DeAndre gasped. “Damn, girl, you nearly lost an eye on that one.”
Not even close. But I wasn’t going to take my eyes off Uncle to explain my anticipatory defensive maneuver to DeAndre. The kid worshipped my dad and was terrified of our cook; I thought it only fair to keep him in awe of me.
Uncle—who wasn’t my uncle at all—shouted in Mandarin about greasy sticks, stupid boys, and foolhardy girls, then grumbled something else in his native Shanghainese. He grabbed another bamboo skewer and wove together the flaps of the duck’s cavity from belly to tail. The rest of his grumblings were buried beneath the noise of the industrial cooking fans as he fastened a triangular poultry hook over the neck and under the wings of his bird and carried it to a pot for scalding.
Baba had discovered Lee Chang in a Shanghai eatery, roasting ducks outside in a huge stone oven. He had been impressed with Lee’s careful ministrations as he rotated each of the birds—snagging them from the oven hooks with a pole, dangling them over the flames, and re-hooking them with a quarter turn. Later that day, Baba returned for lunch. When he discovered that the same person had prepared his sizzling shrimp, Baba offered Lee a head cook position in his new restaurant, a place to live, and moving expenses to Los Angeles.
I was only nine months old at the time, but Uncle swears I cooed with delight whenever he gave me a roasted duck leg to suck. Now he claimed I clucked like a chicken about nothing.
After scalding the duck’s body and dousing it with sugar-water, Uncle hung the naked bird from a stainless-steel drying rack. Beside the rack, the rotisserie oven—a more sophisticated version of the stone oven back in Shanghai—rotated the birds over a wood burning fire at a hypnotic pace. When Uncle grabbed a hunk of pear wood to stoke the flames, I knew he was done with me.
My father stood in the channel between the woks and a long prep table, loaded with continually replenished containers of fresh vegetables, meats, and spices. As Baba and his line cook, Bayani, plated their creations, the serving staff whisked away completed dishes and returned for the next. On the other side of the channel, running the length of the kitchen, was a trough that housed open-flame burners, dome-shaped wok stands, and canisters of oils, sauces, and broths. Water streamed from the faucets for cooking and rinsing. Drains sucked it away.
Sweat glistened on Baba’s neck. His muscular arms were pink from the heat. Flames burst from the burner’s dome-shaped stand as he tilted his wok to dump the simmering broth into the trough. No wonder he was sweating, the flames were high enough to singe his arms. Did they remind him of his childhood when he and his siblings used to gather around a potbelly stove to ward off the freezing North Dakota winters? I’d ask him someday. Right now, I just watched him cook.
He settled the wok on the dome, ladled in a new sauce, and dumped a strainer full of whatever he had just sautéed back in. Then he glanced over to where I waited with my bike. “You were out with the roosters this morning. The hooks were bare.”
He was referring to the bike rack anchored to the wall of our staircase, the unspoken border between public and private domain. The only people who came up those stairs were escorted by Baba to his office-storeroom, a weekly occurrence, or by me to my apartment, which had never happened, not once in six years. Other than Baba, who had renovated the space for me and who popped into my apartment with acceptable frequency, I’d never had a visitor—not even Ma.
Baba lifted the wok off the burner and poured the contents onto an oval platter. Eggplant and minced pork. My favorite. Although to be fair, any food hot off a wok would have jumped to favored status. What could I say? I liked to eat. Which, of course, was why Baba had been worried.
“Got an appetite?” His voice sloped up at the end with hope.
My stomach growled. “Actually, I do.”
He nodded with relief and muttered loud enough for me to hear beneath the hum of the fans. “Well, that’s a blessing.” He gestured to the multi-tiered pot at the end of the cooking station. “There’s har gow, bao, and siu mai in the steamer. Or Uncle could chop some duck if you like.”
Uncle with a cleaver? I didn’t think so.
I gazed longingly at the platter disappearing through the swinging doors. “Do you have time for another plate of eggplant and pork?”
“Oh, sure. Tend to your bike, then come back.”
By the time I hung the Merida on the rack and returned to the kitchen, Baba was dumping sautéed eggplant into the strainer and rinsing his wok before beginning the sauce. My dinner would be ready in a flash. All I had to do was reach it without disrupting his kitchen staff.
I darted between Brett, a Desert Storm veteran who was washing pots and plates with military precision, and Ling, a daughter of Hakka immigrants, who was rolling out dough for bao, dumplings and noodles at the back end of the prep table. Then I slipped into the channel behind the steamer, deep fryer, and woks.
“Behind you, Bayani.”
“Okay, Lily,” he said, his melodic voice pitched higher than mine. I enjoyed listening to him talk about life in the Philippines and often asked him to share stories just so I could bathe in his soothing tones. Not today. My belly was rumbling.
Baba slid the eggplant and minced pork onto a plate. “You’ll want some rice with that, I betcha.”
A server beat me to it, scooping a steaming ball of rice from the cooker and plopping it into a bowl. “Here you go, Lily.” He set it on the table, grabbed a platter of sweet and sour pork, added a serving spoon, and whisked it through the double doors.
“So, what you been up to then?” Baba asked, as he ladled water into his wok and swished it around with a bamboo brush.
I shrugged. “Visiting some friends.”
“Uh-huh.” He dumped the dirty water in the trough and wiped the wok clean with the folded bar towel that doubled as a pot holder. “Old friends or new?”
I stuffed eggplant into my mouth and shrugged.
Until a month ago, Baba had been clueless about my work for Aleisha’s Refuge. All that had changed when he cornered me in his office and squeezed out the truth—or rather, lured me into his lair with his unbearably stoic silence. However I wanted to remember it, I had spilled the beans and told him what I really did for a living: not consulting for his friends on web design and social media, a side gig that paid for my rideshares and incidentals, but rescuing terrified women from dangerous men.
I ate my rice. The less I said about today’s misadventures, the better.
Baba continued as if I had answered. “Well, I’m glad you’re socializing. You’ve always been a friendly person.”
He had to be teasing. Aside from his restaurant, Aleisha’s Refuge, Sensei, and our family, the only person I had socialized with since my sister’s rape and murder was Daniel Kwok. Baba better not be talking about him. I heard enough about Mister Perfect Chinese Son from Ma.
“You had a lot of friends growing up,” Baba continued. “Might be time to reconnect. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.”
I ate another bite and tried to ignore the worry in his voice.
“Your mother’s been up to her eyeballs in birthday plans, dontcha know. Bet she’d also appreciate a call.”