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SIMPLE RECIPES
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X here is a simple recipe for making rice. My father taught it to me when I was a child. Back then, I used to sit up on the kitchen counter watching him, how he sifted the grains in his hands, sure and quick, removing pieces of dirt or sand, tiny imperfections. He swirled his hands through the water and it turned cloudy. When he scrubbed the grains clean, the sound was as big as a field of insects. Over and over, my father rinsed the rice, drained the water, then filled the pot again.
The instructions are simple. Once the washing is done, you measure the water this way — by resting the tip of your index finger-on the surface of the rice. The water should reach the bend of your first knuckle.
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Simple Recipes
My father did not need instructions or measuring cups. j He closed his eyes and felt for the waterline. j
Sometimes I still dream my father, his bare feet j flat against the floor, standing in the middle of the I kitchen. He wears old buttoned shirts and faded sweatpants drawn at the waist. Surrounded by the gloss of the kitchen counters, the sharp angles of the stove, the fridge, the shiny sink, he looks out of place. This memory of him is so strong, sometimes it stuns me, the detail with which I can see it. .
Every night before dinner, my father would perform this ritual — rinsing and draining, then setting the pot in the cooker. When I was older, he passed this task on to me but I never did it with the same care. I went through the motions, splashing the water around, jabbing my finger down to measure the ,water,-level. Some nights the rice was a mushy gruel. I worried that 1 I could not do so simple a task right. "Sorry," I would say to the table, my voice soft and embarrassed. In answer, my father would keep eating, pushing the rice into his mouth as if he never expected anything different, as if he noticed no difference between what he did so well and I so poorly. He would eat every last mouthful, his chopsticks walking quickly across the plate. Then he would rise, whistling, and clear the table, every motion so clean and sure, I would be convinced by him that all was well in the world.
n
My father is standing in the middle of the kitchen. In his right hand he holds a plastic bag filled with water. Caught inside the bag is a live fish.
The fish is barely breathing, though its mouth opens and closes. I reach up and touch it through the plastic bag, trailing my fingers along the gills, the soft, muscled body, pushing my finger overtop the eyeball. The fish looks straight at me, flopping sluggishly from side to side.
My father fills the kitchen sink. In one swift motion he overturns the bag and the fish comes sailing out with the water. It curls and jumps. We watch it closely, me on my tiptoes, chin propped up on the counter. The fish is the length of my arm from wrist to elbow. It floats in place, brushing up against the sides of the sink.
I keep watch over the fish while my father begins the preparations for dinner. The fish folds its body, trying to turn or swim,' the water( nudging overtop. Though I ripple tiny circles around it with my fingers, the fish stays still, bobbing side-to-side in the cold water.
For many hours at a time, it was just the two of us. While my mother worked and my older brother
MADELEINE THIEN
Simple Recipes
played outside, my father and I sat on the couch, flipping channels. He loved cooking shows. We watched Wok with Yan, my father passing judgement on Yan's methods. I was enthralled when Yan transformed orange peels into swans. My father sniffed. "I can do that," he said. "You don't have to be a genius to do that." He placed a sprig of green onion in water and showed me how it bloomed like a flower. "I know many tricks like this," he said. "Much more than Yan."
Still, my father made careful notes when Yan demonstrated Peking Duck. He chuckled heartily at YanV punning. "Take a wok on the wild side!" Yan / said, pointing his spatula at the camera. "
"Ha ha!" my father laughed, his shoulders shaking. " Wok on the wild side!"
In the mornings, my father took me to school. At three o'clock, when we came home again, I would rattle off everything I learned that day. "The brachio-saurus," I informed him, "eats only soft vegetables."
My father nodded. "That is like me. Let me see your forehead." We stopped and faced each other in the road. "You have a high forehead," he said, leaning down to take a closer look. "All smart people do."
I walked proudly, stretching my legs to match his steps. I was overjoyed when my feet kept time with his, right, then left, then right, and we walked like a single unit. My father was the man of tricks, who sat
for an hour mining a watermelon with a circular spoon, who carved the rind into a castle.
My father was born in Malaysia and he and my mother immigrated to Canada several years before I was born, first settling in Montreal, then finally in Vancouver. While I was born into the persistence of the Vancouver rain, my father was born in the wash of a monsoon country. When I was young, my parents tried to teach me their language but it never came easily to me. My father ran his thumb gently over my mouth, his face kind, as if trying to see what it was that made me different.
