Turnip Cake
I remember when we used to come to Chinatown together, the whole family. Our excursions would take us on an orbit from the Grand Street train exit going south. We would never drive. No parking in Chinatown, my dad would say, as my brother and I would pout with puckered lips and furled brows, dragging our deadfish bodies to put our shoes on. They were contrivances we had mastered at a young age even though, under the circumstances, we knew that dad would not renege. Mom was always in on our secret, but she would still try to cheer us up. But there will be egg tarts! or How about we end our trip with some milk tea? She would wink at us with a beaming smile and our limp bodies would be jolted as we rode out our thrill in gallops around our tiled floor.
From Grand Street we would go south towards Bayard Street. The mornings would smell of bread and butter wafting from the bakeries where pineapple buns, barbeque pork buns, and egg custards came fresh out of the oven. Fruit and vegetable vendors would line the streets with their arsenal. Dragon fruit, rambutan, and guava piled high in tumbling mounds. Pomelos, oranges, and grapefruit splayed out, tantalizing in all their citrus glory. Those selling vegetables would have crates stacked one on top of the other. The scattered leaves would be unbundled, still attached to its stem, some with yellow florets peeking from behind leaves like a bouquet of sunflowers draped by lily pads. Mom usually bought her vegetables from these makeshift stands even though they were mottled with soil. When I asked her once why she chose to buy dirt-stained vegetables from these hawkers instead of those washed and clean in a proper grocery store, she said: When they are stained with dirt, you know that the last place they were was rooted to the ground. That, I always trust.
On New Years, the streets would be thronged with people and navigating through the hoards was like worming through a mosh pit. Despite this, mom would always insist. We have to get the freshest ingredients for the turnip cake! Daikon was not easy to find from a vendor cart and so we jostled our way into the supermarket on these runs. I was mesmerized by the way mom sorted through the long daikon bulbs. She would pick them up, two at a time, one in each hand. Most were of equal size, at least to my discerning. She would be gentle with the daikon, not grabbing it ravenously or tossing it with irreverence. She would rest the bulbs on the palms of her hand regally and bounce them around patiently as if time had to catch up to her. While I could not ignore the cold fluorescent light from sabered lamps above or the miasma of pungent admixtures, mom would look undaunted. Like she was ensconced in a ritual.
How can you tell which one is good? I remember asking on one of our earliest trips together. Look at the head. They cannot be too green, otherwise they are not ripe. Don’t choose for size. They may contain more water content and less meat. Choose for weight. Sometimes the smaller ones are more densely packed. Here, you try. I was so keen to impress mom at that age. I picked up two bulbs in my tiny hands – one was disfigured like a hunchback and the other smooth as shale. As I lingered, not making any more progress in differentiating their weight, I tried channeling every kind of energy in me that could somehow imbue me with the utility of a scale; that could decipher the difference in gravity and essence in a thing. I peered at mom with a youthful uncertainty. Her look of earnest calmed me, releasing me from the spellbind of the pressure to get it right. It’s okay, it took me some time too. If you come to the grocery market with me more, you might get the hang of it!
—
I look at the two daikon in my hands and try my best to allow its weight to tip one hand and raise another like mom showed me. I try to discern whether its interior is packed with moisture or flesh. I even close my eyes, praying to the radish gods, to mother earth, to my ancestors, perhaps to the trinitarian god, summoning any and every divinity to provide me the necessary succor. To no avail, I open my eyes and choose the bigger bulb against mom’s better judgment.
Alright, what else is on the list? I ask my brother as he scrolls through a note on his phone. I think we might actually need one more daikon just to be sure. I bend down to the crate and pick up the smaller daikon I dropped just a moment ago. Lets see … dried shiitakes, scallions, and rice flour. He scans the marketplace and spots the scallions, then turns and beelines down the aisle. As I approach him, walking through the wake of his current, he is already inspecting the quality of the scallions. Each group of stalks are tightly wound together by two thin blue rubber bands with stray roots hanging at the bottom like tassels. He picks up a batch, twists it left and right, and shakes his head. He snatches another, flips it for further assessment, and again disapproves after seeing peeling layers. They’re scallions, I say with an added ounce of insouciance, I don’t think perfection is really what we’re aiming for here. He continues unperturbed by my flippant comments. I’m not looking for perfection, but I have standards. The top has to be vibrant and the bottom shouldn’t be peeling. When it comes to ingredients, I can hear my mom’s voice in my brother’s commentary and see her instincts in his reflexes. He tosses one bundle into our basket. Two for good measure. And then another.
