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She glances up at me. Or in my direction, more accurately. I can’t remember the last time my mother looked directly at me.
This is the unspoken agreement between us—she speaks to me in her native tongue, I speak to her in mine. I know from years of her demanding my enrollment in Korean school on Saturdays, she thinks that in an ideal world, I would speak only Korean at home. But there’s a feeling of suffocation that comes with needing to simplify my thoughts into the limited vocabulary I know, a dull pang of shame when I can’t arrive at the correct formal conjugation. So I continue to use English and she’ll continue to ask me not to.
omg twin… shes just like me fr
It wouldn’t help to tell her that the woman she’s grieving is someone I felt like I barely knew.
“Number five is a mandoline.” I look down at what I’ve written. Grater. Like what he’s doing to my nerves. I narrow my eyes at him. “A mandolin is an instrument. Like a musical one, not a kitchen one.” He laughs like I’m making a joke. His round eyes crinkle when he does, making him look so youthful. Then his smile drops as he realizes I’m serious and I watch as disbelief visibly replaces his mirth.
this made me LOL
Then he easily rushes past me, sauntering off into the emptying hallway. In no time at all, he’s out of sight, and I realize he’d been slowing his pace to walk by my side.
I feel even more like a farce in this class, as I’m pretty sure my classmates’ idea of a Dutch oven does not involve bedcovers and noxious gas.
HELP
I’ve already read and edited a draft of Meredith’s personal statement she wrote over the summer. It’s a heartwarming story about coming out to her parents and finding power in public policy. It’s excellent. It’s quintessentially Meredith. I just don’t know what it means to be quintessentially Eliza.
Eventually, he gets the projector to mirror the computer screen and the DVD he brought starts to play. From the intro, it seems to be a Disney film, but I can’t exactly tell which one.
omg is it ratatouille
My laugh comes so suddenly, I almost choke on it. “Oh my God. Is this Ratatouille?”
HELP I WAS RIGHT
“Not even a comparison,” I say. “How did you know how to make this?” He shrugs, breaking one of his eggs with the back of his spoon. “I didn’t really grow up around anything special. Not like you and miyeokguk. Nothing feels like it belongs to me, so I just try out every kind of cuisine I can figure out.”
It occurs to me that I should be considering the length of his stays in addition to their frequency. For the first time, I sense that he doesn’t use his kitchen time just to get ahead, but maybe also to stay away.
As I pull away from the school, I catch a glimpse of Wesley in the rearview mirror. But he isn’t in the parking lot, or in a car. He’s on the sidewalk, walking home.
and if i cry
Suddenly, my memories of my mom alone on our tiled kitchen floor here in Austin feel much colder. Something that used to be a symbol of community turned into solitude. Why did I never join her? Why didn’t my dad?
She shrugs. “I came to America with a degree and college journalism awards, but it didn’t really matter for me. I realized you can be in a rush to learn everything, get to a new place, and have everybody believe you know nothing. Like only a certain sort of knowledge is valuable.”
I tell myself to ignore the strength of his grip around my hand and the warmth that burns at the nape of my neck. I ignore the way that for the first time, I notice what he smells like. Some cousin of vanilla, but warmer. Spicier. I turn all my brain off, because my thoughts are too scrambled to be coherent.
My mom laughs at my final product, and the sound makes me start. When was the last time I heard that?
“I’m just saying, one of us can teach you something that’ll help you in college.” He picks up one of my mother’s gimbap, a perfect, colorful circle that took hours to create, and squints at it with one eye. “This is just hobby, not science.” Then he eats it and walks out of the kitchen.
oh...
“You don’t have things you’re passionate about, only things that you’re good at.” “What’s the difference?”
Have I ever asked him about anything other than Culinary Arts? Besides the one time he mentioned not getting along with his mother, has he ever spoken about himself? His world outside school could be crumbling apart and I’d have no idea because I never took a second to consider him as anything other than an obstacle in the way of a prize.
But it feels like confirmation when he finally says, “Are you going to make me feel pathetic if I ask you for help?” “Like how you make me feel because I can’t chop an onion?” “Do I really make you feel that way?” There’s a softness now, the slightest hint of woundedness written across his brow.
The smile on her face makes her look just a little younger. Almost like she’s on her way back to being her April self. This is the secret I’ve realized: that it’s only when she can lose herself in memories that she paradoxically becomes more like herself.
When my mom goes back to her lessons and I’m dutifully washing the dirty dishes, I am thinking about how much wisdom Halmeoni could have given me if only I had the language to hear it.
“When people blend Asian food with Western food, it doesn’t feel like a fun experiment to me,” he says. “It feels like they’re trying to make our food more palatable to the Western audience, or, like . . . I don’t know, like they’re trying to disguise it? Oh, you don’t like curry? Think of it as an Asian-inspired stew. Dumplings? Ravioli with an Asian twist.”
I hear the click of a camera shutter and see that Wesley has snapped a selfie of us with our food. “Delete that! Curry is not even on the syllabus,” I protest. “This one’s just for me.” Wesley gazes down at the photo he’s taken like he’s about to say something else, but instead he locks his phone and tucks it away.
