My mother taught me how to cook rice when I was still playing with my Barbies and my Legos, bike-racing with my friends to Gab Gab Beach or the Seven-Day Store, and watching “Sesame Street” -- I could never decide whether I liked Big Bird or Snuffleuppagus best. My father had left on the U.S.S. Proteus on a several months' tour of the Pacific, resupplying nuclear submarines and other vessels, and my mother was left with a slobbering baby and a second-grade tomboy on a tiny island on the Asian side of the Pacific Rim.
I never really thought about rice except as something my mom always cooked, as common as my best friend Sarah's mom grilling hamburgers or mashing potatoes. But while Sarah' mom bought the ground beef and potatoes at the base commissary, my mom bought twenty-five pound bags of rice at this large Asian market in downtown Agana, twenty-five pounds which she'd sometimes supplement at the corner Seven-Day Store with a five or ten-pound bag. And while all sorts of people who were part of the U.S. military in some way shopped at the Seven-Day Store, only Asians, military and civilian both, shopped in this Asian market. At least, I had never seen anybody except Asians in the store when I was there with my mother, which always made me feel odd.
I couldn't adequately identify the weird feeling I always got when my mother got rice at the Asian market called Dai Huong, which a Vietnamese family ran. But it wasn't only the Vietnamese population it catered to but all Asians -- Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonese, Malay, Filipino. And even though most of these people were also American citizens (a small but growing number were tourists), if two like Asians met in the store, they'd speak in their native language, whether Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, or Tagalog, which was my parents' language and which I couldn't speak except for a few words and phrases, like "Kumusta" -- How are you? But I would never say "Kumustaa" because I was afraid that the other Filipino would think I knew more Tagalog than I really did and I'd end up staring in mute confusion and sheepishly replying in my midwestern American military brat accent, "I'm sorry. I can only speak English."
Anywhere else my monolingualism wouldn't matter. On base, in school, with Sarah, who was white, with Kim, who was half-German-American, half-Hawaiian -- it wouldn't matter. But in Dai Huong, surrounded by aisles of bamboo steamers, shrimp chips, dried squid, jars of bagoong, bean thread noodles, and miso soup fixings, while the intense smell of fish permeated the store and the foreign words of Asian languages lingered in the air, filled with references I couldn't understand, with laughter I couldn't understand, with histories I couldn't understand, I felt like a rotten banana -- brown on the outside, white on the inside.
One day, after my father had been gone for a month, my mother went to Dai Huong to re-stock our monthly supply in the green and white plastic rice dispenser. Dai Huong had a glass storefront, but you couldn't really see inside very well because the Vietnamese family who ran the place -- I never did figure out their names -- blocked the windows with poster advertisements for videocassettes of Asian soap operas and action movies, current prices of their fresh fish "butchered right before your eyes!", and window displays of happy Buddhas in jade, ivory, and mahogany (my family had a mahogany happy Buddha, and I would rub its burgeoning belly for good luck). As my mother opened the glass door, which knocked against a little bell above the door -- ting-a-ling! -- and she, with Shell in tow, and I stepped inside, I was again hit with the prevalent, ground-in smell of fish emanating from the butcher block in the back of the store -- that's the first thing I noticed. Then I noticed just how crowded and multi-colored everything was. Dai Huong was about as large as the Seven-Day Store in floor space and had as many aisles, but while the Seven-Day Store was like a Seven Eleven stateside -- bright fluorescent lighting and white plastic-cold mettal everywhere -- Dai Huong's lighting was yellower, as if it were a thousand years old, and everything seemed browner, muddier, ancient, whether it was the bamboo chopsticks or the dried plum candies, wrinkled with salt.
"I need one twenty-five pound bag of jasmine rice," my mom said, pointing to the pyramid of fat, white woven plastic bags (the plastic strips were woven together like the warp and woof on a loom), each bag stamped with a happy red elephant holding up a green flower. The pearl-cream Vietnamese woman behind the checkout counter rang up eight dollars, and she yelled across the store to the butcher block, "Ai, someone to help this lady up front!" since Mom had Shell on one hip and only had one arm free.
