Black Beans & Wine
By Joey Bui
I was dating a new guy. That was on my mind as I stirred the saucepan full of black beans and water. I had said something terrible to him. The white eyes of the beans magnified beneath the water and made me feel sudden paranoia. I brought the water to a boil, turned down the heat and let the pot bubble gently.
Our little Arlington kitchen was full of onion and garlic, covering the day-old smell of Payal’s spinach curry still crusting in the sink. For our first date, Sean took me to an Italian restaurant in DC, where my vegetables were puréed and squeezed out into flowers around my plate. I couldn’t tell what they were, maybe a blend of squash, peas, and Brussels sprouts, whipped into a cool blue cream. What would he think if he saw me in my own kitchen, picking at a week-old rotisserie chicken or manhandling a jumbo-sized bag of frozen peas from Capitol Supermarket?
He said that I smelt of madeleines when we first met. I was testing a new mix of essential oils: four parts orange zest, one part lemon, one part vanilla, and a touch of nutmeg. Sean told me about a French patisserie on the way to his high school that sold orange-peel madeleines in white boxes with gold lettering. He sent a box from Georgetown Bakery to my workplace the next day: two golden discs nestled in blue tissue paper and an invitation to dinner.
I had a lot to think about today as I watched the pot bubble. Did I have any tomatoes left? I had been thinking about tomatoes all day. Guillermo, the new intern at work, showed me Neruda’s “Oda al Tomate” and in the evening I ran around the Arlington High School track, thinking about the tomato juices running in the poem, cold and fresh, la totalidad de su frescura and imagining lying down on the conference room floor with Guillermo, where the watercooler bubbled like streams. Some basil would be perfect on top of the fresh tomatoes.
When the beans were ready, I used a tea-towel to lift the lid – the handle had fallen off a week ago. They were overcooked, I could smell it right away in the smokiness that escaped the pot. But when I tasted the beans, I decided that the smokiness worked with the flavor, and the crispy edges were a nice texture.
I balanced the bean pot on the arm of our sofa, the faux leather already cracking and ripped. I wondered where Sean was sitting. Probably still at the same Dupont Circle bar since happy hour, and texting for more friends to come join him for dinner. Rubbing a sheen of orange wing sauce onto his phone screen. I told him I was busy tonight, that I had promised to Skype my dad.
“Send him my regards,” Sean had said. I don’t know if anybody’s ever sent Dad regards before, and certainly not a senator’s staff assistant. I shook out my hair from its bun and sniffed it, full of the smell of garlic (powder). My hair always used to smell of garlic when I worked part time at Dad’s shop, from the garlic-batter shrimp curry. I started to talk about Dad’s business and Sean interrupted me.
“Oh, he’s an entrepreneur,” said Sean.
I laughed at that too. Dad had a notion of fanciness about his Punjabi deli, where he took everything he could from grandma’s faithful kitchen and deep-fried it in buttermilk batter. Even the rice was tossed in oil, cloves, and chicken salt.
“You know what this is, Areej?” Dad said, pumping oil out of a plastic canister. “This is fusion Pakistani-American food. You should take notes.”
His accent dragged down the u in “fusion,” adding four more tones to the word, like a handful of garam masala tossed into a pot of baked beans. I laughed then too, and took very serious notes on how to avoid his accent. In DC, “fusion” was pronounced with the curt, funneled “u” of a Japanese accent and the dishes were deconstructed on long rectangular plates, with slices of pickled ginger on the side.
*
Sean introduced me to his boss soon after we met, at a ball in the Library of Congress.
“Areej, is that Arabic?” she had asked.
“I’m Pakistani.”
“I mean, what language do you speak?”
“English,” I said, and enjoyed the panic on Sean’s face.
I took a passing hors d’oeuvre and bit into it: hard bread, chopped tomato, and herb topping with black vinaigrette. The vinaigrette dribbled to the sides of my mouth and stung. I washed it down with champagne.
“Well, your people have such a rich and interesting culture,” she turned to Sean.
“She’s so beautiful.”
“She’s an Institutional Philanthropy and Partnerships Officer with the ROC,” he said.
Sean leaned in to kiss me. I knew my mouth was dank from the vinaigrette and I said into his mouth:
“If you don’t take me home right now, I’ll break up with you.”
I wanted to say more. I was drunk. I wanted to tell him something just so that he could smell the sourness, something to shame him.
The vinegar made me think of all the smells I hate, curries that stained the plastic of my lunchboxes and stuck to my clothes, that followed me all down Ross Road from school to Dad’s takeout shop. I spent nights by the sink, scrubbing my lunchboxes and then, later on, scrubbing at my armpits. Mom didn’t understand when I asked her for deodorant. She wanted to take me to a doctor. I imagined my glands opening and something dirty inside of me seeping out at my armpits.
Sean didn’t say much on the ride out to Arlington.
