Kitchen Chinese (6 page)

David and my sister were in the same class in high school, both graduating that year. I didn’t expect him to know Claire, but when I mentioned her one early evening at White Castle, he seemed impressed. Shannon was in the bathroom and I was alone at the table with David, searching for something to say.

“Claire Lee is your sister?” he said. “She’s in my AP Chem class.” He raised his eyebrows. “She’s crazy smart. She has the whole periodic table, like,
memorized
.” This did not surprise me. “Hey!” His face brightened. “You don’t think she’d be willing to help me sometime, do you?” He unwrapped a slider and took a bite. “I didn’t do so hot on the midterm…Coach says if I don’t raise my grade I’ll be suspended from the team.” He grimaced. “Can you ask her?”

“Sure.” I was delighted to help him.

I waited until that night, when Claire was alone in her room making Latin flash cards.

“David Lee wants
me
to help him? He doesn’t even know who I am,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t think so.” She snappily turned the tissue thin page of her Latin dictionary.

I should have left well enough alone, but I couldn’t disappoint David. “He totally knows who you are.” I cajoled. “Plus, he’s super nice and…and I think he likes you.”

She looked up. “Really.” It was a challenge, not a question.

“He said you were really smart…” Claire picked up her scissors and started snipping index cards in half. “And that you seemed…funny.”

“He said that?” I could feel her weakening.

I nodded vigorously. At least the smart part was true.

She took a deep breath. “Okaaayyy…tell David…I’ll meet him after school on Tuesday. In the library.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled.

And so I became Claire and David’s intermediary. They had a standing study date twice a week, but if anything changed—if David had extra volleyball practice and had to cancel, or Claire knew she’d be late because of her cello lesson—they would rely on me to relay the information. For a while everything went swimmingly. David raised his AP Chem grade from a C–to a B+ and Claire started singing in the shower and wearing lip gloss. And then May rolled around. Prom season.

I knew something was up when Claire baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and brought a plate of them to my room. “So…I’ll be graduating from high school this month.” Her eyes darted everywhere but toward me.

“Yeah.” With my foot, I surreptitiously nudged a candy pink stack of Sweet Valley High books farther under the bed. Claire thought I should spend my spare time reading the classics.

“And in a few months, I’ll be living in Boston.” She had received her acceptance letter to Harvard a few weeks ago.

“Uh-huh.” I bit into a cookie and braced myself for the usual lecture on how I should listen to Mom and Dad and start early prep for the SAT.

“Do you know what David’s doing for the prom?” she blurted, her face turning bright pink.

Wow, I hadn’t seen that coming. “No.” I paused. I had just finished reading
Harriet the Spy
and was eager to try my own hand at a little snooping. “Do you want me to ask him?” I asked casually.

“If you want.” She shrugged, but her face stayed red.

I saw David the next day at Shannon’s house, eating pizza with some guys from the volleyball team. “My sister wants to know what you’re doing for the prom,” I said, feeling very important.

His friends erupted immediately. “Oooohhh! Does four-eyes Claire have a crush on Davey boy?”

“Guess you two really have been studying
chemistry
!”

“Yeah, like how to turn a frog into a princess!”

“Cut it out, guys! Sorry, Lee.” David sometimes called me by my last name, which I loved. “I dunno. A bunch of us are going in a group. She’s welcome to come with us, I guess.” He shrugged.

His friends burst into groans. “Dave, she’s a total nerd. If she’s going, then I refuse to get a limo with you guys.” David’s friend Brian, dark-haired with a high, imperious nose, crossed his arms.

“Dude, I know Claire’s kind of a drag, but I owe her. She’s saving my ass in chemistry.” David looked at me. “Tell her she can ride over with us, if she wants.”

Shannon and I quickly ran to her room to record the conversation in my Harriet-the-Spy notebook. “He said you could go
with him and his friends,” I told my sister that night, when she cornered me in the bathroom.

“Really? In a group?” She seemed uncertain. “What does that mean?”

I wasn’t sure if she was asking my advice, but I decided to give it to her anyway. “You should go! He likes you!”

“Really?” Her eyes turned shiny.

