Soy Sauce for Beginners

by Kirstin Chen

  “Not tonight.”

  As soon as my father’s steps had receded down the hall, I heard whispers and giggles right outside my door. I pictured the marketing girl on the other side, by now no doubt joined by several others, their eyes widening with curiosity—even glee. I longed to fling the phone across the room so it would strike the door with a deafening crack. And then I longed for the anonymity of my life in San Francisco, where I was nobody’s daughter, granddaughter, cousin, niece.

  I folded my arms on my desk, laid my head down and wished I were anywhere else but this bare office, surrounded by hushed voices and watchful eyes. I couldn’t imagine how much worse the gossip would be if they’d known about Paul’s affair; I couldn’t imagine my father’s slow-burning rage had he known, too.

  When I finally made myself leave my office, I found Shuting huddled with Fiona in her cube, replaying the online video of my cousin Cal’s interview with a local news anchor. I too had seen the clip my first day home. Already privy to how the scandal had unfolded, I’d watched horrified as my cousin looked the news anchor straight in the eye and told her slowly and clearly that he was only going to repeat himself one more time: he, and Lin’s, had done nothing wrong. Shortly after that interview, my father had ordered Cal to leave town.

  Upon noticing me, Fiona quickly closed the webpage.

  Shuting was the first to recover. With exaggerated concern she asked, “Why you always skip lunch? You managed to call Paul or not?”

  I didn’t even want her to say his name. When I didn’t respond, Fiona studied my face and asked if I was feeling okay. She was a serious, sensibly dressed woman whom I thought of as middle-aged even though she was probably only a few years older than I am. I was relieved when Jason from sales peeked his head around the side of the cube, saving me from having to answer.

  “Apparently xiao lao ban is back in town,” he said, taking up everyone’s favorite topic of discussion: Cal, who was known as “little boss” behind his back. Jason’s face fell when he saw me. “Oh,” he said, “you’re here.”

  In the years I’d been abroad, discarding jobs and collecting graduate degrees, my cousin had stayed firmly in one spot, determined to learn everything he could about the family business. Ever since Cal was a teenager he’d spent his school holidays working at the factory. All through university he’d interned in the sales department. Even during his two and a half years of mandatory military service, he’d regularly drop by the office in full uniform. Upon graduation, when Cal was made Lin’s vice president, no one was surprised.

  Months earlier, my cousin had begun his latest push to bring the company into the new millennium with a line of ready-to-cook sauces in such flavors as teriyaki, sweet and sour, black bean, and Peking duck. Although Uncle Robert and Ba had reservations, Cal pointed out that Lin’s was already experimenting with cheaper, fiberglass-aged soy sauce. He argued that this new line of condiments would only bolster the company’s efforts to reach a younger demographic. Sure enough, early consumer feedback was overwhelmingly positive and orders rolled in faster than they could be filled.

  One week after the launch, the first report of food poisoning came in from Rice Broker, a small fast-food chain, not at all like the upscale restaurants that purchased Lin’s soy sauce.

  Cal must have panicked when he saw he had a potentially serious problem on his hands, especially since it had been his decision to streamline the production process by cutting out several hygiene measures. But only three or four more complaints trickled in, and the source of contamination remained difficult to isolate. In the meantime, sales of the new sauces continued to outpace forecasts by two to one. Recalling the line of sauces at this point would not only come at huge cost, but would harm the company’s reputation—perhaps unnecessarily. Cal must have told himself all this when he opted to keep the food-poisoning reports a secret. Drawing on the largest marketing budget in the history of the company, he continued to aggressively promote his new products.

  At first, it appeared he’d gambled correctly. No other cases of food poisoning emerged. But then a Straits Times reporter fell ill after eating a plate of sliced cod stir-fried in Lin’s black bean ready-to-cook sauce. The reporter interviewed a friend who had served the sauce to her family, and whose toddler had projectile vomited for twelve hours. The reporter began to investigate, going so far as to send a sample of the black bean sauce to the Ministry of Health. His article exposed Lin’s shortcuts on the production line and questioned not only Cal’s management abilities but also his sense of decency. How could a company that claimed to uphold family values continue to sell a product that made people sick? The reporter ended with the Chinese proverb: Wealth does not pass three generations. By the time the article landed on newsstands, it didn’t matter that the ministry’s tests had been inconclusive.