We walk straight towards the fish market embedded into a corner like a cavern that smells of the sea. The merchants are clad in once-sterile shirts and crowned with paper white hats that remind me of the origami boats I folded as a kid. A full keel on the bottom with a pinched sail on top. They are barricaded by fish tanks topped with ice baths of a mélange of seafood corpses. The merchant and I make eye-contact, but his expression remains deadpan. Normally in a western grocery store, in like occurrence, the merchant would react with a solicitor’s warmth, attempting to wrangle you in with their kindness. Not here. At least, not usually. On days when I’m in my thoughts, I cannot help but wonder what they see when they see me. Can they sense that my Chinese is worse than subpar? Outwardly an adult, but linguistically a child stuck in a grown man’s body. Would they still offer such tepid glances if I looked different, wore different clothes or styled my hair in a different way? When I vacillate on purchasing seafood, this impervious countenance repels me. Reminds me of the chasm between the worlds from which we come. This gulf could hardly be felt when I came only as mom’s company, but when I started coming alone as an adult, the gulf opened its lips and pulled.
We make a couple turns and end up in an aisle of non-perishables. To those unfamiliar, navigating through these labyrinthine aisles can be quite disorienting. Maps of the floor plan do not exist and the convenient labels that hover like nimbus clouds categorizing aisles are nowhere to be found. If unseasoned shoppers expect to find anything, they must comb every aisle. But the troubles do not end there. The information of each item, whether it is the name, brand, ingredients, or nutritional guidelines, are usually printed in Chinese with the occasional botched English translation. The illiterate, like myself, are left to fend for themselves down to the very last detail.
Hey, remember these? I pick up a can of sliced peaches. I can almost taste the saccharine syrup on my tongue, swirling around my palate. How could I forget? It was an occasion whenever mom opened up a can of peaches. I hand him the can. Yeah I can still see that black couch with the faux-leather. A two seater, but of course, we insisted on fitting together, the three of us. Mom, wedged in by us on each side. She would fork slices from the tin, alternating between her two giddy little birds. My memory filters through a warm film. The amber crescents, dripping with viscous sugar, suspend in my mind. My brother and I share a sentimental smile. Then, he releases a guttural laugh – a sudden burst impelled by thought. We were so insatiable! Honestly, I don’t think she ever even ate a slice herself. That entire can of peaches, all for us. We exhale a cathartic sigh, attempting to grasp the moment frozen in time, unearthed. Attempting to sit with it a little longer before it fades.
Snapping us back, my brother hands me the peaches in a swift decisive motion. Alright, the shiitakes should be just at the end of the aisle. Not sure whether to return the peaches to the shelf, I place it into our basket.
We pace forward. He is focused on checking the items off the list and I try my best, vicariously, to do the same. The dried mushrooms perch at the head of an aisle and the sundry tower to the very top. Mom rarely cooked with regular mushrooms. Dehydrated mushrooms were her preference. More flavor. The mushroom water can be used for soup. I try to be assertive this time and select a bag at random. It has always astounded me how food that shrivels up cannot all be judged the same. When the tomatoes and peppers in my fridge shrivels, it signifies an expiration. Like the life that once ripened it has now vacated. The vegetable now merely a shell of what it once was. The expiration of a mushroom, on the other hand, is determined by dark pockmarks, slime, and the release of a noxious gas. But when it shrivels, it isn’t dying. It is immortalizing.
I rifle through the variety before me, but distinguishing the labels prove an impossible task. None of them say shiitake. How do you even tell? Chinese dried black mushroom. TAK SHING HONG dried mushroom. Then others, only Chinese characters. Some of the desiccated fungi have more flesh, some less, but the cap sizes are all relatively the same. The colors are likewise. Mud-brown canopies with caramel underbellies. I feel like an ill-equipped prospector with a treasure trove before me, but without the tools to determine its value. No dictionary to index for quality, common culinary uses, horticultural history. No compass or detector to point to the proper bag.
