Soy Sauce for Beginners (3 page)

James and his father crimped their brows and made sucking noises with their tongues against their teeth. If Paul were here, he would have nudged me under the table. He hated any kind of pretension. A bunch of shee-shaws, he called people he considered phony. When I asked how he’d come up with that, he sat up very straight and lengthened his face like a bloodhound and muttered, “Shee-shaw shee-shaw shee-shaw,” as he wagged his head in time.

But Ba and Uncle Robert observed the Santosos’ display with approval. So many years and so many tastings later, no one could accuse them of not caring about their work.

When the Santosos’ questions were answered, and my father was satisfied that they appreciated the discrepancies between Yellow River’s and our sauces, he left the conference room and returned with a tray of tall glasses and three cold, sweating cans of Sprite. “Now for a special treat,” he said.

The Santosos looked so eager that my allegiances flipped, and I silently chastised Paul. Why was he so threatened by other people? My irritation must have registered on my face because my father threw me a questioning glance. I only shook my head.

Ba poured out the Sprite and tipped in a dash of dark soy sauce. The caramel streak swirled through the glass like an ominous cloud.

James and his father traded uneasy looks. They held their glasses to the light.

“Try it,
lah,
” Ba said.

“You’ll like it,” said Uncle Robert.

“No, really, it’s delicious,” I said.

The three of us watched as the Santosos raised their glasses to their lips and sipped gingerly, their eyes widening in delight.

My father pushed the third glass to me, and I took a long drink. The mixture, Ahkong’s creation, was sweet and tangy and savory—a comforting, full-bodied flavor like burnt sugar, or brown butter that contrasted sharply with the dancing bubbles on my tongue.

When Mr. Santoso reached the bottom of his glass, my uncle moved right in with the pricing sheet, pointing out the special discount Lin’s was offering for the first time ever. At the mention of the discount, I thought I saw my father flinch, but the next time I checked, his brow was smooth. He was a professional.

James pulled out a mobile device and began to tap at the screen. After a moment, he tipped the screen to his father.

“This is all very impressive,” said Mr. Santoso.

Ba and Uncle Robert inched forward in their chairs.

“But, with all that’s happened this month,” Mr. Santoso continued, “we do have some small concerns.”

Before he could say more, my uncle said, “Let me assure you, I will personally handle your account. There will be no oversights. You have my word.”

Again, Mr. Santoso studied his son’s mini screen.

James’s gaze lifted toward me, and I realized I was holding my breath. Avoiding his eyes, I focused on the paintings on the wall behind Uncle Robert’s head. There, in the very bottom corner of one scroll, amid the towering mountains and winding river, partially hidden by a large boulder, was a tiny thumbnail-size man in a tiny fishing boat.

At last Mr. Santoso put down the device. He extended his hand to my uncle and smiled with his entire face. “I look forward to serving your soy sauce in our restaurants.”

The walls of the conference room seemed to expand with our collective exhale. We rose to our feet, and after a round of handshakes, my uncle called for an assistant to bring out a case of Lin’s prize-winning oyster sauce for our guests to take with them. Then we escorted them to their car, where we entered into another round of handshakes.

“How much longer are you in town?” my father asked, pumping Mr. Santoso’s arm with gusto.

“Just until the weekend, though we’re back and forth a lot from Jakarta. We have a condo in River Valley where James spends most of his time.”

“Any time you want to discuss business, give us a call,” said my uncle. “No question is too small.”

“That’s very kind,” James said, gazing over my uncle’s shoulder at me.

I dropped my head and felt my heartbeat in my temples. I blamed Ba and Uncle Robert—for using me to distract these men from Cal’s absence, for trying so hard to make me care.

Finally the Santosos drove off, and Ba and Uncle Robert congratulated each other, taking turns to thump me on the back. Only then did I fully appreciate how tense they’d been.

