by Leslie Li
Gee Ma Wot Mein (Breakfast Noodles)
¼ pound wonton skins (20-24 skins)
1½ teaspoons oyster sauce
1½ teaspoons light soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
¼ teaspoon Guilin la-jiao (hot chili sauce)
1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
Cut wonton skins into ½ -inch-wide strips.
Bring small pot of water to boil. Drop wonton skins into water. Boil 1 minute. Rinse quickly with hot water. Drain. Transfer to bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix well.
Makes 1 serving.
Old Man Wang’s Spicy Beef Noodles
12 ounces flank steak
peanut oil (enough for stir-frying noodles)
1 ounce bean-thread noodles
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/3 one egg white
1 teaspoon rice wine or dry sherry
1½ teaspoons fresh ginger, finely minced
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
2 scallions, cut in 1½-inch strips
1½ cups bamboo shoots, cut into matchsticks
½ red or green bell pepper, cut in ¼-inch-wide strips
2 dried chili peppers, torn into small pieces (keep seeds)
Sauce:
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons rice wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon black soy sauce
1½ teaspoons sesame oil
Slice flank steak against the grain into paper-thin slices. (To slice flank steak thinly, freeze the meat and slice it when it is partially thawed.) Cut the slices into matchstick-size pieces. Set aside.
Heat peanut oil in wok till sizzling. The oil is hot enough when a piece of bean-thread noodle dropped into the wok pops to the surface and turns white. Pull the rest of the bean threads apart and deep-fry in batches, about 10 seconds on each side. Drain on paper towels, then place on a serving platter.
Mix together beef, salt, cornstarch, 1/3 egg white, and 1 teaspoon of sherry in a bowl. Set aside.
Reheat oil in wok till sizzling. Add beef mixture, stirring to separate the slices. Cook briefly, only until beef is no longer red. Remove with slotted spoon to bowl.
Remove all but 2 tablespoons of oil from wok. Reheat oil, then add the ginger, garlic, scallions, bamboo shoots, bell pepper, and chili peppers. Stir-fry 15 seconds. Add sauce mixture, except for the sesame oil. Cook, stirring, several seconds. Add beef to wok. Mix thoroughly. Add sesame oil. Spoon all ingredients in wok over the fried bean threads. Serve hot.
Makes 4-5 servings.
Pock Marked Mama’s Bean Curd
1 rounded tablespoon fermented black beans, rinsed in warm water and mashed
2 teaspoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
2 teaspoons ginger, finely minced
1 teaspoon hot chili sauce
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ pound ground round
1 leek, white and light green parts only, chopped medium-fine
1 pound firm bean curd, cut into ½-inch cubes
several sprigs cilantro, finely chopped
Seasoning:
1½ tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry
½ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons granulated sugar
1 cup chicken stock or water
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Combine seasoning ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Combine black beans, oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, and hot chili sauce in another bowl and set aside.
Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan. Stir-fry the beef till slightly brown, but still pink. Add the leeks and stir-fry another 30 seconds. Add the black bean, oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, and hot chili sauce mixture. Stir-fry another 30 seconds.
Add the seasoning mixture and bring to a boil. Simmer for 1 minute. Add the bean curd and reduce heat. Simmer till the sauce is thick and its flavor permeates the bean curd. Sprinkle the cilantro on top. Serve with rice or noodles.
Makes 4 servings.
THE SOUND OF ONE STONE FALLING
For most of my life, my father and I inhabited two different continents over which we had constructed, each from our opposite shores, a stone bridge, unstable and unfinished. I wanted, I expected, my father to, Superman-like, leap over the gulf that separated us, that yawned between his raw end of the bridge and mine. If he were a good father, he would make that leap of faith, of love. No doubt, he expected the same of me, were I a dutiful daughter. But the most we were capable of was to stand, each on our most recently constructed patch of bridge, beckoning to each other, shouting entreaties that were half-heard in the wind’s whistle and the ocean’s roar so that in the end we returned, masking our disappointment with bravura or indifference, to our separate shores.
