The Family Recipe

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Georgia

Georgia always had a strong sense of smell; it was how she knew her mother was no longer in her life. May rose, jasmine, and bourbon vanilla—she imagined her mother’s scent leaving a trail across zip codes, states, rivers, highways, coastal cities, swamps, deserts, hell, maybe even just down the street, because who knew where Evelyn had gone? Later, Georgia discovered empty bottles of Chanel No. 5 hidden behind the second fridge in the garage, where her father kept most of her mother’s belongings. He couldn’t even bring himself to throw out the trash; he preserved it all, but kept it away from the energy of the main home. Even at the tender age of seven, Georgia felt sorry for her father, who was trapped in a museum of her mother’s belongings, while Georgia moved on. She knew her mother was never coming back to claim her belongings… or her family.

To my youngest, may you travel the farthest out of all of us. But before you do, I hope you find a bit of yourself, somewhere along the bayou. Just like how I did, when I was your age.

Unlike her siblings, Georgia clung to her father’s letter. The letter, which really only had a few scribbled, incoherent sentences, was more important than anything else he had ever said to her in her entire life. She had folded the letter carefully, tucked it away in her wallet, between a loyalty rewards card for a coffee chain and a faded photo of her mother. On the long drive from Houston to New Orleans, a seemingly easy drive along the 10E, whenever Georgia pulled over for food or gas, she carefully took out the letter, seeking scraps, new clues, or hidden meanings, wondering if her father was trying to tell her something coded.

But Georgia’s yellow van was on its last legs. What should have been only a six-hour drive took almost a full day. The radiator had cracked, the engine had overheated, and that wasn’t even the worst part—she had accidentally killed a spider, which made her pull off the road in Lafayette. She cradled its shriveled body, tears dropped over its curled legs, forming a small puddle in the cup of her hand. She decided that a proper burial was needed along with a eulogy. After scouring the area, she found a serene spot under an old willow oak tree, and recited a translated poem by the poet Du T? Lê. When I’m dead, please bring me to the sea.

The rest of Georgia’s drive came full circle as she caught the sunrise driving toward New Orleans East. Exhaustion circled her, and she bordered on delirium. But she powered through, hoping that once she found the store, she’d finally be able to rest. She prayed that there was a couch in the office, or at least two chairs she could turn into a faux couch. Though she followed her father’s handwritten instructions carefully, it was still hard to parse, and she was unsure why the store couldn’t be found on Google Maps. Duc was notoriously horrible with technology, but surely he wasn’t so bad that not even satellites in space and the world’s largest search engine couldn’t find the store’s location.

As she rolled through the eastern edge of the city, toward Village de L’Est, a small yet sprawling suburban area where the roads were wide and the houses were so far apart, one had to jog to get to their neighbor’s, the van engine began emitting black smoke, clouding the windshield. Through the gaps, she saw two elderly Vietnamese men leisurely kayaking along a small body of water, cigarettes dangling loosely from their mouths. Curiosity grabbed her attention, and she diverted away from the instructions, turned the car around, and slowly began following the kayak until she saw a horde of Vietnamese people arguing with one another. The men docked, and just as the sun fully rose, the crowd began circling around people on the ground, sitting on plastic crates, selling fruits and vegetables laid out on blankets. That’s when it hit Georgia: This was a local Vietnamese farmers’ market.

She pulled the van over and got out of the car to stretch her legs. She was suddenly craving fruit for breakfast, and she trusted outdoor markets to have the best fruit in the city. She tucked her messy hair into a low bun, put on a cap and sunglasses, and headed toward the market, her stomach rumbling. The sun had now come up, its rays bouncing off the asphalt, and she walked past rows and rows of men and women squatting, haggling, gossiping, rolling metal carts, laughing, and Georgia wished with all her might she spoke better Vietnamese so she could eavesdrop. It was her one weakness. After her mother left them, Duc didn’t speak much to her anyway, and her siblings all spoke to her in English—she never had a chance to be around the language at all. It was strange to be comforted by familiar phonetic sounds, but not know what any of it meant.

Cutting through the thick noise of chatter, a familiar scent caught her nose, ascending above the smell of sweet melons and fresh basil. Georgia stopped dead in her tracks. Her sense of smell was the fastest out of her five senses and she slowly turned, hoping she was wrong. Because it was the type of smell that didn’t belong in a farmers’ market; in fact, it didn’t belong in her life anymore. But there it was: May rose, jasmine, and a hint of bourbon vanilla.

Georgia searched the crowd, her nose picking up an invisible trail, and her eyes landed on an older Vietnamese woman, with a plastic visor on her head blocking out the sun, squatting next to a cooler. She was trying to attract customers, shouting randomly out into the crowd, hoping her sales pitch would work. “N?m ?? la! Ch? l?a ngon nh?t New Orleans!” the woman cried out. Just like how elusive understanding Vietnamese was, it was strange to smell something so familiar, and to be comforted by it, but not know what it meant.