My brother was born in Malaysia but when he immigrated with my parents to Canada the language left him. Or he forgot it, or he refused it, which is also common, and this made my father angry. "How can a child forget a language?" he would ask my mother. "It is because the child is lazy. Because the child chooses not to remember." When he was twelve years old, my brother stayed away in the afternoons. He drummed the soccer ball up and down the back alley, returning home only at dinner time. During the day, my mother worked as a sales clerk at the Woodward's store downtown, in the building with the red revolving W on top.
In our house, the ceilings were yellowed with grease. Even the air was heavy with it. I remember that
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I loved the weight of it, the air that was dense with the smell of countless meals cooked in a tiny kitchen, all those good smells jostling for space.
The fish in the sink is dying slowly. It has a glossy sheen to it, as if its skin is made of shining minerals. I want to prod it with both hands, its body tense against the pressure of my fingers. If I hold it tightly, I imagine I will be able^to fe^el i£s fluttering heart. Instead, I lock eyes with the fish.' You re feeling verrrry sleepy, I tell it. You're getting verrrry tired.
Beside me, my father chops green onions quickly. He uses a cleaver that he says is older than I am by' many years. The blade of the knife rolls forward and backward, loops of green onion gathering in a pyramid beside my father s wrist. When he is done, he rolls his sleeve back from his right hand, reaches in through the water and pulls the plug.
The fish in the sink floats and we watch it in silence. The water level falls beneath its gills, beneath its belly. It drains and leaves the sink dry. The fish is lying on its side, mouth open and its body heaving. It leaps sideways and hits the sink. Then up again. It curls and snaps, lunging for its own tail. The fish sails into the air, dropping hard. It twitches violently.
My father reaches in with his bare hands. He lifts the fish out by the tail and lays it gently on the counter.
Simple Recipes
While holding it steady with one hand, he hits the head with the flat of the cleaver. The fish falls still, and he.begins to clean it.
n
In my apartment, I keep the walls scrubbed clean. I open the windows and turn the fan on whenever I prepare a meal. My father bought me a rice cooker when I first moved into my own apartment, but I use it so rarely it stays in the back of the cupboard, the cord wrapped neatly around its belly. I have no longing for the meals themselves, but I miss the way we sat down together, our bodies leaning hungrily forward while my father, the magician, unveiled plate after plate. We laughed and ate, white steam.'fogging my mother's glasses until she had to take them off and lay them on the table. Eyes closed, ,she would eat, crunchy vegetables gripped in her chopsticks, the most vivid green.
n
My brother comes into the kitchen and his body is covered with dirt. He leaves a thin trail of it behind as he walks. The soccer ball, muddy from outside, is encircled in one arm. Brushing past my father, his face is tense.  • :
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MADELEINE THIEN
Beside me, my mother sprinkles garlic onto the fish. She lets me slide one hand underneath the fish's head, cradling it, then bending it backwards so that she can fill the fish's insides with ginger. Very carefully, I turn the fish over. It is firm and slippery, and beaded with tiny, sharp scales.
At the stove, my father picks up an old teapot. It is full of oil and he pours the oil into the wok. It falls in a thin ribbon. After a moment, when the oil begins crackling, he lifts the fish up and drops it down into the wok. He adds water and the smoke billows up. The sound of the fish frying is like tires on gravel, a sound so loud it drowns out all other noises. Then my father steps out from the smoke. "Spoon out the rice," he says as he lifts me down from the counter.
My brother comes back into the room, his hands muddy and his knees the colour of dusty brick. His soccer shorts flutter against the backs of his legs. Sitting down, he makes an angry face. My father ignores him.
Inside the cooker, the rice is flat like a pie. I push the spoon in, turning the rice over, and the steam shoots up in a hot mist and condenses on my skin. While my father moves his arms delicately over the stove, I begin dishing the rice out: first for my father, then my mother, then my brother, then myself. Behind me the fish is cooking quickly. In a crockery pot, my father steams cauliflower, stirring it round and round.
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Simple Recipes
My brother kicks at a table leg. "What's the matter?" my father asks. He is quiet for a moment, then he says, "Why do we have to eat fish?" "You don't like it?"
My brother crosses his arms against his chest. I see the dirt lining his arms,-dark and hardened. I imagine chipping it off his body with a small spoon.
"I don't like the eyeball there. It looks sick."
