Cooking a meal looks, sounds and feels easy at first, but when dinner is twenty minutes away, the only thing cooked properly is the plain rice and a pair of overactive kids with no cooking experiences are the only source of assistance, things get more than a little sticky.
All this was running through Vicente's mind as he moved the rice cooker, prompting it to puff out steam that fogged over his glasses. He spotted Leon opening the freezer door and ran toward him, hopping over a fallen spoon. "What are you looking for?"
"We can't just serve rice." Leon pulled a frosted package from the freezer, brushing ice off of it. "Look, we can make some dumplings."
He kicked himself for not thinking of that. Vicente took the package from his brother with one hand, unhooked a frying pan from the wall with the other, and, intending to place the frying pan on the stove, instead slammed the bag of dumplings onto the stove.
Something inside cracked.
Leon pried the slowly-thawing bag out of Vicente's hand. "You're really dumb."
Vicente ignored him and set the frying pan down, calling over his back, "take out, uh…" He did the math in his head. "Maybe fifty dumplings?"
"That many?"
"There are a lot of us in this family."
He snorted and began shaking out the dumplings onto a dish. Vicente turned back to the stove, pouring oil onto the stone-cold pan. It took him three tries to turn the stove on properly without the gas sputtering, but he began to heat up the oil. Frozen dumplings continued to clatter against the plastic dish.
"Don't tilt the bag so much."
"Go away, Yuet Ling."
"The dumplings are making a really big pile."
"Well, duh."
"They're going to fall over." Ling gasped. "They're falling over, stop pouring, nononoNONO — "
The sound of frozen dumpling lumps falling from the dish onto the floor filled the kitchen. Vicente looked down when he felt something cold bump his slippered foot; it was a dumpling that had somehow skidded across the floor from the counter on the opposite side of the room.
Ling kicked Leon in the shin. "You're dumb."
"Uh…" Vicente looked at the dumpling-covered floor. "Pick up the dumplings that fell on the floor, and throw them away."
Then something started to smoke.
"The pan!" Leon left his sister to deal with the fallen dumplings and lunged at the smoking frying pan. He stuck it in the sink and flipped the tap on, waving away the cloud of smoke that rose up. The pan sizzled for a full minute under the cold water, and when all the smoke cleared Vicente could see, with a sigh of relief, that the pan wasn't damaged. "Thanks," he said. "I didn't notice the smoke."
"You're really, really stupid."
"Now, is that how you should speak to your brother?"
"You're supposed to put the oil on the pan after it becomes hot, not the other way around."
"Oh." Vicente felt like kicking himself again. "Right. Don't know how I forgot."
Ling passed them the plate of remaining dumplings, Vicente heated up the pan again and placed the dumplings onto the pan, arranged neatly in a circle like he'd seen Yao do before. "Can someone pass me the cover?"
Leon stomped off in hunt of it. "Why are you bossing us around?"
"Because I'm the oldest."
"No, Yao's the oldest."
"But he doesn't count because he's sick." Vicente turned around. "Have you found the frying pan cover yet?"
"Here."
Vicente took the cover and placed it over the frying pan. Steam fogged it up almost immediately, and the sizzling of cooking dumplings slowly faded to a dull bubbling. "How long does the package say we have to cook them for?"
Grabbing the half-empty bag, Ling squinted at the instructions. "Er… three minutes?"
He looked at the clock. They had around ten minutes before their father was supposed to get home. Vicente left the dumplings to cook and grabbed placemats, chopsticks and chopstick holders from their cutlery drawer, pushing them to Ling. "Set the table!"
The rice cooker's cover swung open and Vicente began scooping the rice, glancing back at the clock from time to time. He slid five bowls of steaming rice toward Leon and ran to check on the dumplings again. When he took off the cover, the slight smell of burnt dough wafted out, and Vicente flipped the dumplings over to check. They were slightly burnt, but it wasn't inedible.
He passed Ling one of the dumplings to taste. When she bit into it, it audibly crunched, which seemed like a good thing until she shrieked and grabbed a piece of tissue paper to spit the bite of dumpling out onto. "It's cold inside!"