By the way, you heard about the fire right? My brother is now googling the brand names printed on each mushroom packet. The fire? He repeats my words without reciprocating attention like an echo returned after shouting into the dark night sky. The one at the archives of the Museum of Chinese in America. An image of firemen riffling through torched documents and vestigial ephemera flash in my mind. Oh yeah, the one on Centre Street right? I heard about that. He clicks his phone and the screen shutters to black. His resolve to find the proper bag shutters with it and he tosses the one in his hand into the basket. The museum is on Centre but the archives are on Mulberry. I hear it’ll be some time before they can sort through the aftermath to determine what is salvageable. A New Yorker piece, by staff writer Hua Hsu, listed off items swallowed in the conflagration like taking stock of inventory: books and magazines, printing blocks, photographs, restaurant menus, immigration documents and passports, a hand-painted T-shirt of a comedy troupe that only performed once. History is like a Matryoshka doll. The deeper you go, the more is found nested within. These items, once touchable, seeable, readable objects, will now only be archived through words in memory. The words etched in ink on the page opens the corridor to incinerated relics; those relics, pointing to a culture, a people, an ecosystem; that life pointing to stories of migrants whose lives were only inscribed into the bric-a-brac used for survival and into the seeds of their womb.
I read that only about forty thousand items were either catalogued or digitized, paling in comparison to what they had. We’re walking now to another aisle. I don’t think I’ve ever visited the museum before. It’s a shame. That is an insurmountable loss. He slows to snatch a couple bags of rice flour from a bottom ledge and continues without a disruption in pace. Like rolling through a stop sign. I know it’s out of the way, but maybe we can swing by Mulberry later to have a look? He looks reluctant. … Maybe grab some rice rolls across the street while we're at it? The thought of food entices. Yeah, let’s do it.
We arrive at the refrigerated section now and I spot the pressure-sealed packets of cured meats. Chinese sausage and cured pork belly are our final ingredients. I remove a cut of pork belly from the shelf, the thin layer of plastic against my fingers is cold to the touch. My brother tip-toes forward for better scrutiny. As his face inches toward the swine, the cold swarms him. Do you think she could have made the turnip cake this year? My brother straightens himself and swivels his stolid face towards me. Mmm, I mean, would you be ready for the potential meltdown in the kitchen? His derisive retort stuns. The space between us squeezes. It just feels a little cruel, you know? To take this from her. It’s her thing. Mom’s signature turnip cake. He offers a prefatory scoff and his body rolls with his eyes, shifting slightly away. Okay. I get it. You want to believe that everything will still go nice and smooth but… I interject, as a reflex, with a countervailing accusation. And you like to preempt disasters to shield from anything ever going awry. Dismissing my retaliation, he continues, but you weren’t there the last time when she rummaged through her spice cabinet searching for flour. She pulled out all the spice jars. Black pepper, white pepper, every kind of pepper there was. Coriander, cayenne powder, chili flakes. Black sesame, white sesame, salt, sugar, corn starch. She was shouting – where’s my flour, did someone use my flour! It was all laid out across the marble countertop. He pauses to allow me to catch up to this image. The drama ages in the silence. She must have emptied two whole cupboards. I could see it like a Van Gogh nature morte. Still life with seasonings and spices. Jar lids are opened. Cylindrical capsules are toppled and rolled close to the edge. Teetering above the precipice. No caption to color context. The blue-gray shades and tints of mocha brown saying enough of the gloom in the atmosphere.
She moved her flour just a year and a half ago, I think. My brother glares, knowing that I know, daring my rage to spill out in a reprisal of words like the opening of a dam. He must not know that that rage was not rage, but grief; and that that dam has already spilled. The deluge rises at every moment of every day and its roaring rush feels insuppressible. Believing in mom is my attempt to fight from drowning.
Gravity pulls my feet to the ground, chaining me to this deadlock moment in which I cannot abscond. Icy chills billow against us and tickle my skin, prodding a response. I wasn’t there, you’re right. And even though I wasn’t, I’m glad you were because it eases my conscience just a little that mom had the support she needed in her moments of distress. I certainly don’t want her to be in distress, but I also don’t want to surrender to the idea that she is entirely lost. I want to sustain hope in the fact that she still remembers, that she is still able. That she is still mom. He releases his belligerent stance. Eyes unflare, shoulders drop. His throat loosens from the sling of verbal pellets that were taut and ready to be slung. It’s not that I don’t want to hope also. But after seeing her in the emotional turmoil she was in, I never want her to experience that kind of pain again for as long as I can help it. I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to provide stability. To be her rock, you know?
