The weekend my cousin got into the University of Edinburgh, our entire family was invited to Big Uncle and Aunt’s house for a steamboat dinner. This invitation was met with joy and excitement (on the part of my two younger twin brothers), but also dismay and dread (in the secret, but perhaps not innermost thoughts of Ma and I).
As we ascended the glass elevator that led to my uncle and aunt’s fancy apartment in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Ma lamented the fact that she had such an incapable daughter, and warned my brothers not to follow my example, but to instead make sure that they looked up to and learned from my cousin. As usual, I pretended not to listen, while my younger brothers were too busy arguing about who had better aim and was more likely to hit a passerby on the ground with a mouthful of spit. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, but I had long learned to block my ears off from the words that spilled from Ma’s mouth like heavy rain during a period of haze. They left their oily-grey smoke trails on my skin, and I was so saturated with them I could sometimes tell what she was going to say before she said it.
Not for the first time that day, I wondered how different things would have been at these family gatherings if Ba had not abandoned us nearly ten years ago, and left Ma to bend over backwards to please her stuck-up family. We were so afraid of any shame that some of my more distant relatives did not even know that Ma was divorced—or pretended not to know. They assumed our father was always on a badly-timed business trip whenever we had to meet them. You must be so lucky to have a father that works so hard for you! They would say, while I would only grit my teeth and smile sheepishly, resenting my mother for putting us in this position. For all we knew, Ba was very well dead by now, or raising a mirror image of our family, one that was smarter and prettier and richer than ours.
‘Ah John, congratulations! We are all so proud of you. First in the family to go to university!’ Ma said, without a trace of resentment.
When my cousin opened the door, Ma handed him an ang pao and smiled sweetly, a rare event that would only occur five times across my lifetime, and directed to me only once, on the day I got married. She seemed to have conveniently forgotten the fact that I was already in a local university, having started on the January-December calendar rather than the Western one. Still, it didn’t count, since it was just a polytechnic. For many people, this didn’t seem like something to be proud of––it was a useful degree, but not as glamorous as the degrees from the exotic West. Never mind that we didn’t have the money for me to go overseas—it still somehow counted as a failing on my part.
For all his parents’ money, I was thankful that at least my cousin had some manners, and never rubbed anything in my face while we were growing up. The ang pao disappeared into his back pocket, and was tucked underneath his chequered shirt.
‘Come in, come in!’ Big Uncle boomed in Mandarin, face already red from early celebration, a sweating bottle of Tiger beer in his hand. ‘Why still standing in the doorway? No need to be polite!’
We crowded in and dutifully recited a roll call of greetings, from eldest to youngest relative. My Po Po was still in the living room catching the last few minutes of a Hokkien drama that never seemed to end. She was a small, bird-boned lady that always had her silver hair pulled back in a severe bun. Po Po also had perfect posture, regardless of whatever situation she was in––a trait that unfortunately not a single one of her children and grandchildren had. When I glanced at the screen, three characters were lost in an intense but circular argument about the identity of a child, eyes wide and earnest, as if this was the first time in the drama this had happened. Anyone who was able to maintain such dedication to their character over the course of five hundred or more episodes truly deserved an Oscar.
Po Po smiled when she saw us approach, flashing a full set of false teeth. I got a polite nod, while the twins got warmer hugs and head pats, my grandmother asking why they seemed to get thinner and thinner every time she saw them. She shook her head disappointingly at Ma, whose own lips thinned in response as she struggled to hold back a rude response to her mother.
Big Uncle and Aunt’s house had always seemed so big when I was a child. It was certainly expensive—Big Uncle was a businessman who had gotten lucky in the property development market, and was the more successful sibling on Ma’s side of the family. Their family could afford expensive trips to Europe, good international schools, and luxury cars. Meanwhile, it was a treat for our family if we occasionally got to take a road trip down to Penang or Melaka, local haunts which were more food adventures than life-changing cultural experiences. Big Aunt had once given me a small souvenir from Paris, a camera obscura with a tiny pinhole that gave me a panoramic view of the courtyards of the Louvre. That whole year, I nearly ruined my eyesight by squinting through the tiny thing to capture every detail, dreaming endlessly of walking those halls, escaping the moist heat of the tropics.