  My mother was the one who called me in San Francisco and kept me abreast of the latest developments; my father was too furious and exhausted to talk about it.

  Eventually, Ba and Uncle Robert recalled all remaining products at enormous cost to the company. They killed the new line and placed Cal on a leave of absence while they worked to salvage the company’s reputation. Now, two weeks into my cousin’s exile, Ba and Uncle Robert were still in the process of determining Cal’s future at Lin’s—a discussion they kept closely guarded.

  Their silence only encouraged more speculation among the office staff.

  “If he’s back in town, he’ll be here next week,” said Shuting.

  “Unless he kena sacked over the weekend,” said Jason, wiggling his eyebrows lewdly. His eyes darted toward me, and he ducked his head. “Sorry-ah.”

  I waved away his apology. Cal deserved to be disparaged.

  “They won’t sack him,” Fiona said firmly.

  All three of them politely refrained from making the obvious cracks about the beauty of nepotism. They waited for me to speak.

  Weakly I said, “I heard he spent his entire leave diving in the Maldives,” and they looked unimpressed.

  Jason asked if my father had revealed anything else about Cal to me, and when I assured them I had no additional information, Shuting dismissed me with a shake of her head. “Yah, lah, whatever,” she said. “Confidentiality rules and all that, right?” In Chinese, she said to the others, “Of course she can’t tell us,” knowing full well I understood.

  We heard my uncle’s door swing open, and Jason and Shuting got up to leave, but not before the three of them agreed to go for beers at the hawker center after work. I wasn’t invited to come along.

  Fiona handed me a box of envelopes to stuff for a mass mailing and said in a low voice, “Don’t let those two bother you. They anyhow qit gong bueh gong, but they don’t know anything.”

  I smiled to show her I was fine.

  In my office, I printed fifty copies of a form letter to our best clients, thanking them for their continued loyalty through this difficult time, and sat down to work. Usually I enjoyed these mindless repetitive tasks: entering data into Excel spreadsheets, organizing files, making photocopies. But this afternoon I couldn’t focus. I folded and unfolded each letter, convinced I’d misaddressed its envelope.

  Outside my window, beyond the low rooftops of the factory, the downtown skyscrapers gleamed like pyrite beneath the midafternoon sun. Polished, spotless, sterile.

  In San Francisco, I’d fallen in love with the crumbling Victorian neighborhoods, some of which had lived through multiple earthquakes. Paul’s and my Russian Hill apartment building dated back to 1922.

  “Just means we’ll be safe when the next earthquake comes,” Paul said as our building’s cramped cage elevator lifted us into the air. That night, three years into our marriage, we discovered that yanking back the door stopped the elevator in its tracks. As the elevator hung suspended between the third and fourth floors, I peeled off my sweater and let it fall to the grimy floor before pulling him to me, pressing my mouth to his neck. I’d unbuttoned his shirt and was reaching for his bel
t buckle when an unmistakable voice boomed down from above. “You two better not be doing what I think you’re doing.” It was our next-door neighbor, Mrs. O’Donley.

  Giggling uncontrollably, we pulled on our clothes, smoothed our hair, and tried to compose ourselves by the time the elevator opened on the fifth floor. The old lady stood there with her hands on her hips.

  “Good evening, Mrs. O’Donley,” Paul said, bending at the waist to look her in the eye. “I’m so sorry about the wait.” He bared two rows of teeth, shiny and white as domino tiles.

  “Oh,” she said, taking a step back. Her cheeks colored, her jaw softened. No doubt all would have been forgiven if I hadn’t burst into another round of giggles.

  Mrs. O’Donley recovered. “Some of us have places to be,” she said, peering sternly over her glasses.

  We hurried into our apartment, and he collapsed on the bed, dragging me down on top of him, and together we laughed until we were clutching our stomachs.

