Watermelon Rind
Laolao was conditioned to make things out of scraps. Before her mentals progressively worsened and before I grew up enough to understand why, I would peruse around the house, fascinated by her meticulousness and inextricable focus in doing the most minor of tasks. One of these was her preparation of xi gua pi, watermelon rind, sometimes thought of as an herbal remedy in our culture, but to me just a dish that was equal parts savory and enigmatic.
When we ate watermelon in the house, the leftovers were saved in a recycled tofu carton or styrofoam tray that packaged raw meat. In the instances I accidentally threw the peels in the trash, Laolao would scold me, then fetch it out of the bin. She always had something to be angry about. Once the peels overflowed from its container, Laolao, equipped with cutting board and knife, would separate the green exoskeleton of the watermelon from the sweet, red flesh it protects, leaving just the rinds, which are tough, flavorless, and the translucent green complexion of jade. They were sliced into paper-thin strips and stir fried with soy sauce and dou chi, fermented black beans. The watermelon’s original sweetness evaporates save for a few botanical hints, replaced by the ingredients’ umami flavors. Xi gua pi can be eaten on its own, but in the house, it usually served as a pickle for our morning rice porridge.
Laolao kept herself busy. If she wasn’t working with watermelon rind, she would be dicing and pickling the ends of broccoli and daikon, or separating the stems and leaves of kong xin cai, a leafy green regional to her hometown. Bits of leftover meat were minced and cooked to complement tofu dishes. The last drops of milk in the carton or eggs in the mixing bowl were saved as fertilizer for the tomato plants she tended to in the backyard. If there was nothing left in the kitchen to be preoccupied with, Laolao would put on cleaning gloves, the oversized neon yellow ones that envelop your entire forearm, and scrub down the nearest surface.
I never questioned why Laolao did all this. She wasn’t conservationist, at least in an academic sense; her knowledge of worldly things was limited. She worked with the odds and ends of ingredients, but had no aspirations of being a chef. If she had personal ambitions or inclinations that necessitated this work, it was never obvious. But it definitely wasn’t a labor of love. Laolao did these things with a brooding look and a frown on her forehead, a frown I’ve always known. I think I learned to frown before I could smile. She complained often about her knees hurting or the skin cracking from the palm of her hands. The work was anything but necessary since we were well off enough to afford Laolao peace of mind in perpetuity. But it was an inescapable mindset; she only understood the gruel of indefinite toil and couldn’t imagine an identity outside of it — a purgatory of work without frills. Laolao was very bitter, and with every passing year, became more convinced that she was divinely cursed. At the same time, bitterness gave her life. She wasn’t religious, maybe spiritual at best, but she could always be resentful of the nebulous powers that be for her destiny to an existence of eternal unhappiness.
Being raised by Laolao was a luxury and a curse. I was the kid who stood by the countertop to watch her slice xi gua pi, and eagerly waited at the dinner table for her meals. I devoured her cooking and would tell her how delicious it was. I think it made her happy. She cared deeply that I would grow up alright. Sometimes, she would crack a deflated smile and call me guai, a favorite word of her’s, which meant good or obedient and carried a patronizing tone. I wore it like a badge. Laolao was satisfied in brief moments, until her bitterness reappeared and she found something to complain about. She went to tremendous lengths to make me happy, but it was impossible for me to reciprocate. If I asked her now about why she never stopped working, I think she would scold me and say that it was all because she cared about me, and I would feel the warm glow of affection and the piercing hurt I always felt all over again, those two feelings forever inseparable from each other.
Laolao means grandma in Chinese, but it’s only used for the mother’s side of the family. Lao by itself is the word for old, but when said twice, it becomes something much more endearing. Nainai also means grandma, but only for the father’s side. The first words you learn are to call for your caretaker, so she was and is always Laolao to me. I’ve never been able to translate this distinction to English in ordinary conversations. If I said grandma, which one was I referring to? Grandma on mom’s side was too wordy, and maternal grandma sounded like nomenclature.
People around me cared about which side of the family I took after more. The answer was undeniably my father’s, at least in appearance. Though I could see for myself, family and friends reminded me of it so often that I would have believed it anyways. Mom held on to the pieces for dear life. Look at how similar our noses are, she’d say while we FaceTimed my uncle, her voice beaming.
Laolao communicated pain and hurt in so many ways that I saw it in hundreds of shades. I carried those feelings in a palette.
