Sticky Rice
tonight, just me and my daughter tucked into a dim booth at a chop suey joint on Wardour Street. the air is thick with the hot steam of sticky rice, the green tea sharp enough to cut through the haze and remind you that you’re still alive. sweet-and-sour sauce pools on the plate, glossy and slow.
she laughs across from me, mouth full of new love—some boy with soft hands and a softer heart. I just nod and smile, staring into the bitter dregs of my cup while the old ghosts slide into the empty space between us.
this is how it played out back then.
1976, my mother’s parade of men marching through our little flat like they held the lease on her heart, each one an expert with the chopsticks, each one coming and going, each one leaving a permanent echo in my head.
Saul first, when I was seven. skinny, black polo-neck, sliding pineapple chunks across the plate like a bit of contraband. “Use a dab of rice, kid, it’s the glue,” he’d say, smelling of soy and quiet failure. he walked everywhere because cars were for people with futures.
then Eric, the mechanic. grease under his nails, banging the sticks together like he was clearing a carburettor, balancing pork on the wood tips. a funny bastard who kept me laughing while mom sighed behind the closed bedroom door.
Noel rolled in next. I was nine and already tired of it. he sang Sinatra in a cracked voice on the drive home in his red pickup, working the sticks as smooth as his own bullshit. Never funny. but the songs carried us a mile or two.
And finally Harry, the chef, the maestro. ginger hit the air and the world stopped spinning for a second. “Be one with it, boy, inhale the divine,” he’d say, showing me how to pinch, how to lift, how to own the bowl. then one summer he just went back to Cape Town, back to a family who never knew we existed.
tonight, my girl works the sticks like she was born holding them, laughing at her own clumsy fingers while the grains cling to her skin. I sit here chewing the memory down with the food, both sweet and sour.
she lifts the rice clean,
four good men in her fingers,
and not one of them knows.
