Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet (4 page)

7

A
na collapses on her bed. After a second, she gets up and locks her door. Swapping her dress for an oversized T-shirt, she lies back down, gazing up at the white popcorn ceiling. Sometimes at night, when the light from the street comes in just right, the ceiling twinkles like a galaxy of tiny stars.

Right now, it's just white with tacky flecks of silver here and there.

Ana's cell phone rings. She lets it ring twice before she realizes it's Chelsea's ring tone. “Hello?”

“Hey, need to escape yet?”

Ana smiles and relaxes again. “Nope. Surprisingly quiet down there so far, but I'm hiding in my room. I've got to shower. My gown totally speckled me.”

“I told you it would stain.”

“But you didn't take out your little sewing scissors and cut it off me like my grandmother did.”

“What? That's crazy.”

“It was like her pocket version of the Jaws of Life. But hey, everything's cool with my folks as far as dinner goes. So it might even be under control. Still, come early if you can. I totally need help picking out what to wear.”

“Alrighty. See you at six-ish.”

“Bye.”

Ana hangs up and rummages through her closet. Chelsea's the one with fashion sense. Ana gives up on choosing a dress. Work clothes now, adorable dress later.

Ana's room is the same shade of white it was when her parents bought the house after Sammy was born, but the walls are covered in music posters and pictures of places where Ana's been, or wants to go. There's a photo of a jazz quartet under the wrought-iron balconies of the French Quarter in New Orleans, a postcard of the New York skyline, a Chinese watercolor of strangely humped mountains over a river. Her mother claims it came from the village where Ye Ye was born, but Ana can't picture that. It's the only one in a proper frame, hung up with an actual nail. Beneath it, Ana's saxophone lies in the corner, nestled in its case, waiting for her to join her new high school's band.

“Enough lollygagging,” she tells herself. She lays a pair of shorts and a polo shirt out on the powder blue bedspread and pulls out the box of hair dye. She tucks it into the towel she keeps on the back of the door for her hair, and slips down the hall to the shower.

Ana sits on the edge of the tub, reading the label. Downstairs, she can hear her dad dragging the extra chairs from the dining room into the backyard. No fighting or screaming yet. She relaxes a little and reads the directions again.

“ ‘Apply to damp hair.’ Well, I've certainly got that. ‘Do not shampoo hair first. Leave in for ten minutes.’ ” Ana looks at her watch, then at the model on the package. From brown to blond in less than twenty minutes. Ana can just imagine it, descending the staircase, her brown curls transformed into a halo of Sunset Gold
^TM
.

“Nai Nai won't say anything embarrassing, at least,” Ana tells herself. “She'll be dead from the shock.”

She remembers Nai Nai's hints about taking her to Taiwan, and her stomach clenches. She puts the bottle down. It'll be hard enough walking around without her parents there to justify her existence. It's happened before, the “Aha, that explains it” look that flickers across some people's faces when they see Ana with her family. Add blond hair to the mix, and Ana'll be likely to end up in a zoo.

She'll probably see that same look on Jamie's dad's face tonight. She can't imagine him fawning over her the way he did with Amanda. “Well, if all your friends are as
charming
and
blond
as this one! . . .” Ana smirks.

On the front of the package, the pale Asian girl looks blankly off into the distance, a shiny cap of bone-straight, honey-colored hair making her look like an exotic mannequin. Ana stands up and looks at herself in the mirror. Her toffee-brown-skinned reflection stares back at her with its almond eyes and frazzled brown curls. Not exactly starting out with the same equipment. It goes beyond skin color and hair type. The model has single-lidded eyes, like Ana's dad's, with one smooth lid that ends at the eyelash line. Ana is double-lidded, like her mother's family. Chelsea freaked out when Ana pointed it out one day.

“You know, this crease here”—Ana opened and closed her eyes a few times so Chelsea would see the fold she was talking about—“where beauty magazines tell you to put the second shade of eye shadow.” She ran her finger across the crease. “Some Asian girls will actually have plastic surgery to fold the skin there and make their eyes look rounder and more European. It's called blepharoplasty.”

“More like barf-a-row-plasty. That's gross,” Chelsea said. Then again, Chelsea never wanted to look like anything other than a slightly taller version of herself.