Maybe it was the language, or maybe it was the upbringing, but I never understood family as a nuclear concept. I perceived myself as just pieces of Mom, or Laolao, or my father, drawn to one’s love, estranged by one’s mistakes, molded by one’s baggage. Laolao never brought up her past. I think she thought it was unimportant, or maybe she just repressed memories of it altogether. The whole family was good at hiding the things that made us hurt. We covered up our wounds from each other so that it rotted us from the inside instead. Mom didn’t share much about Laolao either, but the rare stories she did tell were revelations.
Laolao was beautiful, even in old age. Her beauty made her sought after, but she ended up in a cold marriage devoid of affection. Laolao was a schoolteacher, which was a lowly occupation in Mao’s China. During the Cultural Revolution, around when Mom was born, she was sent to the countryside as part of the regime’s labor programs, and raised two children on her own. After ten years in the states, Mom made enough to retire Laolao from her job, so she could help look after my sister and me. I think all these things programmed Laolao for domesticity without love. Of course she would never talk about it, but it was palpable in her work ethic and bitterness. It made her so cold and heartless, but a completely devoted caretaker.
A few months into college, my dorm held a student event about expressing love languages. I was unfamiliar with the concept, and after looking it up I was initially repulsed, like hearing about an exotic dish. It was easy for others to do things that felt foreign to me, like give gifts and compliments and make people feel good. Growing up with Laolao introduced me to a lot of difficult feelings. She was a manipulator, so I picked up sympathy and guilt. Her anger taught me patience and the art of holding grudges. Through her, I learned to be untrusting and independent. Laolao communicated pain and hurt in so many ways that I saw it in hundreds of shades. I carried those feelings in a palette. It wasn’t until I left for college, and Laolao moved back to China for good, that I made sense of her twisted guidance as affection. She loved through her work, and put more work into me than anyone else. It almost felt like a hug.
I woke up in downtown Brooklyn last May, a couple months after the Atlanta shootings. Stop Asian Hate, as a decree and slogan, stuck around like glue. The Filipino barber who cut my hair that morning was candid about his thoughts on it all. He suggested that we, the young Asian men, had to do more to assert ourselves. That we were the ones strong enough to fight back. They pick on the women and elderly, he said, because we don’t stand up for them.
I couldn’t have disagreed more, but nodded along. I would’ve much rather talked about the Knicks, or literally anything else. It was a ridiculous idea, that puffing out our chests and making a statement about our slighted machismo would resolve the targeted violence against us, but I don’t blame him for having those sentiments. The victims of these hate crimes were often portrayed as fragile and vulnerable people who deserved more protection. I think this narrative was harmful because it stoked flawed ideas about masculinity and security and the poisonous institutions these ideas informed, like policing.
The woman who asked for my order at the Xi’an Famous Foods that afternoon looked just like Laolao. She was too old to be working in that environment. She was skinny, almost ghastly. I imagined Mom telling her that she needed to eat more, like she would to Laolao. I ordered my food in Chinese, but she spoke fairly good English. She looked exhausted.
It’s a sort of entertainment to watch us cook, one of those inefficiencies that people enjoy.
This woman had the kitchen to herself; she took the orders, cooked the food, plated them in takeout trays and begrudgingly told everyone to have a good day. It feels wrong to call it a kitchen, which should be a cozy, loving place in the corner of a home, a shrine. This was industrial, metallic, lifeless. Steel vats of boiling water and prepared sauces lined a perimeter of glass panes that separated her from the customer. The woman worked the dough, kneaded and stretched it into ribbons, and dropped it in the water to boil. It’s a sort of entertainment to watch us cook, one of those inefficiencies that people enjoy. If the hibachi restaurants and the chefs who do spatula tricks are a circus act, then this woman, behind her glass cage, was a zoo exhibit.
It was inconsequential, but I suddenly cared deeply for this woman, despite having no connection to her. I hoped her shift would end soon. I hoped her home wasn’t too far away. And if she had to walk or take the train for a while, I hoped she was safe. She probably had to wake up the next day and live through the same thing, and the day after next. I wondered how the woman learned to make noodles from scratch. Maybe it was passed down to her from someone she loved dearly. Working with dough might have been precious to this woman, but in the establishment, she was reduced to nothing more than the bowls of noodles she produced. It clearly drained the life out of her. This, too, was violence. Our social machinery took her love and devotion and twisted it into something transactional; it took something that should’ve made her happy and turned her lifeless instead.
In that moment, I missed and loved Laolao tremendously. Her love never felt more precious. Work could be such a destructive force, grinding away at people until they turn to gruel. I was grateful she poured her life into me. I suppose labor is a site of exploitation, but because of Laolao I understood it first and foremost as an act of love. I wonder if it’s any solace to love Laolao now, three years since she moved back to China, when I last saw her. Maybe it would make her happier.
