VietnamEazy

by Trami Nguyen Cron

  My sharp competitive nature developed when I was introduced to tennis. It was a bourgeois sport for Vietnamese, played by generations of men in my family. I still have old black-and-white photos of my great-grandfather standing in his black pants and white shirt and shoes holding a tennis racket in his hands. The French brought this gift to our people. It was a modern and gentlemanly sport of the upper classes.

  I was living in Paris in 1984 when our step-uncle gave my brother, Minh, and I lessons. I loved playing tennis because it was one time I was allowed to run around in the sun. I didn’t have much of a forehand, but as Step-Uncle liked to say, my backhand was as dependable as a cobra strike. He gave me pats on the head and bravos whenever I lashed a backhand winner. Some might think of tennis as stuffy and tradition-bound, but for me, it was pure fun to be out there, away from the constraints of disapproving eyes and cultural rules and etiquette, free at last to move my body as much as I wanted.

  One day in the middle of a tennis lesson I felt a strange, sharp pain somewhere near my stomach. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, but sitting there I grew even more frustrated. Nothing was happening. But the intense cramps persisted. The pain was so blinding, I finally had to ask Step-Uncle to take us home. He knew I was not a complainer and was very concerned that something serious must be wrong. He rushed us to the Metro to bring me back to Mom’s apartment. The ride could not have lasted more than fifteen minutes, but to this day I would swear it must have taken hours. I sat in my seat bent over at the waist and squirmed around to try to ease the pain, but nothing helped. I had never experienced anything like that agony and was sure I would end up in the hospital. I was so relieved to see Mom’s face when she opened the door.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, my stomach hurts,” I replied while rushing into my bedroom to lie down. I just wanted the pain to end.

  Mom came into my bedroom a few minutes later with something in her hand.

  “Put this on,” she said, handing it to me.

  I looked down and recognized the object as something I had often seen in our bathroom: a feminine pad.

  “What do you mean put it on?” I asked her.

  She opened the plastic wrap, removed the pad from the wrapper, and removed the tape to reveal the sticky side.

  “Stick this on your underwear.”

  I got up and went to the bathroom and followed her instructions. Soon I had a pillow between my legs. I didn’t understand why. But I hoped it might somehow help my stomach pain. I went back to the bedroom to crawl into my bed.

  “Rest here,” my mother said and left the room.

  After a while the waves of pain eased and I decided to go to the bathroom. I held up the pad, not believing what I was seeing: It was soaked red with blood. I was horrified. I had no idea what was happening but had the sense to replace the bloodied pad with another one. Mom had not seemed overly concerned, so it seemed unlikely I was going to die.

  My cramps eventually went away, but I continued to wear the pads daily for the next two months. I had heard in passing about women bleeding when they get older and did not want to be unprepared the next time it happened. I came home from school one day and Mom called me into her bedroom. What did I do now? I thought.

  “Why are you still wearing those pads?” she asked firmly.

  She had grown concerned seeing used pads in the little trash can in the bathroom day after day.

  “Because of the bleeding,” I replied, standing meekly in her doorway.

  I was upset. I did not like discussing my private affairs with her. Mom looked a little shocked.

  “But you’re not bleeding anymore,” she said.

  “I don’t know when it will happen again,” I said, “so I wear it just in case.”

  She sighed and seemed relieved. In fact, she chuckled.

  “You only bleed once a month for a week and at the same time each month,” Mom informed me.

  Now she tells me!

  “I did not know.”

  I was so happy to find out that I did not have to wear those darn pillows every day for the rest of my life. Before I was allowed to go back to my room Mom warned me to remember that I was a girl and I was never allowed to wear tampons. I had seen those things in the bathroom, too, and was curious about them, but mostly I was grateful she answered that question so I didn’t have to ask. That was Mom. No explanation, just statements of fact.

