Kitchen Chaos

by Deborah A. Levine

  When I don’t say anything, she pauses. “Am I?”

  If anyone’s mom needs a cooking class, it’s mine. The funny thing—in a pathetic sort of way—is that she doesn’t think so. I decide the situation calls for some tough love.

  “Mom,” I say, “you burn everything from toast to chicken wings. Your hot dogs explode, your cake batters are runny, your quesadillas are like rubber, and you’ve dumped hot pasta water on your foot twice in recent memory. And let’s not even talk about that thing with the omelet, okay? Don’t you think you could use some professional help?”

  My mom sighs and plops down hard on someone else’s stoop, even though she hates it when people we don’t know hang out on ours.

  “Okay, so maybe I am a ‘nightmare’ when it comes to cooking,” she says. “I still like to try. But honestly, sweetie, I love that your dad is the master chef in our family. I feel lucky compared to a lot of moms I know. I don’t need to take a class to try to cook as well as he can. I’m happy to let him be King of the Kitchen.”

  “But, Mom,” I plead, “we can’t take the class without an adult, and Dad’s on call on Saturdays. It’s too late to come up with another project idea, and anyway, this one’s really good—Mr. McEnroe’s totally going to love it.”

  My mom looks at me as if everything suddenly makes sense. “Ah-ha! Now the truth comes out: You need me.”

  I shove her a little with my shoulder. “Come on, Mom, imagine Dad’s and the boys’ faces when you suddenly whip up a delicious dinner—without anything melting or exploding. They’ll be blown away. And they won’t be able to make fun of your cooking . . . um . . . skills anymore.”

  My mom considers this and then checks the time on her phone. “Let’s walk and talk,” she says, hopping up from the stoop.

  I follow, a few paces behind, as usual. When I finally catch up, I tug on her sleeve like a little kid begging for another quarter for the gumball machine. “Oh, please, Mommy, we’ve got to do it!”

  “Frankie, you crack me up, you know that?” My mom laughs. Then she speeds up for the last few blocks of the walk home.

  When I get there, the door to our house is open, but my mother’s still standing on the top step just staring inside. I slide past her and step into one of the most massive messes I’ve ever seen—and trust me, I’ve seen a lot. Our house isn’t filled with antiques or anything, but we do have some nice furniture that my grandmother gave us when she sold her brownstone and moved into an apartment building. Apparently, Nicky and The Goons decided it would be a good idea to transform the living and dining rooms into an indoor skate park by turning the furniture into ramps and half-pipes. Every chair, table, and sofa has been tipped upside down, or at least on its side. Nicky’s entire collection of LEGOs is spilled out all over the carpet to make a “hazard area” that the three of them are trying to avoid as they “skateboard” in their socks and crash into the couch cushions like total dweebs.

  I hear what sounds like a cross between a whimper and a growl and kneel down to peek under an overturned side chair. Of course it’s Rocco, who clearly can’t decide whether to defend his turf or run for his life and has chosen to hide out under his favorite chair instead. I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up. My mom doesn’t look angry, upset, or even annoyed, and I decide she must be in shock. “Frankie?” she says.

  “Yeah, Mom?” I reply, standing up.

  “When did you say that cooking class starts?”

  I smile, crossing my fingers on both hands. “Saturday.”

  Without saying a word to my brothers, my mom puts her arm around my shoulder, grabs her purse, and leads me out of the house. She doesn’t look back or even bother to close the door. “I’m in,” she says. “Let’s go over to that studio and sign ourselves up.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Lillian

  My mother is an ox. Not literally, of course (although she does look a whole lot like one when she’s mad). I mean she was born in the Year of the Ox. According to the Chinese zodiac, oxen are hardworking, driven, and strong-willed—probably the first three words most people who know my mother would use to describe her. Not only is she an ox, she’s also a Taurus, so no matter which zodiac you believe in, MeiYin Wong is one stubborn woman.

