Leftovers

by Kat Y. Tang

2020 Fiction Contest Honorable Mention

I will never understand why my son decided to marry such a useless Woman. All she does, day in and day out, is sit at home, watching inane television shows while chewing popcorn with her mouth wide open, kernels falling to the couch and the floor around her like dandruff. The malnourished dog of theirs licks the popcorn off the floor—they call it a qǐ wáwà, but with its scrawny body and giant head it is more akin to a qíguài wáwà, a queer doll. No one in my village would have touched a sickly looking dog like that, even at the height of our starvation. 

Today, the television shows four women, faces painted like harlots, waving their hands while they talk around a table. They sit and talk and do nothing, much like the Woman aspires to do. On days like this, I am glad that I have lost my hearing so that I do not have to listen to these women quacking in their language—so harsh and grating with none of the melody and meaning of Mandarin. 

My head is bothering me more than usual today, but I cannot rest. If I do nothing, I will be just as bad as that Woman. Instead, I will cook a meal for the ones I love, my little granddaughter and my son, who comes home starving from his demanding work as an engineer. As I shuffle—slow, so slow—around the kitchen, I gather flour, eggs, water, chives, dried shrimp, and ground pork. 

Jiǔcài hézi is their favorite. I remember the first time my son had one. Xuyang was six years old, and it was the first time he ever ate meat. It upset his stomach so much, he threw it all up. Oh, how angry I was then, all the money I had saved to give my son his first taste of meat! But now, here I am, preparing jiǔcài hézi casually on a weekday night. 

I hum as I mix the ingredients for the dough. This is perhaps the worst part of losing my hearing: I cannot even hear myself. I wonder at times what my voice sounds like when I dare to use it. I am afraid I sound simple, like Lu Hong from our village, who was never the same after being beaten and raped by the Japanese. At least Xuyang didn’t marry a Japanese woman. Then I would have known for sure that he was trying to kill me. 

The Woman is still sitting on the couch, but she has replaced one bag of popcorn with another without even bothering to discard the first. Disgusting. She does not know or have what it takes to nourish a family. I place the kneaded dough in a bowl to rest and get to work on the filling. But as I finish mincing the chives, I turn and knock my carton of eggs to the floor. The Woman looks in my direction and hurries to the kitchen. Her attention is in all the wrong places!  She should be watching for my granddaughter teetering about. It is odd that I have not seen the little one playing today. Ah, but of course, she must be at kindergarten. 

The Woman is saying something now as I can see her mouth working vigorously; she must have strong jaw muscles from all that chewing. She scoops up the carton and its few remaining unbroken eggs and starts putting it back in the fridge. I grab her arm. 

“No!” I say, or think I say. “Dinner.”

She shakes her head and says something loudly and slowly, her lips overexaggerating each syllable. I’m hard of hearing, not an idiot, I want to tell her, but she wouldn’t understand. Finally, she leans in close to my hearing aid and I can see the veins on her neck bulging.

“Pi-zza!” she yells. “Pi-zza for dinner!”

This cursed Woman and her lazy ways. How many times can a family eat delivery before they wither from cancer or lack of love? No, my son and granddaughter deserve homemade food. I wrestle the carton away from the Woman’s claws and turn my back to her. I watch from the corner of my eye as she gives up and goes back to the TV, leaving the qǐ wáwà to lap up the eggy mess. 

As I mix together the filling with my hands, I chastise myself for wasting perfectly good eggs. One more reason she could use to convince Xuyang to send me to some old persons’ home. The little dried shrimp go into the mixture last. I can no longer see their curled-up bodies clearly. At least I have not spilled those—it is an hour-long bus ride to the nearest Chinese market, and the bus drivers are rude and impatient. When I can, I like to bring my little granddaughter with me. People are nicer to the old when they are with the young, as though our ages average out to make us into real people. 

My granddaughter is wonderful, even though the Woman gave her a name I cannot pronounce in an effort to wrest her away from me—Ai-mi-li: sigh, rice, beautiful—pure nonsense. The Woman may have given my granddaughter a name, but I gave her my sharp, watchful eyes. My granddaughter once asked me why I pushed my way onto every bus, why I squeezed so closely to the person in front of me in line. But what is a line? “If you don’t push,” I told her, “you won’t get anything. You always have to keep pushing forward or else your family will starve.” It seemed ridiculous to say in a supermarket that had twenty of everything, but I wanted to make sure that she understood this mentality. I worry that she has inherited some of her mother’s weak genes. 

Putting away the perishable ingredients, I notice a photo of a young woman in a black cap and gown tacked to the fridge door. Not the Woman, but someone else. When did these photos get here? And why does the young woman in the photos have Ai-mi-li’s eyes? Squinting to get a better look makes my headache worse. I will ask my son who this young woman is when he returns; I mustn't forget. 

After the dough rests, I pull it taut, then chop it into small rounds. I roll each one out into a disc, then add just enough stuffing—not too much that they’ll burst open like Xiao Pang’s stomach when he died from finally eating a single bowl of rice. I’ve tried to explain this recipe to the Woman, but she balked at the smell of the chives and scurried back to her spot on the couch. This was when I realized how useless she is. In our village, we used to eat charcoal to fill our stomachs, licking the black dust off our fingers, yet she can’t stand the smell of chives? 

