HUNAN HOMES — ELIOT LI
/Content Warning: Suicide
Hunan Homes, where my father devours platefuls of braised pork belly, with its layers of glistening fat, despite his cardiologist’s order to take it easy on the grease, and where Grandma produces green wax packs of baseball cards from her purse and gives them to me and my cousin while my aunt stares blankly at the giant bloated codfish floating upside down in the fish tank, the waiter trying to scoop it out with his net.
Hunan Homes, my family’s favorite Chinese restaurant in Silicon Valley, though our region wasn’t called that forty years ago before the tech companies came and bulldozed the area’s last remaining peach and cherry orchards.
Hunan Homes, where my hand is on my grandmother’s back as she puts her walker against the wall and takes her seat, just a few months after we buried my father and my aunt's cold body was found in the garage next to an empty bottle of valium while my cousin moved to Boston because it’s the big city that’s farthest away from here. My grandmother adjusts her black wig before taking a sip of winter melon soup, says it's like a gift from God that I'm taking care of her.
Hunan Homes, where I order takeout after visiting Grandma at Pilgrim Haven Convalescent Hospital, where she cried and told me how lonesome she is and asks how could I abandon her there. The takeout is for my Taiwanese American fiancé, as they’re the only restaurant around that serves her favorite spicy stewed pork intestines with curdled blood, which isn't on the English version of their menu. I drive it back to our studio apartment in San Francisco, and when she kisses me I taste hot peppers and iron.
Hunan Homes, where we celebrate your fifth birthday, though Momma yells at you because it’s a privilege to eat such authentic Chinese food here but you’re just rolling white rice around between your fingers into a smooshed little ball and leaving the heaping mounds of House Special Seafood Chow Mein on your plate untouched.
Hunan Homes, now a neighborhood ice cream shop, where you’re wrapped around my knee licking chocolate soft serve off the tips of your fingers.
Eliot Li lives in California. His work appears or is forthcoming in CRAFT, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Trampset, Necessary Fiction, The Pinch, and elsewhere. He's on twitter @EliotLi2.