  I, on the other hand, am a goat—creative, wandering, and disorganized. I’m also big on sleeping, watching TV, and just hanging out. I’m pretty much the polar opposite of my sister, Katie (a dragon, a born leader), and as you can imagine, none of my goatlike character traits go over very well with my mother. Still, I am her daughter, and sometimes, on very rare occasions, I summon the ox that lives deep down inside of me, too, and you’d be amazed how strong-willed and stubborn a lazy little goat can be.

  Convincing my mother to take the cooking class with us is definitely a job for my inner ox. Luckily, he’s super bored from not having been called on for so long and is ready to lock horns with a much bigger, more powerful beast. When Frankie and I got the text from Liza with the news about needing an adult, I was surprised at how determined I became to win the battle and sign up for the class. We have to be able to do this, and I have to help make it happen. I guess spending a month trying to fit in has made me kind of desperate—not exactly an oxlike quality, but powerful in its own way.

  I’m helping my mother with the dishes when I mention the class. Our new house came with a perfectly good dishwasher, but my mother’s not satisfied with the way it cleans, so she’s ordered a new one. Until it arrives, she insists on doing the dishes by hand rather than using an appliance that isn’t up to her standards. So we’re both wearing rubber gloves, our arms elbow-deep in greasy suds, and I’m wondering what my mother has in store for me if I leave a few spots on the glasses like our dishwasher.

  “How are those new friends of yours?” she asks while scouring the remains of some noodles that stuck to the bottom of a pot. “Are you going to invite them over again soon?”

  “They were practically just here,” I say. “And I told you, they aren’t exactly friends. We’re just doing a project together.”

  “How is the project going? There’s a great library nearby. You can get there on your bicycle.”

  I put down the platter I’ve been rinsing and decide this is my moment. “Actually,” I begin, turning to my mother, who has moved on to oiling a wok, “we’re going to be doing a different kind of research for our project. We’re taking a class.”

  My mother looks perplexed, but in a sort of angry way, as if confusion is a weakness that shouldn’t be tolerated. “What do you mean taking a class? I thought the project was for one of the classes you’re already taking.”

  “It is,” I explain. “The project is for social studies. But we’re going to do the research for it in a Saturday cooking class taught by a professional chef. It runs for six weeks, and we’ll really learn a lot.”

  “A cooking class? You?” my mother says with the same tone of disbelief she’d use if I told her I was in the running for the Nobel Prize in science.

  “I know I’ve never been that interested in cooking, Mama, but this is a special kind of class. And it’s for an assignment.”

  “Why do you need to take a special class? If you girls want to learn to cook, you could just ask me. I’ve been trying to show you how to make jiăozi for years! Your friends certainly cleaned their plates, they must have liked my cooking.”

  “I know, Mama, they did. They loved the food you made. Everyone does. But this isn’t a Chinese cooking class. We’ll be learning all about American foods, traditional American foods, and how immigrants from all over the world brought them here.”

  “I see,” my mother says, squirting out another blob of oil. “And you’re doing this for a social studies class? Because cooking is an important part of American history?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “No. I mean, I don’t know.” I start spouting a bunch of things I think Mr. McEnroe would want to hear. “We have to come up with some aspect of immigration that would cut across all diffe
rent groups. Some kind of ‘common thread,’ our teacher said. This is perfect! And all immigrants carried cooking traditions from back home with them to America. We’re going to learn about what foods were brought here by which immigrant groups, about how common things we eat all the time are really from all over the world. We’re going to base our project on that idea and make, you know, posters and a report and stuff to go with it.” Actually, we haven’t gotten as far as figuring out exactly what we’re going to do yet, but she doesn’t need to know that. “Maybe we’ll make a cookbook or something,” I add, a little lamely.

  One thing you should know about my mother is that she doesn’t use cookbooks. She learned to cook mostly by watching her own mother, my lăo lăo, and then just got better and better. It’s like she has some kind of magical ability to know just what combination of ingredients will make something taste exactly the way she wants. There must be a hundred jars of dried herbs and smelly fermented fruits and vegetables in our cabinets, yet my mother can reach her hand in and find the one she needs without even looking. So it’s not exactly surprising that she feels pretty much the same way about cookbooks as she does about ordering takeout.

