by Zoë Folbigg
A man in white chef aprons gives Cuong a loose hug.
‘Guys, this is my friend Nguyen, this is his snake palace.’
They speak to each other in Vietnamese.
‘Did he just say snake?’ Lenny attempts to whisper to Dee. She pouffes up her hair and tucks her fitted checked shirt into her tight jeans.
‘You’ll love it, Len.’
Maya looks at James and gives a nervous smile. Excited by what awaits. Comforted by Dee’s voice. Maya loves how her soft Dublin lilt jars with her beautiful brown skin. James puts his arm around Maya as they follow Cuong and Nguyen into the restaurant, past a row of urns covered in cloth tied with rubber bands. Past the open kitchen, wall-to-wall in pots and pans, with searing fire rising to the ceiling.
Nguyen is more affable than quiet Cuong, the effusive host wanting to impress the tourists. He reaches an arm out to present the table that awaits – white linen and plates all set – and Maya notices he is missing the thumb from his left hand.
‘This restaurant has been in Nguyen’s family for eighty years,’ says Cuong. ‘It’s a traditional snake restaurant – a delicacy in our country.’
Lenny gasps and holds his hand to his mouth, making it into a fist with the melodrama of a pre-teen girl, not a thirty-five-year-old man.
‘It’s OK, babe,’ says Dee, squeezing his other hand.
‘No need for menu here,’ says Cuong, while Nguyen nods profusely. ‘There are ten dishes, plenty for everyone to share. It all comes out at different times.’
‘Do you have any chicken wings?’ asks Lenny, shuffling in his seat as another man approaches the table, carrying an urn. His question goes unanswered.
The man pulls off the cloth and shakes a long cobra onto the floor, which lands with a slap, writhing and rising in anger at the table.
‘Oh jaysus, Dee!’
Cuong sits at the top of the table with the calm demeanour of a man who has seen this before; watching with a gentle smile as Maya, James, Dee and especially Lenny all recoil and lean away from the cobra at the table, the spectre at the feast. The cobra rises fast, flaring its neck high and wide. Just as it’s about to lash out, the man standing next to Nguyen, the one who brought the urn, slits the cobra’s throat in a flash. Maya and Dee scream while Lenny repeats, ‘No no no no no!’ in anguish.
Maya can feel James’ hand on her thigh, squeezing her, urging her to be OK, excited by this new experience.
A third man appears at the table with a little bottle perfectly placed to collect the snake’s blood as it drains from its body, while the man who slit the cobra’s throat cuts out the snake’s heart and puts it on a little plate between James and Lenny. Only James and Cuong look close enough to notice that the heart is still beating.
*
Over the next two hours, and much to Lenny’s disdain, Nguyen proudly brings out snake soup, a snake bile shot, snake pieces fried in green leaf, snakeskin crackers (Dee likes how they look like snakeskin prawn crackers and suggests to Maya that they wear them as a fashion accessory), snake spring rolls, shredded snake teeth fried in herbs, BBQ snake, a second snake soup, and rice fried in oil from the snake.
‘All from that one cobra?’ asks James.
‘All from that one cobra,’ Cuong replies with a puffed chest. ‘In Minsk We Trust’ expands.
Maya leans in and lowers her voice. ‘What happened to Nguyen’s thumb? Was it a snake?’
Cuong laughs quietly. ‘No, he chopped it off cutting vegetables,’ he replies with a quick wink.
‘No no no no no,’ laments Lenny, traumatised by the whole evening.
39
April 2016, London, England
‘Pleeeease, baby girl, please eat something,’ Nena begs Ava, who just stares back at her before giving a long and sassy blink. Ava has thick black hair like her mother’s, although it swirls in loops and whirls like the black ink of a fingerprint. Tom’s imprint is left in Ava’s sparkling blue eyes, which are dulled slightly by the current impasse. Ava’s mouth is clamped shut, her stubborn cheeks fill out, so her face looks like a puffin, and she turns her head away from her mother, towards the kitchen door, as if to say I am not interested in your boiled potatoes.
Nena tries not to cry.
Or your fish fingers.
Weaning isn’t going well.
Or those orange sticks you tried to trick me with before.