What would Chelsea think about this? Or Ana's mom, for that matter? After years of straightening her hair, Ana's mom went all natural right before Sammy was born. “Black women have been trying to change who they are from the outside for far too long,” she explained. “But it turns out, all hair is good hair. And being bald's fine too.”

Ana laughed at the time. She was eight and the image of her mother with a shaved head was a weird one. Ana's mom went for twists instead, and occasionally braids. Ana's hair was straighter than her mom's, and she liked the curls it made. Sometimes. When her head wasn't damp and frizzy.

Ana hesitates. She promised her mom she'd be down soon. Besides which, Sunset Gold
^TM
is an awful lot like “Mandy” Conrad's natural color. Does she really want to look like Amanda Conrad?

“She's such a cow,” Ana reminds herself. With a sigh, she shoves the hair dye to the back of the cabinet under the sink. There's a really good chance she'd just end up looking like a clown anyway.

“So much for that.” She fluffs her hair in the mirror and then pulls the ends tight, trying to smooth it down. “Yep. So much for that.”

Instead, she steps into the shower and transforms into a nonblond but much cleaner Ana Mei Shen.

She pulls on her shorts and shirt and runs back downstairs to start Jamie's perfect dumplings.

8

T
he kitchen is a madhouse. Ana's mom has the hand mixer going on her cake, and her dad is halfway inside the refrigerator digging through the groceries. Grandma White is banging around in the cupboard under the stove where the pots are kept, and at the counter, Nai Nai is throwing handfuls of pork into a bowl while Sammy watches. All the noise together sounds like a bad elementary school marching band.

“Hey, honey,” her mom says above the high whir of the mixer.

“Hey. Where's my pork?” Ana asks as she enters.

“Don't worry, Miss Impatient. It's right here.” Nai Nai points to a butcher's parcel on the counter. “Now, pay attention, Sammy. There is a rhythm to this,” she goes on. “If you do it right, the lion's head will be tender. Wrong . . . and you make a mess.” She chuckles and scoops a handful of ground pork and tosses it against the bottom of the bowl with a light underhand maneuver that blends in the diced water chestnuts and soy sauce perfectly. Ana stands in the doorway and braces herself. Nai Nai's skill is just another reminder of how perfect her own dumplings will have to be. She takes two bowls from a cupboard.

Sammy stands on tiptoe to watch Nai Nai work. “Can I try it?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.” Nai Nai looks over her shoulder at Ana. “An-ah, your father will make the filling. Danny!”

Ana's dad pulls his head out of the refrigerator. “I'm still looking for the Chinese cabbage.”

“Later. You help Ana. You start the dumpling filling. Ana will make the dough,” Nai Nai announces.

“Nai Nai,
I'm
making the dumplings,” Ana protests.

“No, you are too slow. You can stuff them. We will help now.”

Ana gives in and puts an apron on. Aprons are kind of silly, but the last time she made dumplings, she was so covered in flour by the end that she looked like a snowman.

“Okay, this is going into the oven for half an hour,” Ana's mom says, pouring her batter into a large sheet pan. “Watch it for me, and try to keep it down so it doesn't fall.”

“What, baby?” Grandma White hollers, voice echoing in the cabinet she's rummaging through. “Where is my gumbo pot?”

“Up here, Grandma.” Ana drags a chair over to a higher set of cabinets and wrestles down the cast-iron Dutch oven.

“Mama, do you have to do that now?” Ana's mom asks. She looks from the cake to Grandma White and Sammy. “Why don't we take the Samoan outside to run some laps? Come on, Sammy. Let's leave the kitchen to the pros for now.”

“I am a pro,” Grandma White says indignantly. Sammy is instantly swinging on her arm like a monkey.

“If he was a battery, we'd never run out of energy,” she says. “I guess the gumbo can wait half an hour or so. Let us know when you-all are done.”

“Will do,” Ana says. The door swings shut and the kitchen is suddenly quieter.