As we waited, I stayed close to my mom, pretending to be able to read the labels on the jars of jackfruit even though I couldn't read Tagalog. I knew that it was jackfruit because I had eaten it before in halo-halo, a Filipino snow-cone, and I remembered what it looked like. But the other stuff, like the dried meat stuff in shrink-wrapped plastic in Chinese? Japanese? Vietnamese? I had no knowledge of the language, and I disguised my ignorance by keeping my mouth shut, clasping my hands in front of me, and looking like an F.O.B. -- Fresh Off the Boat. Actually, all I needed was a Catholic school girl's outfit and my hair in pigtails to complete the look of the Oriental girl newly schooled into civilization by the conquering Western educators -- the quiet, religious, sweet Oriental daughter whose English sounded so VERY good.
As soon as a Vietnamese guy from the back put the jasmine rice in the back of the car, saying, "Bye," to me, who replied in a shy, clipped voice, "Bye," and as soon as my mother pulled away from Dai Huong, I was able to find my voice again and asked, "Mom, can I have hot dogs for lunch?"
"Hmph, you eat too much hot dogs already. Hot dogs and bologna have too much salt. Besides, there's leftover adobo in the refrigerator. Finish the leftovers first."
"But there isn't any rice to eat it with."
"What? There's a big bag of it behind you."
I sighed irritably. "No, I mean there isn't any COOKED rice, so how can I eat adobo without rice?"
"You're a big girl. Cook rice."
"But I don't know how!"
I saw my mom glance up at me in he rear-view mirror. "You will today."
I looked at the back of my mom's head quizzically until I realized that she had somehow foisted upon me another household chore to do. I started to complain, but she added, "Yes, it's about time, you learn to cook rice. Your pa said that you be good and help me out while he's gone, and you cooking rice every once in a while will be a good help to me. Okay, Ellen?"
I slumped back against my seat and felt the heavy rice bag slide against the other side of me as my mother came to a stop light. Sliiiide, bunk! "I guess."
When we arrived home, I held Shell while Mom went to bring the bag of rice. Holding Shell, I realized how heavy she was getting, a big baby. You'd think that as Shell got older, she'd be able to do more stuff on her own and then Mom wouldn't have to take care of her all the time. But it seemed that Shell's getting bigger only meant that she got into things more, which meant that Mom still needed me to do stuff she used to do, like scrub the bathtub or go get some small items at the Seven-Day Store. It wasn't fair. I was still a kid, too.
"Can't you grow any faster?" I whispered to Shell, who only drooled on me and said, "Eww, Eww, Eww" which was how she said my name.
"Ellen! Can you open this door?" Mom, hunched over with a twenty-five pound rice bag on one thin shoulder, handed me the keys. I opened the front door as quickly as I could because I was now holding Shell with one arm, and it started to hurt. "Thank you!" Mom said. She pushed the door open with one foot, crossed the kitchen in four strides, and dumped the rice bag onto the floor next to the rice dispenser while I dumped my baby sister into her walker.
"WAAAAAAA!!!!" Shell started wailing, and Mom lifted her up, felt her bottom, and said, "Open the rice bag while I change Shell, okay?"
I sighed. Shell wasn't growing any faster, and my parents wanted me to be older than I was, older than my friends, at least. I bet Sarah's mom didn't make Sarah make meatloaf when Mrs. Montgomery was busy doing something else. In fact, since I often saw Sarah more on her bike, wandering around in the neighborhood, than at her house, and I never saw her mom anywhere but her house, I bet Mrs. Montgomery did all of the housework and just left Sarah alone. That sounded really good. But then I wondered what Sarah and her mom did together. I couldn't think of anything, and I imagined Sarah on her bike, wandering alone while her other friends, like me, were at home, doing family stuff, like chores. That seemed a little lonely.
I found a little knife and sat down in front of the rice bag. Rice bags were secured with red and white strings stitched at the top, and if you could take out the first stitch, then you could pull out the other stitches like unlooping a crocheted chain. Zip! The strings came off easily into my hand. Piece o' cake.
When Mom came back, I was scooping the rice from the bag into the rice dispenser, one measuring cupful at a time.