I watched his profile nervously as he drove. His shirt collar was so perfectly ironed and for a moment I saw him standing in his studio apartment before the ball, carefully ironing his shirt and looking forward to picking up his beautiful girlfriend, whom he was ready to introduce to his boss. I remembered the girlfriend that went with him to Barney’s to buy new shirts, and how he proudly, eagerly bought everything that I chose for him that day.
He drew a deep breath as he slid into my driveway and turned off the engine. All of a sudden, I was desperately afraid that he was mad at me. But he turned to me and said:
“You know you can tell me anything.”
He touched my hand. His face was full of worry and I realized that I had never before tried to guess what he was thinking. It didn’t feel fun anymore to trick him into thinking I was beautiful.
*
The first time I left home, it only lasted two months. I came back to Sugar Land when I was at my skinniest and my friend Sarah was sick of me. When Dad opened the door, I had on the old sweats that I used to wear at home.
“You look disgusting,” he said.
Behind the flyscreen, Mom stifled a moan. She started crying in full once Dad opened the door. He led me to the living room and gestured at the couch.
“Where have you been? You have worried your mother sick.”
I fingered the loose skin around my wrists.
“You think we don’t know where you’ve been?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother wants to die because her only daughter is sleeping like a dog on the streets.”
“Then why doesn’t she tell me? Is she dumb?”
Mom didn’t know what we were saying. I watched Dad swallow his anger. His arms were stiff and shaking, as though ready to strike me, but I knew he wouldn’t. I saw him curling inward, a small man keening on his living room couch in a green-and-white striped polo shirt, frightening nobody. He had already come knocking on Sarah’s door and begged me to come back. He had already disowned me. I said that he sold me long ago when he let his customers leer at me and said nothing but thank you’s and pleases to them.
But it felt weak when I said it aloud. I wanted to say more. The two-hour drive to the family holiday at Lake Erie, where I sat in the back of a Land Rover with Uncle Saif and he stroked circles on my thigh, where my jeans were ripped, with his forefinger. The big weddings where the men drank too much and I posed for photos, feeling hands on my waist where the sari left my skin exposed. The 47-year-old Pakistani math tutor, a family friend, who stared at my chest and took home Mom’s pakoras after our sessions. But I was afraid it wouldn’t be enough. I wanted him to feel my disgust, but I couldn’t convince him of it.
He curled his lip and said the last thing he wanted to say to me:
“You are so full of hate.”
*
I first started making wine when I was unemployed and staying in Aurora, Ohio with Aunt Laksha and Uncle Hassan after graduation. They had a little house with dirty white walls sitting on a bed of weeds and I started making wine in the barn in between sending off resumes. Their kids thought it was fantastic, my cousins Sara and Eric. They used to come visit me in the barn and I did a bit like I was a witch concocting potions to turn children into mushrooms. They ran screaming, “Areej is a witch! Areej is a witch!”
Aunt Laksha sat me down one night.
“I’m worried about you. You are a very lucky girl, you know. You have good family and you are so beautiful. Look, what man would not want this?” she patted my C-cup boobs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“But you are so strange, Areej,” she said. “You are not normal.”
“That’s just because I’m drunk, Auntie.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“How shall I answer to your father!” she wrung her gold bracelets hysterically. “Oh Allah help me.”
I was drinking a lot because there was no one else to try my wine and nothing else to do in Aurora except scare the children and send out the resumes. After the talk with Aunt Laksha, I took a long walk around the neighborhood. I would later visit other small American cities, but no other where the streets were level with the footpath and there were no curbs. For miles in Aunt Laksha’s neighborhood, the ground was flat everywhere. Powdery streets blended into off-white driveways, cut by squares of grass that were watered a polite, pale green. I bought a bunch of hibiscus at the florist and took it back to boil in the barn. After dissolving the flower water with sugar and a bit of acid, I let it cool before plunging my hands in the bucket to squeeze the flowers for more flavor. It took me the whole day and my arms were tinged with hibiscus red up to my elbows. Sara and Eric came in before dinner.
“Tell Auntie that I’ve already eaten,” I said.
“But Mommy made kofta,” said Eric.
“Hey, come here.”
I dried my hands on my shirt and stuck a hibiscus flower behind each of their ears. I had saved two of the prettiest ones for them.
“This is a very strong flower and if you wear it close to your head, it will grow beautiful thoughts inside of you,” I said.
“You smell like a goddess,” said Sara.
“I thought I was a witch.”
The whole barn smelt of flowers and sugar – that was before the yeast – and they stayed playing with the wet hibiscus mulch until bedtime. It was the last time I felt fully beautiful.
*
Give him my regards, Sean said. He kept watching me, smiling. I laugh when he stares like that. He used to ask me why I laugh, and at first I used to say, “At you, you knob,” very nicely. Then he asked when we were in bed and he was eating me out: “Why are you laughing?” I was laughing because his hands were stroking my sides, where I was ticklish, and I screamed, “At you, you fuck.” He stopped for a moment and looked at me. I didn’t know what to say, I just wanted to finish. He went back down and stroked the length of my thighs, to my calves where his fingers fit all the way around. I wanted to thrash from the feeling of his cool tongue inside me, but he had me pinned. He stroked the nook under my right knee, kneading deeper and deeper as I came, laughing and screaming. As he leaned up to kiss me, I tasted sourness on his lips and decided to be very kind to him.
