An acrid smell hangs heavy in the air. Surely you're not going to eat this, warns my stomach with an ominous rumble. Are you prepared to suffer? The odor of the dish recalls the time in college when I came home from a few weeks at Dad's place, only to discover an apartment full of flies, rancid macaroni-encrusted pots, a litter box soaked from top to bottom with clumpy cat piss (with two very traumatized cats), and of course, a roommate I've vowed never to live with or speak to again. Is food ever supposed to smell like this? If I finish the contents of this bowl, am I going to die? 

“Put it in your mouth,” Auntie commands. Her black eyes are inscrutable.

I look down at my bowl. Dubious. The sediment layers are as follows: a base of fragrant jasmine rice, topped with the baby bok-choy I lightly stir-fried with a bit of garlic, soy, and xiaoxing wine (if only the bowl's composition ended here). Resting atop this bed of greens is the savory roasted duck I bought from the market, which does boast a fairly respectable crisp to its skin. In my inexperience, though, I told the shop attendant “yes” when he asked me so innocently if I wanted it cut. My heart sank when he pulled out his cleaver and wantonly hacked the poor body to bits without so much as a glance down. Sharp fragments of bone are now riddled throughout the fatty, succulent meat, jutting out at random angles like exposed bits of shrapnel. Too bad. But nothing I can't tolerate. I'll just nibble my way around it. Admittedly, the crispy minefield duck is far from the most offensive item in our bowls. Still, dad never would have made such a mistake.

“Put it in your mouth,” Auntie says again, still firm, but this time with just a hint of uncharacteristic defeat. 

Maybe somebody else wouldn't notice the difference in her tone. But we're acquainted well enough. She never married, and lived with dad in America for as long as I can remember, doing tai-chi in front of the TV every morning, and in the afternoon, singing melancholy folk tunes-- always raspy and off-key, yet scarcely above a whisper-- as she'd slice vegetables for dinner with near mechanical precision. As a child, it was mortifying that she would always reserve the juiciest cuts of meat for me. I sensed the ferocity of her affection, despite the seemingly infinite gulf of language between us. 

When dad died a week ago, I couldn't bring myself to speak. She was the one to cut through the silence. Then, as now, and as I'd always known her to be before, she carried herself with a sobering air of inevitability. She rarely spoke to me directly. If she had something to say, we used to play a game of bilingual telephone with dad at the center, him dutifully converting her Cantonese into English so that I'd easily be able to understand. But that day, I saw my disheveled, pathetic reflection in her dark eyes, which watered, but never shed a single tear. “You are the last one I have. Do not cry." 

She held me close and rubbed my back as I sobbed into her bony shoulder, soaking her shirt with my tears. Her body felt so frail. “Do not cry,” she repeated bluntly, as if handing down an imperial decree, one I couldn't help but disobey. Yet somehow I began to feel better. We stood there together in the hospital waiting room for a long time.

Now, we're in my father's old home, sitting at the same old dinner table we used to. Just the two of us now. Auntie sits with her back perfectly straight, stoic as the Buddha statue tucked in my white neighbor lady's hydrangeas. More than half her dinner has already disappeared into her stomach. 

Anyone could probably guess with one glance what's actually causing the smell: the greasy, black oblong things which Auntie had carried up from the basement pantry only an hour before, as I was prepping our vegetables for dinner. The caustic smell emanates from somewhere deep within their slick, rubbery flesh, unlocked with the heat of the pan. It bled into the hot oil. It worms its way into each grain of rice. It coats the vegetables in its astringent reek. Frankly, I hadn't even known they were down there. If I had, I would have immediately thrown them away. They must have been down there for at least a decade, if not longer. They appear dehydrated, but even so, can they last until the end of time? Auntie seemed to think so. But she always seemed to have an aversion to throwing anything away.

“Dried… sea things,” she'd said hesitantly at first, knitting her brows. She tapped the plastic bag thoughtfully for a moment. “Dried mussels. A Chinese delicacy. Very expensive," she clarified with a hint of pride, smiling faintly. I smiled back. Auntie took one from the bag and held it out to me, nestled in the center of her weathered palm.

What I thought, but couldn't will myself to say: Are they really supposed to look like that? 

Not that I would know. I'm only half. Mom served a lot of pot roast and potatoes, lots of Kraft macaroni. Little Debbie and Chef Boyardee often joined me for lunch in the cafeteria. Whenever I was returned to her from dad's place for the weekend, Mom would bend over to sniff my head and grimace. “You really stink, kid. Does your father bathe you in soy sauce? Does he just ladle it over your little head?"