"Okay, I can put the rest of the bag in." She carefully hoisted up the opened bag and dumped the remaining rice -- there was still a lot -- into the top of the dispenser. I saw the rice fill up like quicksand in an hourglass until it topped off the dispenser and made a little starch cloud from the rice starch which had settled to the bottom of the bag.
It was, I noticed, a good smell, dusty-sweet.
"You see these levers down here?" Mom squatted and pointed to three white knobs attached to three metal levers near the bottom of the dispenser. "Each one puts a certain amount of rice in the catch tray inside when you push it down. The left is one cup, the middle is two, and the right is three. See this knob below the levers that goes side to side? That's the cup selector. When you slide it to go underneath one lever, it locks out the other two so you won't accidentally release more rice than you want. If you get more rice than you want, just pour it back into the dispenser and start all over. Okay, get four cups of rice. That will last the whole day."
"How'd I do that? It only goes up to three."
Mom shook her head. "You can add, can't you? Three," she slid the cup selector to three cups and pushed down the three-cup lever and I heard a soft rain of rice cascading into the plastic tray, "plus one," then she slid the selector to one cup and pushed down the corresponding lever, "is four." She pulled out the tray, showed me a shallow tray of rice, poured the rice back into the dispenser, and returned the tray. "Now you try. Four cups."
I stared at the levers for a second and then mimicked my mom's motions. "Three," tinka, tinka, tinka of rice, "plus one" tinka, "is four." I pulled out the tray and was amazed that I didn't mess up. I looked up, expecting an approving smile from Mom, but she was already at the kitchen counter next to the sink, removing the ricepot from the rice cooker.
"Now what?" I put the tray of rice on the counter.
"Now you need to stand on this step-stool to reach the sink." She pulled over the step-stool to the sink and looked as I stepped up and came up to Mom's height. She poured the rice into the ricepot.
"Hey, the rice doesn't go up to four," I said, looking at the numbers stamped inside the pot.
"Ellen, you're making four cups of COOKED rice. Rice cooks by soaking up water, getting bigger. You see? So uncooked rice is smaller. You measure the water to go to four, and the rice will go up there."
"Oh."
"Okay," she continued, “you need to wash the rice three times."
"Why?"
"To rinse out the extra rice starch. Do you want mushy rice, like baby food?"
"No."
"Then wash the rice. Remember, three times." She turned on the faucet, half-filled the pot, and handed it to me.
I stared at the pot, seeing the water a little cloudy with rice starch. "Mom, I don't know how to wash rice."
"What? You see me wash rice every day."
"Well, yeah," I shrugged, "but I don't really pay attention."
Mom looked at me again and took the ricepot back. "You're a big girl. You should know you learn by paying attention."
"Big girl, big girl. You and Pa keep saying that to me, but all my other friend's parents don't make them cook and clean the house and stuff like that, and I bet nobody my age cooks rice!"
"Hmph." Mom slowly began to wash the rice, holding the pot steady with one hand while the other squeezed and stirred up the rice in the water, reaching up palmfuls out of the water and letting the rice grains cascade back into the pot like rain. "When I was your age," she said after a small silence, "I didn't only cook rice, I planted rice. Do you know what rice-planting is like? It's being knee-high in mud behind a carabao manuring the rice plants."
My nose crinkled up at the image of a water buffalo crapping into the mud, and as I saw this image, my mom suddenly released a handful of wet rice into the rice water. Plop!
"Big girl. No, I didn't feel like a big girl. I felt like a hungry little girl, and a hungry little girl works for her food, her rice. In the Philippines, rice is the most important food, fills you up fast, even when there is no meat, no milk. In some houses in my barrio, some families even use the rice water as milk for their babies. See, the first rice water even looks like milk."
I watched as my mother slowly poured out the first rice water, white and thick as whole milk. One hand held back the rice so that no grain escaped the pot. She poured in more water for the second washing.
"Once when I was working the rice paddies, a carabao lifted me up with its horns and threw me behind it. Whoomp!" She waved her arm above her, sprinkling me with rice water and laughing at the same time. "Like a bird. And then, sploosh! Into the muddy rice water! But I wasn't hurt, even though I was skinnier than you, all elbows and knees. No, rice makes you strong. And, of course, the mud broke my fall!"