Pureed foods didn’t go down well. Ava spat out the carrot, the parsnip, the mushy peas and even the pear, all of which Nena frantically scooped up and ate herself. She wasn’t going to let the peeling, the steaming, the pulverising, the sterilising, the freezing and the defrosting of little ice cubes of organic food go to waste. The cool sweetness of the pear felt like the most nourishing meal Nena had eaten in ages. Then she pressed a tea towel to her mouth to stifle a loud sob, so as not to alarm Ava.
With that, Nena decided enough was enough and she had to take action to stop both of them losing their shit at every mealtime – to get Ava off the breast – so she went to baby weigh-in clinic, concerned that Ava wouldn’t be gaining weight – or worse still, dropping it – through her reluctance to get off milk. Nena’s reluctance to breastfeed had been growing ever since Ava cut two bottom teeth and had taken to biting Nena’s already-sore nipples.
A matter-of-fact health visitor called Tina recommended baby-led weaning as an alternative to the dejection of unwanted puree.
‘What do you even mean?’ asked Nena, trying not to let the wobble in her voice grow into something undignified.
‘Offer her manageable chunks of what you have: potatoes, chicken, broccoli, whatever you’ve cooked for yourself – give her some of your roast dinner – it’ll enable her to copy you. Monkey see, monkey do,’ Tina added cheerfully.
She’s not a monkey.
Nena was dumbfounded.
‘I don’t cook roast dinners.’
I don’t have the fucking time.
Nena wasn’t sure she’d ever cooked a roast dinner – it was Emily Snatch who made her soup in Bateson Hall; Maya who looked after them in their houseshare the two years after by cooking her signature roast chicken with chickpeas and chorizo; her mother Victoria who made comforting feijoadas when Nena went back to her parents’ for some nourishment; and it’s Tom who sorts a leg of lamb for Sunday lunch while Nena keeps an eye on Ava and Arlo.
‘Well, weaning is often a power struggle,’ Tina elaborated, looking over her half-moon spectacles. ‘But baby-led weaning gives Baby the power to answer her own inner hunger cues.’
Or throw expensive organic chicken on the floor.
Nena looked blank. The past dazzle in her eyes dulled by night feeds and day feeds and having her nipples bitten. The health visitor didn’t know what else to suggest, so she brought the encounter to an end so she could see as many people as possible during her clinic.
‘See how you get on,’ she said, breezily. ‘But you can keep breastfeeding, you know. Just because she’s six months doesn’t mean…’
Here we go again.
‘Actually, I’m thinking of stopping breastfeeding,’ admitted Nena matter-of-factly, as if she was spoiling for a fight.
Tina stopped perusing a plastic folder of leaflets and looked up. ‘Oh.’
‘She’s draining me. She’s biting me. I can’t take it any more. I’ve tried formula, but she wouldn’t have it. I’ve gone to the pump to get a bit of distance. Even the act of feeding her has been driving me mad.’
The health visitor studied Nena’s face. ‘Driving you mad?’
Nena waited for the lecture.
‘I’ve done it for six months,’ she said defensively.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Whether I stop breastfeeding or not, Ava needs to start eating food; humans eat food.’ Nena tried to laugh to lighten the oppressive feeling on her chest. Was it a tightening within or was it Ava wriggling on her lap?
‘You’ve done a great job. Her weight is fine. But remember, once you stop there’s no goi
ng back. It dries up, it’s gone.’
She’s judging me.
‘I just thought expressing milk would be a good halfway house.’
Before Tina could find the leaflet she was looking for on baby-led weaning, Nena got up to leave, muttering something about a washing machine being delivered. She didn’t give Tina the chance to end the encounter how she would have liked, but still she pushed her glasses up her nose and called the next mother in.
As Nena wheeled Ava’s buggy up the winding ramp path that led out of the health centre and onto the road packed with buses, cars, mopeds and a fruit and veg stall gathering pollution, she burst into tears and sobbed, knowing that her crumpled crying face looked the same as her daughter’s.
Ava blinks slowly now, defiantly, mouth still clamped, staring at the baby bouncer hanging from the door frame to the hallway.