Claire kept her emotions concealed as tightly as a sphinx, so it was no surprise that she didn’t mention prom again until a week before the dance. “Can you ask David what time he’s picking me up next Saturday?” She ducked her head while her cheeks burned bright.

I squirmed behind my desk, where I was copying Chinese characters—thirty times for each one—under Claire’s watchful eye. The whole prom thing was starting to make me feel a little uncomfortable. The AP Chemistry test was over and David had started hanging out after school with Candy Andrews, a long-limbed brunette who was cocaptain of the tennis team. She came with us on our White Castle runs, where they held hands under the table and fed each other french fries. “Ummm, I haven’t really seen David in a while—”

“If you ask him, I’ll tell Mom you finished your Chinese school homework,” she said quickly.

I looked at the vocabulary list. Twenty characters still remained and
Who’s the Boss?
was on in ten minutes. “Okay,” I said.

True to my word, I found David the next day in the kitchen. “Um, so my sister was wondering what time you were coming by before prom…” My voice trailed off. Shannon climbed up onto a chair and got down a box of Nilla Wafers from the top of the fridge.

“Oh, man, Lee, I totally forgot about that.” His brow furrowed. “Uh, the thing is, we’re not—um, she’s totally welcome to come but I’m—”

“Aren’t you going with Ca-andy?” Shannon broke in, punching her brother’s arm.

I grabbed the box of cookies from Shannon and started eating.

“I just don’t know if it’s going to work out this time…” David’s mouth turned down at the corners and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Do you think you could let her know?”

“Oh,” I said, through a mouth full of Nilla Wafers. “I…” I had no desire to be the bearer of this news.

“You wouldn’t mind helping me out, would ya, Lee?” He reached out and patted my shoulder.

“I really don’t want—” I made another desperate attempt.

“Or I could call her. I should totally call her.”

“Ye—”

“But you know what? I bet she doesn’t even care about the prom. Claire Lee seems like the last person who would want to go to some lame high school dance.” He laughed weakly.

“Um, maybe, but—”

“Really? You think so?” He turned his clear blue eyes upon me. “Thanks, Lee. I totally owe you. Next White Castle run is on me.” He reached for the cookies and grabbed a handful before leaving the room. I watched him retreat from the kitchen, my heart sinking with disappointment. I’d thought David was perfect, but it turned out he was selfish and flawed just like everyone else.

What is it they say about shooting the messenger? I stared at the ground when I told Claire, unwilling to meet her eyes, my shoulders heavy with guilt.

“He said
what
?” Her face drained of color.

“I told you. All he said was that he didn’t think it would work out this time. Anyway, Shannon said he’s taking Candy.”

“
Candy Andrews?
Do you know where she’s going next year? White Plains Junior College. She couldn’t even get into a four-year school.” She barked a bitter laugh. “I just—” Her eyes flashed wet with tears, but she bit her lip to stop them.

“Claire…please don’t…” I reached out to touch her arm, but she snatched it away.

“I don’t need your help,” she hissed, before turning into the bathroom and closing the door with a quiet click.

And so, prom night came, and Claire stayed home. In the years since, she’s joked about missing the prom, laughing it off with an airy shrug that can’t quite conceal the lingering sting. I’d like to think that by now she’s forgiven me for misreading David, for convincing her to tutor him, for leading her on, for being a busybody. But I know that’s not true. Because Claire has never again asked me for help.

The kettle whistles, and I hurry to turn off the stove, pouring scalding water over my tea bag. As Ed has said, China is the land of reinvention, and so it doesn’t surprise me that my shy, dowdy sister could transform herself from a duckling into prom queen. But that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned. The stainless steel kettle reminds me of Claire: polished to a gleam on the outside, boiling within.

B
y the time I get outside it’s almost 6:00
A.M
. and Ed’s voice is echoing in my ear. “You better make like a granny and get out there early, Isabelle, or your story is fucked.”

I have no idea what he means by the granny reference, but I know he’s right about the early start. Most street vendors cater
to hungry construction workers, and by 8:00
A.M
. they’ve sold out of food and are pedaling back home, already finished with a day’s work.