I stared at my mom, amazed that she could laugh about being thrown by a carabao.
"I can't believe I lived like that, that I was that girl, but I was, I was. And I'm still cooking rice, eating rice. As it should be! I'm still a Filipina, after all." She poured out the second rice water, looking like two percent milk. "As are you, Ellen." She handed me the ricepot.
"Me? But I'm not you."
"No, but a part of you is, even though you don't know it yet." She pointed to the faucet. "Now, you wash rice."
I turned on the faucet, filled the pot half-way, and then dipped my small hand into the cool rice water for the third rinsing. The grains felt like little sandstones on the beach, grainy and crumbly in my fingers as I squeezed and stirred it in the third rice water. Swoosh, swoosh. I lifted out palmfuls and let the grains fall back into the rice water like drops of rain into the rich mud. Tinka tinka tinka, plop. A clumpy bit fell from the folds of my palm, and I giggled.
"Okay, you don't wash rice very long with the third rinsing, or you won't have any rice starch at all to soak up the water," Mom said behind me. She saw me pour out the third rice water, just barely cloudy this time, and helped me keep back any stray grains that might follow the escaping rinse water. Then I filled the rice pot to measuring level four, handed the pot to my mom, who wiped up the excess water on the outside of the pot, lifted up the lid of the rice cooker, and put the pot in the cooker. After putting the lid back on the cooker, Mom let me push the cook button, which, after cooking, would spring up into the warm setting.
I looked at the rice cooker, which looked like a little white crockpot and, as far as I could remember, had always been a part of my household, and I realized that Sarah didn't have a rice cooker in her house. The first time Sarah came to my house, she had walked into the kitchen, looked at the cooker sitting on the counter, and asked, "What's that?"
"It's a rice cooker, dummy." I had rolled my eyes.
"A rice cooker? Why d'you need that? You're supposed to dunk the bag in boiling water so it'll cook for five minutes. Kinda like Ramen."
"A bag? What bag? And five minutes' too short! You'll have hard rice like a rock."
Sarah had rolled her eyes at me. "What're you talking about? It says on the box, 'put small bag with Minute Rice in boiling water for five minutes for perfect rice,' you dummy!"
"Oh, you're talking about THAT rice, stuff that separates all over the place and doesn't even soak up sauces all that good and doesn't even taste like anything. THAT stuff." I had made a face.
"What's wrong with that rice? My mom makes it whenever we eat Chinese."
"Well, that's just it -- Chinese eat with chopsticks, and can you see one trying to pick up that falling-apart-and-all-over-the-place stuff? Rice is supposed to be STICKY, so you can eat it in bite-size bits, sticky and soft and a little sweet."
Sarah had wrinkled up her nose. "Yuck, your rice sounds like baby food."
"No, it isn't!" And I had pushed her.
"Hey!" She had stumbled a little but hadn't fallen. "Jeez, you're touchy! It's only rice, Ellen. Can we go to your room now?"
I had crossed my arms across my skinny chest and shook my head. "Not till you admit that my rice is better'n than yours."
"Okay, okay, it's better." As we had headed for my room, Sarah had added, "Jeez, you Oriental people are weird."
The "ding!" of the cook button popping up to the warm setting after twenty-five minutes returned me to the present. I lifted up the lid, and steam from the fluffy, white rice billowed up. Even though Mom had reheated the leftover adobo, I easily smelled the starchy sweetness of the cooked rice, which had a hint of jasmine flowers, like good green tea.. As I inhaled, I was surprised that Sarah couldn't smell the jasmine in my family's jasmine rice, couldn't see the glistening sheen of freshly cooked rice like mother-of-pearl under the morning light, couldn't appreciate the balls of rice my mom made so that I could pick them up with my fingers (the perfect finger food!), and couldn't taste the comforting flavors of jasmine and rice starch.
And I, who had always felt funny in Asian stores surrounded by people who seemed more Asian than I was, was equally surprised that I could.
© 1996 Rufel F. Ramos