My mother tuts. Her nametag is still clipped to her blouse. It says Woodward's, and then, Sales Clerk "Enough," she says, hanging her purse on the back of the chair. "Go wash your hands and get ready for supper."
My brother glares, just for a moment. Then he begins picking at the dirt on his arms. I bring plates of rice to the table. The dirt flies off his skin, speckling the tablecloth. "Stop it," I say crossly.
"Stop it" he says, mimicking me.
"Hey!" My father hits his spoon against the counter. It pings, high-pitched. He points at my brother. "No fighting in this house."
My brother looks at the floor, mumbles something, and then shuffles away from the table. As he moves farther away, he begins to stamp his feet.
Shaking her head, my mother takes her jacket off. It slides from her shoulders. She says something to my father in the language I cant understand. He
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merely shrugs his shoulders. And then he replies, and I think his words are so familiar, as if they are words I should know, as if maybe I did know them once but then I forgot them. The language that they speak is full of soft vowels, words running together so that I cant make out the gaps where they pause for breath.
My mother told me once about guilt. Her own guilt she held in the palm of her hands, like an offering. But your guilt is different, she said. You do not need to hold on to it. Imagine this, she said, her hands running along my forehead, then up into my hair. Imagine, she said. Picture it, and what do you see?
A bruise on the skin, wide and black.
A bruise, she said. Concentrate on it. Right now, its a bruise. But if you concentrate, you can shrink it, ^ compress it to the size of a pinpoint. And then, if you want to, if you see it, you can blow it off your body like a speck of dirt.
She moved her hands along my forehead. '
I tried to picture what she, said. I pictured blowing it away like so much nothing, just these little pieces that didn't mean anything, this complicity that I could magically walk away from. She made me believe in the strength of my own thoughts, as if I could make appear what had never existed. Or turn it around. Flip
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Simple Recipes
it over so many times you just lose sight of it, you lose the tail end and the whole thing disappears into smoke.
My father pushes at the fish with the edge of his spoon. Underneath, the meat is white and the juice runs down along the side. He lifts a piece and lowers it carefully onto my plate.
Once more, his spoon breaks skin. Gingerly, my father lifts another piece and moves it towards my brother.
"I don't want it," my brother says.
My father s hand wavers. "Try it," he says, smiling. "Take a wok on the wild side."
"No.". ■ . ■ ~
My father sighs and places the piece on my mother's plate. We eat in silence, scraping our spoons across the dishes. My parents use chopsticks, lifting their bowls and motioning the food into their mouths. The smell of food fills the room.
Savouring each mouthful, my father eats slowly, head tuned to the flavours in his mouth. My mother takes her glasses off, the lenses fogged, and lays them on the table. She eats with her head bowed down, as if in prayer.
Lifting a stem of cauliflower to his lips, my brother sighs deeply. He chews, and then his face
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changes. I have a sudden picture of him drowning, his hair waving like grass. He coughs, spitting the mouthful back onto his plate. Another cough. He reaches for his throat, choking.
My father slams his chopsticks down on the table. In a single movement, he reaches across, grabbing my brother by the shoulder. "I have tried," he is saying. "I don't know what kind of son you are. To be so ungrateful." His other hand sweeps by me and bruises into my brothers face.
My mother flinches. My brothers face is red and his mouth is open. His eyes are wet.
Still coughing, he grabs a fork, tines aimed at my father, and then in an unthinking moment, he heaves it at him. It strikes my father in the chest and drops.
"I hate you! You're just an asshole, you're just a fucking asshole chink!" My brother holds his plate in his hands. He smashes it down and his food scatters across the table. He is coughing and spitting. "I wish you weren't my father! I wish you were dead."
My father's hand falls again. This time pounding downwards. I close my eyes. All I can hear is someone screaming. There is a loud voice. I stand awkwardly, my hands covering my eyes.
"Go to your room," my father says, his voice shaking.
And I think he is talking to me so I remove my hands.
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But he is looking at my brother. And my brother is looking at him, his small chest heaving.
A few minutes later, my mother begins clearing the table, face weary as she scrapes the dishes one by one -over the garbage.
I move away from my chair, past my mother, onto the carpet and up the stairs.
Outside my brother's bedroom, I crouch against the wall. When I step forward and look, I see my father holding the bamboo pole between his hands. The pole is smooth. The long grains, fine as hair, are pulled together, at intervals, jointed. My brother is lying on the floor, as if thrown down and dragged there. My father raises the pole into the air.
I want to cry out. I want to move into the room between them, but I can't.