My Big Aunt was busy in the kitchen, preparing the cooked and raw ingredients that would make up our family steamboat. Every inch of the kitchen counter was covered in dishes, and my stomach grumbled at the sight. She was the perfect stay at home mum and wife. Every time we visited, I couldn’t help but marvel at how immaculate the kitchen was, or how artfully yet another room renovation had been done. While my mother used Big Aunt’s life of leisure as the reason everything she did looked so perfectly put together all the time, I secretly thought that my Big Aunt had just never known bitterness, and so she couldn’t imagine any bitterness in the lives of others.
‘Mei-ah, how’s school?’ She asked, while arranging cloud-coloured, deveined prawns on a plate. They were so large that she was able to build them up into a small Jenga tower, black eyes spilling out of their heads. I replied that everything was fine, and nothing was too hard yet.
She turned off the bubbling pot of broth on the stove. ‘Your mother must be so happy that you’re living close by,’ she continued. ‘Xin tong ah, when I think about John going to Edinburgh. My big boy, all grown up now! I don’t know how I’m going to cope when the youngest will have to go too.’
I was handed a plate of fish bladders and beancurd to bring to the dining room, as she followed behind with four stacks of thinly cut shabu-shabu meat. In a matter of minutes, the spread was transferred from kitchen to table, with the huge steamboat pot taking the place of pride atop a portable electric hot plate.
‘Lai chi ah!’ Big Aunt called out loudly to everyone.
Steamboat is a meal that both embodies unity while promoting bitter divisiveness. The order of ingredients that go in are a hotly contested topic, and there is only as much space as the pot allows, so for hungry stomachs, it’s important that the things they like most go in first.
Meat first—for Ma and Big Uncle, who were rarely in accord on anything. Big Aunt and Po Po protested, saying that the vegetables cooked slower, and were needed to counteract the heatiness of the steamboat’s pork broth. The twins and our younger cousin tore their eyes away from their computer games and came over to add their noisy voices to the fray, calling out for meatballs stuffed with cheese and crab-sticks to be thrown in. Big Aunt lamented the fact that they didn’t have a pot with a divider in the center, so that we could have different soups and broths.
Eventually, all eyes turned to John who had already started on the side dish of fried dumplings while the adults bickered.
‘I like both meat and vegetables,’ he said. ‘But the vegetables do take longer to cook, so we should just leave them in while the broth boils. When everything is hot enough we can just dip the meat in and cook it instantly, so no one has to wait for anything.’
It was the obvious solution, but no one ever wanted to compromise in the beginning. The ingredients went in: huge leaves of Chinese cabbage that would shrink down as they were boiled, local Kai Lan that Big Aunt swore was a hundred percent organic, then some meat and fish balls to please the children. Ma and Big Uncle dipped in meat with their chopsticks directly into the boiling broth, and then into the mixture of soy sauce and chilli flakes in the smaller dishes in front of them.
We ate peacefully, as the talk turned to politics. Big Uncle laughed about another Malaysian politician’s alleged sex tape, while Big Aunt scolded him and said there were children at the table. Another corruption scandal. One of our relatives working in the government civil service had mentioned something or other to Big Uncle, ensuring that the rumours would spread further and further through the country until even primary school children had worked the words into their schoolyard games. Ma asked John about university—where was he going to live, and who was going to help him move all his things? Then to our younger cousin—would he miss his older brother? He shrugged in response, mouth full of food.
John hadn’t just gotten into a university overseas, but he was going to be the first doctor in our family. Big Uncle often boasted that if Po Po and Gong Gong had been rich enough to send him overseas, he would have been able to be a doctor too, and wouldn’t have had to start working at such a young age. I couldn’t think of a worse profession for him—with his red face and furrowed brows, staring down a patient as they tried to explain their symptoms. He was a much better businessman, with the courage to strong arm people into giving him what he wanted. John would probably be a good doctor. Luckily, he had inherited Big Aunt’s patience and thoughtful eyes, and I had never seen him frustrated or upset before.