  The topic of sex was never discussed in my family. We were told babies came from armpits. I suppose it was just as ridiculous as stories about storks delivering babies to American homes. To this day I don’t even know the word for sex in Vietnamese. They usually referred to sex as làm bậy bạ (doing the naughty) when referring to the act in bad scenarios. In happy, loving situations, they said chăn gối vợ chồng (blankets pillows wife husband). I did appreciate the subtleties of the Vietnamese culture when referring to sex. It was never crude or lewd.

  “Five, four, three, two, ONE!” Peter called out happily. “Time is up!”

  We all had to raise our hands in the air to demonstrate we had stopped at the sound of Peter shouting at us. I was amazed that one hour could pass so quickly. I looked down at my beautiful Feminine Salad. I had plated an array of colorful, perfectly julienned vegetables and herbs on a large white platter. I carefully placed the fried sweet potato and shallots in the center and sprinkled sesame seed and a sprig of cilantro on top. The extra dipping sauce was ready for the judges to pour over the salad before they tasted it. I knew even Mom would be proud. I pulled off all four virtues today. I was skillful. I was cute. I was articulate. And I played nice.

  One by one they ushered each of us into a separate room to give our presentation in front of the judges and an array of cameras. I sat waiting on the couch next to Todd, a porky, middle-age contestant with the ruddy complexion of someone who had been overweight most of his life. As much as I hated chit-chat, I forced myself to save my nerves by letting Todd talk. I found out he was a father of two. He tried out for the show to remind his kids they could do anything they wanted. He loved bacon. He didn’t even have to tell me this. I could tell just by looking at him that he was a fan of bacon and Southern comfort food. But his energy and demeanor did help calm me down. That would benefit me in front of the judges.

  “Who doesn’t love bacon?” I told Todd, smiling.

  Vietnamese people tended to rely on intuition. We developed this skill as a necessity because we were not able to ask questions. Reading a person’s mood and body language offered us clues into their thoughts and character. I was very good at reading people’s energies and making sure they could not read mine, practicing a steady and natural self-control. Americans often lacked this level of awareness. They didn’t bother. It was perfectly natural for me to meet a complete stranger and after three and a half minutes they had revealed their entire dating history to me. It was much different with my Vietnamese friends. We could spend a whole weekend together on a camping trip, cooking, eating and laughing together, yet head back home afterward having directly shared very little about each other. Perhaps each other’s professions and maybe marital status, but that was about it. But we could clue into where each person came from by judging their accent. We could determine the family’s education level by their choice of words and their mannerisms as they ate. We could gauge their honesty by the way they glanced at us. Looking into another person’s eyes too long as they spoke would be considered too intimate. The practice of looking just long enough to show interest followed by a timely release was an art form, one I knew I would need to practice to perfection during the shooting for Sliced and Diced.

  Packing for the trip to New York had been horrendous. I stuffed as many clothes, shoes and accessories as I could into three suitcases, knowing I might be gone as long as three months and wishing I could pack three or four more suitcases. John had a strange look in his eye as he stood back and watched me bounce around from closet to closet and drawer to drawe
r to gather my things. I could never understand how he was able to pack in less than an hour and have everything he needed while I made lists and checked them twice yet always ended up borrowing something from his suitcase. But then there was a lot about John I could never understand. He had his good qualities, like discretion; he knew enough to stay out of the way to avoid becoming a victim of my anxiety as I rushed around. As calm as he appeared, his excitement for me came through, along with something harder to put my finger on, an uneasiness he tried to camouflage. I had to wonder: Would he prefer to have the woman he married years ago, less sure of herself, more afraid of the world, or the changed woman who would come home to him after appearing on Sliced and Diced? Maybe none of that really mattered so long as I did come home to him.