In actuality, when Dad had me for the weekend, he would often treat Auntie and I to a fancy restaurant with no English on the menu, although he was an excellent chef himself. Dinner was a dazzling spectacle, a procession of savory, saucy tofu dishes which melted in your mouth, the salt chicken with the crispy skin, bright crunchy gai-lan drizzled in oyster sauce and sesame oil, decadently soaking into every ripple of its wide green leaves, which were pleasantly wilted with steam. Sometimes, using good grades or birthdays or whatever else as a convenient excuse, we would gorge ourselves on dim sum until everybody just wanted to come home and lie on the floor. But in my insecurity, I often wondered what people thought when he introduced me as his kid. Am I really supposed to look like this? The waiters at the restaurant would wordlessly bring chopsticks to everyone else, and bring out a single fork, just for me. I'd glance around the drafty dining hall and see other kids eating with chopsticks, which I also knew how to use by then. Every time it made my ears burn. I'd sink down in my chair, screw my eyes shut, and try to will myself out of existence-- until the food came, of course.

Although I dutifully followed my Auntie's unspoken directive to add the sinister black things to our meal, as far as I knew, Dad had never dipped into the fetid hoard of mussels for any of our meals together, for reasons he wouldn't have volunteered. If he ate them himself, he did so when I wasn't around. When I brought the as-yet uncooked bag of mussels to my nose for a quick sniff, its musk brought immediate tears to my eyes. Apprehensive, I locked eyes with Auntie, who reassuringly beamed back at me from the kitchen doorway, apparently immune to portent. I forced a smile. Into the pan they went. 

Now, I raise my bowl to my trembling lips for the first time. I peek over the rim at my Auntie, who is chewing and staring straight ahead, as if unthinkingly putting away some bland TV dinner. Such nonchalance. Dad's voice echoes in my head: When I was a boy in Hong Kong, we were very poor. Most of the time, we had one meal: rice mixed with lard. Okay, dad, you're right. I set the bowl down so I can draw in one final breath and hold it, readying my body for the plunge.

A single flick of the wrist. It's in my mouth. Immediately, my stomach begins to churn violently, roiling like the vengeful sea. As I fight to suppress my body's intense desire to purge, beads of perspiration gather on my brow, which roll down the bridge of my nose and sting my eyes. My glasses slide down from the sweat. Tensing muscles I didn't even know I had, I muster every ounce of fortitude in my body, winding myself tight, a loaded spring. The chewy mass still languishes at the back of my throat, as if heavy and waterlogged, like beached offal ripped from the briny paunch of some ancient sea beast. For what feels like minutes of agony, I struggle to remember what it used to be like to swallow, so I can attempt to emulate it in real life. Then, finally, I do. For now, at least, the tension releases from my body.

“Not too bad, eh?” Auntie says. 

“Y-yeah." Not too good, either.

“You know," Auntie pauses in thought, neatly resting her chopsticks atop her spotless bowl. “Your dad. So wasteful, sometimes. He'd say, ‘Don’t eat that! Too old! Too hard!'”

“O-oh. Oh yeah?" 

“Yeah! Good thing you know better!"

“…Yeah. Maybe.” Although I feel winded, I can't help but laugh a little.

Slowly but surely, I polish off the rice, the bony duck, and all of the vegetables left in my bowl, leaving the rest of the mussels untouched. At last, I rest my chopsticks on top of my dish, too. Auntie looks over. “Full already?”

“Yeah…”

“Well. That's okay.” She reaches over and pats my hand tenderly.

After a few moments, I turn my hand over and clasp her hand in mine. She squeezes it tightly. 

Gazing out the dining room window into the backyard, I admire how different the setting sun looks to me right now, at this particular moment in time. Blurred, swimming in my tears, its round shape distorted into waves, but only temporarily-- a latent beauty I'd never noticed before. I remember how massive Dad looked when I was really small, and the time he suddenly stopped chopping a cucumber, just to slowly and painstakingly cut a single slice paper thin. When he was finished, he marveled with childlike wonder as he held it up to the sun for me to see: the shimmering, translucent pane, with its opaque seeds arranged in a perfect circle at its center. “Look! Beautiful stained glass we grew in our own garden!” Gently, I close my eyes, and allow myself to savor the memory, if only for a little while longer.