  Later that night, when we made love, I pulled Paul against me as hard as I could, again and again, bruising my hipbones, crushing my ribs. He thought I was just really turned on, but that wasn’t it: I’d awakened a longing I could not control, an awareness of the spaces he could not fill.

  The clock on my computer said three in the afternoon. Eleven p.m. in California. I pictured Paul pacing the length of his new apartment with his cell phone pressed to his ear, asking about my mother’s health, telling her about his research. I heard him suck in his breath when she lowered her voice to signal a change of subject, and said, “Be straight with me, Paul. Is it really over between you two?” Did he throw out something vague and meaningless like, “These things are complicated”? Did he chew on the insides of his cheeks before confessing that he truly didn’t know?

  I was stuffing my last few envelopes when the phone rang. I held my breath, but it was only Ba. Then I remembered he was calling from the doctor’s.

  It was supposed to have been a routine checkup, and he tried to assure me that everything was fine, even though the doctor had run tests and Ma’s potassium level was higher than normal. When further questioned, Ba conceded that this condition could be dangerous if left untreated, so the doctor was keeping her at the hospital overnight just to be safe.

  “You know how Dr. Yeoh is,” he said. “Very cautious one, lah.”

  “But what happened?” I repeated, annoyed by his efforts to placate me, determined to have my suspicions confirmed. “What caused this?”

  He finally admitted that Ma might have had a gin and tonic or two while lunching with a friend that afternoon—he was hazy on the details, and I bit my lip to hold back the wave of accusations.

  I dropped the stuffed envelopes off at Fiona’s desk and explained I had to leave early. As I walked down the hall to the stairwell, I heard Shuting scurry over to Fiona’s cube. I didn’t turn back to catch her in the act.

  It was no secret that my mother’s chronic kidney disease had deteriorated into full-fledged kidney failure, but what my co-workers didn’t know—what I was only just beginning to grasp—was the extent to which Ma’s drinking was compromising her health. Forced to retire at age fifty-eight, Ma now spent the majority of her days chained to a dialysis machine, a routine that would probably continue for the rest of her life. In some ways I couldn’t fault her for needing to fill those lonely, empty hours. Since I was a child, Ma had always enjoyed an after-work cocktail, a glass or two of good wine, and yet thanks to my father’s deft orchestrations, she never appeared anything more than charmingly tipsy. In recent years, however, there were more incidents he couldn’t explain away, like the time she phoned me long-distance in the middle of the night, her voice too loud and strangely shrill. “Do love me, ducky?” she’d slurred into the phone. “Do you really, truly love me?”

  In the car on my way to the Gleneagles Hospital, my guilt bubbled out of me. My father never asked for help, it wasn’t his way, but Ma needed something he could not provide. I resolved to show I was here for them, ready to play a more active role in her care.

  Three months earlier, I’d called to tell my parents’ the most bare-boned version of my separation from Paul: our marriage wasn’t working, he was moving out. I braced myself for the barrage of questions, but all I heard was silence; I thought my cell phone might have dropped the call. Then Ba said, “We have news, too. Ma’s going on dialysis.” He waited three days before suggesting, carefully, that perhaps it was time to come home, and at that moment, thinking only of myself, I felt relief.

  Consumed by Ma’s health problems and Cal’s betrayal, my father had yet to push me to explain my separation, but I lived in a constant state of dread.

  I emerged from the elevator on the hospital’s ninth floor. Despite my best intentions, when I saw my father pacing the hallway outside the patient wards, all I could think of was how he’d never been able to stand up to Ma.

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “You can’t keep letting this happen.”

  At first he stared back at me; then, he leaned in close. “You’ve been back for a week,” he said, face red with the effort of keeping his voice low. “You don’t know anything.”

  I tried again. “Maybe I should talk to her.”

  “Who’s stopping you?” he asked.

  When I didn’t respond, he smoothed his shirt into his waistband. “I’m going downstairs to get a drink. Want anything?”

  For an instant, I thought he was referring to a bar, but then I realized he meant the hospital canteen. These days Ba rarely touched alcohol. Even though I hadn’t consumed anything all day except cereal, the thought of eating made my stomach churn. “No, thanks,” I said.