GUYS ITS STARTING
To him, I was a representation of all that he wasn’t, but was expected to be.
Our sophomore year, we dressed in all pink and went as the Plastics from Mean Girls, which was particularly hilarious because out of all the characters in that movie, we were probably most like Kevin Gnapoor.
LOL
Kareena rolls her eyes. “Elphaba. I figured I could buy a normal witch costume and paint myself green and—voilà. An effortful costume that will attract musical theater fans, too.”
i stg if jess is glinda i will scream
“You’re applying to college this year?” she asks. And that’s when I realize that even though she’s present in the moments that we’re cooking together, she is still so lost in her own sea.
It’s the hypocrisy of my dad asking my mother to support me when he has hardly supported her through the last months. He tiptoes, whispers, never confronts the reality of her grief, and yet feels like he can demand more from her in the name of being a good parent to me. Who’s a good partner to her? Who’s a good daughter to her?
She glances over at Kareena before looking back at me. I wonder if she’s surprised that I’m trying to make conversation, or if it’s something else. Jess says, “I’m going as Galinda from Wicked.”
SHUTUP ID START FLIPPING TABLES
“Eliza, don’t you know the most enticing way to spend my Friday nights is to hang out with you?”
jaw dropped
Beyond an appreciation for Korean cuisine, Eliza has also taught me about authenticity to self. She is someone whose skills and successes are uniquely her own, who creates her own definitions and goals, and who inspires me to nurture ambition like it’s a friend. She brings discipline to the kitchen, a thorough understanding of why something works, and an excitement to learn more than what’s required of her. Her approach to cooking is evidence that cooking lies between science and art. If cooking with others is an exchange, what I have given Eliza is time and what she has given me is
...more
guys im crying
He takes a deep breath. It sounds desperate. “Eliza, please kiss me.”
PLS I GASPED
“Eomma!” The indignation in my tone verges on hostility. “Stop pretending you know what’s going on. You don’t. You haven’t in a long time.”
my heart just sank
The photo booth light flashes as it captures a photo of two people kissing. One is dressed in a beautiful, shimmering sky-blue dress that poofs around her like a princess. I can only see the back of her head, but her blond hair is curled into perfect ringlets. The other girl is dressed in a witch’s costume with a pointed black hat.
WAIT I WASNT EXPECTING THIS IM GAGGED
I look at her, purposefully boring straight into her eyes, taking effortful measures to keep my expression serene. “I’m not ignoring you. I just don’t have anything to say. I’m sure you understand.”
oof
I can only see the unmistakable horror on her face when Wesley pulled open their photo booth curtain. Like the idea of me knowing about something so personal was a nightmare of hers. I was her Halloween monster, someone demanding to see the most private parts of her, interrupting what should have been a cherished moment with my perverse sense of entitlement.
“The world our parents came from is not home to us. You can’t blame yourself for not missing something you never really knew.”
this whole book is hitting home
Without saying anything, I enter the room and take the last available seat in the first row so that I don’t have to sit next to them. I know then that this is going to be a pattern. The girls are no longer the girls, the group chat name will stay stagnant, and I can’t go back to how things were.
Wesley’s expression is so earnest, it nearly winds me. It’s a foreign feeling, to have someone be so openly caring. To have someone let you know their secrets, but more than that, to have someone want you to know their secrets. It comes with an inexpressible feeling of gratitude.
“It’s hard to explain, Eliza, but sometimes it’s like . . . we’re ships in the night about some things. I say something and you misunderstand, or it’s the other way around. And pointing that out feels like opening a door to a fight, which neither of us ever wants, so then it seems easier to just . . . keep the door closed.” I wish I didn’t understand what she means, but I do.
I think of how every time I’ve messed up in the kitchen, my mom or Wesley were always there to fix it. How making that mistake then meant that I tried harder not to repeat it next time. How some mistakes were small enough that when you tasted the end product, it was like it never happened. Maybe there was something to be said about letting go of the reins and knowing you would end up okay anyway.
When I leave my bedroom and turn the corner to go down the staircase, Wesley is standing right there. I gasp, and my heart leaps into my throat.
cut the fucking cameras
I notice his key ring dangling from his fingers and I realize he was so desperate to get here on time that he drove his own car. I want to sob.
NO MAKE IT STOP ILL CRY
Her bottom lip trembles and her chest heaves before she finally gets the words out. “All I want is my mom, too,” my mom says in English, like she’s using the language as a weapon. “And no one is here for me. Not even my own family.” She takes the soaked recipes and flees the kitchen.
Every night, wanting someone to grieve with her, while the only people who could skirted further and further away.
“Eliza, I like you so much,” he murmurs, and this time, I know he’s falling asleep. He’s barely conscious. “I’m done pretending I don’t. And I like you so much more now that I know you can cook something on your own.” He tries to smirk, but his face is already trying to sleep.
I wonder what my halmeoni would think. I wonder if she’d approve of me adding noodles to her dakdoritang, or whether she’d think my third scoop of gochugaru made it too spicy. I can’t help but think that she would like it.