“You know-
ah,
Gretch,” Uncle Robert said, “when you were small, you used to love coming to the factory. You knew all the workers’ names.” He’d told this story before—how I’d spent so much time on the factory floor that Mr. Liu had given me my own yellow polo shirt, so I could look like everyone else.

Right on cue, my father said, “That shirt came down to your knee. You wore it every week for an entire year.”

They often conversed like this, as if engaged in some sort of call-and-response.

Now, it was Uncle Robert’s turn. “Remember how she loved those rice snacks?” He was referring to the crackers used for tastings.

“At home you ate nothing,” Ba said, “but here you would eat an entire packet if I didn’t stop you.” He looped an arm around me as we walked back inside, and without thinking, I slid out from beneath him.

It had been a long time since I’d viewed the factory as my own personal playground, but I didn’t bother to point this out. My head was filled with other thoughts. His name lit up in my mind as it had on my cell phone: Paul-paul-paul—an endless chain of hope and history, falling off the screen, slipping out of reach.

2

B
ACK IN 1958,
when my grandfather opened his new soy sauce factory, he mandated that all employees, factory and of
fi
ce staff alike, break each day at 12:30 for a family-style meal prepared by in-house cooks. By the time I began temping at Lin’s, Ahkong had been gone for
fi
ve years, but along with his custom-made jars and secret recipes, the practice of staff lunches had lived on to the extent that his favorite southern Chinese dishes were still in rotation: braised pork with hard-boiled eggs, stewed chicken with black mushrooms, sweet potato porridge. Many of these dishes I’d missed dearly during my time in San Francisco, and yet lunch was an activity I tried my best to avoid.

My first day at work, I slipped into the kitchen early to fill a plate to take upstairs, but my uncle spotted me on my way out and insisted I take the seat beside him to explain what exactly I was learning in this master’s program in music education. After that, I feigned stomach trouble and stayed at my desk, where I ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch—purchased at the expat grocery store for twice the price—straight from the box.

Now, as I headed back to my desk from the parking lot, people streamed past me toward the dining room. I spotted Fiona and Shuting, administrative assistants who I’d worked with over the past week, and, for the sake of conversation, asked where they were going.

“To
makan
,” Shuting said. She mimed spooning food from the cupped bowl of her palm.

Even though I certainly would have declined, I waited for them to invite me, and when neither did, I tried to look busy by hustling back to my office.

My inability to make friends at work, I believed, could be traced back to this spacious room with freshly painted, pale-pistachio walls, right next door to my father’s corner office. As if things weren’t awkward enough with my last name plastered across every bottle we shipped out, I’d also earned the distinction of being the only temp in the history of the company to land her own office. I’d pleaded with my uncle for a regular cubicle, but he’d waved a hand at the window that overlooked the dense configuration of workspaces on the office floor. “Where do you want me to put you? This place is already packed, and that friend of yours arrives next week.”

He was referring to Frankie Shepherd, my old college roommate, who was about to start a yearlong consultant position at Lin’s—a job I’d helped her obtain back when neither of us expected that I, too, would be in Singapore, much less just across the hall. At least Frankie would also have an office. Still, in protest, I refused to hang pictures on my wall, or to bring in photographs or potted plants. Whenever my uncle or father commented on the sparseness of the decor, I took the opportunity to remind them that I was only temping for a few months. Come January, I’d be back at the conservatory, completing my last semester.

A knock interrupted my thoughts, and Shuting pushed open the door without waiting for a response. She was a skinny girl with a shrill voice and a mouth that was perpetually in motion.

“By the way,” she said as though we were in the middle of a conversation, “you got a phone call while you were gone. Someone named Paul.”

She was waiting for a reaction, and I willed myself to stay calm. Paul had a name for girls like her, too: drama vultures. This office was filled with them.

“Oh?” I said with a shrug. “Did he leave a message?”

Disappointed, Shuting sighed. “He just said to call him back. Sorry-
ah,
forgot to tell you.”