I am comforted by that thought. Her rock. I get lost in that thought like jumping into a pile of autumn leaves and taking cover in its fortress. I look at the long blocky flesh in my hand, but at that moment, it could have been anything. I look off into the distance like seeing with my third eye. How could I not know? Mom taught me how to speak my first English words even though she herself was barely fluent. Dock! She read out as she pointed to a duck in a picture book. Pick! She repeated. A ruddy-cheeked pig smiling back at me. No pronunciations were more orthodox for me than mom’s, at that age. She would spoil us in stealth, too – coming home from the supermarket, where she worked, with a stash of sweets. Yanyan sticks, creme-filled koala puffs, and gummy hi-chews. Artificial sugar served both to satisfy our incorrigible craving and to erase the day’s void of mom and dad’s presence like palimpsest. Shhhhh! She would hush my brother and me. Don’t tell dad when he gets home or I’ll be in trouble. An easy secret to keep, considering that they would be devoured and no evidence left by the time of his late arrival. She would never let us forget to celebrate any occasions of significance either. She would prepare a feast that busied our mouths too much to ask for the recipes. Though different languages rolled off of our tongues, the table reminded us that our tongues could still sing to the same chord. It was why she gathered us there.
I look back at my brother and slide the suctioned packet into the basket. Yeah, I know.
—
Once we are south of Canal street, on Mott street, we slow to a stroll. Each year, lanterns are laced against the sky on this block from beginning to end. Chinese characters that I wished I was privy to are inked on these paper globes. The string lights intersperse the lacing and centerpieces of filigreed diamonds spangle the street. Not much changes in the décor from one year to another, but each year I allow my gaze to linger a little longer like a wide panning camera shot.
Wow, look at these lanterns. I exclaim to my brother, with an eye-twinkling wonder. Wait, hold up. With the sudden fear that this image would be lost into oblivion, I pull out my phone. Its infinite amount of storage space augments my memory bank. What I cannot remember, my phone remembers for me. I angle the lens in different degrees like a fisherman casting a rod. I bounce around within a five-feet radius as if I knew the science behind light and shadow, framing and linearity. After some time, the shot has been so edited by my attempt to capture the perfect memory that it is no longer what I originally saw.
I wish I knew what the characters said. I say this to my brother, with a tinge of remorse, knowing that once upon a time we had that opportunity in Chinese school. We took the delicate strokes of our imaginations of calligraphy and rendered the characters stiff and square. We churned them out in pencil repetitively in rows, hoping that eventually the elegance would bloom out of some innate quality of time lapsing, like the inflorescence of wildflower. If we stuck with Chinese school just a little longer, maybe we would. But it’s hard to have stuck with everything. You’re doing what you can now. My brother waxes tender. What, this? I gesture at the tote strapped around my shoulder. Learning how to make a turnip cake is hardly trying. I lower my camera. Maybe, but I think it’s more than you are chalking it out to be. It’s definitely more than you were doing before. He offers optimism as counterbalance. Ha. And what exactly was I doing before? Nothing. A seesaw of perspectives. Where is this all coming from? We’ve walked down this block like a hundred times. We see chinese characters everywhere. A flock of pigeons flit across the sky and disappear behind parapets. They’re different now. Before, they reminded me of what I had. Now, it reminds me of what I’m losing.
Our stroll becomes a lumber as if we were bearing stones in our bags. My eyes wander. A butcher is centered behind a window with a cleaver in one hand and a roast duck in another. The window is blurred just enough to obscure the decapitation. A toddler hobbles next to her grandmother in a dichromatic outfit. She is snacking on something scrumptious in one hand and holding the gaunt hand of her grandmother’s in the other. Her hair stands as if held by static. The best days of hers, I think. A man leans against a brick wall, taking a cigarette break. His eyes also circulate the perimeter aimlessly like mine. We do not make eye contact. He droops his head as if the sight alone has exasperated him. He takes a drag. The embers of his cigarette recede at his inhale. The span of the tobacco stick deplete by a slow burn. He releases a tunnel of smoke like a mythic god conjuring wind.