  Unlike in the car on the drive down to L.A., when I wanted to talk and he clung to his audio-book safety blanket, here at home he seemed to want to open the lines of communication between us, not in any deep way, but at least enough to lessen the sense that we were two trains heading away from each other in the night. This time I was the one who did not want to be distracted. I had to make good decisions about clothes and I had to stay focused on positing thinking. I was not even going to consider the possibility that I might fall short and be eliminated from the show in the early going. I was going to get as much air time as possible and do my best to land my own cooking show. To pull that off I’d have to be determined and I’d have to be smart. That meant backing off on black. I was only going to bring two black dresses, even though black is my favorite color because it camouflages my back fat and belly pooch. But for Sliced and Diced I had to go in a different direction. Bright, flashy color, that was what they wanted. A colorful personality and a colorful wardrobe, this was the winning combination.

  I packed my back-fat-suppressing Soma bras and Spanx undergarments. After turning thirty-five, I found my fat migrating from one spot on my body to another on a weekly basis. I felt lucky not to have big thighs, but hated my stomach pooch. I had two bellies, one for eating food and the other for storing food. I’d had them since I was thirteen, even when I was just a dark, short twig with breasts. A few years back I finally learned to accept them after attending a seminar in San Francisco about women and body image. During one of the sessions, they made us stand half-naked in front of a mirror. Staring into those long, flimsy wardrobe mirrors, we had to pretend that the body parts we hated most had voices. We had conversations with them. I had paid six hundred bucks for this woo-woo seminar, so I reluctantly went through the exercise. I studied the reflection of my 115-pound, five-foot-one body, in a pair of black short shorts and white tank top. I rolled up the shirt to expose the body parts I liked least.

  “Hey twins, why can’t one of you leave?” I taunted my belly rolls. “I only need one. You’re so flabby and fat!”

  The coach was standing next to me and loved this. He coaxed me along, but I felt silly and could not help chuckling.

  “What would your bellies say back to you?” the coach asked me in a way too serious tone of voice.

  I was going to chuckle some more, I felt the laughter coming, but suddenly it hit me: He was right. This was the way. I stared back into the mirror with fury and purpose and could hear a voice in my head now.

  “Why do you speak to us this way?” I shouted, channeling the voice of my twin bellies. “Would you allow anyone else to call us names like that?”

  I was startled by the intensity of the outburst.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” I said after a pause. “Even my husband knows never to call me names.”

  The women who had gathered around me started sobbing. My words cut right through the fog and made them stop and take stock. We get offended when others speak degradingly to us. Yet we do it to ourselves every single day of our lives.

  In that moment I learned something wonderful. I gave myself permission to love my body for the first time, despite its flaws. I gathered up all the name-calling and criticism I received growing up about my weight, height and skin tone and stuffed it all away in a little bag. I vowed that day I would no longer call my belly my “twins” and never have. I would stop complaining about them. I would love them. Because they are me. I have not seen that bag since.

  Jessica, an attractive woman in cat-eye glasses and Louboutin heels, walked confidently back into the room after completing her presentation and flashed a coy smile. She had dark brown shoulder-length hair in a blunt cut with short bangs. Her shtick was making daily food elegant.

  “Kieu, you’re next!” she called out, all but winking.

  I grabbed my platter and held it up high as I walked in to meet the judges, giving them my best confident smile.

  “Hi, Kieu!” said the oldest of the judges, who was thin and distinguished-looking, like a real judge. “Welcome to your first official on-camera and presentation.”

  Sitting to his left was Peter. On his right was a redheaded woman with wavy hair, a distracted air and a smile plastered on her face that looked permanent.

  “Kieu, you remember our judges?” Peter spoke up in his official tone. “Gnarles, our executive producer, and Linda, our head chef. And I am your third judge.”

  “Hello judges,” I said firmly but evenly. “Thank you for this opportunity.”

  “You have three minutes to present your dish on camera,” Peter stated matter-of-factly. “And we will taste your dish to determine if you will be sliced today. Are you ready?”

  The director immediately said “Cut!”

  A makeup artist came running out to powder my nose. The director reworked the camera angle and gave multiple instructions to the room full of people.

  “Action!” the director finally shouted after ten minutes of commotion.

  I smiled at the camera once again and gave them a presentation I knew they would not forget.