  He didn’t try to change my mind. He just turned and walked to the elevators.

  “Ba,” I called, wanting to tell him that maybe I would join him for dinner after all.

  Without looking back, he raised his hand in a half wave and kept going.

  Standing before the door to my mother’s room, I drew my face to the window. There she was, propped up on two pillows, thinner and frailer than she’d looked the day before. An IV needle pierced her left arm, and PVC bags hung off the side of the bed, their tubes leading to places I didn’t want to think about.

  My mother had always been slender, but she’d lost weight over the last year. Her cheeks were yellow and waxen, as if formed from a synthetic material intended to mimic real skin. After enduring months of hair loss, she’d ordered her longtime hairstylist to “get rid of it all,” and her once long, glossy locks now hung limp at her chin. Despite these setbacks, she refused to act like someone who spent her days moving from bedroom to hospital to bedroom again. Each morning she donned the graphic print silk blouse and pressed slacks and stack of real gold bangles that had been her teaching uniform. Even today, clad in a standard-issue hospital gown, the slash of candy-apple red on Ma’s mouth looked freshly applied. Some days, I admired her uncompromising standards; other days, I pitied her.

  Although an issue of The Economist lay tented over her chest, she was staring at the mounted television screen, where a bubbly, perfectly coiffed, blond woman—America’s favorite daytime talk show host—urged viewers to, “Stop saying ‘no,’ and start saying ‘Hell, yeah!’” The studio audience of middle-aged housewives burst into ecstatic whoops. Sturdy and wide eyed, these women possessed a wholesomeness I associated with the Midwest, but the show was taped in San Francisco. The host’s Pac Heights mansion was a popular sight on city architectural tours.

  When she heard my knock, Ma hastily clicked off the TV.

  “My long lost daughter,” she said. “I have to be lying in a hospital bed before I get to see you.”

  I busied myself with pulling up a chair.

  “Where do you go after work?” she asked. “Where are you spending all your time?”

  These were fair questions. I’d spent the last two nights by myself in Holland Village at Chaplin’s, a shabby bar with torn leather stools and an empty patch of dance f
loor that was nothing like the heaving, undulating place I remembered from summer breaks, back when the smoke had been so thick, you lit up in self-defense.

  I said, “How are you feeling?”

  She scowled. “That Dr. Yeoh. He keeps telling me to eat more, but then in the same breath he says, ‘No salt, chili, sugar, garlic.’” She ticked the list off on her fingers. “What am I supposed to eat? And your father. He takes everything so seriously. He was sitting there, taking notes as if he’d forget. I told him, ‘Just write, nothing with taste.’” She looked pleased when I cracked a smile. “Seriously though, with all this dialysis, what does it matter what I eat? And does Dr. Yeoh not realize that I live with the soy sauce king of Singapore?”

  Alcohol was absent from the doctor’s list of banned ingredients; I suspected this was Ma’s own omission. Given how I’d spent the previous nights, ordering one vodka soda after another to delay having to step through the doorway of my parents’ home, I was in no position to judge.

  “Ma, we have to talk about this,” I said, placing a hand on her forearm, searching for a way to show her I understood.

  “Oh, don’t start, ducky. I feel fine. I told them I didn’t need to stay overnight, but of course, no one listens to me.”

  I interrupted. “How many did you have?”

  She looked away.

  I told her that once she got home we would sit down and devise a plan. Perhaps it was time to return to the manuscript she’d all but abandoned, a biography of the germanophone African writer, Dualla Misipo. “You can’t just sit around all day,” I said.

  She pursed her candy-apple lips. “Really? Because everyone keeps telling me how sick I am, and that’s what sick people do.”

  I wouldn’t let her draw me in. “I’ll give you piano lessons.”

  She stopped short. She’d always wanted to learn to play, but had never had the time. “Oh, Gretch,” she began.

  “I’m very strict. I’m used to dealing with eight-year-olds with ADD.” As part of my master’s program, I’d volunteered at a public school in the Richmond.