Ana sifts a few cups of flour into one of her bowls and stands at the kitchen table, slowly mixing in a thin stream of water, while her father and Nai Nai work in unison, chopping vegetables for the dumpling filling and cabbage for the lion's head. With the kitchen reduced to only three cooks, a sense of calm prevails. She begins to work the dough with her hands. The kneading and the rhythm of the knives are soothing, and the whirlwind in Ana's head slows down just a bit.

Ana's dad and Nai Nai are like pianists playing a duet, small cleavers flying up and down like the velvet-covered hammers of piano keys, striking at water chestnuts, bok choy, gingerroot and garlic cloves, reducing each to a fragrant, uniformly diced pile.

“When do I get that superpower?” Ana asks.

Her father laughs. “When you practice it as much as I have with Nai Nai standing over you.”

“I told you we were faster,” Nai Nai says. “And your father is a slow learner. You'll do much better. Make the dough, then I will show you.”

Ana finishes her dough and leaves the bowl under a damp cloth to rest.

Nai Nai stands beside her and holds up her cleaver, the sharp edge wet with juice from the gingerroot she's slicing. “Hold your knife at an angle and cut away from your fingers.” She chops once, slowly, and then moves into a blur too fast for Ana to follow.

“Do that again?” Ana asks.

Nai Nai sighs and turns the blade, cutting the coins of ginger into matchsticks.

“Now, you mince it.” She hands the cleaver to Ana. Ana looks at her dad.
Right, that looks easy.
He shrugs and steps away from the counter.

“I was a lot younger than you when I got my first knife lesson, tiger,” he says.

Ana fumbles with the cleaver. “Right, like Mozart. ‘All the Shens learn to cook from birth,’ you told me.”

Her father grins. Nai Nai shakes her head. “Tell the truth, Daniel. A lie will make the food taste bad.”

He winces. “Okay, Ma. But some of this I don't think you know.”

Nai Nai stops chopping. “You are my son, Daniel. I know everything.”

“Did you know I stole Dad's army sword?”

Nai Nai hesitates a moment too long. “Of course.”

Ana laughs. “My poor dumplings. Doomed before they're even made.”

Nai Nai bumps Ana with her shoulder. “I am an old woman. Sometimes I forget. Daniel, tell us again, so I can punish you properly.”

“I must have been about five years old when I found it under your bed.”

“Daniel! What were you doing down there? So dirty and dusty like that.”

“Not in your house, Ma. It was clean as a hospital. I was just playing around and my feet hit something, so I turned around and found this box lying there almost as long as I was tall. Well, Dad was downstairs reading a book, and Ma, you were getting ready to make dinner. So I shut the door and pulled the box out.

“Now, Ana, I was a pretty quiet kid.”

Nai Nai shrugs. “Not always, but yes.”

“But I was terrified of being found out. It was clear Ma knew about the box—she spent more time cleaning the house than I did getting it dirty again. And I always thought we were weird because we didn't have dust bunnies like the other kids' houses did.

“So I dragged the box to the closet, that big walk-in thing you guys had at the old house, and I hid behind your clothes so you wouldn't see me if you came upstairs. I remember the box was covered in old green cloth that smelled like old books.

“So I open it, and inside is the giant sword. At least, it looked huge to me at the time. And it was all shiny and new looking, because Ye Ye polished it every month, he told me later. It was as long as my leg, and the handle of the sword was bronze. The face of the hilt was rough, covered in some kind of bumpy leather. Turns out that was stingray skin.

“So there I was, feeling like I was King Arthur or something.” Ana's dad puts down his cleaver and wipes his hands on a kitchen towel.

“So I picked up the sword, climbed onto my parents' bed and swung it up over my head with both hands.” He mimics the movement, heaving his arms over his head. Ana giggles. She can just see him, younger than Sammy, legs spread wide for balance, swinging a giant sword.

“And I took a big chunk out of the ceiling. I mean a
big
chunk. Cottage cheese and plaster all over the place. It scared the life out of me. I couldn't get the sword back in the box fast enough.”

Nai Nai gasps. Ana bursts out laughing.

“You put it back all dusty and everything?” Ana asks.

Her dad nods. “I didn't care. I could hear my dad running up the stairs. I'm trying to sweep the plaster off the bed when he comes charging in. ‘
Zhen me gao de?’
You know? ‘What the hell are you doing, Daniel?’ ”

Ana gasps, she's laughing so hard. “I can't even picture Ye Ye raising his voice. He must've been really pissed.”

