Not Quite Snow

A brief look into immigrant experience — how you want to rid yourself of this culture that holds you back from fully assimilating, yet don't feel comfortable leaving it behind. How childhood experiences follow you into adulthood and the iron-grip tenacity of your parents who made it this far.

Written in the style of Arundhati Roy.

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It was a sweetbitter night when I got to know the Four of Them. It was not the first time I had met the Mother who loves him Just The Way He Is. The father who is Still There. The sister who makes swans and turtles and wontons.  It was not the first time I had seen their matching smiles or sicksweet comfort with each other, but it was the first time I had felt it twist my stomach like the wringing of water from a plaid handtowel. Taut. The kind that stings your hands when you grip it too tight. Because you grip it too tight. The kind that sticks to your fingertips with the inside-of-sink smell. That fishsmelling notfresh holding-too-tight smell. 

I had always found the kitchen Too Empty. Too cluttered. Too Clean. In that emptyclutteredclean kitchen, Mama wiped her hands on the plaid handtowel. They are veiny and weathered hands, as if the varicose veins from her left leg had somehow spread to them over time like fireworks. Pop pop pop. The hands you would expect from a forty year-old Chinese woman with her feelings kept neatly sealed under Tupperware lids. 

“You have to roll the dough out into neat circles,” Mama instructed, voice quieter than the itching of my multicolored tights (for Modesty) and silky qipao (for China). I fidgeted with the lunchbag-texture of my flour-coated Tinkerbell apron. Blonde-hair-green-eyes-green-dress. Felt the flaky skin on my eczema-riddled palms catch onto Modesty and China like a grudge. I pretended the flour was pixie dust instead. Glittering. Sunbeaten. Sandcolored. 

“Get me the rolling pin. Are you even listening, Xiao Qi? Look at the mess you’ve made.” Mama’s eyebrows scrunched as she forcefully patted my apron down, falling pixie dust turning back to flour on the peach-tiled floor. Snowlike.

Mama made a small gesture at the rolling pin. I held my breath as I leaned over the sink to pick it up. Fishsmelling notfresh holding-too-tight. 

“Do you want to see how Mama folds the dumplings?” I gave her a stately nod, attention now drawn toward her veiny firework hands smartly tucking a dollop of pork-chive-onion-egg filling into the white wrapper. She worked quickly, making a neat, crimped Dumpling dumpling with uniform creases along its back. When she placed it onto the baking sheet, it was plump, stark white, and stood up on its own, like a stiff Chinese girl with chapped palms and a silky qipao. The whiter the skin, Mama would say, the better quality it is. Hand-rolled, authentically-risen dough. 

“Can I make a meatpie instead?” I reached for the near-perfect doughcircles.

“No!” She quickly batted my hand away. 

A trained response.

Regret slowly filled her face as my eyes began to water. Not because it hurt. Tears never fell and I swallowed them back. 

A trained response. 

She quickly corrected herself. “Because meatpies will need two skins, and we can’t waste any.”

“Okay,” I steadied my voice. “Can I make a star, then? I’ll only use one skin, I promise.” 

Anger flashed momentarily in her eyes again, but she didn’t let it burst this time. “No. It’s not proper. Do it the way I told you to.” 

It was always in times like these where her voice started to adopt that Tone that I always thought sounded like November rain. Cold. Berating. Not quite snow. The Tone that I would, later in life, hear in the emptyclutteredclean Volkswagen with varicose-vein-hands gripping the steering wheel like a grudge. Too tight. Fingertips with the inside-of-sink smell. 

Pop pop pop. 

I tried my best to copy Mama’s actions. The perfect amount of filling. Quick, limber fingers making neat, uniform creases. But my dollop was too big. My stubby, four-year-old fingers didn’t have the strength to pinch the dough shut. When I finished, it didn’t stand up like Mama’s. Pink pork filling leaked out like unsuccessfully held-back tears, but Mama wasn’t mad this time because I had tried. 

“Don’t worry, they all look a little funny the first time.”

Years later, I still had never made a dumpling quite as Dumplinglike as Mama. Some are better than others. Most times I put too little filling. A lesson learned from four-year-old Xiao Qi who made it overflow. The one saving grace about my dumplings is that they learned to stand up on their own. They had a sharp, sickle-like curve to them. Like a spine holding up a girl. Pale, fishsmelling, holding-too-tight.

