Page 21

RANDALL

The garden is the only place that makes any sense right now. I run my hands over the towering stalks of green onions. With my kitchen shears, I snip three green onions right at their white bases. The air fills with the slightly grassy scent of cut scallions. Next, I go to the patch of napa cabbage. I touch the outer green leaves to find the one I want to harvest. I pick the biggest one that’s full and round. I chop at its base until the cabbage head rolls to the ground. The veins of the green leaves are thick under my fingers.

I carry the produce inside the house. I immediately put them in a cold water bath to rinse the dirt off.

I hop on a stool to reach the top cabinets. I pull out the all-purpose flour, sweet rice flour, and cornstarch from the pantry. I measure out the right amounts into a glass bowl, then add some warm water. I knead the dough.

There’s something about gardening and making homemade mandu dumpling wrappers that helps me calm down.

Every time I think about Julie calling me cruel and unkind, I feel a ripple of heat erupt under my skin. I slap the dough against my lightly floured cutting board. I roll it under my palms until it turns into a long snake of dough. With a bench scraper, I slice off small knobs of dough. Then, I pin each knob down with my large wooden rolling pin. Pushing the blob of dough down, I aggressively flatten it until it is almost paper thin and smooth. I churn out mandu wrappers slowly.

“Ah! Looking good,” says Halmeoni as she wraps her red apron around her small body.

She walks over to the kitchen sink and pulls out the cabbage. Carrying it over to a large cutting board, she lops off the bottom of the cabbage. She pulls out her favorite butcher knife to chop the leaves into a fine dice.

My job, since I was six, has been to make the dumpling wrappers. Halmeoni is in charge of the fillings. It’s taken me years of misshapen circles (if you could even call them circles) before I was able to make ones that are circular and three and a half inches in diameter and an eighth of an inch thick. Any thicker and the wrapper becomes too chewy.

Halmeoni and I work side by side in silence. To watch her work is a culinary lesson to rival any cooking school. She places each ingredient—cabbage, glass noodles, ground pork, green onions, and leeks—into a large mixing bowl, using disposable plastic gloves to add the raw meat.

I pause making wrappers to watch her. I stand close by as she adds generous dashes of soy sauce, sweet rice wine, ginger, black pepper, and sesame oil. Then, Halmeoni mashes it all together until all the veggies are mixed with the meat.

I bring over my finished wrappers. Halmeoni holds one up to the light to see if the edges are thin enough to pinch together when folding the dumplings.

“Perfect,” she says.

I beam with pride. Together, we fill and wrap the mandu. Halmeoni only likes the half-moon shape, so we fold the wrappers, bend the ends to the center, and pinch the ends together to form them exactly as she likes them.

When we’re done, there are one hundred half-moon mandu lining the bamboo cutting board. I gather the steamer baskets and liners to put in the baskets.

Once they’re cooking, Halmeoni and I wash our hands. We don’t leave the kitchen so we can monitor and pull the dumplings when they’re ready.

She pours jakseol tea into a white porcelain cup for me. The steam rises as I inhale the sweet scent of the black tea.

We lean against the kitchen counter with our cups of tea. I look over at my grandmother. I pat her shoulder.

“You okay, Halmeoni?”

She nods solemnly. I don’t push further. The steam pours out of the sides of the baskets.

“I’m glad the school project with the Wu family is over. Good riddance,” says Halmeoni.

I murmur my agreement, but inside my heart flip-flops when I think about Julie. Yesterday was not great, but does it mean that things are over completely? I’m still mad at her and her family.

“I can’t believe after all these years, she still steals from me,” says my grandmother.

I sip my tea. “How did she steal from you before?”

Halmeoni places her cup down on the counter. “She stole all my money in that stupid restaurant.”

“The fire?” I ask.

My grandmother nods furiously. “She forget and it cost me all my money.” She punctuates the words with the jab of her finger on the countertop.

I check on the top steamer basket. The dumplings have plumped up and have a shine on them.