‘Come on. This is a Taste The Difference fish finger. Do you know how good a fish finger is? Let alone a Taste The Difference fish finger?!’
Ava picks up a piece of crispy crumbed cod in her chubby fist, extends her arm and opens her hand out ceremonially. Flakes of fish fall to the already smattered tiles of the kitchen floor.
Nena taps the plastic plate with a fingernail as if she’s about to make a speech, to alert Ava to the boiled potato and carrot baton under her nose. Ava fidgets irritably in her seat, arching her back and extending her soft tummy. Then she hammers her fists down onto the table tray, picks up the plate and drops the whole thing onto the floor. The plate spins as if a clown has just dropped it in a deliberate act of slapstick. Nincompoop Nena doesn’t find it very funny. Her chest tightens again and the kitchen walls seem to shrink a little around her.
‘What’s WRONG with you?!’ Nena bellows, as she bends down to pick up the plate. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she adds with a quiet inhale of breath.
Ava arches and contorts and cries, shocked to have been shouted at by the face she most trusts, and Nena feels deplorable for shouting at her baby so aggressively, in such anger. She picks Ava up out of her highchair and whispers into her ear, soothing herself as much as Ava.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s OK, it’s OK… Shhh…’ Nena rocks Ava on her hip as she sways from side to side. ‘It’s just you need to eat or you won’t get through the night. I can’t carry on like this… Shhh, shhh…’
Nena can’t take another sleepless night. Bedtime fills her with dread; not knowing what’s coming or just how many times Ava will wake makes her feel sick as night-time looms. Every time Ava does wake, it’s Nena, with closed eyes and a heavy heart, who pads into Ava’s nursery, feeling like she’s being deliberately tortured.
Tom can’t do the night shifts, he has to be at W1A early most mornings for breakfast catch-ups with schedulers, studio visits, meetings with production companies, discussions with talent… talent like his wife used to be before she went on maternity leave. Tom has to get up and go to work so he can hang out with Dr Rosa, and Nena goes to bed knowing that she won’t sleep for more than an hour or two. That it’ll be her getting up five times a night. And she’s just so. Fucking. Tired.
‘You can’t drink milk all your life, you know,’ Nena says, walking into the living room and slumping onto the sofa in defeat.
Ava flicks her head and widens her eyes on hearing the word milk.
‘Sixteen-year-olds don’t survive on milk.’
Nena looks into Ava’s eyes, blue and alert and excited by the promise of milk, and Nena is disarmed by her daughter’s beauty.
‘OK, baby,’ she concedes. ‘I just need to express.’ Nena knows Ava won’t have a clue what she’s talking about, but still, it’s what she does. She has no one else to talk to.
‘I’m just changing your nappy.’
‘Let’s run you a bath.’
‘Mummy’s just getting some water.’
Nena commentates on her every move as she talks to a void. Ava doesn’t answer. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills don’t answer.
‘I’m putting you on the mat, so I can express, OK?’
Ava says nothing, but both are calmed by the prospect of a solution. A plan.
Nena rests Ava on her back on the playmat to check she can still roll over, whether the lack of food in her diet means that she might have forgotten her milestones, but she does, straight away. Nena leans to turn on the television.
‘I’m just getting a bottle from the steriliser.’
Ava seems placated and she seems to understand that milk is coming at least, even if the delivery format is less preferable to her mother’s breast.
Nena walks back to the kitchen, picks up another boiled potato she missed off the floor and lifts the lid on the steriliser.
Thank god.
She’s relieved to see there is one sterilised bottle left. Had the oval plastic contraption, that Nena already bemoans takes up too much space in the kitchen, been empty, she might just have picked it up and thrown it out of the window.
Nena takes the bottle and goes back to the living room. There’s a catfight on the TV. A woman in sequins points her finger in another woman’s face. Nena smiles.
Excitement at last!
Ava rocks on all fours, captivated by the argument. She turns her face towards her mother for comfort.
‘It’s OK, baby, standard Housewives bitchfight. They’ll be shopping in Neiman Marcus by the end of the episode.’
Ava blinks. Big blue eyes like a baby big cat.
