On the theme of Groceries
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROCERIES OF NICOLETTE WONG
I. Red Bean Bun
They call it flower shaped, the red bean paste spilling over your lips when you bite into a petal. I’m about six years old, looking for my favorite bun in the bags of groceries my grandma has just put on the dining table. The afternoon shadow that is my hand, fumbling white plastic, beneath a flimsy tear-off calendar with green letters. When I feel the familiar petal shape, I lean against the wall, as if the chill would wrap me up in a cloak of invisibility. I wish not to be seen.
My grandma emerges from the kitchen; she sits down at the table and shoots a glance at me. She’s dressed in one of her many nylon shirts and pants, the kind of shapeless, dull-colored outfits (sometimes adorned with gold buttons and wavy lines) that the old folks wear in Hong Kong in the 80s. On this day she’s a pale blue.
She starts eating a slice of bread. I shout.
“How can you feel hungry? How can you eat?”
“Why can’t I eat?”
“You’ve done wrong! You’re not supposed to eat!”
“I’ll eat because I eat.”
My grandma takes another bite of the bread, pours herself some tea. It’s up to me to hold back tears. There was a scene earlier in the day. I might have wanted to go to the library to read on my own, or to go to the stationary store to check out (i.e. steal) some cartoon stickers, and my grandma denied my request. Why can’t she—and everyone else in this crowded household—let me be free for a day? In an odd twist to the Chinese concept of guilt—the wrongdoer should feel no hunger as they repent—I decide my grandma has no right to eat this afternoon.
When she has retreated to our shared room, I consider my options. The red bean bun—or anything from the bags of groceries—is out of question. I can’t give in to our usual afternoon tea routine as if nothing had happened. No, I must not eat within my grandma’s sight; I must prove her guilt with the drama of my suffering. The lemon-cream sandwich cookies or sesame crackers might work, if I manage to eat them quietly when she gets back to cooking. To tear the plastic packet open at the label with my teeth, the crumbs dropping onto the floor…
Time simmers for an unhappy child. I starve until dinner is served.
II. Junk Food Days
I’m thirteen, or fifteen, or nineteen, living in a studio flat in a public housing estate. My father is only around when he borrows or steals, and I’m left to cope with creditor harassment every day. My extended family supports me. I model for quick cash after turning sixteen.
Grocery shopping becomes the orbit of my daily life, the thing I do to survive from one day to the next without looking into the abyss. I buy groceries for the evening and the next morning: instant noodles or cup noodles, bread, cheese crackers, an assortment of biscuits, microwave food. Some nights I eat a loaf of banana bread for dinner. Or a bag of chips if I want to be distracted by the savory taste.
I only get what would fulfill my immediate needs, partly because of the fear of running out of cash. There’s comfort in the routine of grocery shopping, the precarious act of tending to my wellbeing one day at a time. I could spend my money on fresh food and cook sometimes. But I refuse to take care of myself as my situation calls for it; I can only live by avoiding the truth of my loneliness and near poverty.
Whenever I go to school—which is about half of the time—I eat better food. My best friend H. lives in a household of mentally ill people, and she copes with life with a mix of passive acceptance and kindness towards others. On this day—I’m eighteen—H. and I feel like getting away from the other girls during lunchtime. H. has groceries at home, and we get some fruits.
She heats up some dumplings. The tiny flat smells of steam. I sit in front of a desk fan, my legs curled up in H.’s bed. It’s a bright day. Too bright for us to sit by the windows.
We eat from two white plates on fold-up chairs.
“It’s too much hassle to go out for lunch every day,” H. says. “I’d rather stay at home and have something simple…like this.”
I nod yes, munches on an apple. H. has frizzy hair and tired eyes, as she often does.
I’m happy when people give me food to eat.
III. PARKnSHOP
I’m twenty-two, still living in public housing, with plans to run off to Australia once I finish graduate school.
Tonight I wear a ponytail for a change, though my floral pattern shirt has a similar cut to the one I wore yesterday. It makes no difference to my trip. Between the grocery stores, supermarkets and fast food places in the hood, I’ve shown up in T-shirts and overcoats, straight hair and curly hair, sunglasses and no glasses, wobbling down the stairs at different times of the day, over the years… I’m still the girl who dines and shops alone.
With my studentship and part-time jobs, I can afford regular (i.e. takeaway) dinners. Once or twice a week I visit the PARKnSHOP for grocery shopping, and I get more or less the same junk food as I got in my teens: noodles, biscuits, chips and microwave food, of higher quality. Grapefruit juice becomes an addition: I drink up to 2 liters of it on most days. The sour taste calms me down, makes me feel alive amid the clutter in my flat.
I’m fascinated with the PARKnSHOP cashier who wears an 80s style perm and bright lipstick. I watch her whenever I wait in line. She looks at the customers in the eyes as she speaks, her voice burnt from years of smoking; then she smiles and takes the cash, or inserts a credit card into the card reader. I see her playing mahjong with three friends, a white cigarette between her red lips. Other cashiers look generic to me, just as I’m one of the numerous customers coming in and out of the supermarket.
When I come home from grocery shopping, there’s a note scribbled in childish handwriting in my mailbox:
“Dear Miss Room 422,
I’m bored. Will you be my friend?
Sometimes I see you smile. I think you’re always happy.
Call me. 9746 3804.
Wait for you!”
Is it someone who lives in the opposite building? Why would anyone spy on me? Follow my routine? I was probably crying, rocking in grief to post-rock music, when some creep mistook it for a happy dance.
What gives this stranger the right to judge and exploit me?
IV. 7-Eleven
I’m twenty-eight, living with my cat in a studio flat in a quaint neighborhood, where there’re many auto repair shops and sidewalk cafes. People walk their dogs in the hood. On the eve of Mid-Autumn Festival, the shop owners and their families throw barbecue parties on the sidewalk.
I work irregular hours. Most nights I get dinner at 10pm, write from midnight to around 4:30am, and go to sleep. When insomnia strikes I take long walks to the pier two train stations away, or to another district for breakfast at a 24-hour restaurant. There’s rarely any grocery in my home anymore: a box of instant cereal, a pack of sesame cracker, an orange. My fear is late-night binge eating. If there’s a packet of Chinese noodles in the kitchen, I’d cook it and gobble it with the soup, one hour before I hit the sack.
The anxiety sends me straight to 7-Eleven, where the cashier named Carol is sweeping the floor with a red broom. I pretend to get something light, a ham and cheese sandwich and two chocolate bars. A man with a graying crew cut brushes past me and snatches a dinner box from the fridge.
I hear him open the microwave oven. Then the smell of meat, of cooked food that has been sitting on the table for too long.
I scan the microwave dinner boxes; I’ve never had one before. Most are Cantonese dishes like chicken and mushroom rice, the kind of food we order at a Hong Kong styled teahouse. The pork ribs and green beans look gigantic in pictures; the colors are two shades darker than they are in real life. The set up looks like flaming flesh in motion, shaky and steady in a close-up grind.
I pay for my sandwich and chocolate. Carol offers me some cartoon stickers.
“Twenty-five stickers plus ten bucks for a Moomintroll mug,” she says.
I put them in my wallet.
The guy starts eating his late dinner. There are worlds inside those microwave dinner boxes, colors and textures that come to life in sizzling glory. But I won’t find out. I don’t have a microwave in my new home; and I won’t be the person who’s seen waiting for their food at 7-Eleven, lonely.
Author Biography
Nicolette Wong is a dancer, magician, and editor of A-Minor Magazine & Press. She blogs at Meditations in an Emergency.