Our tradition is that we eat the first basket together, then cook the rest. I place a white towel underneath the steamer basket. Halmeoni grabs our silver chopsticks.

She holds up one mandu to let it cool. I do the same.

“You two used to be best friends. I remember hearing you two talk when I was in bed. Always laughing,” I say tentatively.

My grandmother purses her lips together into one flat line. She puts the dumpling back in the steamer basket.

“You should’ve been sleeping,” she says.

I laugh. I was terrible about going to sleep as a kid. I’d devise elaborate plans to delay my bedtime until my grandmother would gently usher me into my room.

“Do you ever want to open a restaurant again?” I ask.

I am treading on thin ice here, but I’ve been wanting to ask her this for years. I’m only brave enough to ask now because I need to know if I can salvage my relationship with Julie or let it sink and burn in our family’s fire.

She picks up the mandu and slurps it into her mouth. I eat mine and swiftly eat another because they are just so good.

After we finish the basket, I get up to put the others to steam. But my grandmother touches my arm.

“Sit,” she says.

I immediately obey. She pours me another cup of tea. I sip it while she refills her tea. We sit in silence for a few minutes. I can see her choosing the words she wants to share. Her left foot taps along the ground.

“I had a dream to open a restaurant after your grandfather died. He told me to take the money from our life insurance plan to open it. I saved every penny, but it was still not enough.”

I reach out and touch her hand. She squeezes my hand. I wait for her to continue.

“When I met Mei-Hua Wu, I liked her right away.”

“I remember,” I say. “You two were always together.”

“Glued at hip, your grandpa said. After our husbands died, she offered me the money so I could open the restaurant. We work together on the menu.”

“You were up late every night,” I add.

She nods. She cradles my face in her hands. “After the fire, the dream had to die too. All the money I saved went up in the fire.”

I see tears in her brown eyes. I hand her my napkin. She daps the corners of her eyes.

“Your dream doesn’t have to die forever, Halmeoni. We could figure something out.”

She clears the plates. I follow her back to the kitchen. We continue to cook the rest of the mandu.

“The farmers market is good. I sell my food. Make people happy. I’ve got you. What else do I need?”

I hug her from behind. I feel her sigh. I wish I could help her continue what she started five years ago, but it’s not like I have a giant savings account.

While I add more dumplings to the steamer, I think about the one person I know who has a giant savings account.

London Park.

My grandmother would never let me ask for money from the Park family. She would be too ashamed to ask for that kind of loan, but I’m not.

After I help Halmeoni clean up the kitchen, I head to my bedroom while she watches her favorite reality show— Top Chef.

I text London first. Hey can we talk soon?

Out of reflex, I start to text Julie, but then I delete it. I fling my phone on my bed before I’m tempted to write: I need your help.

JULIE

I swear I saw three gray dots appear in my text chat with Randall. I watch it, waiting for a message to appear.

I tap out. I’m sorry I said you were cruel and unkind. I was upset. You are not cruel. I was unkind to say that to you.

But I see that no text from Randall appears. I hastily erase what I’ve written.

I sit on the edge of my bed, staring at my phone, trying to figure out how to apologize and then being mad at myself for thinking of Randall at all.

Tyler busts into my bedroom with his purple apron on. “Ready?”

I slip my phone back into my jeans pocket.

“Knock much?”

“Late much?”

I roll my eyes at him. “I’ll be down in two minutes. I swear.”

I shove him out of my room. He’s a brick so I have to lean against his body to get him to budge.

“Go.”

“I’m not cooking this whole Sunday supper on my own,” he protests.

I mime putting a crown on top of my head. “That’s you, drama queen.”

He gives me the finger while walking to the kitchen.

I close my bedroom door and lean against it, in case my annoying brother decides to barge in again. I check my phone.

Nothing.

“Come on, Randall.” I say to my phone. “What were you going to write to me?”