Ana's dad nods. Nai Nai shakes her head and busies herself covering the bowl of minced pork with plastic wrap.

Ana's dad leans back against the counter, eyes bright with the memory. “Anyway, he sees the box sticking out from under the bed and the gouge in the ceiling and puts it together.

“I'm still on the bed and I'm crying because, you're right, he's never yelled at me like that before. So I think I'm going to get a spanking or something terrible is going to happen and he sits down on the bed and opens the box. He pats the bed for me to join him and I sit there, all snot-nosed and blubbery, as he examines the blade for nicks.

“And all he says to me is ‘There is a proper way to treat a blade,’ and shows me how to polish it.

“And when he's done, he looks up at the ceiling, smiles and says, ‘Huh. Still sharp.’ Not a single ding.

“So I start asking questions and he explained why the sword was so important, how he earned it as an officer in the Taiwanese Army in World War Two and he wore it in a big parade.

“I couldn't understand why he didn't show it off to everyone, but he said, ‘That time is past, Daniel. I would rather think of the future, not the past.’

“Then he slides the box under the bed again. He knows I won't mess with it a second time. And he says, ‘Speaking of the future, it's time you learn something about knives. We can help your mother with supper.’ And that's the day I had my first knife lesson.”

Nai Nai wipes the last of the lion's head filling from her fingers, the perfectly shaped meatballs lined up in a glass dish in front of her. She turns to face Ana's dad. “Your father.” She shakes her head.

“Really, Ma? You didn't know?” Ana's dad asks.

“I wondered, what's all this interest in cooking all of a sudden? But it didn't last. You helped me with two, three dinners, then I had to chase you down to get the same help.”

“But wasn't there a big crack in the ceiling?” Ana asks.
Ye Ye must have been an old softy back then,
Ana thinks. He'd never let
her
get away with something like that.

Nai Nai shrugs and washes her hands. “We live in California. I thought it was from earthquakes.”

Ana laughs. The lion's head is on the stove. The dumpling dough is resting. Her shoulders relax. She smiles. “This is kind of nice.”

Her dad nods. “See, honey? We can be civilized sometimes. Right, Ma?”

Nai Nai nods. “I always say we should spend more time together.” She dries her hands on a kitchen towel.

“Now, enough of this, it's time to cook. Ana, your filling is in the refrigerator. Your dough needs to rest. You can go back to the car. I forgot the rice.”

“Okay.” Ana washes her hands and takes off her apron.

“And get Mrs. White. It's time to start the gumbo.”

“Okay.” Ana starts to push open the door.

“Wait. No. I'll get the rice. You get Mrs. White. And where are you going, mister?” Nai Nai asks Ana's dad.

He pauses, head halfway out the back door. “I've got to set up the tables out back.”

Nai Nai points a manicured finger at him. “Okay, but do not forget, you have the
lu bo gao
to do. I will not forget.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Ana's dad says with a sharp salute. He nods at Ana. “Miss Mississippi River Cruise,” he says.

Ana smiles. “That's Miz Mississippi River Cruise to you, mister.”

Her dad winks and slips out the door.

Nai Nai is going furiously through her purse. “Ana, we made a little mistake earlier with the
huen bao
.”

“What?” Ana pats her back pocket. The small envelope is still there.

Her grandmother smiles, a weird, embarrassed little smile. Ana raises an eyebrow. “A simple mistake, really,” Nai Nai says. “Ye Ye did not put everything inside like I asked.” She closes her purse and thrusts a wad of tightly folded money into Ana's hand.

“It's nothing. Not a big-time river cruise. Just a little token. But we want you to have it.” She pats Ana's cheek. “We are so very proud.”

Ana blushes.
Note to self,
she thinks,
no more talking about the riverboat cruise.
“Thanks, Nai Nai. It's really wonderful of you.”

“Okay, silly girl, no time for sentimentality.” Nai Nai waves away Ana's attempt at a hug. “We have dinner to make. I'll get the rice.”

Ana takes a deep breath. “And I'll get the people.”