by Ryan Wong
The ladle slides into the broth. No one moves to pick it back up. Ba spares a glance at me, a fleeting movement, before returning his focus to the bowl in front of him. Waiting. Beside him, Ma picks at the plates of liao. My curled toes press themselves into the ground as I reach for the silver handle, prostrating in the slow-boiling silence. Soup coats my fingers as they close around the ladle and place it firmly against the pot’s side. We carry on as if nothing happened, but something did happen, and now the air is charged. Stiffened. As if a single spark would set the world on fire.
With a grunt, Ba moves to switch the hotpot back on, and on cue, Ma adds the rest of the liao. Cabbage, prawns, mushrooms and meat tumble unceremoniously into the mix like pennies from a loose pouch before Ba puts the lid back on. Trapped steam clouds the inside of the lid, and within a minute, the soup begins to bubble. Ba lifts the lid and looks at me. I raise my eyes to meet his, and in them is a question, unspoken, like most of the words shared between us: Ready for round two?
I nod.
At the dinner table, time passes by slowly. Dinner is itself a hushed affair; sound rarely makes its way across the marbled surface aside from the clinking of chopsticks against ceramic. And yet, I sense everything in terrible, piercing clarity. Like cornered prey, or an acrobat on a tightrope—one wrong move and I am ash.
The steamboat rests at the center of the table, anchored, separating one ocean from another. I stare into its eye and picture the monster Charybdis, bane of ship and sailor. In Greek mythology, it was said to have swallowed entire lakefuls of water before spewing it back out, creating whirlpools from which no vessel was safe. I imagine the slices of beef and pork as sailors, the cabbage and mushrooms the remnants of their ships, caught and devoured because they chose to cross Charybdis instead of Scylla, the monster across the strait. Either way, they were doomed from the start. What must it be like, I wonder, to realise your life is forfeit no matter which path you take? To know that in this story, you are not the hero that lives, but a fragile instrument, an expendable. A pair of sun-hardened arms rowing the boat, or perhaps a cry for mercy ringing across the deck.
“Yin.”
Ma pulls me from my reverie. I look up to see her hand stretched towards me; in it she holds a prawn without its shell. I nod, and she drops it into my bowl. I pick it up and bite into it. The flesh is soft and chewy. Delicious.
“I’ll peel more for you,” Ma says. I nod again, and a feeling, like waves lapping over my feet, rises in my stomach. Gentle tugs and warmth. For a brief, foolish moment, I think of reaching out and pulling it towards me, wrapping it around myself before it can go again. And then, like every other time this sensation washes over me, I hear Ma’s voice, reeling me back in: Don’t swim too far out at sea. You never know how strong the current will be.
Alone on this island, I am a stagnant, spectral thing. Past the great horizon is a space where the hollow branches of my being can affix themselves and grow into something from which the ripest fruit will hang. I can see it so clearly in my mind’s eye: Ba, Ma and I, a singular unit of unbridled, unconditional affection. But to reach it is to drown in the depths, praying with my last breath that I am brought back as someone stronger than myself—someone no longer Yin.
This much is clear: I am not the hero of this story. I am only a coward, too scared to live.
Ba and Ma are now in the kitchen, having long since had their fill. Drifting near the center of the idle hotpot is a lone sheet of cabbage, serene as it traverses the expanse of cold soup. In my mind’s eye I see the witch Circe on her secluded island, comfortable in her eternal solitude; a disgraced castaway to some, a willing recluse to others. Could she see past the horizon too? Did she not like what she saw? Once more I think of Charybdis, ravaging entire fleets with its maw. I think of the starless depths, of life, and light, and every lovely morsel just out of my grasp. And I think: of all these pretty, terrible myths, the most magnificent one is right here.
I reach for the piece of cabbage and swallow it whole.