Sharp filaments of pain shoot through my temples, but I refuse to sit down. If I focus on making dinner for Xuyang, I can ignore it. I crimp the edges of each pocket to seal in the filling. 

When Xuyang was accepted into graduate school in the United States, I was reluctant to let him go. We had suffered so much together, I felt our souls had fused. How could I let a piece of my soul fly across the ocean to a foreign land? 

“Ma,” he’d said, gripping my tremulous shoulders. “There are opportunities in America. When I make enough money, I will bring you with me, and then we can live together.” 

“But you don’t even have a wife yet,” I’d said. “Who will take care of you in America? You must find a wife before you leave.” 

If only he’d listened! Then I would have a Chinese daughter-in-law who understands that elders must be respected, instead of this Woman who doesn’t even lift a finger when I come home carrying groceries from the market. 

My hands are unsteady as I pour oil into the frying pan. A bit of it splatters on my clothes, but this is the smallest of the indignities I now endure. Although I can no longer hear the sizzle of cold dough hitting hot grease, I can still feel it from my years working as a street vendor. What a luxurious job that seemed after filling our stomachs with nothing but Mao’s words for so long. Back then, I could make a dozen jiǔcài hézi in a minute. My body still remembers the perfect time to flip the pocket to achieve the ideal golden crust. 

I finish frying the twentieth one just as Xuyang walks into the kitchen. He holds a giant cardboard pizza box—grease-carrying monstrosities, just awful things. The little qǐ wáwà runs in pathetic circles around his feet. He puts a hand on my shoulder, shouts, “Ma! I told you to stop doing this! Go sit down. I bought dinner.” 

“I made your favorite,” I protest. “It’s not good to eat so much processed food.” His face is swollen, and his skin looks sallow, all from eating food with too much yǎng. All American food has too much hot energy. Americans are terrible with balance. 

“Wendy doesn’t like it, Ma. We’ve been over this so many times!”

“Don’t yell at me,” I mumble, though I know that if he didn’t yell, I wouldn’t be able to hear. 

“No one respects me in this house, not even my own son. Why did I leave China? To be treated worse than the dog?”

My son sighs, then joins the Woman to eat their pizza in front of the TV. Cheese turns my stomach, you know that! I want to yell at him. Instead, I stand in front of my perfect jiǔcài hézi, biting into one just off the stove, so hot that it would burn anyone’s tongue but mine. It is getting dark out and I wonder why Ai-mi-li is not yet home. I know she will eat my jiǔcài hézi. Her little body needs proper nourishment to survive in this terrible world. 

Though I cannot hear, I know my son and the Woman are talking about me behind my back; everyone talks talks talks in this house, but no one talks to me anymore. The horrible Woman is probably saying that I’m a nuisance and wouldn’t it be better if I were in a nursing home where I could spend my days with other people who are also on their way out of this life? I only hope my son will defend me. My son, my only remaining child. I curse him under my breath. 

I bring the plate full of jiǔcài hézi slowly toward the kitchen island, making a show of how heavy it is, how difficult it is for me to carry, but neither my son nor the Woman look away from the TV. I consider dropping the plate, but it’s unforgivable to waste food. I am no longer hungry. It is late and I am worried about Ai-mi-li, but no one else seems worried about her. When Xuyang was a child, I never let him out of my sight, but the Woman will just say that this is how they do things in America. I bite my tongue; I don’t make a scene. Instead, I dump the jiǔcài hézi into a bag and bring them to the freezer. They are almost as good reheated. 

I strain to pull open the packed freezer drawer. What could possibly be in there? I tug with what little strength I now possess. The drawer flies open. I look down at bags and bags of leftover jiǔcài hézi. My heart pounds wildly. Did I make these? When? My mind draws a raging blank. Why can’t I remember last night when I remember the years of hunger like they were yesterday? I am standing in front of my baby’s burial mound, dirt piled high like so many leftovers. Infants cannot digest dirt. They need proper nourishment! I stuff this new bag into the freezer and shut it as fast as I can. Hide the evidence. Blame it on someone else. Kētóu to Chairman Mao. If I must be sent off to a place for crazy people, send me to my village, my village!

How will I hide my deteriorating mind? These revelations take so much out of a person, and my mind is as heavy and useless as melted scrap metal. 

I prepare for bed, taking out my teeth and placing them in a glass, like a little exhibit for old age. 

As I touch the bedspread, I realize that the Woman has slipped some sort of plastic covering between the mattress and the bedsheet. As though I were an incontinent child who would wet the bed! 

I am the one who narrowly missed the bullets that pierced the wall inches above my sleeping body. I am the one who suffered through nights of tossing and turning on cold ground. I am the one whose work-swollen feet denied her sleep for years. All for this? The anger courses through me until I shake. 

She will know the wrath of a woman who sold out her husband to save herself and her son. Xuyang, don’t cry, mother is still here. When the Red Guard took my husband away, he did not point at me even though I was the one who burned Mao’s picture in its frame to melt the frost so I could properly bury my baby in the earth. 

I am pacing the room when I notice a frazzled and tired old woman in the window. What is she doing out so late at night? I raise a hand toward her and she raises one as well. We hold our mirrored hands up, greeting kindred souls. I resist the urge to hold her head in my hands and tell her that, at her age, maybe it is time to rest. 

Published July 26th, 2020