But Georgia didn’t need a translator for this. She had known who it was before she turned around.

“Mom?” Georgia asked so softly that only she could hear. She instantly recognized the seller, matching them up to the old photo she had carried in her wallet for nearly a decade. Despite some obvious differences that came with age, the woman looked healthy, her eyebrows bushy, her hair thick, her jaw sharp, her nose long, her face heart-shaped, her eyes round and large, and the signature look that every woman in the family had: a face littered with birthmarks, forming the familiar pattern of Cassiopeia’s constellation that only the Tr?n women could see, even under the cloudiest of night skies.

The woman kept shouting for prospective buyers to come over, flagging anyone down. She didn’t notice Georgia, who was now headed fast in her direction, feet heavy and heart thumping.

“Mom?” Georgia said again.

No answer. The woman kept ignoring Georgia.

“Má?” Georgia said again, louder, trying her luck in Vietnamese. Was she wrong? Had the delirium set in? She must have seemed like a lunatic.

The woman looked up, confused. Georgia quickly removed her sunglasses.

“Evelyn?” Georgia asked again, for the final time.

The woman froze and studied Georgia’s face. She took in Georgia’s long nose, the moles that scattered across her face, and her big, flappy ears—they were the type of comically large ears that could only have been genetically inherited from one man.

“Now that’s a name I haven’t been called in a very long time. Má,” the woman finally said as she leaned back, tilting her visor up to reveal her full face. “Mother.”

Now it was Georgia’s turn to freeze up. “Was that a Star Trek reference?” she whispered, instantly regretting her first choice of words to her mother after two decades.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. It was frightening, staring into her eyes, which seemed distant, aloof, but as Georgia looked longer, she spotted a touch of mirth.

“It’s from Star Wars . But nice try.”

“I’ve never seen a single Star Wars ,” Georgia responded, still in disbelief she was even having this conversation with her mother.

“Well looks like your father didn’t do a great job, did he,” Evelyn said, aghast. “Speaking of, how’d you find me? Did the old nut finally pin my location?”

Georgia went on autopilot as she reached into her wallet and handed her mother Duc’s letter. Evelyn’s eyes danced and darted across her husband’s words. The changes in her expression were subtle but significant in their meaning. Georgia now wished she could not only speak Vietnamese but also interpret her mother’s expressions.

“Looks like your father finally found me, didn’t he?” Evelyn chuckled bitterly, handing the letter back to Georgia, without addressing Duc’s inheritance game. “So, have you eaten yet? That’s something I’m supposed to say, right?”

“No, I just got in—” Georgia began.

Evelyn stood up, wiped her hands on her apron, and took it off. “Great, let’s go eat.”

“At the sandwich shop?”

Evelyn released another howl as she began packing up her stall. “That old dump? No, I mean let’s get some real food.”

“Isn’t that real food…?”

“Just follow me.” Evelyn began wheeling the cooler of pork rolls wrapped in banana leaves behind her, stomping toward the parking lot. Without protest, Georgia began following her estranged mother.

“Don’t you dare breathe a word of this to your father,” Evelyn said, her voice carrying the thinnest of a threat, thinner than graphene, invisible to the human eye, but despite not ever having had an adult conversation with her mother, Georgia could tell when to keep her mother’s secrets.

Georgia just nodded her head, wondering if she was agreeing merely for the sake of it because she was too afraid to not smell her mother’s scent again.

Three months later, Georgia still felt like she was living in a fever dream.

Strolling through the Quarter in the middle of the day, Georgia didn’t know what to do with her hands. Logically, she knew her hands were attached to her body and that her motor cortex was giving her directions on where to direct them, but they felt like foreign objects, heavier than usual, and a burden.

Around her, every tourist seemed to know what to do with their hands. They elbowed their way through swaths of sweaty bodies, grubbily petting the horses that were pulling carriages, which went by every five minutes down the main strip; or they shoved their fingers in the air, pointing at every building, hands coated in sugar and grease from the deep-fried beignets brown bag they’d been carrying around all day. They were so entitled with their hands it made Georgia claustrophobic. She’d always preferred to travel off the beaten path, so being in a high-traffic area almost made her wish her van hadn’t made it to New Orleans. But then she’d never have stumbled upon her mother.

It’d been strange, ever since the universe brought her and her mother together three months ago. Per her mother’s request, she hadn’t said a word to any of her siblings or her father. Yet. They were still strangers to each other, and Georgia couldn’t bring herself to address Evelyn as Má. Can a mother still be a mother without the formal nomenclature? So, Georgia awkwardly addressed her as Evelyn each time they met up and hoped for the best.

Evelyn Lê looked very different from the old film photos Georgia would go through in secret as a child. After studying her face for the last three months, Georgia decided the Evelyn in front of her was a much better version than the old stories and photos that framed her. She was warm, sharp, and most importantly… happy.