RANDALL

The whole time I’m talking to London, I am staring at a photo of Julie. The one I took at the beach where her black hair is whipping around in the wind, her lips red from ripe strawberries. It’s a problem. I wish there was a way to delete someone from your mind, just as easily as pulling a weed out of my garden bed.

To be fair, talking about money bores me to death so it’s not London’s fault that I can barely keep up with what he’s saying. Something about good interest rates and small business loans.

“My parents have a really good relationship with the business loan officer at East West Bank. I’m sure they can set up a meeting for your halmeoni with them,” says London.

“I appreciate that so much, London.”

“Of course. Can I ask you something?”

“Fire away.”

“Do I really have no chance with Julie Wu? Like, be one hundred percent honest with me and I’ll stop acting like an idiot around her.”

My stomach twists at the mention of Julie’s name. I can’t exactly tell him she was in a relationship with me nonetheless. I mean, I have no idea what we are anymore anyway.

“To be honest, I don’t think she sees you like that.”

“Oh,” says London. I can hear the disappointment in his voice. I scramble to say something to fill this awkward void.

“I’m sure there are plenty of girls at school who would love to go out with you.”

“Randall, please stop. I get it. I’m an insufferable rich snob,” says London.

“Maybe you can tone it down on the money stuff when you talk to people,” I offer.

“Thanks for the honesty,” says London. “I’ll reach out with a date and time for your grandmother.”

“You’re the best,” I say. “I mean it.”

He laughs. “At least you like me.”

When I hang up, I stare at my phone. I click over to my messages and stare at my last text from Julie.

We can do this, she wrote, I know it’ll be hard. But it’ll be better when we can be open and honest with our families about our relationship.

I wrote back, At least, it’ll be over soon.

My words hurt to read. I had no idea that our relationship would be the one that would be over soon.

JULIE

I turn off my phone so I won’t be tempted to look at it anymore. I head to the kitchen to cook with Tyler before he throws another fit.

Mom took Ahma out to go grocery shopping so that Tyler and I could surprise her with this Sunday supper.

As soon as I enter the kitchen, Tyler tosses me my black Tatsu Ramen apron with a silver bear on it eating a bowl of ramen.

“Hello to you too,” I say.

“I’ve got dough to fry,” he replies, turning his attention back to the sizzling canola oil.

I stand next to him. He’s got half of the bread dough worked out into strips.

“Want me to roll out the rest of the dough?”

He nods as he drops a piece of dough into the fry oil. The doughnut immediately puffs up and crackles as it cooks.

I roll out two strips of dough and lay them on top of each other. I take a bamboo chopstick and press it gently into the pieces, then I pull the ends until the long thin doughnut is about the length of my forearm.

Tyler examines my work. “Why are you like a machine when you make youtiao and mine look like a rejected pottery project?”

I laugh out loud. Tyler rolls his doughnuts, which are not indented.

“You forgot to do the chopstick method,” I say.

Tyler groans then smacks his forehead. “This is why I wanted you to help me.”

I pat his shoulder. “What does it matter what it looks like? They are all going to get rolled up in sticky rice.”

He gives me a small smile. I continue to make more doughnuts.

“Yesterday was intense,” says Tyler.

“Understatement of the year.”

He nudges my shoulder. “So who is the special someone you were going to tell us about before Randall’s grandma dropped bombs on us?”

I freeze midway pulling the dough. It shrinks in my hands. It’s not like I can confess the truth to Tyler now.

“No one,” I say softly.

Tyler’s smile fades. He wraps his arm around me. “Who is this idiot and where do I find him?”

I hand him my dough. He drops it in the pot. I lean over the pot and take a sniff. There’s nothing as heavenly smelling as fried youtiao doughnuts. I snatch one out of the finished pile.

Tyler smacks my hand. “Save them for dinner.”

I bite into it. “Someone has to check if it’s poisonous. You wouldn’t want Ahma to get sick from uncooked dough.”

Even though Tyler’s doughnut looks like a misshapen snake, it melts in my mouth. I look at the inside of the doughnut. It has the perfect butterfly-looking interior.