With each retreat, in our frustration we’d kick at a freshly laid stone which, lacking the mortar of communication and comprehension, of compassion, dropped off the bridge with a defeated plop. With time, the bridge grew shorter, as did our tempers; the gulf, wider; and the remaining stones looser, like our tongues. I say tongues in a figurative sense. More often than not we employed nonverbal communication: a gesture, a glare, a slouch. We utilized moods: irritable, sullen, repressed rage. We used, to great effect, utter and unbroken silence, that vacuum impervious to sound, that infinite void.
Which was the critical stone that, once jettisoned, destroyed the arch which supported the bridge and brought it tumbling down?
The one among many. Was it an early one, setting the stage for those to follow, which could only form a crumbling foundation?
My sister Marcy and I were invited to a party given by our next-door neighbor and my classmate at St. Margaret’s, George Sansone. My father insisted that we dress “appropriately” — i.e., a skirt, with a crinoline underneath — and that we take a large box of chocolates, wrapped in gold paper and tied with a bow Marcy and I were not only the only two girls wearing puffy skirts, while all the other girls were wearing slim pedal pushers, we were also the only guests to have come bearing a gift, ostentatious at that. It was bad enough to be wearing the wrong clothes, but the extravagance of the box of chocolates demanded that Mr. Sansone, George’s father, march us right back next door to our house to explain to my father, Chinese immigrant that he still was after several years in the United States, that the occasion was just a little get-together, not a party per se, an informal occasion where, lovely thought though it was, any gift was unnecessary, actually, out of place. I could feel the box of chocolates I gripped in my hand melting in the heat of my shame to have a grown man, an American man, tell my father, a grown man, a Chinese man, what to do and what not to do, what was proper and what was not, patronizing words which sounded like ridicule to my ears and which my father accepted not only in submissive silence but grating gratitude as well.
Or was the crucial stone the time when Wendye, Gerrie, and I had gathered on Old Baldy above our back hill and Gerrie lost her balance, toppled into the blackberry bushes below, and began to bawl at the top of her lungs? We heard my father shout at us. He stood at the back door holding one of the bows from our bow-and-rubber-tipped-arrow play sets. He commanded us to come into the house, “right now”. Whimpering, Gerrie passed through the door first, then Wendye, who for all her silent submissiveness still received a lash across her legs with the bow, as did I — two lashes, since I was last in line and the oldest, and he could rear back in his anger and let loose a second time. What stung worse than the force of those blows were his words — “That will teach you to push your little sister off the rocks” — words I was forbidden as dutiful daughter of a Chinese father to question, contradict, or correct. His mere accusation was tantamount to, and unimpeachable proof of, my guilt. My ensuing silence was the only acceptable response, and I smarted at the injustice.
Or was it a later stone? The one when the World’s Fair had co
me to New York and Marcy and I, looking for summer jobs in the hope of avoiding the agony of a second stint at my father’s boring, sweltering office on Broad Street, had seen an ad in the paper: the American pavilion was looking for “Oriental” high school girls to man the Hawaiian information booth and concessions stands. We’d received my father’s halfhearted permission to fill out the application. But when we breezed through the personal interviews and landed our first real jobs, he forbade us to accept them. No daughters of his were going to cheapen themselves by cavorting in public wearing leis and a sarong. (When we attended the World’s Fair and visited the United States pavilion, the “Hawaiian” girls were clad in muumuus.)