Her mother was so petite in stature next to her, clocking in at barely 4′11″, and yet she exuded such a carefree attitude, Georgia felt guilty for interrupting her side of the universe.

Everyone had always said that Evelyn was hard to predict; one moment she was calm and the next she turned into an umbra, instantly becoming the darkness in sunspots. But nothing seemed to be further from the truth. Which is why, despite the niceties and pleasantries between the two of them, Georgia still couldn’t solve the mystery.

Why had her mother left in the first place?

Unlike her youngest daughter, Evelyn didn’t seem to mind the throng of tourists. Despite most people not noticing the petite Vietnamese woman bulldozing her way through the crowd, she somehow made her presence known. Her confidence and long strides made her appear bigger. Men, double her height and size, even stepped aside for her instead of her having to step aside first. Evelyn seemed unbothered, as if it was just another ordinary Wednesday morning, walking alongside her youngest daughter, whom she hadn’t seen since she was a child, on their way to get tea.

Evelyn speed-walked through, not saying much, and Georgia scurried next to her, trying to keep pace. Neither mother nor daughter said a word to each other. Today, Georgia felt like she’d been walking through Hades this entire time, with no end in sight, when in reality it had only been less than fifteen minutes.

Evelyn turned a sharp corner and headed down an old, dark alleyway with sparse stalls throughout. The shop was hidden from the main strip, with not much signage, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of foot traffic based on how eerily quiet it was. Evelyn stopped so abruptly in front of a stall that Georgia ran smack into her, almost knocking her over, but Evelyn held her ground. Though Georgia towered over her mother by five inches, that height difference made no impact. Evelyn was weirdly very sturdy.

“We’re here!” Evelyn exclaimed, waving her arms in a flourish. Georgia looked up to see a nameless, shabby teahouse. Stacks of loose-leaf teas in old glass jars were randomly piled on top of one another, in no particular order, and there were no labels on any of them. The shop was so small there were no customers allowed inside. Outside, old men were playing games of Go, sitting on red plastic stools, with the board precariously on top of another little red plastic stool between them. White and black stones were separated out in rusty Cafe Du Monde coffee tins.

“Sit, sit, sit.” Evelyn motioned for Georgia to grab a plastic stool from the stack and prop it next to the building. She ducked her head inside the shop and ordered for them in Vietnamese. She then perched herself on a stool next to Georgia, whipped out a foldable fan, and began to wave it in front of her face, despite the cool weather.

“What did you get?” Georgia asked shyly.

“You didn’t understand?” Evelyn responded, surprised. “I just ordered trà chanh and some finger food.”

When Georgia’s face still remained blank, Evelyn put down her fan. “You don’t speak Vietnamese, do you? Not even a little bit?”

Something in Georgia snapped, and she could feel her left eye twitching. Just as the owner of the shop came out holding two iced teas with limes in them, Georgia could feel the tears coming. The pain was overwhelming, to sit next to a strange woman who shared the same bloodline as her, but nothing made sense.

“What the hell am I doing here? What the hell are you doing here!” Georgia yelled suddenly, startling the old men next to them, their Go board toppling over. A sea of black and white stones littered the alleyway, the pitter-patter of the stones hitting the gravel like rain hitting a metal roof. Curse words were thrown at the mother and daughter duo as everyone jumped to their feet to pick up the stones. When Georgia stooped down to her knees to help pick up the tiny stones, she began to cry, and the stones weighed like bricks in her hands.

“Why don’t you think for a goddamn second as to why I can’t speak a lick of Vietnamese? You left. You left. I was a child . Who the hell was going to teach me Vietnamese? Duc? Jude? Jane? Paulina? Fucking Bingo? They all crumbled after you left. I had no one. No one .”

But Georgia couldn’t stop yelling. She got to her feet, and didn’t wait for Evelyn to respond to anything she had said. She threw the stones at the wall, creating a firework of white and black. The old men threw their hands up in the air and cursed even more as stones randomly knocked over drinks or pelted into them.

“You sit there calmly, acting as if it’s just a friend in town visiting you, for the past three months, and don’t address anything? I’m your daughter! Your youngest daughter! You haven’t told me anything, you just take me all over this city like you’re some paid tour guide. You haven’t asked me a single question about myself or the rest of us,” Georgia screamed, facing her this time. “Don’t you care at all? Aren’t you even curious why I’m here?”

Evelyn waited for a gap between Georgia’s outbursts, turned to the old men, apologized profusely for the trouble, and stared straight into her youngest daughter’s eyes.

“Let me ask you something, con,” she said, her voice no longer light-hearted and confident. “Would you rather have a dead mother or a living one who feels dead? Tell me what would make you happier, and I’ll do it. You want to learn Vietnamese? Translate this: Ngày nào tao c?ng mu?n ch?t.” With that, Evelyn turned on her heel and walked out of the alleyway toward the main street, leaving Georgia surrounded by a circle of all black Go stones. Though it looked like she had built her surrounding territory, why did it feel like she had lost everything?