“This dough,” I say, then gesture a chef’s kiss.

Tyler leans forward and takes a bite. “At least they taste good.”

I hand him the rest and he finishes it off.

“Did this person dump you?”

I debate how to tell Tyler the truth. Technically, we were never going out officially.

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Were you going to introduce Ahma to a hookup buddy?”

“Ew. You’re my brother and this conversation is officially gross.”

“You definitely were going to introduce Ahma to some rando. That’s not like you, Jules. They must be an amazing kisser.”

My stupid cheeks betray me by turning a bright shade of pink. Tyler laughs.

“I’m one thousand percent right. Your face says it all.”

I smack his shoulder. “Let’s get the supplies together.”

He and I search through the cabinets to pull out the bamboo rolling mat, plastic wrap, and a large glass bowl. I flick open the rice cooker. A waft of steam rises. I inhale the aroma of warm, sticky rice. I scoop out the rice with a rice paddle and put it into the bowl.

“What an asshat Randall has become,” says Tyler.

I freeze. Good thing my back is facing Tyler. Despite my own anger at Randall, my fist clenches. I put down the rice paddle and take a few deep breaths.

“Even if that dumpling tasted like mold, it gives them no right to insult Ahma like that. I was so close to popping Randall in the mouth.”

“I know.”

I tear out a huge sheet of plastic wrap and place it over the long bamboo mat. I add a clump of rice then spread it with my white and pink spatula.

“Why did you stop me?” he asks. “He deserved it.”

“Violence is never the answer, Ty.”

I grab the container of furikake seaweed flakes and sprinkle it over the rice.

“Can you fry up the eggs now?” I ask.

He nods. He adds oil to a griddle pan and turns on the heat. He cracks open a few eggs to cook.

He points his Stormtrooper-shaped spatula at me. “Violence is justified if someone insults your grandmother’s cooking. The nerve of that family thinking that Ahma stole their mediocre mandu recipe…”

Tyler continues his rant as I stare down at the seaweed sprinkles. For the past five years in the Wu house, trash talking the Hur family has been our thing. Picking apart their food or what they said at the market.

I sigh. It’s exhausting. I thought this feud would end with Randall and me, but it just continues on and on and on.

I interrupt Tyler. “Don’t you get tired of this constant fighting with the Hur family? Like it’s our axe to grind until the end of time.”

Tyler’s nostrils flare like a small bull. He flips the eggs over.

“Never,” he says. “I’ll carry this torch to my children and their children.”

“Doesn’t that seem childish?”

“Excuse me, where you not there when Randall said Ahma’s dumplings were an insult to all mandu? Can you stomach that shit?”

Tyler is bursting with anger, and I am no fool to stop it. I place an egg in the middle of the rice as Tyler continues to rant.

I place my hand against his cheek. For a moment, he stops talking.

“You’re right,” I say, knowing those are the only words that will get him to stop.

Satisfied, he helps me finish filling the fan tuan. I add the yellow pickles, and he brings over the freshly made youtiao. We fold the bamboo mat with the plastic wrap over the filled rice, curling it into a tight, compact tube. It’s like the world’s biggest burrito and I love it. Ahma used to make these fan tuan for us every weekend so we could eat it at the booth.

I carefully roll up the bamboo mat so that the white sticky rice folds over the toppings.

“Your skills are on point,” says Tyler.

Once it’s all rolled up, I give it a big squeeze, then I pinch the sides of the plastic wrap and twist. When I unveil the cover of the mat, there it sits—my picture-perfect fan tuan.

Tyler mimes a chef’s kiss. I take a bow.

The front door creaks open.

“Oh shit,” says Tyler.

We run around like chickens who have a coyote in their coop. I stuff a bouquet of red tulips into a vase. He grabs our special dinner plates.

We bump into each other.

“Ouch,” I yelp.

“Watch where you’re going, sis.”

We’re too late. I can already hear Ahma and my mom laughing. We rush out to help them carry their grocery bags into the kitchen.

