-
Rice
1Fluffy? white flakes in a
porcelain bowl. Steam rises and with it, the
particular fragrance. Like a kind of
incense, it wafts? and weaves so many,
many memories.
2
“
Rice is served...Come and
eat,
”
Ma calls to
no one in particular.
With the
regularity of clockwork, dinner at our house is
always served at
7:30 p.m., and we are
gathered at the table for dinner. The meal is
eaten
in reverent? silence, slowly and
with meaningful silence. The plates are
emptied and quietly we collect the
dishes for washing. This gradually
changed, bit by bit as each of us grew
busy with work that kept us back
at the
office. But this I long remember of a family
ritual
：
we have
always
had rice for dinner. Rice was
served even when we had turkey at
Christmas. Pa would always have his
ubiquitous? bowl of rice and Ma
would
always serve it.
3Ma taught me how to
cook rice at the age of ten.
4
“
Okay, one milk
tin full for four people. Empty the tin of rice
into this
pot. Now, pick out all the
sand and unhusked
⑤
rice and if you see any
little black crawling
weevils?
，
pick them out and
squeeze them to kill
them.
5
“
Now fill the
pot with water. You put both hands in the pot and
rub
the grains of rice gently between
your hands. Now pour out the water
and
be careful that not a single grain of rice spills
with the water. Rice is
precious,
remember that.
6
“
Fill your pot once again
and rinse the rice one more time. This time
the water should be :almost clear.
7Put your hand there, flat on the top
of the rice
—
now fill the
water up
to the level of theknuckle of
your finger. Too much water and
you
’
ll be
eating
porridge. Too little, you
’
ll
be eatinguncooked grains which taste
like sand.
8
“
Let the rice
boil for five minutes. Stir and lower the flame.
9
“
Stir to make sure that the
rice does not stick to the bottom of the
pot. Cover and let it cook over a slow
flame until the water dries up. Turn
off the fire. The rice is now ready to
be served...
”
10
Thereafter twice a week,
until I went to university, I had the duty of
cooking rice for the family.
11
“
Ma, please
come home
?”
12
“
I
c...can
’
t. I
d..don
’
t want
to...
”
13
The cars roared past us and
before us, their headlights blinding us.
There had been a big fight at home,
over what I forget now, but Pa had
said
something, something about duty and
responsibility. Ma answered
back. Pa
raised his voice. Soon there was shouting and more
shouting. A
plate was thrown, the
crashing resounding through the house. More
crashing sounds, more shouting. We
covered our ears, trying in vain to
block out the noise and confusion. Even
then, I heard Pa say,
“
Go.
See if I
care
—
the
clothes you wear, the roof over your head and the
food you
eat, everything you have you
owe to me and you bloody well dare to
answer back...
14
Suddenly, there was a
silence.
15
Ma
ran out of the house into the rainy night.
16
“
Come home, please, Ma
?
please,
Ma.
”
17
“
Go home, you go
home. Your Ma wants to die
here.
”
18
“
Please,
Ma
，
I
don
’
t want you to
die.
”
19
“
Go
home. The others have to eat. Go home and serve
your Pa his
rice.
”
20
“
No,
Ma
，
I
won
’
t go home...I
won
’
t go home without
you
?”
21
“
Go home, I tell you, go
home and serve your Pa his
rice.
”
22
We stood there
for the longest time, the cars hooting us to warn
us from standing too close to the edge
of the pavement I did not dare to
let
go of her hand. My hands hurt from holding her
hand so tightly.
Slowly, bit by bit, I
could feel the slack, the tension easing. Both of
us
sobbed in silence. Ma's shoulders
drooped and slowly I was allowed to
lead her home. We left the main road
and slowly made our way through
the
quiet suburban lanes, the winding alleys and
finally reached home.
23
Pa sat stone-faced before
the television, his face grim, his lips set
in a straight line. He refused to say a
word. I led Ma into her bedroom,
closed
the door and went into the kitchen. Lifting up the
cover of the pot,
I spooned the thick
white flakes into Pa's bowl and set the bowl on
the
table.
24
“
Pa, time to
eat.
”
25
Silence.
26
“
Pa, eat
rice.
”
27
“
Don
’
t
want to eat
”
28
The bowl of
rice sat on the end of the table, getting colder
and
colder.
29
After that, without fail,
day after day, for as many days as there
were in a year, Ma would place a
steaming hot bowl of rice before Pa.
Even if she had to go out for her
mahjong games in the afternoon, she
would return in time to serve the bowl
of rice. If she was going out in the
evening, she would wait till Pa had
finished his bowl of rice and had laid
aside his then would she pick up her
bag and leave on
her occasional
outings
.
30
I hate eating
white rice. White rice is
bland
①
and
boring. It has to
be made more
interesting .With a variety of other dishes. One
hardly
eats rice on its own, to savor
its full-bodied flavor, simply because it has
none. It is a staple, a stomach filler,
little else. [ make concessions for
brown rice, which I cat sparingly, more
as a health lad rather than as real
food. I am, my Ma says,
“
western-
educated,
”
and prefer home-
mo sek.
Pasta is a definite favorite,
All kinds of it, from capellini to Iettucine to
lasagna , smothered with thick creamy
sauces, and yes, I love cheese --
the
Bleus with their colored blue green ridges and
sharp-smelling Bries
which tum Ma green
with disgust. Parmesan toasts had me turned out of
the house because no one could bear the
smell of the cheese I was
eating- which
is a continual joke to my neighbors who see roe
fitting in
the garden in the evenings,
chewing on foul-smelling toasted bread. Of
course, I like breads, French, Danish,
Manoucher deli-style sandwiches
with
pickles* and relishes , sandwiches which are so
large that two
hands arc required to
grip the bread together while large mouthfuls are
chewed vigorously and then swallowed.
Yes. don't forget salads. I am the
resident rabbit in the office - please
pass the greens over. Healthy
crunchy
lettuces with loads of lovely dressings make my
day. But rice ... I
cannot take rice
two meals in a row. I'd rather go hungry.
①
bland: not
highly flavored,mild, tasteless.
31
I remember that
Ma was very particular that we never wasted any
rice. Not a single grain was to be left
on the plate or else, every single
grain left would appear m ugly marks on
the face of our eventual
intended .
Certainly not wanting to marry any man with a
scarred or
marred complexion, we
faithfully cleaned out plates and through our
dating years, every close encounter
with men with chronic acne resulted
in
real guilt that perhaps, just perhaps, this might
be retribution for that
one plate of
rice we had not finished.
//