Or was the sundering stone the one not long after that, when I was a freshman in college and Wendye a junior in high school? “Discovered” in Saks Fifth Avenue by a fashion photographer, we were invited to model the season’s look in the Mademoiselle magazine fall fashion show. With my mother running interference for us and with her assurances that fashion models and prostitutes were not synonymous, my father grudgingly gave his consent At the end of the défilé, all the beautiful professional models left the glamorous hotel by the side entrance, there to be met rapturously by their handsome husbands or breathtaking boyfriends, or otherwise to saunter insouciantly into the autumn night in chosen, enviable, Garboesque solitude. Not my sister and me. The evening’s euphoria vanished in a single humiliating moment when we saw, waiting in Ka-trinka to drive us home, our glowering father — lest we turn into streetwalkers on the subway between midtown Manhattan and the north Bronx — whose eyes suggested just such an ignominious end for us if he hadn’t come to prevent it.
No. No to all of the above, though they were surely stepping-stones to the single critical stone which I now recall with unwonted clarity, perhaps because it possesses a deja vu quality. It is also a stone I do not share with my sisters, at least one of whom helped me bear up under the stones I’ve just recounted. This stone I bore alone: the collective “we” of my sisters and me became the solitary “I” of myself. (It is interesting to note that in traditional Chinese thought no “I” exists unless there is an “other” to validate the fact, the Eastern equivalent of the Western conundrum: if no one heard the sound of a tree falling, did it fall?)
The stone that took the entire bridge down tumbled off just a few months after the Mademoiselle fashion show fiasco. I was a freshman in college, and it was the last day of the year, December 31. I had been invited to a New Year’s Eve party given by the parents of Laurie and Diane Roizin, sororal twins and my closest friends of long standing. I’d known them through grammar school, which we attended together, and high school, where we separated — they to a Catholic academy, I to Bronx High School of Science. Despite different high schools, we hung out together after school when light homework permitted and on weekends.
I had no problem wresting permission from my father to go to the party. He gave it without a second thought. After all, he knew the Roizins, their house was less than a block away, and our exurban neighborhood was unquestionably, boringly safe. But permission came with two conditions: because it was a New Year’s Eve party and because I’d be coming home after — “right after” he insisted, and I promised — the glittering ball descended in Times Square, I was to take the key to let myself back into the house on the more than fair chance that my noncelebratory parents and sisters would be sound asleep. And “No champagne. A sip at most.”
The party was fabulous. Laurie and Diane’s aunts and uncles and cousins were incredibly interesting, particularly because they showed interest in me. And why not? I was a college girl. I was knowledgeable and sophisticated, or at least I was on my way there. They used big words I loved hearing and that I’d only read in books. They held important jobs I couldn’t imagine holding myself. But most of all, they talked. They talked a lot. They talked to me, and they waited, with bated breath surely, for my pearls of wisdom, my bons mots. Why shouldn’t they? What I said was important. What I said was fascinating. I could see it in their eyes, beneath the thickening glaze. Silence was unacceptable. Silence was impolite.
Right before midnight we all gathered around the television set and counted down the seconds to the New Year in loud, champagne-ready voices. When the hour struck, we drank the bubbly, linked arms, and do-si-doed. We tooted toy horns and donned ridiculous hats that we strapped under our chins. We laughed. We sang “Auld Lang Syne.”
When I remembered to consult a clock, it was past one in the first morning of the New Year. When I checked the pocket of my coat, no house key. I had forgotten it at home, on the sideboard in the kitchen where I’d put it so that I would remember to take it on my way out the back door.
The long three-quarters of a block to my house, I hoped and prayed that someone would be up to let me in when I knocked quietly on the back door. Preferably one of my sisters. Perhaps I wouldn’t even have to ring the bell and alert the whole house to the fact that I’d forgotten my key and, worse, that I was returning more than an hour after I promised I would. Perhaps my mother was waiting up for me, even though I was a college freshman and beyond such protective behavior. Perhaps my father was, suspicious of my unself-protective own. How dare they? How dare they treat me like the child I no longer was? Why couldn’t they behave the way Laurie and Diane’s family behaved in my presence? With interest, appreciation, even admiration. Perhaps a trace of reverence, possibly awe. What was one hour’s tardiness on New Year’s Eve anyway? Didn’t they know that the fun only started after midnight? I should be angry with them — not my parents with me — for imposing impossible, outlandish, infantile conditions on my one night out. Didn’t they trust me?! As for the key, I shouldn’t be expected to think of everything, not when one year was ending and another was beginning, and on such a festive note as my first New Year’s Eve party, unescorted and alone, without my parents and sisters to dampen my spirits, to remind me of who I was. That’s what I would say when I knocked on the door and my mother or father opened it. If my sisters did, I’d say nothing at all. I’d just breeze by them like the cat that swallowed the canary, with champagne as a chaser.