I gave her a brisk nod. “Anything else?”

She shook her head.

When the door closed behind her, I picked up the phone, weighing its heft in my palm. Paul must have called the house first and spoken to my mother. Who else would have told him how to reach me here? A line of tension moved through me, like someone zipping me up from my tailbone to the tip of my spine. Paul and my mother had always gotten along. Surely she would have pressed him for information, and while I knew he’d honor our agreement to keep the details of our separation to ourselves, the thought of them conversing—asking after each other, showing concern—made my hands shake.

I dropped the handset in its cradle and reached for the cereal box in my bottom drawer—the same cereal I ate for breakfast, right here at my desk, to avoid sitting down at the dining table with my parents. I shoveled a handful in my mouth and chewed, shoveled and chewed, savoring the heady burst of sweetness, the hearty preservative-enhanced crunch, the American excess of it all. Turning to my computer, I clicked on a new email from Kat Tan, my oldest friend in Singapore. It was an invitation to her thirtieth birthday party, and I closed the message to avoid having to make a decision.

In the hallway outside my office, a girl from the marketing department paused at my window and made a show of shuffling through a stack of documents while keeping one eye on my strange mealtime ritual. I went over and yanked the cord to lower the blinds.

Minutes later, a sharp rap on my door. I yanked it open with too much force and came face to face with my father. “Oh,” I said. “It’s you.”

“Everything all right?” he asked. His gaze scanned the room before landing on the cereal box.

“Everything’s fine,” I said, returning to my chair. “Except the entire company seems to think I’m some kind of exotic animal. This office might as well be a cage at the zoo.”

Ba’s smile fell short of his eyes. “They’ll get bored soon enough.” He glanced over again at the cereal, but wisely avoided mentioning it. “I’m going home to pick up Ma.” He adjusted his glasses on his nose. “For her doctor’s appointment.” He waited, daring me to speak.

I shifted my gaze to my computer screen and placed one hand on the mouse. “Okay.”

He stood there with his arms crossed, and then whirled around and opened the door. Before I could relax he stuck his head back in. “Coming home for dinner or not?” he asked, as if I hadn’t given the same answer three days in a row.

“Not tonight.”

As soon as my father’s steps had receded down the hall, I heard whispers and giggles right outside my door. I pictured the marketing girl on the other side, by now no doubt joined by several others, their eyes widening with curiosity—even glee. I longed to fling the phone across the room so it would strike the door with a deafening crack. And then I longed for the anonymity of my life in San Francisco, where I was nobody’s daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece.

I folded my arms on my desk, lay my head down and wished I were anywhere else but this bare office, surrounded by hushed voices and watchful eyes. I couldn’t imagine how much worse the gossip would be if they’d known about Paul’s affair; I couldn’t imagine my father’s slow-burning rage had he known, too.

When I finally made myself leave my office, I found Shuting huddled with Fiona in her cube, replaying the online video of my cousin Cal’s interview with a local news anchor. I too had seen the clip my first day home. Already privy to how the scandal had unfolded, I’d watched horrified as my cousin looked the news anchor straight in the eye and told her slowly and clearly that he was only going to repeat himself one more time: he, and Lin’s, had done nothing wrong. Shortly after that interview, my father had ordered Cal to leave town.

Upon noticing me, Fiona quickly closed the webpage.

Shuting was the first to recover. With exaggerated concern she asked, “Why you always skip lunch? You managed to call Paul or not?”

I didn’t even want her to say his name. When I didn’t respond, Fiona studied my face and asked if I was feeling okay. She was a serious, sensibly dressed woman whom I thought of as middle-aged even though she was probably only a few years older than I am. I was relieved when Jason from sales peeked his head around the side of the cube, saving me from having to answer.

“Apparently
xiao lao ban
is back in town,” he said, taking up everyone’s favorite topic of discussion: Cal, who was known as “little boss” behind his back. Jason’s face fell when he saw me. “Oh,” he said, “you’re here.”