“You’re so beautiful,” said Sean afterward. We were on the lawn of the National Monument, where the Navy Band Northeast was playing Prokofiev badly.
I looked up and felt shocked by how unfamiliar his face was. His bright blue eyes, the color of candy shell or club lights, were so concerned (What are you thinking? How do you feel? Are you having a good time?) that I couldn’t turn away. I lifted a hand to close his eyes, but stopped myself just in time.
“What,” he said softly.
I rested the hand on his cheek. I thought about telling him that he was a stranger to me, but realized that it didn’t sound nice, even if I said it nicely.
“What,” he said again, more softly.
So I said: “I love you,” and laughed, and went home to cook black beans.
*
I woke up later that night with my face in the cracked leather and Payal swearing loudly in the next room. She was wrestling with a large bucket that had spilled thin red liquid all over the bathroom floor. I helped her pull it upright and the liquid sloshed loudly inside.
“What the fuck is this, did you period into this thing,” said Payal.
“No, fuck you, this is the wine I was making, and it’s not supposed to be opened for another month,” I said.
I squatted over the bucket, stuffing the thick lid back into its seal, but it was already too late. I couldn’t rack it now that the airlock had broken.
“Well, I’m not cleaning it up,” said Payal. She had taken off her underwear and was stepping into the tub, muttering, “fucking wine in the bathroom.”
I mopped it up with an old shirt, but most of the spill had already seeped into the exposed concrete where the tiles were cracked. My chest started to feel constricted. I leaned my chest against the toilet bowl and made heaving noises but couldn’t throw up anything. I was worried, wondering what Payal thought of me, but I couldn’t stop. She stood under the shower, watching
“Why do you drink?” she asked. “It makes you such a fucking mess.”
“I didn’t drink that much. I just had a night in.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
She stepped out of the shower and knelt down beside me, holding a towel to her chest.
“Tell me why you drink and I’ll help you clean this up.”
“Don’t treat me like one of your kids.”
She was a career counselor at the Arlington high school.
“Did something happen?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“Don’t. My head hurts, OK? Let’s talk later.”
“Then tell me in one word.”
I stared at her, but didn’t have the energy to tell her what a stupid idea it was.
“I don’t know the word,” I said.
“What’s it feel like?”
“Disgust.”
“What are you disgusted with? Sean?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You?”
“You said one word.”
Her shoulders dropped.
“OK,” she said finally. “Sit down. Are you hungry? I’ll make you a cheesy potato bake.”
I was so hungry. I sat and watched her peel eight potatoes and slice them into thin round disks. She lined the slices up in a tray and poured in a milk-butter-mozzarella batter. I calmed down as she lined up the potatoes in neat strokes. The bake came out golden, crisp at the edges, and soft in between. We put the tray between us on the floor and ate it with some red wine and I told her I was sorry.
I was staring at Sean’s eyes again, bright and blue. Club lights. I’d texted him over, just to see if he would come. In my house, he waded through the throws, cushions, and footrests that Payal and I had collected over the years. It was a guesthouse in the backyard of an elderly couple who had been in Arlington for more than 30 years. It was built on a slope, and had a loft above the kitchen with these wooden railings that Payal sometimes poked her head through to watch TV with me before she fell asleep. It had always reminded me of a treehouse. Sean crouched over as he stepped down from the living room to the kitchen, where the ceiling was low, and passed the bathroom with the sliding door that I jammed a few weeks ago. He had never been here before.
“It’s the wine I’m making,” I said, explaining the red cracks in the bathroom floor.
“You make wine?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then I have to try some,” he said.
I went in to fill a pitcher with the thin red liquid and swilled it in Sean’s face. I drank my glass in one gulp. It was awful. The flowers were bitter and dry, so tart with the yeast that it made my mouth sore. I filled another glass and it sank hot and sour to my stomach.
I hated the way Sean looked at me. I hated more that he wouldn’t admit how awful it was. He drank his glass and didn’t say another word. I started undoing his belt and he gripped my arm suddenly as though in shock. I laughed into his face, my breath full of yeast, until his grip loosened and he let me pull down his pants. I turned around and we had sex against the kitchen sink, where the dishes were still crusted and everything was ugly.
I woke up sometime at dawn, my head pounding. Sean was still sleeping on the couch. I was horrified to find half of the wine bucket empty and worried that I had gotten him seriously sick, though I didn’t know if I still hated him. I went out into the garden, startled to find a morning so bright in April. All the plants were under a pale yellow glow and I laid down on the grass to warm my skin against it. I noticed a bud of orange above my head and plucked out the first tomato of the year, raw and young, and ate it, crying for all the things that I had made and ruined.
Joey Bui is a Vietnamese Australian writer. She graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi in 2016 and now roams Melbourne cafes, writing stories and checking out baristas.