When I arrived home, the house was completely dark. I walked to the back door (the night light above it was also extinguished) and knocked, quietly. Nothing happened. Half a minute later, I knocked again, a little more forcefully. Again, nothing happened. I took off my glove and rapped on the door with bare knuckles, with the same results. This half-measure wasn’t working. They were all asleep. I would have to ring the doorbell and wake someone up, someone who would come down the stairs and let me in, hopefully someone not my father.
I rang the doorbell, its sound shrill and aggravating. It wasn’t a melodic, bell-chiming doorbell, but a buzzer that could wake the whole block if the windows were open, which thankfully they were not. Though I winced to hear it through the thick wooden door, the jarring vibrations didn’t manage to wake a single member of my family. I buzzed again, longer. I waited. No light went on. No sound of slippered feet padded across the kitchen linoleum to open the back door. It was cold. I hadn’t noticed the cold before, but I was feeling it now. I put my glove back on. I turned up my collar. I wished I’d worn a hat. I fought with myself about whether or not to buzz a third and longer time. I felt sheepish to have forgotten the key. I was angry at my parents, who were sound asleep, or pretended to be to teach me not to come home late ever again; and I was afraid that they were truly sound asleep and that I’d have to spend the night outside, perhaps to freeze to death. Anxious, I gave in and buzzed again, keeping my finger on the button for at least a minute while I stamped my feet, ostensibly to warm my benumbed toes, but more out of helplessness and frustration. I thought of shouting up to my parents’ bedroom window. But what if the Sansones heard me caterwauling? I was just about to walk to the front door and try that doorbell when my parents’ bedroom window swung open. My heart, and my breath, stopped. In relief. In fear.
“Who’s there?”
It wa
s my father’s voice. As if he didn’t know. My throat contracted to the diameter of a drinking straw. It refused to answer. It balked to be so humiliated. But I wanted to come inside. I wanted to be safe and warm.
“It’s me,” I rasped in a high-pitched voice, one that, insult to injury, cracked.
“Who?”
My cold face burned in humiliation. I’d return to Laurie and Diane’s house. They’d still be up. They’d let me in. They’d welcome me. That’s exactly what I’d do. I didn’t move. Not a single cowardly muscle.
“Me. Leslie,” I said in a feeble, wavering voice.
I heard the window slam shut. I waited — between self-loathing, fear of my father, and relief, knowing I would be safe once more — for my father to come down the stairs and let me in. And I waited. And as I waited, realizing that this prolonged ostracism out in the cold was but partial punishment for my dereliction, my self-loathing for my weakness and my dependency on my father, my fear of his wrath, and my anticipation of the warmth and the safety that were his to bestow were all transforming into hatred for him. What had contracted my throat to the narrowness of a straw was strangling my heart to the same bitter size, dislodging and extruding from it a deeply buried memory: Though I was locked out, I witnessed myself on the other side of the door, inside the house. The person outside wasn’t me but my mother. My mother, whom my father wouldn’t let in. My mother, who was crying, begging to be let in after a long day’s work, to which my father was no longer privy, of which he was envious. He was punishing her for her work, in which she took pride and pleasure, as he was punishing me for my play, my ability to take pleasure in the preferred society of my friends instead of the forced familiarity of his Chinese relatives and business associates. My friends, who were Americans.