The All-American Slurp

by Lensey Namioka

    The first time our family was invited out to dinner in America, we disgraced ourselves while eating celery. We had immigrated to this country from China, and during our early days here we had a hard time with American table manners.

    In China we never ate celery raw, or any other kind of vegetable raw. We always had to disinfect the vegetables in boiling water first. When we were presented with our first relish tray, the raw celery caught us unprepared.

    We had been invited to dinner by our neighbors, the Gleasons. After arriving at the house, we shook hands with our hosts and packed ourselves into a sofa. As our family of four sat stiffly in a row, my younger brother and I stole glances at our parents for a clue as to what to do next.

    Mrs. Gleason offered the relish tray to mother. The tray looked pretty, with its tiny red radishes, curly sticks of carrots, and long, slender stalks of pale green celery. "Do try some of the celery, Mrs. Lin," she said. "It's from a local farmer, and it's sweet."

    Mother picked up one of the green stalks, and Father followed suit. Then I picked up a stalk, and my brother did too. So there we sat, each with a stalk of celery in our right hand.

    Mrs. Gleason kept smiling. "Would you like to try some of the dip, Mrs. Lin? It's my own recipe: sour cream and onion flakes, with a dash of Tabasco sauce."

    Most Chinese don't care for dairy products, and in those days I wasn't even ready to drink fresh milk.  Sour cream sounded perfectly revolting.  Our family shook our head in unison.

    Mrs. Gleason went off with the relish tray to the other guests, and we carefully watched to see what they did.  Everyone seems to eat the raw vegetables quiet happily.

    Mother took a bite of her celery.  Crunch.  "It's not bad!"  she whispered.

    Father took a bite of his celery.  Crunch.  "Yes, it is good," he said, looking surprised.

    I took a bite, and then my brother.  Crunch, crunch.  It was more than good; it was delicious.  Raw celery has a slight a sparkle, a zingy taste that you don't get in cooked celery.  When Mrs. Gleason came around with the relish tray, we each took another stalk of celery, except my brother.  He took two. 

    There was only one problem: long strings ran through the length of the stalk, and they got caught in my teeth. When I help my mother in the kitchen, I always pull the strings out before slicing celery.

    I pulled the strings out of my stalk.  Z-z-zip, z-z-zip.  My brother followed suit.  Z-z-zip, z-z-zip, z-z-zip.  To my left, my parents were taking care of their own stalks.  Z-z-zip, z-z-zip, z-z-zip.

    Suddenly I realized that there was dead silence except for our zipping.  Looking up, I saw that the eyes of everyone in the room were on our family.  Mr. and Mrs. Gleason, their daughter Meg, who was my friend, and their neighbors the Badels — they were all staring at us as we busily pulled the strings of our celery.

    That wasn't the end of it.  Mrs. Gleason announced that dinner was served and invited us to the dining table. It was lavishly covered with platters of food, but we couldn't see any chairs around the table. So we helpfully carried over some dining chairs and sat down.  All the other guests just stood there.

    Mrs. Gleason bent down and whispered to us, "This is a buffet dinner.  You help yourselves to some food and eat it in the living room."

    Our family beat a retreat back to the sofa as if chased by enemy soldiers.  For the rest of the evening, too mortified to go back to the dining table, I nursed a bit of potato salad on my plate.

    Next day Meg and I got on the school bus together.  I wasn't sure how she would feel about me after the spectacle our family made at the party. But she was just the same as usual, and the only reference she made to the party was, "Hope you and your folks got enough to eat last night. You certainly didn't take very much. Mom never tries to figure out how much food to prepare. She just puts everything on the table and hopes for the best."

    I began to relax. The Gleasons' dinner party wasn't so different from a Chinese meal after all. My mother also puts everything on the table and hopes for the best.

   Meg was the first friend I had made after we came to America. I eventually got acquainted with a few other kids in school, but Meg was still the only real friend I had.

    My brother didn't have any problems making friends. He spent all his time with some boys who were teaching him baseball, and in no time he could speak English much faster than I could—not better, but faster.

