when i think of how my mother must have loved me, i’ll think of the alien slime caviar she scraped from the insides of papayas that smelled like sweet and rot.
i’ll think of the delicate taste of pomelos, skin peeled and abandoned, silvery and paper-thin, in a bowl.
sunset flesh, sunset flesh.
the exact color of a little girl’s cheek — one lighter-skinned than the two of us ever were.
brown mother, brown daughter.
the trouble of taking apart the armour of a pineapple done for me.
avocados cut up and sprinkled with cane sugar.
perfectly ripe fruit.
twenty cents.
this wasn’t even supposed to be about my mom.
⟴
i have at least twenty pairs of yoga pants that fit me perfectly, and i haven’t picked a proper papaya to date.
it’s midnight and my entire body aches.
i’ve had two soft-boiled eggs and this raw-as-fuck papaya, unyielding and beautiful, soft pink and orange.
i’m too tired to make anything else.
this is los angeles a lot of the time — more coffee than water, more salt than sweet.
i think i’m a lot skinnier when i’m here, not that it matters, and it doesn’t.
it really doesn’t.
⟴
hey mom, what’s this?
it’s salt.
why does it look different?
it’s rocksalt.
it’s pretty. is it different when you cook with it?
no. but it’s expensive. that’s what you get for pretty.
then why did you buy it?
go away and let me cook.
⟴
the skin between my mother’s fingers — sometimes the smoothest, softest parts of her hands — would blister up with eczema whenever she peeled shrimp. whenever she cut up mangos.
i’d watch her take breaks from peeling and cutting, shaking her fingers above our bleach-white kitchen sink.
“sssss,” she’d inhale, sharply. waving around a butcher knife. opaque bits of shrimp peel glistening on her hands.
i’d eat the mango, waiting for dinner.
love is someone watching you while the webbing between your fingers bloom.
⟴
what’s that?
sugarcane juice.
can i try some?
yes, but it’s not good. this used to be my favorite thing in vietnam.
why isn’t it as good here?
it’s just different. the sugarcane. it’s not the same.
but it’s sweet, right? how different can it be?
sweetness can be very different. do you want one? i’ll buy it. we’ll share.
⟴
there are so many foods my mom used to make that we don’t get to taste anymore.
“ask di diep, i bet she’d know what you’re talking about,” my brother says, whenever i ask him about a dish or a recipe. he’s right — but we both also know my aunt’s variations would taste different than my mom’s.
that’s how cooking works. different interpretations of time, of sweet, of salty.
it is what it is, sugarcane.
it is what it is, rocksalt.
“what are you talking about?” my mom would ask. “i have no idea what you’re asking.”
“don’t be so sentimental,” she’d say. “that doesn’t get you anywhere.”
⟴
these days, when i go back to the bay area to visit my family, i’ll make my brothers and dad a meal.
sometimes it’s simple — a bloody rib eye with salad. most of the time, it’s heavy and takes a while — chicken marsala, using the entire bottle of wine, the entire box of cream.
we’ll sit around the table chewing. and i’ll usually ask something kind of prodding and annoying, like, “is it good?”
and all my dudes will sort of shout, “it’s good!”
you know. in that too-enthusiastic way.
we’re not a family that says that kind of thing a lot to each other.
for example, my dad will make something absolutely fucking delicious and it takes effort for us to remember to compliment his efforts — like oh shit, of course, our poor OCD dad, warming the plates and fine chopping the green onions. “it’s great, dad!”
to be fair, we barely celebrate birthdays. we’ve been trying to make more of an effort.
i try to give a lot more hugs and say “i love you” more and it’s all pretty generally unnatural, because we’re a family raised by my mother and trust me: my mother did not do that kind of shit.
but we do make dinner. my dad, my brothers, and me.
⟴
my mom used to make this dish — tomatoes, fried tofu, pork belly — a type of stew. completely umami. a little sweet from the tomatoes. i can’t think of the last time i had it. maybe when i was in high school, and brawling with my mom, and things were fucking terrifying in the house because it was just the two of us (my dad would literally just depart to god knows where) and that was one of the only things my anorexic ass would eat because “tofu”.
it’s really fucking awful to think that was 10 years ago.
there’s no other way i can really say that.
⟴
again, this was never supposed to even be about my mom. it was supposed to be about this shitty fuckboy i dated, and how he made me eat breakfast.
my mom never made me eat breakfast.
⟴
right now i’m thinking about lost food.
listen, for a minute — and this is the worst part, actually, about grief and illness, about death and the other assortment of shit things that happen in life — is how far away it all felt from me.
like i felt really, really distant from my mom. like even from the memories i had of her. of her actual death. or something i can barely explain.
like losing a photo of something you don’t remember happening.
like me on the high chair screaming joyfully for more boiled taro. what happened to that picture?
like eating a coconut dessert and it reminding you that your mom loved desserts, but probably wouldn’t have liked this one, and also why are you eating this dessert?
this sweetness in your mouth, so unexpected.
grief is an act of slow recovery.
animal fat melting underneath your tongue.
a warm liquid in your belly.
and then your mother’s voice.
what is that you’re asking me?
it is what it is, sugarcane.
it is what it is, rocksalt.
