Winner of the 2022 Flash Contest

“This story is an admirable illustration of just how much a writer can accomplish in under 1,000 words. The details are precisely chosen and evocative, and the pacing is impeccable. The spareness of the prose—especially in descriptions of traumatic events—serves to enhance the story’s emotional resonance.”
—Isabel Kaplan, contest judge and author of NSFW

Linda Liu

by Nicole Zhu

Before she was Linda Liu, she was Er Jie: second sister. When she was six, her mother hauled a wooden stool into the kitchen and told her it was time to learn to cook. Only when standing on the stool was she tall enough to reach the stove and prepare meals for Ba, Ma, her two brothers, and three sisters. They lived in one room, huddled on a heated bed-stove in the bitter winter. The family that lived next to them had two bedrooms and a garden. When her father had colleagues over for dinner, she was tasked with making hong shao rou. She simmered the pork belly for hours while her brothers were at school. The men ate the meat while she cradled a bowl of white rice in the kitchen, soaked in the glistening broth. Sometimes she listened in on her brothers talking with the neighbor’s son about what they learned that day. When they caught her listening, they pushed her to the ground. The neighbor’s boy helped her up. Beneath the shade of a walnut tree, he showed her his lessons. They wrote their names in the dirt. She was 刘福梅, he was 张耀祖. When she turned twelve, the Japanese invaded and renamed her city. Construction began on wide avenues, railways, and a palace for a new emperor. Her brothers and 耀祖 began coming home bearing red welts, each raised ridge a rebellion of speaking Mandarin. 耀祖’s father was shot one day and no one dared to mourn. Although it wasn’t much, she snuck out one hard-boiled egg into the walnut tree hollow for 耀祖 to find. At night, he kissed her beneath its branches and told her he was leaving for America, where his aunt lived. Before he left, he folded pages of a new language into her palm. Her two brothers went to war. One returned. Her youngest sister hung herself in the kitchen, the stool kicked away. 福梅 righted the stool, though she no longer needed it. A letter arrived one day from a ghost. Come to America, 耀祖 wrote. At twenty-two, she left Changchun with a handful of money sewn into the lining of her coat. 耀祖 met her in San Francisco. She drew out haw flakes from her pocket. The sourness reminded him of home. He was Jimmy now. When they married, her name was Linda. That night, she made them hong shao rou and ate whole chunks of pork. Jimmy worked at a restaurant that served only noodles and chicken. Walnut chicken, almond chicken, pineapple chicken. We eat so much more than just chicken, she thought. The chef and owner was a solemn man from Fujian who took frequent smoke breaks out back. Jimmy worked out front because he smiled and spoke better English. The owner only let Linda clear tables. Every month, Linda sent money back to her family even though she couldn’t be sure it ever arrived. Two weeks after the birth of their son, a letter arrived telling her Ba was dead. There was no money to return home. Linda kept her son away from the flaming woks. When the restaurant owner died, he left it to Jimmy. Linda told him to sell it—what did either of them know about running a business? Jimmy insisted this was an opportunity for them both. Linda became the chef on one condition: not just chicken. Mandarin Garden opened in 1962. She couldn’t find eggplant, wood ear mushrooms, or sesame oil. Some ingredients could be found in Japantown. The first six months, they thought they were going to lose the business. Slowly, people came for dumplings and hot and sour soup. A journalist dined at the Mandarin Garden. His review filled their tiny restaurant. Linda ventured out of the kitchen to greet people. Authors, columnists, a chef named James Beard. She urged her family to join her in America. Linda and Jimmy looked for a larger space in 1966, but no one wanted to rent to a dirty Chinese restaurant. In 1967, the new Mandarin Garden opened with 200 seats, serving pan-fried chive pockets, caramelized sweet potato, and Peking duck. In the first week, Jimmy pulled her out of the kitchen in the middle of every dinner rush to a burst of applause. A month later, another letter arrived. This time, her Ma. Linda set up a shrine, dotted with chrysanthemums. “Did your mom teach you to cook?” her son asked in perfect English. In the restaurant, Linda continued cooking, wiping away sweat over steaming pots of stock. Sometimes she looked out on the packed dining room, the framed articles and photos on the wall. Customers left tables strewn with half-eaten dishes, bones with the meat still on them. She remembered how her family once ate the meager offerings from her sister’s altar, the hunger weighing too heavily in their stomachs. A part of her knew she would never be full.

Published November 13th, 2022