Tourists crawl the remainder of the block. White faces in souvenir shops searching for the cheapest I <3 Chinatown t-shirts. Some exit with straw hats like they’re ready to dip their bare feet into a rice paddy, pants cuffed, underneath the harsh heat of the sun. Maybe in another world. In this one, the conical hats will simply sit on ledges above a fireplace as a gimmick or an interesting talking point when guests are entertained. It may hang on a hook behind a door or be buried in a closet, unworn and forgotten. Copper figurines, once hammered from anvil, now gilded, stare out from shelves. Happy Buddhas, fierce lions, and sinuous dragons. Deities waiting to be dealt and exchanged to a traveler for dollars, repurposed from sacred symbols to mere records of a tour, an escapade.
We arrive at Mulberry and the window panes of the top two floors have been completely hollowed. No traces of glass sheets ever having existed. The red brick is bruised by blackened stains of char coughed out from above the empty frames. Inside the fourth floor windows, light descends through beams and jagged edges. A rough stitching of a crumbling ceiling. Through the windows of the top floor, white clouds are seen sailing across blue skies. Nothing remains of the roof. I imagine the floorboards on the fourth level scattered with detritus, flame-licked and water-cannoned, like flotsam from a sinking ship. It looks like just another derelict building waiting for a realtor to capitalize on prime real estate. Do we know what caused the fire? Like, could it have been arson? I let my brother’s practical and investigative question glide past my body. Inexplicable visceral pains stir within me like lapping waves of grief.
You know, I always saw the museum as just that. A museum. A place that held exhibits of interesting people from a somewhat distant history. I could step in there, pay a small entrance fee, and expect the curation to spark some intrigue. And I could walk out having learned new information – information that I never remembered. But it didn’t matter because remembering it was of no consequence. They were just nebulous facts. But it isn’t just that, is it? My brother attends eagerly to my soliloquy. I raise my palms. My eyes are glued to them as if pulling them up by gossamer threads. They slink upwards against the surface of my arm. Reacquaintance. They leap at my brother’s gaze. All of those exhibits were facts of our bodies. Yours and mine. To see this now, a history we never knew existed. One that we could see, touch, smell, and even hear and then suddenly also to have it incinerated. That is like being written and erased in one discontinuous stroke.
We crane our necks simultaneously. Sunlight kisses the fire escape from a neighboring building and distills shadows on the lower levels like rectilinear blinders. The red wall and gray mortar concealed by black and the layers of brick distorted. It’s true. Those archives carried our stories, but that isn’t all that the museum represented. I wait. What do you mean? He clicks his phone on to show me an instagram post by @chinatownartbrigade: “Statement to Hold Margaret Chin and the Museum of Chinese in America Accountable.” He points me down to the third paragraph:
“The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) was one of the first groups that met with Chin to negotiate a ‘community give back’ for building a new jail in Chinatown, and when publicly confronted, MOCA denied these allegations. MOCA as an institution has been complicit in the displacement and gentrification of Chinatown, and their decision to cash in on mass incarceration comes as no surprise.”
They’ve told our stories and preserved our artifacts, but they’ve also betrayed the very people whose stories they champion. The immigrants who come with empty pockets looking for a paycheck to paycheck job. The illiterate aunties and uncles. Those scraping the bottom of the barrel to get by. Supporting construction of both luxury condos and prisons in Chinatown will be the death of this community. People will be priced out and then merciless caged for the very conditions of their displacement. The place is a conundrum in itself. I remember this in Hsu’s piece too even though my mind chose to elide over a transaction so damning. But how else could they stay afloat? Who else would be able to preserve the stories of Chinatown? I deploy the questions to plug what is porous. They can still build their archives and have their exhibits, but not like this. He says this as if laying out the obvious.
Look around you. Those souvenir shops at every corner? Tourists running amuck. This museum is more essential than ever. These archives are our lifeblood. The sunlight wanes and shop lights along Bayard Street flick on one by one. He faces me. The people who live here are the lifeblood. The cashiers in the grocery stores, the cooks in the kitchen, the butchers, the tea merchants. The museum has stayed standing for as long as it has because it knows this. But when everyone is trying their best to survive, sometimes the lines between selling and preserving blurs. You might want it to be a neatly packaged time capsule of the past or for its existence to be unblemished, but what if that isn’t what it is? What then? I don’t want to be speechless, but I am. I try rapidly to search for a response like triggering a mental algorithm to compute every piece of data within but it’s as if his words wiped my mind clean. He stretches his arm down the east side and mimes a crest. This is it. This is what we need to hold onto.