    I worried more about making mistakes, and I spoke carefully, making sure I could say everything right before opening my mouth. At least I had a better accent than my parents, who never really got rid of their Chinese accent, even years later. My parents had both studied English in school before coming to America, but what they had studied was mostly written English, not spoken.

    Father's approach to English was a scientific one. Since Chinese verbs have no tense, he was fascinated by the way English verbs changed form according to whether they were in the present, past imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future, or future perfect tense. He was always making diagrams of verbs and their inflections, and he looked for opportunities to show off his mastery of the pluperfect and future perfect tenses, his two favorites. "I shall have finished my project by Monday," he would say smugly.

    Mother's approach was to memorize lists of polite phrases that would cover all possible social situations. She was constantly muttering things like "I'm fine, thank you. And you?" Once she accidentally stepped on someone's foot, and hurriedly blurted, "Oh, that's quite all right!" Embarrassed by her slip, she resolved to do better next time. So when someone stepped on her foot, she cried, "You're welcome!"

    In our own different ways , we made progress in learning English.

    The day came when my parents announced that they wanted to give a dinner party. We had invited Chinese friends to eat with us before, but this dinner was going to be different. In addition, we were going to invite the Gleasons.

    "Gee, I can hardly wait to have dinner at your house," Meg said to me. "I just love Chinese food."

    That was a relief. Mother was a good cook, but I wasn't sure if people who ate sour cream would also eat chicken gizzards stewed in soy sauce.

    Mother decided not to take a chance with chicken gizzards. Since we had western guests, she set the table with large dinner plates, which we never used in Chinese meals. In fact we didn't use individual plates at all, but picked up food from the platters in the middle of the table and brought it directly to our rice bowls. Following the practice of Chinese-American restaurants, Mother also placed large serving spoons on the platters.

    The dinner started well. Mrs. Gleason exclaimed at the beautifully arranged dishes of food: the colorful candied fruit in the sweet-and-sour pork dish, the noodle-thin shreds of chicken meat stir-fried with tiny peas, and the glistening pink prawns in a ginger sauce.

    At first I was too busy enjoying my food to notice how the guests were doing. But soon I remembered my duties. Sometimes guests were too polite to help themselves and you had to serve them with more food.

    I glanced at Meg, to see if she needed more food, and my eyes nearly popped out at the sight of her plate. It was piled with food: the sweet-and-sour meat pushed right against the chicken shreds, and the chicken sauce ran into the prawns. She had been taking food from a second dish before she finished eating her helping from the first!

    Horrified, I turned to look at Mr. Gleason. He was chasing a pea around his plate. Several times he got it to the edge, but when he tried to pick it up with his chopsticks, it rolled back toward the center of the plate again. Finally he put down his chopsticks and picked up the pea with his fingers. He really did! A grown man!

    All of us, our family and the Chinese guests, stopped eating to watch the activities of the Gleasons. I wanted to giggle. Then I caught my mother's eyes on me. She frowned and shook her head slightly, and I understood the message: the Gleasons were not used to Chinese ways, and they were just coping the best they could. For some reason I thought of celery strings.

    When the main courses were finished, Mother brought out a platter of fruit. "I hope you weren't expecting a sweet dessert," she said. "Since the Chinese don't eat dessert, I didn't think to prepare any."

    "Oh, I couldn't possibly eat dessert!" cried Mrs. Gleason. "I'm simply stuffed!" Meg had different ideas. When the table was cleared, she announced that she and I were going for a walk. "I don't know about you, but I feel like dessert," she told me, when we were outside. "Come on, there's a Dairy Queen down the street. I could use a big chocolate milkshake!"

    Although I didn't really want anything more to eat, I insisted on paying for the milkshakes. After all I was still hostess.

    Meg got her large chocolate milkshake and I had a small one. Even so, she was finishing hers while I was only half done. Toward the end she pulled hard on her straws and went shloop, shloop.

    "Do you always slurp when you eat a milkshake?" I asked, before I could stop myself.

    Meg grinned. "Sure. All Americans slurp."

(1,685 words)