  “Hi, my name is Kieu,” I said. “I’m going to show you how to make Vietnamese food easy by using American ingredients.”

  I took a breath and continued to smile confidently at the camera. Twice I realized my eyes had darted from the judges to the blinking light on top of the camera and back, but I was not going to let nervousness upset my composure. Steady, steady, steady.

  “Today I made for you Vietnamese Feminine Salad,” I continued. “This salad represents all that is intricate and beautiful about women. It has amazing textures of crunchy vegetable and fried sweet potato and soft herbs. The taste is well balanced with sweet, sour and salt.”

  I had found a groove. I could feel warm waves of approval emanating from the judges.

  “All you have to do is pour on this delicious dressing of lime juice, a little sugar, salt and some fish sauce to give it that VietnamEazy flavor,” I said.

  I demonstrated by pouring the sauce over the platter, holding my elbow high to give the gesture some added flair.

  “Toss it a little and serve it tableside,” I added.

  I picked up a small plate from under the counter and set it down. I tossed the salad with two large, metal spoons and served a little portion onto the plate. Holding up the plate with one hand and chopsticks in the other, I tasted a small bite – and was honestly surprised at how delicious and perfect the dish had turned out.

  “Mmmmmm, it’s so good, with a fresh crunch, like having summer in your mouth,” I said, flashing honest pride.

  I put the plate and chopsticks down and turned to look directly at the camera, a twinkle in my eyes, and added, “The next time you think Vietnamese food is hard? Think easy. I’m Kieu and I look forward to making your next culinary adventure VietnamEazy.”

  We all had to wait in a plain small room with a few simple couches until all the contestants had their turn at presenting their dishes. The last person to go up was Deepti, my favorite Indian chef. She had a mild and gentle demeanor about her that I admired. She was full of light and smiles. I wished I could watch her presentation and was sure I could pick up a few pointers from her approach. But you never really knew on these shows what the
judges would consider bad or consider great. I had seen the worst chefs win and the greatest ones lose. That was probably part of the calculation to keep the regular viewer at home interested. Still, talent and grace had to count for something and if I did not win the competition, I hoped that Deepti would. She had made Lamb Keema Aloo, minced lamb curry with potato and basmati rice, and the dish looked exquisite.

  I was exhausted from having to wait but kept myself entertained by studying the other contestants’ body language, looking for insights into their personalities. Some slumped on the sofa in a defeated state. Some paced back and forth. Some chatted nonstop. Still others sat still, pulled back into themselves, and engaged in some private dialogue about how they could improve in the next round – if they made it that far. Suddenly the door flew open and Peter pranced in.

  “The judges would like to see Todd, Jessica and …” he said.

  The rest of us all stared down. It seemed like forever before he continued.

  “And … Deepti!”

  I’d been on pins and needles waiting to hear my name, but once the moment had passed it dawned on me that maybe I was lucky not to have been named. Todd, Jessica and Deepti followed Peter out of the room, looking like characters in The Hunger Games. Deepti glanced back to meet my eye and I nodded and smiled as if to say, “You’ll be OK.” She smiled her thanks but then quickly turned back around to adjust her sari and straighten her posture into a dignified stance before following Peter out of the room.

  Chatter exploded all around me once the door shut behind them. It felt as if the air had left the room. To make up for the lack of oxygen, everyone speculated even more rapidly on whether or not the departed trio represented the top three, the bottom three or some as-yet-unimaginable other three. My own guess was that if Deepti were part of the group, they had to be the top three, just based on the wonderful fragrances wafting my way from her kitchen, but I was also thrown off because then what would Todd be doing in that group? The bacon guy? He just did not seem like a star to me, but I had been wrong before. Who knew how far the producers would go to try to satisfy viewers? The Vietnamese woman and the sari-wearing Indian woman were not necessarily going to make your average middle-American viewer feel comfortable, were we? I made a mental note to talk to Deepti later about clothes if she did return to the competition.