FICTION

Feast

By PS Zhang     VOLUME 55.1

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When auntie patty died, we ate a plum-glazed roasted duck and a steamed chicken served with delicate side sauces of minced ginger-scallion, soy sauce chili, and sweet hoisin. The poultry said nothing. Their eyes were closed, and hollow holes gaped at me where their carotid arteries had been. My father had taken the chicken out from its coop earlier that morning. I wasn’t allowed to look, he said, as he shooed me back into the house. Dad slammed the door but not in an unkind way. I crept over to the patio window and peered out like a cat eyeing the sparrows as they jumped from branch to branch.

My father sat on a squat wooden bench with the red hen in his lap. She didn’t seem scared. Dad said something to the hen’s small divot-like ears, maybe a prayer. It wasn’t menacing, but to use a word like “kind” was out of place. I knew what would happen next even if the hen did not. Dad bent over, holding her body firm under his arm and extending her neck out with the same hand that had calmed her slowing ribcage. In his other hand, the cleaver I knew so well.

As soon as my palms were large enough, Dad taught me how to peel an apple with the cleaver. He held the heavy knife before me, “No funny business, Monkey,” and bestowed the same words my grandfather had told him, “Respect this tool. Do not be scared, though you will get cut. This is life.”

The toughest part came after removing the peel. You’d slice it into quarters then extract the core by making two cuts in the shape of a V. The first cut was toward the fleshy pad below your thumb and the second cut was toward your other fingers. I like my fingers and am always reminded how much I like them any time I hold a cleaver. Slow and steady, I’d make the cut and slow-steady, I’d promise protection to the fingers holding the wedge of fruit. I never knew other children weren’t allowed to handle knives, and I remembered how strange and inconceivable a “no-cut plastic chef’s knife” was when my roommates had them in college. “It’s so you don’t cut yourself,” they told me. Sometimes in an effort to protect ourselves, we missed the point.

The hen lay patiently, perhaps now aware of her destiny. Dad stretched her neck further and covered her candy-orange eyes. When he sliced through, her neck instinctively convulsed, but my father’s steady hands held the hen in place--there there—as her blood drained into the metal dish.

After her tributaries emptied and dried, my father laid the hen down onto the soft bed of Carolina Clover beside him. The white and purple plumed flowers peeked through the space between her chest and wings. Dad collected the dish and seasoned the blood with rice wine, fresh garlic, and a little white pepper. He tended a fire and patiently poached the liquid, waited for it to take on the shape of the dish. I cracked the window a sliver and inhaled the steam floating through the screen. The water had been perfumed with long, thick slices of ginger.

The taste was rich, like a salty pudding decided to become Jell-O. Hung can be served hot or cold. Dad liked it hot; I liked it cold. Once in a restaurant in Guangzhou, they served it to us cut into beautiful identical cubes, chilled in a round crystal ice-cream dish.

My first feast was my first funeral.

Aunts, uncles, cousins—distant friends and family I scarcely knew—arrived at our home that day. They knocked on our front door, not realizing we only used the side entrance. Spring pollen from the loblolly pines, so prevalent in our Piedmont town, coated our visitors’ palms as they bent down and shook hands with me. “When are we eating? Where can I wash up?” they joked, not wanting to linger on Death’s attention with a child.

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Mom tugged the duck and chicken to the outer edge of the giant lazy Susan. Dad placed a new dish on the table. A black sea bass with a gelatinous eyeball, the size of a dime, gazed up at us from the round rotating disc.

As Cantonese mothers do, Mom tried to convince me to eat the eyeball. “Eat, it tastes very nice and makes your skin so smooth and beautiful.” She took one and plopped it into her mouth. “Mmm, yummy-yummy.” My mother flipped the fish over, exposing the other eyeball. Her chopsticks delicately dug into the socket. “Sure, you don’t want?”

I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head no. “If the eyeballs are so nice, why is the fish so ugly?” I used the metal serving spoon to sweep away the finely julienned scallion and ginger, revealing slippery grey and black skin.

“Silly child. When you are old, you will wish to have skin as beautiful as this fish.”

Dad swiveled the lazy Susan clockwise and placed a piece of perfectly crisped pork belly on his plate. It looked like a finely layered slice of cake, ng faa juk or five flower meat. The skin sparkled and glittered a delicious crunch upon the first bite. It had taken Dad three days to prepare the pork belly. The slab hung in the garage held up by two butcher hooks. An old desk fan blew at the belly as a baking sheet caught the dripping juices.

“A recipe like this takes time and patience,” my father had said as he adjusted the fan a centimeter to the left and then two centimeters to the front.

“But I’m hungry now,” I’d whined.

“And you will continue to be hungry with that attitude. Monkey, sometimes waiting is a great pleasure. It means you have time. You have opportunity.”

“Dad,” I’d groaned while stomping my feet. Eight-year-olds don’t understand Taoism. The fan shifted from my commotion and Dad inched it back to position.

The lazy Susan turned counterclockwise. Aunt Jennifer was trying to get to the sauteed pea shoots, but I stuck my hands into the air. “Stop, stop,” I cried. My favorite dish—crunchy, tender, refreshing, salty, sweet, sour, bouncy—came to a slow halt: the crown of a jellyfish served as a chopped salad. The dish is the center gem on any Cantonese appetizer platter. Yes, there was the sliced shank, the braised tendons, the spicy intestines with bitter melon, but nothing beat the jellyfish. The crown comes packed in salt and must be rinsed and soaked for several washes. Once cleaned, it is thinly sliced and dressed with sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, chilis, and toasted sesame seeds. Dad garnished it with sweet, pickled carrots and daikon radishes cut to resemble matchsticks, but I picked those out.

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It wasn’t an exciting death. Auntie Patty was 102 years old, mostly blind, confined to her wheelchair, and generally disgruntled. She lived in a retirement community and caught the flu from her neighbor’s home aide. The flu persisted and became pneumonia. Her lungs failed, and we were called to the hospital to say our goodbyes. Patty’s attendant, Ping, swore to us her own flu symptoms had been pure coincidence. She hadn’t been in contact with the neighbor’s aide, though Mom said she’d often seen the two women gossiping during their smoke breaks.

Everyone said Dad was Patty’s favorite even though he was only her grandnephew. That seemed true enough; only a minute after he stepped into her room, she stepped out.

“Auntie Patty, it’s me, Charles. I’m here.” Dad held her hand and surveyed the room. “Everyone’s here: Ma and Ba, Jennifer and Larissa, Michelle and Monkey. Everyone’s here. We’re happy and safe. You can go now, don’t stay for us.”

I’ve wondered how a spirit can leave with her descendants so crowded together. Is there any room for her to wiggle through? Or does a soul evaporate into gas, the atoms far apart and malleable? Maybe she just floated up like how they do in the movies. Patty’s heart rate monitor flatlined and everyone turned away. Grandpa and Dad looked on. I tried to look too, but Mom turned me around. Her encircling arms insisted I wasn’t yet a man.



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PS ZHANG was born and raised in North Carolina. Her work is forthcoming in Washington Square Review and New South.


VOLUME 55.1