Issue #3 - Food In Times of Grief; Food as Ritualistic Offerings
Our first fiction piece brings us a beautiful story about grief, ritual, and ghosts
Note From Editor
Happy Wednesday! We have arrived at the 3rd issue of We Have Food at Home and it’s our first fiction piece. Fiction is a type of writing I’m still trying to figure out, and particularly invested in in the past week as I try to work my way around writing a longer piece of fictional work for the first time in years. I read a lot of fiction—almost exclusively sometimes—so it’s funny how it’s my least preferred genre to write.
I love when works of fiction feature food heavily. Even in my own fictional writing recently, I included in heavy detail the steps to make aloo bhorta, the iconic Bengali mashed potatoes.
“The secret to a good aloo bhorta is the marriage of five ingredients: potatoes, mustard oil, ghee, chilis, and red onions. I set the potatoes in a boiling pot and get ready to prep the onions.
I chop a red onion into medium-long slices. I pour mustard oil onto a frypan and wait for it to heat up. I toss in the onions alongside some dried red chilis. Mustard oil is another creation I am forever grateful to the Bengalis for. Surprisingly enough, I can get it in Orange, at the Indian Market. When I first moved to New Haven I had to bat my eyes at Erica for a ride the first time. But then I discovered there was a bus that went to both the market and Trader Joe’s, and thankfully I could stock up on mustard oil as much as I wanted. Once the onions are translucent, I take the mix off the stove and chop the green chilis until I hear the timer on my phone go off, letting me know the potatoes were ready.
I try to be patient about not touching the potatoes and letting them cool, but like every time, I cannot wait. I poke a finger in and let the rounded edge crumble at my touch. Bengalis do not use a masher. The mashed potatoes can reach optimum deliciousness only if it has the love transferred directly from the chef’s hands. The steam from one of the six russets burns the edge of my index finger.”
The story we have today however, goes beyond describing any recipes of any kind. It talks about how witnessing death—no matter how far off the dead is—can arouse complicated feelings. It also tackles the the characters’ experiences with family ghosts and using moon cakes as offerings for the ghosts. Food is significant around grief—at times of loss, I’ve struggled to eat, find words around hollowness in my body because it could be anything, and gone days without appetite.
This story blew me away the first time I read it. My words don’t do it justice. So why don’t I let Lucy take it over?
Until next week!
Warmly,
Padya
Lucy Zhang
Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in FOLIO, CRAFT, The Spectacle, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbooks HOLLOWED (Thirty West Publishing) and ABSORPTION (Harbor Review). Find her at https://lucyzhang.tech or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.
Ritual
CW: Suicide, Grief
Seconds after we witnessed the girl jump off the suspension bridge and into the gorge, we heard her body smack against the ground. That kind of sound sticks with you. It’s like the earth’s mantle has snapped for a second, enough to let a body slip through the cracks. We didn’t have the guts to look over the railing and double-check if a human body lay there broken.
That night, I ask Shu to hold me while I sleep. According to Mom, watching someone die will bring misfortune to me and my family. I reason that I had not truly watched the girl die—I had only heard the impact of her body. It’s like hearing a bird slam into glass: you can’t quite be sure it was a bird or ferocious raindrops unless you search for the body, but by the time you look, the body imprint has washed away. Shu sleeps without an issue, snoring softly within fifteen minutes of burrowing under the covers.
Several days later, I return to the suspension bridge alone despite my fear of heights. I worry the lack of closure will ruin Shu and my future. Ghosts not properly put to rest latch onto the last people they see, displacing souls and possessing new vessels. It had happened to me when I was young and wandered into my grandma’s room where she slept on her rock-hard bamboo mat. She hadn’t been sleeping. She’d died several hours ago from heart problems, but I didn’t know at the time and left the room quietly to ask the next most lenient person, my mom, for permission to eat the Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Grandma’s soul took over my body during my elementary years which is why I remember little of those days. After Grandma left (maybe she got bored of living as a child), I confessed to Mom who told me that my body could never fully be mine now. Grandma was the kind of woman who believed family shared the same bank account, the same debt, the same allergies, the same traditions. When Uncle Pan Zhong needed an additional 100k in cash for a new apartment on the high rises of Beijing, Grandma demanded that mom fork over the cash even though she’d never ordered Uncle Pan Zhong to do the same when mom was eying the houses in varying levels of school districts in New Jersey. She ended up choosing a small apartment on top of a barber shop in the low-income area of a Blue Ribbon school district. Grandma loved Uncle Pan Zhong the most and expected everyone to share the sentiment. Even when Mom and Uncle were kids, Grandma would give the chunky, meaty pieces of pork belly and duck breast to uncle and leave the bones for mom. Mom claims that’s the reason why she likes to gnaw on bones and left all the muscle meat for me as a child.
Mom claims I was a polite, obedient, hardworking child during the years Grandma possessed my body, but I don’t believe her. She looked so relieved when I returned to my body and would wince whenever I opened the fridge in search of apple cider. Our fridge was full of Costco milk gallons, Dannon yogurt cups, frozen tubs of gogurt, frozen chicken pot pies—foods Grandma liked to call “falsey sustenance” that ruined the female complexion, rendering us “unmarriable and abandonable”, and would dump out of the fridge as soon as she had a chance. I doubt Grandma was able to empty the fridge while in possession of my body though. Those cartons were too big and heavy and wedged in between other food products for my tiny hands and arms to pull free.
