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Rice

1Fluffy? white flakes in a porcelain bowl. Steam rises and with it, the particular fragrance. Like a kind of incense, it wafts? and weaves so many, many memories.

2 “Rice is served...Come and eat,” Ma calls to no one in particular. With the regularity of clockwork, dinner at our house is always served at 7:30 p.m., and we are gathered at the table for dinner. The meal is eaten in reverent? silence, slowly and with meaningful silence. The plates are emptied and quietly we collect the dishes for washing. This gradually changed, bit by bit as each of us grew busy with work that kept us back at the office. But this I long remember of a family ritual： we have always had rice for dinner. Rice was served even when we had turkey at Christmas. Pa would always have his ubiquitous? bowl of rice and Ma would always serve it.

3Ma taught me how to cook rice at the age of ten.

4“Okay, one milk tin full for four people. Empty the tin of rice into this pot. Now, pick out all the sand and unhusked ⑤ rice and if you see any little black crawling weevils?，pick them out and squeeze them to kill them.

5 “Now fill the pot with water. You put both hands in the pot and rub the grains of rice gently between your hands. Now pour out the water and be careful that not a single grain of rice spills with the water. Rice is

precious, remember that.

6 “Fill your pot once again and rinse the rice one more time. This time the water should be :almost clear.

7Put your hand there, flat on the top of the rice—now fill the water up to the level of theknuckle of your finger. Too much water and you’ll be eating porridge. Too little, you’ll be eatinguncooked grains which taste like sand.

8 “Let the rice boil for five minutes. Stir and lower the flame. 9 “Stir to make sure that the rice does not stick to the bottom of the pot. Cover and let it cook over a slow flame until the water dries up. Turn off the fire. The rice is now ready to be served...”

10 Thereafter twice a week, until I went to university, I had the duty of cooking rice for the family. 11 “Ma, please come home?” 12 “I c...can’t. I d..don’t want to...”

13 The cars roared past us and before us, their headlights blinding us. There had been a big fight at home, over what I forget now, but Pa had said something, something about duty and responsibility. Ma answered back. Pa raised his voice. Soon there was shouting and more shouting. A plate was thrown, the crashing resounding through the house. More crashing sounds, more shouting. We covered our ears, trying in vain to block out the noise and confusion. Even then, I heard Pa say, “Go. See if I

care—the clothes you wear, the roof over your head and the food you eat, everything you have you owe to me and you bloody well dare to answer back...\

14 Suddenly, there was a silence.

15 Ma ran out of the house into the rainy night. 16 “Come home, please, Ma ?please, Ma.”

17 “Go home, you go home. Your Ma wants to die here.” 18 “Please, Ma，I don’t want you to die.”

19 “Go home. The others have to eat. Go home and serve your Pa his rice.”

20 “No, Ma，I won’t go home...I won’t go home without you?” 21 “Go home, I tell you, go home and serve your Pa his rice.” 22 We stood there for the longest time, the cars hooting us to warn us from standing too close to the edge of the pavement I did not dare to let go of her hand. My hands hurt from holding her hand so tightly. Slowly, bit by bit, I could feel the slack, the tension easing. Both of us sobbed in silence. Ma's shoulders drooped and slowly I was allowed to lead her home. We left the main road and slowly made our way through the quiet suburban lanes, the winding alleys and finally reached home. 23 Pa sat stone-faced before the television, his face grim, his lips set in a straight line. He refused to say a word. I led Ma into her bedroom, closed the door and went into the kitchen. Lifting up the cover of the pot,

I spooned the thick white flakes into Pa's bowl and set the bowl on the table.

24 “Pa, time to eat.” 25 Silence. 26 “Pa, eat rice.” 27 “Don’t want to eat”

28 The bowl of rice sat on the end of the table, getting colder and colder.

29 After that, without fail, day after day, for as many days as there were in a year, Ma would place a steaming hot bowl of rice before Pa. Even if she had to go out for her mahjong games in the afternoon, she would return in time to serve the bowl of rice. If she was going out in the evening, she would wait till Pa had finished his bowl of rice and had laid aside his chopsticks.Only then would she pick up her bag and leave on her occasional outings.

30 I hate eating white rice. White rice is bland① and boring. It has to be made more interesting .With a variety of other dishes. One hardly eats rice on its own, to savor its full-bodied flavor, simply because it has none. It is a staple, a stomach filler, little else. [ make concessions for brown rice, which I cat sparingly, more as a health lad rather than as real food. I am, my Ma says, “western-educated,” and prefer home-mo sek. Pasta is a definite favorite, All kinds of it, from capellini to Iettucine to

lasagna , smothered with thick creamy sauces, and yes, I love cheese -- the Bleus with their colored blue green ridges and sharp-smelling Bries which tum Ma green with disgust. Parmesan toasts had me turned out of the house because no one could bear the smell of the cheese I was eating- which is a continual joke to my neighbors who see roe fitting in the garden in the evenings, chewing on foul-smelling toasted bread. Of course, I like breads, French, Danish, Manoucher deli-style sandwiches with pickles* and relishes , sandwiches which are so large that two hands arc required to grip the bread together while large mouthfuls are chewed vigorously and then swallowed. Yes. don't forget salads. I am the resident rabbit in the office - please pass the greens over. Healthy crunchy lettuces with loads of lovely dressings make my day. But rice ... I cannot take rice two meals in a row. I'd rather go hungry. ① bland: not highly flavored,mild, tasteless.

31 I remember that Ma was very particular that we never wasted any rice. Not a single grain was to be left on the plate or else, every single grain left would appear m ugly marks on the face of our eventual intended . Certainly not wanting to marry any man with a scarred or marred complexion, we faithfully cleaned out plates and through our dating years, every close encounter with men with chronic acne resulted in real guilt that perhaps, just perhaps, this might be retribution for that one plate of rice we had not finished. //