Grabbing the frozen bag, Vicente stared at the instructions, running his eyes down the tiny lines of information until he read:
Add ¼ cup of water and cover to cook for 3 minutes.
The water! It must be what helped cook the dumplings without burning it. How does Yao handle all this normally!? Starting to panic, Vicente grabbed the pitcher and splashed it over the dumplings, not bothering to measure the amount, and slammed the cover over it to cook again. By the time the dumplings' fillings cooked successfully, the kitchen table had already been set, and their steaming bowls of rice placed neatly on the placemats.
He could add "having less risk of undercooking food" into his list of why he preferred baking.
He shook the dumplings out of the frying pan and onto a plate, then carried it away from the kitchen counter. They smelled all right — as all right as frozen dumplings they'd bought on a discount could smell — but still didn't compare to the hand-wrapped dumplings that he'd had so long ago.
"Is Father not home yet?"
Leon shook his head, settling on the sofa in the living room with a book. "Should I go get Yao?"
"I'll do it." Vicente set the plate down on the table and went to Yao's bedroom.
Yao was shivering under his thin blanket when he walked in. A box of tissues was lying on his bedside table, and the small rubbish bin in the corner of the room was half-full with crumpled-up tissue paper. The room was freezing, but when Vicente neared his side he noticed that his forehead was beaded with sweat.
"Brother?" Vicente shook him. "Yao?"
"Hm?" Yao turned onto his back and squinted at him. "What's it?" His Northern accent sounded even more prominent.
"Dinner's ready. Do you want to eat here, or out in the dining room?"
He huffed, sitting up and shaking the blanket off, still shivering. "I have a fever, not SARS. Just give me a moment to brush my hair, and I'll be out." Yao waved a hand at him. "Now shoo, go make sure Yue Ling and Jia Long aren't burning the building down."
Slightly miffed that he'd been reduced to seem like nothing but the substitute babysitter, Vicente left the room, grabbing the trash can out with him. He threw the tissues into the larger trash can in the kitchen, reminded himself to take out the trash after they were done with dinner.
The door swung open and their father stepped in, taking off his coat and shoes and tossing his bag on the sofa. Leon and Ling chorused greetings, and Vicente was opening his mouth to do the same when he swept right past him and went to Yao's bedroom.
They'd be out sooner or later. Vicente sat down at the kitchen table. "Leon, Ling, it's time for dinner."
They didn't hear him. He ran out to the living room. "Time for dinner."
He had to repeat himself three more times before they followed him to the kitchen. Yao and their father came out a few moments later, Yao glassy-eyed and sleepy-looking, their father tight-lipped and clearly deep in thought.
After quite a while of silent eating, the only sounds being those of chopsticks clinking against bowls, their father finally spoke up. "Where's your mother?"
He was looking at Yao when he said that, even though he couldn't have known, having stayed in bed all day. Vicente answered the question after another minute of silence. "We haven't seen her all day."
"Really now?"
"If she'd been here," Leon said bluntly, "she'd be the one cooking us dinner, and we'd have more to eat."
Halfway through her bowl of rice, Ling murmured her agreement.
When dinner was over, they loaded the dishes into the dishwasher for the first time since moving — their father was too tired to wash the dishes, and after the cooking incident none of the three healthy siblings were exactly bouncing with energy. Yao went back to his room after mumbling "goodnight" at their father.
Far later, when it was one in the morning maybe, while Leon was still rereading comics under his covers and he was tossing and turning, trying to sleep despite the blinding flashlight, Vicente heard the door swing open and his mother return home. Then came harsh words that escalated into shouting again.
"You left the children to cook dinner again!" Their father shouted. "Yao is sick and I'm at work all day, and you're off cheating while your three brats starve!"
Their mother shouted back, in knife-sharp Mandarin riddled with slang only Yao could've understood, and Leon's flashlight switched off, his comic fell to the floor and he pulled the covers over his head.
Not long after, his quiet sniffles sounded out, muffled slightly by the blanket.
By the time Vicente realised Leon was crying, he was already drifting off to sleep.