Mama had thought of the name Mingqi long before the Blue Scrub Nurses had whisked away the birth certificate with the name Joyce hastily scribbled under First Name. She regretted not being able to put it as my legal name, but soothed her mind by telling herself that no one would be able to pronounce it anyway. She could imagine the confused, sympathetic attempts her coworkers in the Ministry of Environment would make at pronouncing the name. “Mingchee? Mingkee? No, I got it. Mickey!” 

Still, she kept the name to herself. Mingqi. Blessed light. 

She, and everyone around her, would continue to marvel about how beautiful Mingchee/Mingkee/Mickey was. How her remarkably pale skin and monolids looked Just Like Her Mother. In the coming years, confused, sympathetic coworkers from the Ministry of Environment would wonder how Mickey came from Joyce and how the two were connected in any way at all. They would look at the paleskinned mother and the formerly-so daughter, sunbeaten and sandcolored after a long summer at the beach. A tan that would only wash away in November rain to reveal a complexion. Cold. Berating. Not quite snow. 

Richard was introduced to my life through a series of coincidence-like coincidences that somehow turned him into a Boyfriend. Richard’s legal name was Richard and his Chinese name didn’t sound very Chinese either. Ruizhe was a borrowed name made from borrowed sounds and borrowed syllables. Borrowed from Richard. When the name leaves his Mother’s mouth, I can hardly hear the difference. No one would wonder how Ruizhe came from Richard, because Ruizhe is Richard. Tanskinned, jubilant, warm. Joyce is sunbeaten and sandcolored from the summer at the beach. Mingqi is paleskinned, November rain and Just Like Her Mother. 

Inside Richard’s house is a warmglow. I felt it for the first time on The Night we made dumplings together. The warm a little too close. The glow a little too blinding. 

In the kitchen, a foil-covered cylinder lay next to a glass bowl with pink pork filling. Richard opened the foil-cylinder to reveal a thick stack of perfect-circle, yellowish whitish dumpling skins. Machine-cut-and-rolled. Unauthentic dough. The kind that I had seen in grocery stores previously, but purposely skirted around. It was out of sheer politeness that I didn’t say anything as his family gathered around the table to make dumplings. 

Warmglow. Too close. Blinding.

I sat with them and picked up a skin. I thought of the countless New Years, Birthdays, Mid-Autumn Festivals that I spent making Dumplings. Too Empty. Too cluttered. Too Clean. Neat, crimped Dumpling dumplings. Far from perfection. 

“Ma, can you pass me another skin?” His sister, already holding one, held out her hand for another. I braced myself for a sharp Don’t waste the skins!

Instead, a yellowish whitish perfect-circle was placed in her outstretched hand. I watched her quick, limber fingers move with elegant artistry, just enough filling, to create a nice, plump meatpie. I glanced nervously at their mother. For anger. For a change in expression. Nothing. As if this were normal.

Too close.

I watched as his sister made unDumplinglike dumplings. A swan. A turtle. A wonton. A flat dumpling, unable to stand on its own, with pink pork filling leaking out the sides. 

“Joyce, do you want to make a fun one?”

His efforts to include me squeezed my stomach like the wringing of water from a plaid handtowel. My eczema-riddled hands caught on the fibres of my flannel. Holding me back. 

Because of his insistence, I made a star. 

When they boiled the unDumplinglike dumplings, you could not tell whether they had been machine-cut-and-rolled or hand-rolled, authentically risen. But one bite tasted of hot, angry fireworks. Of New Years, Birthdays and Mid-Autumn Festivals. Another tasted of borrowed sounds and borrowed syllables. Of Mothers and Fathers and Sisters. 

Of pale and tanskinned fingers intertwined under the table, simultaneously Too Close and Not Touching. 

On the car ride home, Mama was silent for the most part. Not angry. Not happy. Just silent. She had paused her dinnertime movie to pick me up. Her varicose-vein-hands gripped the steering wheel like a grudge. Holding-too-tight. 

I told her about the machine-cut perfect-circle skins. About the swans and turtles and wontons. The meatpies and stars. 

She scoffed and told me that those weren’t what Dumplings were supposed to look like. I shut my mouth and dreamt about the Four of Them. The Mother who isn’t holding-too-tight. The father who is Still There. The sister who makes swans and turtles and wontons. Richard who stays in that house with the warmglow while I return to mine. 

Cold. Berating. Not quite snow.