Read Mãn for Free Online Page B

closed eyes. I would hold my breath then, because with no witness, sorrow might exist only as a ghost.
    Most Vietnamese believe in the existence of wandering souls who haunt life, who watch for death, who stay wedged between the two. Every year, in the seventh lunar month, people burn incense, paper money and garments to help the ghosts to free themselves, to leave the world of the living, which has not anticipated a place for them. When I threw the false paper money, orange and gold, into the fire, I hoped for both the ghosts and Maman’s sadness to disappear, even if she denied the ghosts’ existence with the same fervour as the Communist Party, which condemned the people’s fear of those roving spirits, unidentifiable and with no witnesses.
    It’s true that Maman’s face, like my husband’s, showed neither pain nor joy, to say nothing of pleasure, while I could read everything on Julie’s. When she wept, full of affection, at the birth of my son, her heart was drawn on her cheeks, her forehead, herlips. In the same way, she was moved when she carried children just arrived from faraway lands to greet their new destiny in the cocoons carefully woven for them in Montreal. She took their photos and gave them greeting cards signed by her friends in the adoptive parents’ group. She was the first to say, “I love you,” to my baby who was still curled up in my belly. She was also the one who took my husband’s hand to place it against the little foot that was imprinted on my stretched skin. Then, despite his stiff body language, she was quite ready to take him in her arms when he agreed to sponsor Maman for her immigration to Canada.

    ÄÃ´ng-Tây

    East-West
    IT TOOK SEVERAL YEARS and countless photos of my two children to persuade Maman to join me. Unlike my boy, my little girl arrived very quickly, at the same speed as the multiplication of catering orders for private and corporate parties. My husband had bought the duplex next door to enlarge our living space. At the same time, Julie was building a large kitchen under the workshop and she turned the two apartments above us into a daycare for her daughter, my children, and now and then the children of friends who found themselves without a sitter. Two ladies from the Philippines took turns helping out during parties that ended too late or mornings that started before dawn.
    In the kitchen, Julie had hired Philippe, a pastry chef, to reinvent Vietnamese desserts, because our traditions regarding cream, chocolate and cakes were limited to a few, very basic recipes. As a matter of fact, Vietnamese call birthday cakes
bánh gatô
, with
bánh
meaning “bread-cake-batter.” We had to import the word
gatô
because cake comes from a singular culinary tradition. We had to learn how to use butter, milk, vanilla, chocolate—ingredients that were as foreign to us as the cooking methods. Lacking ovens, Vietnamese women baked their cakes in a cauldron covered with a lid on which they placed chunks of blazing coal. The cauldron was set on a terracotta barbecue the size of an average cachepot so the mixture could be elevated and baked withoutburning even if the temperature couldn’t be constant or the heat distribution uniform. I was very surprised, then, at Philippe’s thermometer as well as his stopwatch and his set of measuring spoons, not to mention implements as mysterious as they were impressive. I ran my hand over the contents of the drawers and shelves with the fascination of a child stepping into a cockpit.
    Slowly, Philippe brought me into his world. He started with hazelnuts, plain, roasted, whole, ground—because I adore nuts. From Chinatown, I would bring him pandan leaves to share with him their intensely green colour and their scent: in Thailand, taxi drivers place a fresh bouquet under their seat every two or three days. As Philippe was already familiar with lychees, I offered him their cousins,