I look outwards toward the crest as if he opened a portal into another world. Cars are parked bumper to bumper, flanking the street. No room to breath, to slide in, to slip out. Hurried travelers scurry the sidewalks with bags hooked tightly in their hands. Chefs run out for scant ingredients while hungry customers wait with bellowing stomachs. Shop owners who lose track of time arranging and rearranging herbs and teas and dried goods and medicinal elements now sprint to neighboring food stalls for a quick bite. Inside restaurant windows, I see kids. Some press lead pencils onto loose-leaf papers, practicing a language their parents would likely never read. Others enthralled by the screens of game consoles, lost into a universe that is not clinking pots and cast iron woks. Another staring out into the bright blue sky like she is praying to all the beings that live above. Sun and clouds, moon and stars, angels and ghosts. Is she thinking about her future? Is she thinking about the past? Does she feel trapped or free? Does she feel at home or displaced? Whatever it is she thinks, it looks like she is dreaming. And that dream rides the tides of these streets. Though reduced to paraphernalia representations and erased by english letters, I can see it in the strides and the strokes. Not a single denizen of Chinatown entered these gates without a dream. This is where dreams swim and float and breathe and live. I hug the turnips close to my chest. This is what we need to hold onto, I think.
—
What is that you’re holding? My mom asks in Cantonese. I am raking the last packet of rice flour from my tote. All the turnip cake ingredients are unbagged and spread out across the countertop. Flashes of mom’s incident splice into my mind like anamnesis. This was where the scene occurred. If I am to answer her question directly, it may lead to confusion. Out of her own confusion, she might disparage me for attempting a dish, especially one of which she is the quintessence, that I have no experience cooking. The conversation may spiral, quite literally. Explaining context like a dog chasing its tail. She might roil in frustration. It might escalate to a cascade of commands in that motherly way where unsolicited advice and orders are offered as aid but hit like pelts. None of the conversations I play out in my head end in our favor, but I try anyways.
I’m making turnip cake mom. Now positioned across from me at the counter, she sees a jar of little brown rafts buoyed in soiled water. I started the reconstitution before arriving at her house. She picks up the additional mushrooms I brought, still encased in packaging, and begins reading the print. Although she might be examining the details of the mushrooms, like the location in which it was foraged or the methods by which it was dehydrated, I wonder if she is searching for a code or insignia. A secret key that could anchor her back into our current moment in time.
Why are you making turnip cake? We only make that during the new year. Dad has decided this year to leave the red banners unhung on the walls to create a more adjustable environment. Either I reveal to her that Lunar New Year has just begun a week ago and usher in a series of denials or I continue a charade that keeps her in the delusion of normality. A scale does not exist to weigh out my options. I bite my lip.
Yeah mom, I’m just preparing for the New Years because I wanted to try to make the cake this year. If that is okay with you? A lie that buys me the truth of peace. Oh, of course! Where did you find the recipe? Do you need any help? I swish my hands against the nape of my neck to mop the sweat that announced my previous dilemma, clearing the way for the next. More time with mom in the kitchen only invites more possibility for meltdown. It would demand me to be more inventive with my lie. I could try my hand at this fiction, but I’m terrible at multitasking so I defer. It’s okay mom, I think I got it. I’ve watched you make it enough and understand the general idea. I got a recipe from online to guide me along. I’ll call you if I need any help okay? She nods and retreats into the living room. I’ll just be right here, she cries out.
Twenty ounces of daikon radish. I place both daikons into a steel mixing bowl like readying babies for a bath. The electric scale tells me that it is a tad too heavy so I transfer the radish with traces of unripeness over to the chopping station. A clean cut right at the head. The stains of lime green by the stem are discarded for another time as if detaching it would change its substance.
The preparation of the radish is more extensive than all the other ingredients. It is the star of the show. I pluck the protruding roots that whisker from the body and deskin long shreds that fall off at the tip so that only the naked flesh remains. Grating the daikon is a sort of arduous pounding. I slide the body against the gnawing grooves with force as radish blood splatters. A heap of starched confetti, soaked and processed, waits at the other end and defecation leaks from underneath it. An ambitious pearl of fluid begins to form a canal within the moat of my wooden board.