  Holding her glowing wok up for inspection, my mother offers one of her pronouncements. “The history of cooking in the United States—sounds very ambitious for a children’s cooking class,” she sniffs. “What kind of experience does the instructor have?”

  I’ve just rinsed off the last bowl, and now I’m making little towers out of the soapsuds floating in the dirty water. “The teacher is a very famous chef,” I explain. “He even has his own cooking show on TV.”

  My mother looks unimpressed, which doesn’t surprise me. Other than the news and a Chinese soap opera she got addicted to last year when she broke her foot and was stuck in bed, she doesn’t watch much TV. I’m the complete opposite, because I’ll watch pretty much anything, even really boring sports like golf with my dad.

  “And this very famous chef is teaching a cooking class just for children?” my mother asks, narrowing her eyes.

  “Well,” I say, demolishing my city of soapsuds, “not exactly.” It’s time to channel my inner ox. “It’s not actually a children’s class. It’s an adult class that will allow kids. Kids accompanied by an adult. And I was thinking maybe we could take it together.”

  At first the next part of the conversation goes exactly as I expected it would. My mother looks at me like I’m crazy, sighs, and says she doesn’t need someone else to teach her how to cook. I tell her that I know she’s good, but taking the class is really important to me, that we can’t take it without her, and can’t she just do this one thing that I want?

  My mother hangs the wok on its hook and walks back over to the sink, where I’m still watching the tiny soap bubbles pop one by one in the oily dishwater. I peek up to test the atmosphere. She’s staring at me, and I can see her face soften. “Yang Yang,” she says, using my Chinese name, “I have no need to learn to cook these foods. We are Chinese.”

  Suddenly, I feel a sharp pain in my stomach. It lasts only a second or two, but I know right away what it is: a kick from the tiny ox inside me, reminding me to stand my ground.

  “Well,” I begin, “you may be Chinese, but I’m both. Chinese and American. You chose to stay here, and you chose to have us here, so you chose for me to be both. And right now I want us to learn about American traditions too.” She doesn’t seem to be weakening, so I throw out my last, desperate argument. “Or are you afraid you won’t be as good at American cooking as you are at Chinese?”

  Nothing in my mom’s expression changes except her jaw, which tightens as she makes a tiny clicking sound in her throat. She makes this sound very effectively—and often—to show irritation or to herd us where she wants us to go. But right now it tells me she’s trying to decide whether or not to get really angry. Her inner Taurus the Bull has taken over for the ox, and I’m the one holding the red scarf.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lillian. If I can make bird’s nest soup, I’m quite sure I can make a French fry or a hamburger patty.”

  I may not be able to tighten my jaw and click as well as she can, but when I put my hand on one hip, I can look pretty fierce. “Okay then, Mama,” I say, “prove it.”

  Even a slacker goat like me knows that a bull rarely says no to a challenge. My mother flares her nostrils like the massive hoofed creatures within her. This is it: The class, the project, and my best shot at making friends so far this year all depend on whether my mother decides to charge or hold her ground.

  Mama locks eyes with me for another long moment. Then, slowly, the corners of her mouth begin to rise. She’s smiling, but there’s a glint in her eye that’s not entirely friendly. Goat and I have won.

  “Fine,” she says, holding out her hand for me to shake. “As you girls would say, it’s a deal.”

  I’m so happy that I start jumping up and down. Instead of shaking her hand, I throw my arms around my mother’s neck, leap up, and wrap my legs around her waist. Just like in a TV show, my father and Katie choose that very moment to enter the kitchen. The sight of my five-foot-three mother holding her five-foot-one daughter must be so ridiculous that it stops them in their tracks. They stare at us for a minute, then turn to each other and exchange a bewildered look. Finally, my father—who does math all day and is a man of few words—clears his throat. “Well,” he says to Katie, handing her a clean teacup from the dish rack before taking one for himself, “looks like they’ve finished with the dishes.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Liza

  Believe it or not, whoever came up with the quote on that poster in the school infirmary wasn’t completely clueless. Wednesday night I got almost simultaneous texts after dinner from both Frankie and Lillian: Their moms said yes—both of them. Of course I was relieved that we could take the class, but suddenly, I was the only one whose mom was still holding out—and my mom taking the class with us was the entire part two of my original big idea.

