I held his hand, but I can’t do that with Shelley. Khoi never cried (I cried, and he did what he could—which wasn’t much—to soothe me). My sister cried when her husband Tan went off to war, but she tried to be stoic about that. Later, when he died, she wouldn’t let us near her. I’m sure I had friends cry over broken hearts, or failed exams, but my mind goes blank as I try to recall what I did, if anything, to help them.
For a long time, we say nothing. Shelley pulls some tissues out of her purse and cries into them, the sausage forgotten. I shake the bean sprouts in the colander and let them drain, then start on the egg pancakes. The sound she makes—a faint, rhythmic gulping—reminds me of the last time I cried around Bo. It was only days before Khoi planned to leave Vietnam and I had decided against going with him. My father had insisted that, at nineteen, I was old enough to make my own decision and, after vacillating for weeks, I felt surprisingly confident that I’d made the right choice. Still, I cried. Bo didn’t try to comfort me directly, but he refused to abandon me, either. While I lay on my bed and wept, he sat at the table, tak-ing apart a broken clock, and talking. Nothing that he said related to my decision, and I remember understanding, even through my tears, exactly what he was doing. He talked about his boyhood, his parents, my mother, a man at the veterans’ center who made toys out of old tin cans. None of it mattered, but it helped.
I shake some fish sauce into the eggs and whisk the mixture until yoke and white meld together. Then I pour my first thin pancake into the pan and begin to talk. “Vietnamese cooking, you got think about everything. Not just taste. You got think about how the food look together on the plate. How it smell. You got mix texture. Like, soft eggs with crunchy bean sprouts. The color red with the color green. Salty and sweet. You need contrast.”
I wish I didn’t sound like such an idiot in English but, once I’ve started, I find it fairly easy to keep going. I talk. I fry pancakes. When bubbles form across the yellow skin, I prick them with a fork. A rich and mellow fragrance begins to fill the room. I talk about seasoning, cooking times, sugar. I talk about soaking noodles, boiling noodles, heating wet noodles in the microwave to soften them. I finish the pancakes and peel three pounds of shrimp. I discuss different ways you
She picks up the knife and goes to work. I pull a bag of bean sprouts out of the refrigerator and carry them to the sink to wash. Shelley and I stand only a few feet apart at different ends of the counter. She asks, “Who taught you to cook?”
“My mother,” I say, feeling vaguely sheepish. I will never be the cook my mother was, able to know, intuitively, that roasting a chili over flames will give your broth a smoky flavor, or that searing a chicken will hold in the juices. I never make up anything new, like she did. I just try to fol-low her technique and remember her recipes. “She could really teach you how cook for your kid.”
I glance at Shelley. She’s stopped cutting. “What’s funny?” I ask.
“ ‘My kid.’ ” But her words come out unevenly. They sound cracked and forced, which is how I realize that she’s crying. I keep my eyes on my bean sprouts, trying to figure out what to do. In my life, I’ve witnessed people crying of course, but I can’t remember what I did about it. You get out of practice. Who cried? My mother never cried. My father cried when my mother died, and I held his hand, but I can’t do that with Shelley. Khoi never cried (I cried, and he did what he could—which wasn’t much—to soothe me). My sister cried when her husband Tan went off to war, but she tried to be stoic about that. Later, when he died, she wouldn’t let us near her. I’m sure I had friends cry over broken hearts, or failed exams, but my mind goes blank as I try to recall what I did, if anything, to help them.
For a long time, we say nothing. Shelley pulls some tissues out of her purse and cries into them, the sausage forgotten. I shake the bean sprouts in the colander and let them drain, then start on the egg pancakes. The sound she makes—a faint, rhythmic gulping—reminds me of the last time I cried around Bo. It was only days before Khoi planned to leave Vietnam and I had decided against going with him. My father had insisted that, at nineteen, I was old enough to make my own decision and, after vacillating for weeks, I felt surprisingly confident that I’d made the right choice. Still, I cried. Bo didn’t try to comfort me directly, but he refused to abandon me, either. While I lay on my bed and wept, he sat at the table, tak-ing apart a broken clock, and talking. Nothing that he said related to my decision, and I remember understanding, even through my tears, exactly what he was doing. He talked about his boyhood, his parents, my mother, a man at the veterans’ center who made toys out of old tin cans. None of it mattered, but it helped.
I shake some fish sauce into the eggs and whisk the mixture until yoke and white meld together. Then I pour my first thin pancake into the pan and begin to talk. “Vietnamese cooking, you got think about everything. Not just taste. You got think about how the food look together on the plate. How it smell. You got mix texture. Like, soft eggs with crunchy bean sprouts. The color red with the color green. Salty and sweet. You need contrast.”
I wish I didn’t sound like such an idiot in English but, once I’ve started, I find it fairly easy to keep going. I talk. I fry pancakes. When bubbles form across the yellow skin, I prick them with a fork. A rich and mellow fragrance begins to fill the room. I talk about seasoning, cooking times, sugar. I talk about soaking noodles, boiling noodles, heating wet noodles in the microwave to soften them. I finish the pancakes and peel three pounds of shrimp. I discuss different ways you
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