Up and down, up and down. The flesh is being cleaned right off as the daikon scrubs. A sound like sandpaper against a plank of pine. I rotate it periodically so that the surface tilts and levels. The constant pumping motion punishes my palms. When the radish has been completely transformed and rises on a high hill in the steel bowl, it looks like ashes in an urn and feels like its own kind of ritual. I stare at it for a little too long; part breather, part pat on the back. I plop it onto a pan set to low heat. The recipe instructs me to stir intermittently. More fluids are released as the pool sloshes against the tufts. By the time I drain the end product and the radish is packed like a snowball, it is reduced only to a fraction of what I started with. The water content extracted is much more than expected.
What is left of the prep work is straightforward but laborious. Slicing and dicing through the cured meat tests my already-sore hand but I persist, not wanting to cut any corners. It needs to be perfect just as mom would have it. I can almost hear my palm squealing, begging for an end to the interminable abuse. Almost now. I sear all the fixings and listen for the sizzle of the oil like melody. When the pork belly pops a crescendo one by one, I know that is my cue. Everything is now stirred in an enormous pot with flour and cornstarch, salt and sugar. Water content from both radish and shiitake are added to the slurry before finally patting it down to steam. I set the timer to fifty minutes. To delay further interactions with mom, or better yet to give myself time to strategize, I decide to rinse off the dishes no longer in use and organize the condiments back into their compartments.
I sit down with mom who is now rewatching baby videos of my brother and me. We are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The person behind the camera, likely my dad, unburdens the recording from narration and the only sounds that are heard are faint footsteps of rubber against linoleum. He stalks nearer to my brother and I, slumped comfortably in a double stroller. My mom rolls us along, but suddenly, she is drawn as if by force of gravity to something outside of view at stage right. The lens remains on us. I stretch my arms forward for mom and for a second, I think I hear a soft grunt come from my mouth. Nothing so loud that the human ear can detect behind digital barriers. Mom has just walked off set. The camera freezes on the two of us momentarily, abandoned, before it swings to the right and mom is transfixed onto a painting of a woman with eyes fluttered like half moons lying supine. Her expression is simper, of mystery and ambiguity. She cradles a baby wrapped in loincloth whom she does not face. The baby is as transfixed to this woman as my mom is now to the portrait, their arms are locked in an extension and their face speaks of their wanting. A shrill cry pierces from the camera’s edge and a deep voice. Sir, there is no filming here. The recording shutters to black and the tape ends.
My mom smiles a pensive smile, filled with leftover nostalgia not done with her yet. She turns to me. What were you doing in the kitchen? The replay begins, but unlike tape recordings, the effects of these tête-à-têtes are unpredictable. I’m just making some turnip cake. Practicing because I want to try making it for some friends in the new year. She is surprised once again that I did not ask for her assistance. I apologize ruefully again, but this time I steer the conversation elsewhere. I carry her on my back and nosedive into a time of clear vision. A time entered where she is able to take the lead. Mom, it must have been difficult for you and dad back then as migrants in New York City. I can’t imagine salaries coming from a Chinese restaurant cook and a supermarket clerk amounting to much. Is this what you imagined life would look like or did you have a different dream?
I mean, who doesn’t have dreams? Anyone who has the guts to cross an ocean and leave their families could not be chartered unless by big dreams. It isn’t like it is now. Moving away from home for college or moving to a new city for a job. You have money to buy a plane ticket. Be home in a matter of hours. Back then, once we left, we didn’t know when we would see our kin again, if ever we did. She clicks the remote to eject the tape from the VCR. She still uses the old machine regularly since none of us have the savvy to transfer these analogs onto a disc or a flash drive. The film strip has been so tattered from overuse that the hiccups are no longer occasional. What was your dream? She speaks lucidly now without rigidity and I let her strut and pirouette freely. The floor is hers. I watch with anticipation.
You’re right. When dad and I first arrived, making a living was harsh. We talked about how we could make more. Maybe enterprise. We did not come to America so that life would be more difficult. We came for stability and to pave the road to a bright future for our sons. If you are an immigrant in this country, that is what you came for. You remember how we used to buy our vegetables from the vendors on the street? She is now uncovering my memories. I nod yes. She stands and saunters over to a vertical shelf to retrieve a photo album. She shows me a sepia-toned picture of a balding man with side fringes standing next to dad. That is your Uncle Lee. You may not remember him, but the three of us discussed starting a food sourcing factory that served the vendors, many of whom were my friends. Your aunties and uncles. We wanted to create a self-contained supply that would not only give vendors trust in where their inventory came from, but also to make a way for Chinese migrants to imagine a path forward to farming again. Long story short, it never happened. Your dad felt like it was too big a risk.
