Page 73 of RomeAntically Challenged
Annie should have stayed home, and that was the truth of it.
She hadn’t even said her hellos and already she was dreaming up a list of excusable reasons for why she had to dish-and-dash.
It was Friday, and the monthly Pho Shizzle potluck was in full swing. When Lynn had invited her, Annie had imagined a dozen or so women in various stages of life sitting around the room sipping wine and talking about food.
Pho Shizzle was an ethnic cooking group that focused on homestyle Vietnamese dishes, so it was not unexpected to find a lot of dark-haired petites there. But looking around the room,
Annie realized they werealldark-haired petite women. In fact, they were all Vietnamese.
A warm and unfamiliar emotion spread through her that she couldn’t quite explain or describe, other than to say it’s what she’d always imagined it felt like to belong.
It was ridiculous that Annie had been on the planet nearly thirty years and this was her first time being in a large group where everyone looked like her—and where she wasn’t in the minority. For many, it wouldn’t seem like a big deal, but to someone who had always been the odd girl out, it was huge.
Annie watched the women flutter back and forth in the kitchen, putting the final touches on their dishes, chattering away all at once. She could hear the conversations overlapping, people talking over others to be heard—mainly the older women.
But as the night drew on, and women paused to look at all the dishes, that feeling began to chill, because Annie was beginning to see that, while no two dumpling soups were alike, hers was suffering from a serious case of “one of these things is not like the others.”
Par for the course, she thought, watching the hustle and bustle around her.
Annie had managed to whip up a darn good replica of her mom’s soup, fueling false hopes for the outcome of the night.
Her goal had never been to come into Nurse Tran’s home and show her up, although she’d dreamed last night that Hoan was so taken by Annie’s soup she’d asked Annie to host the next get-together. Now her goal was simply to make it through the night without crying.
Not sure how to slip seamlessly into the well-oiled machine that was Pho Shizzle, Annie turned out to be more of an obstacle than an extra hand. After mistaking ginger for galangal—a root vegetable that looked as if it had come through the wormhole with Dr. Who—and telling Lynn’s grandmother her broth had too much fish sauce—because she’d said she used too much and Annie had agreed—Annie had given herself a culinary time-out.
So there she sat, on a bamboo and seagrass high-backed chair with a fragile smile on her face, as she watched not one, not two, but three generations of Vietnamese women laugh and learn and—the most beautiful part—love.
All in their native language. Menu Vietnamese wouldn’t help Annie now.
Assigning herself to the role of Annie’s advocate, Lynn seated herself right next to Annie and translated the conversations around them. Her efforts, as sweet as they were, only managed to make Annie feel more out of place. Instead of being the lone Asian girl in a Caucasian community, she’d become the lone Caucasian-raised girl in a tight-knit Asian cooking class.
And she wasn’t sure which was more uncomfortable.
“I’ll be right back,” Lynn said, standing. “My grandma knows she’s supposed to ask for help when lifting heavy pots, and...Bài, no! Let me get that.” Lynn said something else in Vietnamese, but Annie didn’t need to pull up her translating app, because Lynn’s grandmother shuffled over to sit next to Annie.
Mai, her grandmother, was now Annie’s assigned keeper.
When Annie had first arrived, Lynn had introduced her to everyone, and it quickly became apparent that the new “girl” didn’t speak the language, so she wasn’t surprised when the older woman spoke to her in English.
“Hai Linh tells me you’re a Hanoi girl.” The older woman smiled with her entire being, exposing a lifetime of crinkles and crannies and canyons of joy. “My family sent me from Hanoi to live with my aunt in New York when I was twenty-six.” Which explained the thick accent that came through her words. “They wanted a better life for me, so I came to find a husband.”
“Did you find him?” Annie asked, and Mai laughed.
“Yes, I found him and the next and the next.”
“You’ve been married three times?” Annie asked, liking the idea that she wasn’t the only one unlucky in love.
Mai shook her head. “Four grown kids, four grandkids, and four husbands. Four was my lucky number.”
Annie wasn’t sure what her lucky number was, but she hoped it was closer to two than ten.
“Do you miss your family in Hanoi?”
“Most have passed. But I miss the smells and sounds and commotion of the city. So much happening, so many things to do, but there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for my generation.” A frail hand came to rest on Annie’s arm. “How old were you when you came to America?”
“I was five days old when my parents adopted me, but they had to wait for one more piece of paper to come through, so we didn’t come home until I was a few months old.” Her parents’ three-week voyage turned into three months, but they’d refused to leave without her.
They had both taken a leave of absence from their practice to stay in Vietnam, going to the hospital every day during visiting hours to hold Annie. Her mother would sing to her and her dad would read nursery rhymes.