It is like a tree falling, beginning to move, a slow arc through the air.
The bamboo drops silently. It rips the skin on my brothers back. I cannot hear any sound. A line of blood edges quickly across his body.
The pole rises and again comes down. I am afraid of bones breaking.
My father lifts his arms once more.
On the floor, my brother cries into the carpet, pawing at the ground. His knees folded into his chest,
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MADELEINE THIEN
Simple Recipes
the crown of his head burrowing down. His back is hunched over and I can see his spine, little bumps on his skin.
The bamboo smashes into bone and the scene in my mind bursts into a million white pieces.
My mother picks me up off the floor, pulling me across the hall, into my bedroom, into bed. Everything is wiet, the sheets, my hands, her body, my face, and she soothes me with words I cannot understand because all I can hear is screaming. She rubs het cool hands against my forehead. "Stop," she says. "Please stop," but I feel loose, deranged, as if everything in the known world is ending right here.
In the morning, I wake up to the sound of oil in the pan and the smell of French toast. I can hear my mother bustling around, putting dishes in the cupboards.
No one says anything when my brother doesn't come down for breakfast. My father piles French toast and syrup onto a plate and my mother pours a glass of milk. She takes everything upstairs to my brother s bedroom.
As always, I follow my father around the kitchen. I track his footprints, follow behind him and hide in the shadow of his body. Every so often, he reaches down and ruffles my hair with his handsi We cast a spell, I think. The way we move in circles, how he cooks
without thinking because this is the task that comes to him effortlessly. He smiles down at me, but when he does this, it somehow breaks the spell. My father stands in place, hands dropping to his sides as if he has forgotten what he was doing mid-motion. On the walls, the paint is peeling and the floor, unswept in days, leaves little pieces of dirt stuck to our feet.
My persistence, I think, my unadulterated love, confuse him. With each passing day, he knows I will find it harder to ignore what I can't comprehend, that I will be unable to separate one part of him from another. The unconditional quality of my love for him will not last forever, just as my brother s did not. My father stands in the middle of the kitchen, unsure. Eventually, my mother comes downstairs again and puts her arms around him and holds him, whispering something to him, words that to me are meaningless and incomprehensible. But she offers them to him, sound after sound, in a language that was stolen from some other place, until he drops his head and remembers where he is.
Later on, I lean against the door frame upstairs and listen; to the sound of a metal fork scraping against a dish. My mother is already there, her voice rising and falling. She is moving the fork across the plate, offering my brother pieces of French toast.
I move towards the bed, the carpet scratchy, until I can touch the wooden bed-frame with my hands.
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My mother is seated there, and I go to her, reaching my fingers out to the buttons on her cuff and twisting them over to catch the light.
"Are you eating?" I ask my brother.
He starts to cry. I look at him, his face half hidden in the blankets.
"Try and eat," my mother says softly.
He only cries harder but there isn't any sound. The pattern of sunlight on his blanket moves with his body. His hair is pasted down with sweat and his head moves forward and backward like an old mans.
At some point I know my father is standing at the entrance of the room but I cannot turn to look at him. I want to stay where I am, facing the wall. I'm afraid that if I turn around and go to him, I will be complicit, accepting a portion of guilt, no matter how small that piece. I do not know how to prevent this from happening again, though now I know, in the end, it will break us apart. This violence will turn all my love to shame and grief. So I stand there, not looking at him or my brother. Even my father, the magician, who can make something beautiful out of nothing, he just stands and watches. '
only a face of bones and skin. And then, at other times, so much pain that it is unbearable, his face so full of grief it might dissolve. How to reconcile all that I know of him and still love him? For a long time, I thought it was not possible. When I was a child, I did not love my father because he was complicated, because he was human, because he needed me to. A child does not know yet how to love a person that way.
How simple it should be. Warm water running over, the feel of the grains between my hands, the sound of it like stones running along the pavement. My father would rinse the rice over and over, sifting it between his fingertips, searching for the impurities, pulling them out. A speck, barely visible, resting on the tip of his finger.
If there were some recourse, I would take it. A cupful of grains in my open hand, a smoothing out, finding the impurities, then removing them piece by piece. And then, to be satisfied with what remains.
Somewhere in my memory, a fish in the sink is dying slowly. My father and I watch as the water runs down.
A face changes over time, it becomes clearer. In my fathers face, I have seen everything pass. Anger that has stripped it of anything recognizable, so that it is
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