Nena slinks into the apple-green sofa, into the space that’s a bigger version of her bottom, and attaches a funnel-like piece of plastic to her nipple. At the end of the tube is the sterilised bottle, empty now, but she hopes for a good yield. She turns on the pump and the hum of the electronic whir makes a sound like a cow’s moo. Her breast starts to tingle, her nipple hurts. Nena hoped pumping breast milk, creating a production line of bottles in the fridge door, would help wean Ava off her. Get her off the comfort of suckling day and night. Give Nena a break from the feeling of being drained all the time, the pain of the occasional bite – and Tom could be more hands on.
But the moo of the breast pump also drains and depresses Nena in a way she didn’t expect. And Tina the health visitor was right – her stores are starting to deplete.
There’s no going back.
The suction is taking longer and the bottles are harder to fill. And still, Ava’s waking in the night wanting bloody milk, even if it’s expressed.
Why won’t she take formula?
Ava rocks backwards and forwards on all fours on the mat.
The pump groans. Pitiful drips hit the floor of the plastic bottle. Ava starts to cry.
I need to pick her up.
The cry loudens.
If I detach myself, if I put the bottle down, will the bottle still count as being sterilised?
‘You’re hungry, baby! Why didn’t you just eat your dinner?’
Ava’s cry grows louder and more distressed and her tired arms weaken, giving way underneath her, sending her cheek crashing down to the mat.
Thump.
Shit.
Nena pulls the sucker off her nipple, switches off the pump and carefully balances the bottle on the arm of the sofa. She scoops Ava up and cuddles her as they both cry.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she repeats.
I’m just not very good at this.
Nena and Ava sob into each other’s cheeks, Ava’s blotchy and red from the impact and her tears, as Nena turns in a circle in the middle of the room. Real Housewives laugh and the bottle teetering on the arm of the sofa, not even a quarter full, topples over. Watery milk trickles slowly over the arm of the apple-green upholstery, and Nena starts to wail.
40
April 2016, Hoi An, Vietnam
In the foyer of the Hoi An Happy Homestead, Maya, James, Dee and Lenny are tired and relieved: relieved to be static; relieved that tonight they can sleep in a bed, in a room, and not on a tatty train. It’s the morning after a night spent in a fo
ur-berth sleeper car travelling south on the Reunification Line from Hanoi to Danang, the nearest outpost to this UNESCO town of Hoi An – a pilgrimage for people in search of peace, pho and finery. And, as funny as Lenny is at a sleepover, it makes for a tiring day after. As they bedded down for the night and the train tooted its horn out of Hanoi, Lenny regaled Maya and James with the story of how he wooed Dee, a personal trainer, by telling her he wanted to get in shape and train for the Dublin marathon.
‘Will ya train me up?’ he said, as he did an impression of himself stopping Dee while she was stretching with a client in St Stephen’s Green.
It wasn’t until four months later, when Dee joined Lenny for his longest training run, and they talked candidly and breathily, as running companions do, that Lenny admitted there was no marathon place with his name on it. He had no intention of doing another twelve kilometres on top of the thirty he had gradually built up to in order to impress Dee. He confessed he’d seen her in the park and thought she was so beautiful, her brown skin and strong arms glistening in the summer sunshine, that he decided there and then to conjure a story as a ruse so he could spend time with her.
‘He had to pay me!’ Dee added with a laugh, flashing a gap-toothed smile as she, too, listened while Lenny told their story.
After that longest run, three hours in the autumn sunshine, Lenny leaned against a horse chestnut tree and panicked at the prospect of having to go any further, both in his lie and in kilometres. With red cheeks and a breathy laugh, he said, ‘Here’s a funny thing…’ and told Dee about his cunning plan. Fortunately he was too tired to be embarrassed.
Dee chipped in as Lenny retold the story on the train.
‘I said, “Well, you may as well run it now, ya eejit!” A mate of mine from the gym had dropped out – hurt his knee – Lenny went white when I said he could have his place!’
‘I did go white, didn’t I, Dee?’
When marathon day came, Lenny ran, powered by the runs he and Dee had shared as the seasons changed, and heartened knowing she would be cheering him on along the way. No one was more surprised than Lenny when Dee planted a kiss on him at the finish line and said, ‘G’wan then, I’ll let you take me for dinner.’