Prawns went in next, turning plump and pink underneath the bubbling soup, bursting out of their shells with flavour and succulent flesh. I sucked the soup from their heads, dipping them again and again into the sauce until they filled my mouth with spice and the briny sea. Mussels and golden abalone floated to the surface too, and disappeared in an instant, being slurped down throats. I fished out a quail egg with a slotted spoon, popping it in whole and letting the hardboiled yolk coat my tongue. Po Po asked if I was going to get married soon, and I shrugged. It was a new personal record; she usually asked this question the moment I walked through the door.
‘She doesn’t even have a boyfriend,’ Ma sighed. ‘I’m so worried she’s going to end up alone forever like me. How is your girlfriend, John?’
Across the table, John shrugged and said something I couldn’t hear over the crunch of prawn shell under my teeth, as I tried to extract a last sliver of meat. John and I didn’t follow each other on Instagram, but I had seen the girlfriend whenever Ma periodically stalked his page to see what he was up to. She looked pleasant, with her constantly smiling face and long glossy hair. Ma often commented on how well suited they looked, a conclusion that I never understood how she came to. Was it because they looked similar? What did she detect in those flat pictures and faces? How could she tell without having ever met the girl?
One of the twins had recently won a calligraphy competition at school, and the adults paused their eating to marvel at how neat and even the strokes were in a picture Ma had taken of the black ink pooling against the red paper. The vertical strip of words were pasted in the school lobby, above hundreds of children filing past every morning as they rubbed sleep from their eyes. In a few months, the red would fade to pink, hanging there until the next year’s competition.
‘So much like Gong Gong’s handwriting,’ Po Po said in Mandarin. ‘I should give you his brushes, I still have them upstairs somewhere.’
Big Uncle and Ma began to disagree, as they usually did three drinks in, about the smallest details of their childhood. Big Uncle thought that as the eldest, he had a better memory—Ma just didn’t want to lose, not after she had already lost in every other aspect of life to her brother. This time, it was the bunk-bed they had shared in their childhood home. Reviving their childhood rivalry, they were fighting over who had the top bunk. Their voices rose, and even the younger children had become mute and paused their YouTube videos, watching the argument instead with scared, embarrassed eyes.
‘Be quiet,’ Po Po finally said in her stern, reedy voice. ‘Li Hui, don’t argue with your brother. He’s older than you. Please respect him in his house.’
They became so silent that my chewing suddenly seemed like the loudest thing in the room. I glanced at John just to have something to do with my eyes, only to find him doing the same. He looked apologetic.
Slowly, the empty plates had begun to stack, and a silent agreement to have a break was called, even though Big Aunt was still fussing around the dishes, constantly asking if everyone had eaten enough food. It was an attempt to diffuse the tension. She began to distribute the leftovers neatly onto each person’s plate—like a good housewife who didn’t want anything to go to waste. Out of politeness, everyone protested at being given the last piece of the dish, but eventually accepted their fates.
‘John, can you help mummy fry the last few dumplings? I wrapped them earlier already, they are on the big plate in the fridge.’ Big Aunt squinted through the steam coming from the pot, using her chopsticks to deftly separate the last bunch of needle mushrooms that curled and made swirling patterns in the dwindling broth.
‘Ah Mei will do it,’ Ma volunteered, gripping my shoulder. Maybe later she would chastise me for not volunteering faster. ‘John should be celebrating, not working!’
My expression must have been foul as I stood in the back, frying the dumplings in sweaty silence, because as my cousin tiptoed in, he seemed bowled over by my face’s intensity. ‘Are you alright?’ He asked. I rearranged my face and the dumplings in the pan before nodding. My cousin watched the hot oil splatter.
He shuffled around with something behind me, and I ignored the irritation, trying not to burn the food and, itching to get back to the steamboat. There was one last piece of meat out there calling my name.
‘I’m not going to Edinburgh,’ he said suddenly, as one of the dumplings burst open when I flipped it too enthusiastically. I tried frantically to gather the bits before they melded with the pan.
‘Why?’ I asked in surprise, without adding it’s not as if you don’t have the money, or, what are your parents going to say?
‘I haven’t told my parents yet, but my girlfriend didn’t get in. So she’s probably going to end up studying in Australia, and I want to go with her.’