“What is this?” asks Ahma. Her smile is wide as she scans the kitchen.

When she spots the fat fan tuan rolls, she claps her hands together like a child.

“Don’t worry, Ahma,” says Tyler, “Julie made the fan tuan this time.”

In response, Ahma gives him a smacking kiss on the cheek. He laughs.

“You have to practice,” says Ahma, wagging her finger at him.

“Or just get my sister to make them.”

I stick my tongue out at him. “Sit, sit,” I say, ushering my mom and Ahma to the dining table.

They reluctantly sit down. We rush around to set out all the plates of Ahma’s favorite dishes. Savory soy milk with a garnish of green onions and chopped pieces of youtiao. I lay out the fan tuan and cut it in half in front of Ahma like she did for us when we were kids.

I can’t help but smile when she takes a big bite and doesn’t say a word. A sign of a good meal is when nobody says anything because they are too busy eating.

Tyler and I finally sit down to eat.

“Oh Juju,” says my mom, “Your fan tuan is just like Ahma’s. Perfection.”

I beam with pride. Ahma takes a noisy sip of the savory soy milk soup. Tyler watches her closely. She puts her bowl down and gives him a thumbs-up. Ahma scoops up a piece of youtiao in her white soup spoon and chews.

“Delicious,” she finally says.

Tyler and I high-five. My mom laughs.

“Maybe we should have you two cook Sunday supper every Sunday.”

Tyler whips his head toward her. “Don’t get any wild ideas. This was just for Ahma.”

I take my bowl and bring it to my lips. It’s warm and tastes sweet/salty, just like Ahma makes it. I dip a slice of youtiao in it.

“This is so good, Ty,” I say between bites.

“Thanks,” he says.

After we’re done stuffing ourselves with food, Ahma tugs on my arm.

“Let them do the dishes. Let’s go for a walk,” she says.

I look over at Tyler, who clears the table with my mom.

“Go,” says my mom.

Ahma puts on her red sweatshirt with gold Chinese characters on it. I slip on a rainbow tie-dye sweatshirt. As we step out, I offer her my arm. She places her hand on my arm.

We walk slowly side by side. It’s cooler out now. I look up at the darkening sky and the outline of the mountains.

“You mentioned dating someone special,” says Ahma softly.

Shoot. I was hoping she would forget, but of course she has an elephant-like memory.

“I’d like to meet this person.”

“It’s over already.”

“So soon?”

I nod. I bite my lip so that the tears don’t come. I don’t want to shed tears for Randall, who was unkind to my grandmother. Ahma pats my hand.

“Sometimes love feels like it’ll last forever. Sometimes it wasn’t meant to be.”

I look away from her because I can feel the tears coming. I swipe at my eyes to keep them from falling and betraying me.

“Ahma, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Juju.”

“Can you ever forgive Halmeoni Chung Hi for what happened?”

My grandmother stops walking altogether. We stand on the sidewalk as I watch her face freeze. She’s unreadable. I wish I hadn’t even asked, especially after the terrible confrontation yesterday.

“She blames me for losing our restaurant. Nothing I say can change that, but I wish she would forgive me.”

“You two were such good friends,” I say softly.

“Yes, but just like romantic relationships, friendships can wear out their welcome.”

I don’t know why I keep pushing the topic. It’s not like anything will change. It hasn’t in five years.

We turn to walk back home. Crickets croak. In the distance, I hear sirens. A few moments later, a fire truck blares by with its red lights flashing, illuminating the street. At the sight of the red engine, Ahma grips my arm tighter. I glance at her face and see the fear that I saw that night of the fire. When we arrived at the mall parking lot, we could see the flames licking the top of the entrance. It was burned to a crisp. The red and gold awning with their combined surnames—Woo Her With Food—flapped in the wind.

Her eyes shone with tears and I remember seeing her cry for the first time in my life that night.

“The fire was not all your fault,” I say. “We all make mistakes.”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t respond. She hasn’t forgiven herself for that night. I wonder if she ever will.