  The next day, after we’d all registered and paid for the class, I’d pretty much given up hope that my mom would sign up, and I was getting ready to be the latchkey kid of American Cooking 101. But all that imagining and dreaming I did must have paid off, because that night my mom came home looking seriously annoyed. After she put Cole to bed, she told me about how she’d spent the whole afternoon arguing with clients who just wouldn’t listen to her and had gotten on her last nerve. Later, when we were eating dinner, the commercial for the class came on again, and just like that, Mom shook her head, put down her fork, and said, “You know what, Lize? I’m going to take that class.” She even booked Cammy, the ninth grader who lives upstairs from us, to babysit for Cole on Saturday afternoons.

  That was Thursday. Now it’s Saturday and we’re supposed to be leaving for class, only Cammy’s mom just called to say that Cammy has a fever and won’t be able to babysit. She offered to watch Cole herself, but he can be seriously cranky with people he doesn’t know, so Mom told her that she should stay home in case Cammy needs her and that we’d figure out something to do with Cole. That “something” turned out to be taking him along with us. I hope the chef likes babies—and that there are safety knobs on the stoves.

  “Okay, everybody, let’s do this,” my mom says, zipping up the diaper bag. From all the toys, snacks, and extra clothes she’s stuffed it with, you’d think we were going away for the weekend instead of a few hours. But that’s life with a two-and-a-half-year-old. Mom grabs the stroller and I scoop up Cole, who’s waving around his sippy cup and splashing milk all over the apartment.

  “I’ll take that, mister,” I say, snatching the cup out of Cole’s hands and switching it with a box of animal crackers. The guy is a sugar fiend, and I’ve discovered that the trick to getting him to cooperate is just to keep giving him sweets. My mom’s not crazy about that plan, but this was supposed to be my afternoon with her, so there’s no way I’m feeling guilty about a few little crackers.

  We decide to w
alk to the cooking studio because it’s warm and sunny out today, but Cole whines and fusses the whole way there and my mom and I are feeling anything but “sunny” when we arrive. Frankie and Lillian and their moms are already standing around a big metal table in the middle of the room, which is huge, with fancy-looking steel appliances lining three of the walls. The other wall is all windows and looks right out onto the street. Even though we won’t be on TV, I guess we’ll kind of be starring in a cooking show of our own, at least for the people passing by on the sidewalk.

  Chef Antonio comes to meet us at the door, and all I can say is, Wow! He’s even better-looking in person, and I can already tell that he’s just as friendly in real life. Cole starts howling and struggling to escape his stroller the minute we’re inside, but Chef Antonio’s smile doesn’t fade as he holds out his hand to me first and then my mom.

  “Welcome to my kitchen,” he says in a deep, Spanish-accented voice that sounds so familiar, like he’s an old friend instead of a stranger I’ve only seen on TV. “I’m Antonio, and you must be Liza and Ms. Reynolds.” He waves his hand toward the big table. “Your friends have been telling me all about you.”

  “Call me Jackie,” my mom says while trying to get Cole to calm down.

  I give Frankie a look that says, You’d better not have said anything embarrassing. Frankie’s mom—who insists that I call her Theresa, even though it still feels a little strange—looks at us, then at Frankie, and then back at us. She waves at my mom and then whispers something to Frankie with a confused expression on her face. I guess Frankie “forgot” to mention that my mom decided at the last minute to take the class after all. I catch Lillian’s eye as her mom is hissing something in her ear too. Looks like my big idea has morphed into some kind of mother-daughter cooking adventure—probably not what our moms were expecting, but too many is better than not enough!