I didn’t know what to say to that except: ‘You like her that much?’
He looked up in surprise. ‘I love her.’
I had never really thought about my cousin’s inner life. This was the first time that we had ever spoken about anything outside generic statements about school or shows that we liked to watch. We orbited around the gravity of family, but there was no pull due to our shared age and experiences. Twenty years in the future, I doubt that we would even wave to each other on the street; we would be that unrecognisable. To think that he was so in love he was willing to sacrifice his parents’ expectations.
‘Good,’ I said. I wanted to ask him what he was planning to tell his parents, and how? How did he think they would react? How did he know that this was the right thing to do? I thought about his girlfriend’s smiling face again, now a hazy recollection. But there was no point in asking him anything—he would have to defend himself against his parents and our family many more times in the future. A part of me was happy for him, but also happy for the fact that John would finally know how it felt to be cast in shadow by the rest of our relatives. It connected us, more than anything else had in the past.
He helped carry the second plate of dumplings as we returned to the table, where things were beginning to wrap up. Big Aunt was pushing noodles into the last of the broth, and cracked eggs in—one for each of us. The yolks bobbed to the surface tantalisingly, wrapped in silky strands of white. The atmosphere had settled, as if the effervescent bubbles of a soft drink had forced themselves up to the surface, leaving everything flat and bland.
‘Don’t bite the noodles,’ Big Uncle warned the younger children. ‘If you do, you’re cutting your life in half.’
‘Should we make a wish?’ The younger twin asked. He was already counting how many strands there were, and if they would equal the number of wishes he could make. Ma snorted into her bowl, but said that it wasn’t a birthday cake: you couldn’t hope for anything more than you had right now, but could only try anything, no matter how nonsensical, within your means to prevent bad things from happening in the future. It was a philosophy that was true for much of our lives.
I suddenly remembered Ba using scissors to cut my noodles for me as a child, scared that I would choke on a too-long strand. As I grew older, I had tried many times to slurp a noodle strand whole, but had almost always ended up choking on it, with half the strand somehow disappearing down the abyss of my throat and having to quickly bite the remaining noodle in two so that they could go their separate ways. In the days after Ba’s disappearance, I often thought of those desiccated noodle bits from my childhood as short moments of happiness, punctuated by tragedy as each strand came to a too-short end.
‘What a nice dinner,’ Ma said, wiping her mouth. Her own face was red from the beer that Big Uncle kept handing out. ‘And for John, so nice to see your dreams coming true while young, hah?’
‘Good to experience the world when still young,’ Big Uncle said, leaning back in his seat at the head of the table. ‘I’m proud of you, ah boy.’
Po Po said nothing, but reached out to where John was sitting beside her to hold his left hand, patting it gently. A silver gleam came from her neatly combed and bound white hair, giving her a papery thin translucency that made the light from the ceiling seem to pass right through her.
John smiled politely and thanked everyone, but turned his face downward, concentrating hard on his noodles. There would be more family gatherings in the future, and now Ma would warn my brothers against becoming like John, smugly proclaiming that even such a smart person could be led astray so easily. And Big Uncle? He would never say anything while we were there, but behind closed doors I could imagine his face red from shouting, flecks of spittle coming to land on John’s face in a fine mist. Big Aunt would finally taste the bitter dregs of life, and she might even develop the same worried furrow my mother had right in the middle of her forehead. John may have been Po Po’s favorite grandchild, but she was the kind of person that expected disappointment at every turn. This betrayal would sting, but she would recover quickly. Trapped in the thick of the battleground, Po Po would watch all of it in the same way she watched the tragedies of her television drama unfold––impassively, utterly unmoved.
A wet sound suddenly came from John as he choked on a noodle strand, head resurfacing from his bowl and coughing for air. The adults swarmed on him, Big Aunt frantically pounding his back and Big Uncle roaring for someone to get some water. Ma hovered there as well, providing unhelpful commentary about stupid brothers who said silly things about swallowing noodle strands whole. Even Po Po looked alarmed, clutching John’s arm. The three younger boys blanched in fear. I could see the panic on John’s face––more from the persistent attention of the adults than from the choking. All those hands reaching out to him, trying to help.