This is to say—I don’t want Shu and me to start a family while I’m inhabited by a suicidal girl. I grip the handrail as I walk, my feet quaking slightly with each step, not enough to shake the bridge but enough for me to pause before moving again. Shu loves the thrill of heights even though it means suffering my death hand grip. I reach the side where the girl had jumped, the far side of the bridge where hiking paths wind toward the bottom of the gorge, unguarded by any form of barrier. It wasn’t so much jumping as it was walking, her pace unchanged as the ground disappeared from beneath her as though she expected the path to continue onward in all directions.
I peer into the gorge.
Mom taught me the procedure for dealing with ghosts after the fiasco with Grandma. She drilled it into my head that every step must adhere to a degree of meticulousness else the ghost wouldn’t be sent away. It had been the only time I remembered her every word, even her linguistic stumbles when she shifted from Chinese to English and back to Chinese again. First, you need to bow toward the location where the ghost was last found alive. Then you provide them gifts, ideally precious objects the ghosts can take with them, but if you don’t have any, mooncakes packaged in silk containers would suffice. Mom seemed to think mooncakes could ferry souls to the moon which is why she never let me eat them, not that we had them often to begin with. When Mom and Uncle Pan Zhong were kids, Grandma fed all the mooncakes to Uncle, squashing any chance of a budding sweet tooth in Mom. “All turned out for the best,” I tell Mom five years after I moved out. Uncle got diagnosed with diabetes but Grandma kept feeding him lotus paste-stuffed moon cakes and fried sesame mochi balls and overflowing bowls of rice noodles, insistent the doctors were trying to starve him.
Shu and I don’t eat mooncakes but I had bought a case for Mid Autumn festival to share with Mom, who thinks Shu could gain some weight.
“Are you starving Shu and hoarding everything for yourself?” She asks me whenever we visit before insisting Shu eat another helping of turnip cakes. She slices up raw onion and ginger for me and tells me it’s good for dieting. Probably a tenet Grandma drilled into her head.
I place the box of mooncakes on the edge of the path so it threatens to teeter into the gorge. The next step is a product of Mom’s paranoia: pierce a finger with a needle and wet an origami crane with a few drops of blood before tossing it into the deceased’s resting place. Cranes act as vessels for immortals. Supposedly their presence would imbue the token of blood with enough longevity to satisfy a ghost’s thirst for a living vessel. I doubt a drop of my blood is enough to satisfy any ghost’s craving, but I’m not skeptical enough to skip this step. I’d been folding all sorts of animals and flowers since I was little. Mom insisted I learn a craft in case all other skills failed and I’d have to fall back to prioritizing my value on the marriage market.
The police had already removed the body so I let the crane float down toward where I think the girl had fallen. It drifts into the gorge and lands in the stream of water and floats away, unhindered by the many rocks threatening to hold it captive. I watch it disappear downstream and then pack up the mooncakes. Thirty minutes have passed, which should be enough for the offering to be accepted. But leaving food for the animals—especially food meant for ghosts—is a sacrilegious dishonor though.
When I return home, I tell Shu, “I’ve sent her off.”
“Who?” Shu asks, sitting on our gray IKEA couch.
“The girl who passed us last week, the one who offered to take our photo and walked right into the gorge.”
“Was there someone who offered to take our photo? I only remember you clinging to me and asking to go back while we crossed the bridge.”
Shu never remembers anything that doesn’t directly pertain to our existences. I call it Shu’s Miraculous Brain Wipe Out ability: to flush a memory into oblivion. “Never mind,” I say, setting the mooncakes down on our kitchen table.
“Don’t think so much. Babies take after their parents, you know. We should set an example as rational, reasonable adults.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I reply. “I’m taking these to Mom’s place.” I point to the mooncakes. “Unless you want them.”
“No sugar and hydrogenated oils for me.”
Mom’s place is located down the street. We moved her close by after she retired since her old home was on the second floor and too much of a trek for her knees. We also think the location will be convenient for her to help care for our child once it decides to pop out of me. Since it’s nearly dinner, Mom is likely out on her walk. I punch in the code to the smart keypad that we’d installed for her and enter the house. It smells like green tea and yeast, and as I enter the kitchen, I find a glass bowl of proofing dough, likely in preparation for scallion mantou buns. The TV plays in the background. Mom claims the news lulls her to sleep even though she seems to actively listen to it more than she ignores it. “Careful, there’s a gunman loose,” she’d tell me. “Yes, in Los Angeles. Across the country,” I’d reply.
The news channel continues to play, and a blonde newscaster reports on the latest suicide—a girl pursuing a business major with an internship lined up at HSBC bank. She was dating a bartender, and interviews with her friends seemed to indicate she was “lively.” If you’re alive, you’d better be lively, I think. It had been impossible to tell when she passed me and Shu, her frame small and willowy like it’d blow away with the wind rather than slam onto rocks.
I open the silk box of mooncakes again. One cake is the size of my palm. You have to cut them in small slices to avoid the dense sweetness and oiliness overwhelming your tastebuds and triggering a gag reflex. I take a cake out of the plastic packaging and bite straight into it. I suppose it’s still tough for me to believe Mom’s ritual will help with chasing a ghost out, or else she should’ve chased Grandma from my body the day Grandma took hold. I open my jaw wide and take another bite of the sticky cake, chewing and swallowing so quickly I start to wheeze. Starving the ghost might be more effective.