The early morning air feels cool and silky as I turn down one of the narrow streets that wind through our neighborhood. Back here in the alleys, people cling to the old way of life. Wiry hawkers squeeze three-wheeled carts through the slender lanes and announce their wares in a singsong chant. Stooped old men swing round wooden bird cages from their hands, giving their pets a breath of morning air. I once watched a white-haired woman hobble down the street and gasped as I looked down at her feet, which were bound into minute stumps.

Above, our apartment complex looms sleek and tall, a harbinger of doom for this lively, grubby area. Soon it will be destroyed, its crowded alleys turned first into a pile of rubble and then into a series of bleak and bland office buildings, all created in the name of modern China. But for now, life continues as it has for centuries, closely packed and bustling with the smells and sounds of old Beijing.

Chubby toddlers run in circles, their split potty-training trousers winking open to reveal bare bottoms. A small Pekinese prances along the gutter, enjoying his last gulps of freedom before being shut up, as Beijing law dictates, until evening. In a shady corner of the neighborhood’s playground a group of tiny wrinkled women stroke the air in the graceful motion of the Chinese martial art, tai chi. Their tranquil movements remind me of my mother’s mother, an elegant stiff-backed woman we called Laolao, who proclaimed the benefits of tai chi and a smoke-free lifestyle until her death at ninety.

The exercise concludes and the group erupts into a cacophony of chatter. These gray-haired grannies certainly look vigorous as they mill about, swinging their arms and gulping deep breaths.

I vow to reform my own high-fat, low-exercise existence, when I see them dive into their pockets and light up a tobacco field’s worth of cigarettes.

I continue down the street until I reach a small stretch that’s lined with ramshackle storefronts. Here each step brings a different smell, first an acrid wave of cigarette smoke, then the reek of garbage, then the cozy, wafting scent of fried dough. It’s a reminder of how closely packed life is here, where generations share bedrooms, neighborhoods share bathrooms, and stacks of napa cabbage are stored next to trash heaps.

I pause in front of a young woman who is deep-frying
youtiao
, long strips of dough, in an enormous, portable vat of boiling oil. As a kid, I used to eat these greasy, heavy wands of dough on Saturdays after Chinese school, accompanied by a salty bowl of soy milk and a stern lecture from my mother on my lack of discipline.

The wet dough puffs and sizzles as it hits the oil’s scalding surface. The vendor, an unsmiling woman with a toddler clinging to her legs, stacks a pile of fried dough sticks and makes an impatient gesture with her tongs.
“Ni yao bu yao?”
she asks. Do you want one? Shaking my head, I continue down the street.

I spot a crepe vendor and join the long line, admiring his compact, portable kitchen. He’s packed a coal-fired stove, grimy buckets of batter, and bowls of chopped cilantro and hot sauce onto the back of a three-wheeled cart, ready to be pedaled away at a moment’s notice. I watch as he swirls batter onto a flat griddle and delicately distributes a raw egg across the surface. After a jaunty flip, he sprinkles the other side with sesame seeds, cilantro, scallions, brushes it with a dark sauce, and adds a thin sheet of fried dough before folding the pancake into a square and tucking it into a wisp of plastic bag.

The line in front of me shuffles with hungry impatience, but the vendor’s movements remain unhurried. I admire the artful twist of his wrist as he spreads the batter into a large, paper-thin crepe, the flick of his spatula as he turns it over, the meditative sprinkle of sesame seeds. By the time it’s my turn, the long line has shrunk. As he pours a scoop of batter onto the griddle, I gesture at the griddle and ask,
“Zhongwen zenme shuo?”
How do you say it in Chinese?

“Jianbing!”
he replies with a glance that’s at once hostile and curious. I brace myself for the inevitable question.
“Na guo ren?”
Where are you from?

“I’m Chinese but I have an American passport.” I rattle off the words in Mandarin. Geraldine taught me the phrase last week and already it’s proved to be indispensable, short and tidy, though not strictly accurate.

“Mm.” He concentrates on turning the crepe.

“Are
jianbing
from Beijing?”

He snorts a scornful laugh, and for a moment I consider snatching the pancake from the griddle and running for the hills. But then I picture Ed’s impatient face as he shouts, “What do you mean you were afraid of the street food vendor? Are you a bloody pansy?”

Switching tactics, I smile broadly and try again. “Are
jianbing
from Beijing?”