In the years I’d been abroad, discarding jobs and collecting graduate degrees, my cousin had stayed firmly in one spot, determined to learn everything he could about the family business. Ever since Cal was a teenager he’d spent his school holidays working at the factory. All through university he’d interned in the sales department. Even during his two and a half years of mandatory military service, he’d regularly drop by the office in full uniform. Upon graduation, when Cal was made Lin’s vice president, no one was surprised.

Months earlier, my cousin had begun his latest push to bring the company into the new millennium with a line of ready-to-cook sauces in such flavors as teriyaki, sweet and sour, black bean, and Peking duck. Although Uncle Robert and Ba had reservations, Cal pointed out that Lin’s was already experimenting with cheaper, fiberglass-aged soy sauce. He argued that this new line of condiments would only bolster the company’s efforts to reach a younger demographic. Sure enough, early consumer feedback was overwhelmingly positive and orders rolled in faster than they could be filled.

One week after the launch, the first report of food poisoning came in from Rice Broker, a small fast-food chain, not at all like the upscale restaurants that purchased Lin’s soy sauce.

Cal must have panicked when he saw he had a potentially serious problem on his hands, especially since it had been his decision to streamline the production process by cutting out several hygiene measures. But only three or four more complaints trickled in, and the source of contamination remained difficult to isolate. In the meantime, sales of the new sauces continued to outpace forecasts by two to one. Recalling the line of sauces at this point would not only come at huge cost, but would harm the company’s reputation—perhaps unnecessarily. Cal must have told himself all this when he opted to keep the food-poisoning reports a secret. Drawing on the largest marketing budget in the history of the company, he continued to aggressively promote his new products.

At first, it appeared he’d gambled correctly. No other cases of food poisoning emerged. But then a
Straits Times
reporter fell ill after eating a plate of sliced cod stir-fried in Lin’s black bean ready-to-cook sauce. The reporter interviewed a friend who had served the sauce to her family, and whose toddler had projectile vomited for twelve hours. The reporter began to investigate, going so far as to send a sample of the black bean sauce to the Ministry of Health. His article exposed Lin’s shortcuts on the production line and questioned not only Cal’s management abilities but also his sense of decency. How could a company that claimed to uphold family values continue to sell a product that made people sick? The reporter ended with the Chinese proverb: Wealth does not pass three generations. By the time the article landed on newsstands, it didn’t matter that the ministry’s tests had been inconclusive.

My mother was the one who called me in San Francisco and kept me abreast of the latest developments; my father was too furious and exhausted to talk about it.

Eventually, Ba and Uncle Robert recalled all remaining products at enormous cost to the company. They killed the new line and placed Cal on a leave of absence while they worked to salvage the company’s reputation. Now, two weeks into my cousin’s exile, Ba and Uncle Robert were still in the process of determining Cal’s future at Lin’s—a discussion they kept closely guarded.

Their silence only encouraged more speculation among the office staff.

“If he’s back in town, he’ll be here next week,” said Shuting.

“Unless he
kena
sacked over the weekend,” said Jason, wiggling his eyebrows lewdly. His eyes darted toward me, and he ducked his head. “Sorry-
ah.
”

I waved away his apology. Cal deserved to be disparaged.

“They won’t sack him,” Fiona said firmly.

All three of them politely refrained from making the obvious cracks about the beauty of nepotism. They waited for me to speak.

Weakly I said, “I heard he spent his entire leave diving in the Maldives,” and they looked unimpressed.

Jason asked if my father had revealed anything else about Cal to me, and when I assured them I had no additional information, Shuting dismissed me with a shake of her head. “Yah,
lah,
whatever,” she said. “Confidentiality rules and all that, right?” In Chinese, she said to the others, “Of course she can’t tell us,”
knowing full well I understood.