The ending feels obfuscating even though I could see her eyes dilating as she spoke. She smooths out the bump in the road dismissively as if it was no hurdle at all. I don’t believe it. And I don’t want the streak of lucidity to be curtailed. Just like that? You and dad had a discussion and simply decided that this huge decision was not an option? Her volume changes to a mutter. Though no one else is in the house besides the two of us, she speaks as if in secret. Not wanting even invisible spirits to hear. It was a long time ago but no, it was not an easy decision. I missed home then. Missed my sisters on our family farm. I loved your dad but he had no ambition and that contention almost tore us apart. I eventually threatened to leave. During those days, I thought about it often. I had sleepless nights when I would clamber to the kitchen and light a candle. I sat in utter silence thinking, should I? Should I just leave now? And that candle wick would burn and burn. Sometimes a gust of wind would blow from the open window and the flame would bend. I always waited for it to be overwhelmed and it never was. The story trickles out in whispers like the slow drip of a neglected basement pipe. From the kitchen, I hear the clack clack clacking of the steam pot and soft susurrations of vapor spouting and vanishing. The strains between my parents astonish me because of my image of them, especially my image of mom. Always washed in immaculate light.
Truth be told, it was your aunt, my sister, who convinced me to stay one night. You know, the one who lives in Guangzhou? I was unhappy and really could not think straight. Caught in a spiral. She asked me over the phone what made me fall in love with your dad. Of course, this was a rhetorical question because we had plenty of these talks in the past. I said, well, because I never doubted his character. Rich or not, I knew I would have his heart. And there it was. She said, ‘Exactly. You could have someone with dreams so far-reaching, so grand, that they could make every last cent there is to make, but that doesn’t really tell you whether or not he is good. You have a good man. It’s not about all that other stuff.’
The timer alarm rings. Beep, beep, beep. My turnip cake’s fifty minutes is up. Mom is startled, not knowing where the ringing is coming from and for what. I calm her and tell her for a third time that I’m making a turnip cake. I race over down the narrow hallway to the kitchen to turn off the fire. The drumming water simmers and I remove the pan from the pot. The surface of the cake gleams with a moisture that threatens collapse. I let it cool, hoping that evaporation might rescue the cake.
Mmm, it smells good in there! I feel the gentle quake of mom approaching and my shame spills out in a gargle of self-criticism. I’m making turnip cake, but I don’t think it turned out so well. The recipe said to use a cup and a quarter of water which is what I did. I’m not sure if I was supposed to wrap the lid with a towel so that it could catch the steam. The cake looks a little mushy and not like you usually made it for us. It looks all wrong. Either I added too many fillings or there wasn’t enough radish or flour. I don’t even know if I can slice it. I don’t know what I did wrong. My elbows drop onto the counter before the cooling cake and my head hangs. Mom does not say a word.
She hovers close now and takes a look at my creation. Flip it, she says. Hesitant, I place a plate above the pan. I flip it in one fluid motion. My fingertips touch the rim of the plate and mom's eyes meet mine. I uncover, ready for the unpredictable.
The cake is lopsided and globs melt and slide off the sides like molten lava. I cover my face with both hands. I am ready to heave the cake and call it a day. You know, I remember the first turnip cake I tried to make. It wasn’t too far off from this one. You know what your aunt told me? My hands slide down my face and scrape the cliffs of my jaw. She said it was the radish. You can’t always tell when it is chosen, but only after the water has been fully drained. It’s so tempting to choose the bigger ones. That’s when I learned that you can’t choose for size.
A blade of dusk light pierces our honey wood floors. The density is what determines whether or not a radish is good, I say. Exactly.
She opens a drawer and grabs a knife by its hilt. She carves off a small chunk and takes a bite. Mmm, yes. This tastes perfect. Her tongue, singing, levitates me.
I remove a serving platter from the cupboards and we get ready to fry.
About the author
Kevin Hu is a writer based out of Brooklyn, NY. His writing has previously appeared in the Asian Americans Writer Workshop, Inheritance Magazine, and the Lit Hub, amongst others.