Aubergine Anguish

Eggplants are purple. Growing up in Hong Kong, I remember them being long and thin. But in Canada, they’re usually fat and round. Some are also white, which is why they’re  called  eggplants  because  they  look  like  goose  eggs  when  they’re  white, round, and small.

Mandy—my elder sister—her favourite colour is purple, just like my mom. I like purple too, but I tend to tell people that my favourite colour is blue when they ask.

***

“Any food allergies?” The volunteer at the sign up desk asked. He had his head down and wasn’t even looking at me, but his neutral and deep voice had some sort of an authority tone that demanded truth from me.

“Uh, I can’t eat eggplants.” I supposed my doctor probably wouldn’t say that it was an allergy, but I said it anyway.

My mom still tried to make me eat eggplants until I was five. It was hard for her to prepare meals for the family when Mandy loved eggplants and I didn’t. But there was something unique about their texture and taste that I detested. I didn’t even want to eat other foods that had been in contact with them. They had the taste of eggplants.

Sitting before the full plate of deadly brown slivers cooked with minced pork and soy sauce, I knew that I had to shove one into my mouth. I felt like everyone was watching  me  as  I  picked  out  the  most  harmless-looking  piece  of  eggplant.  It squirmed between the tip of my chopsticks as my fingers trembled to grip. I stared at the sliver in front of me—it smelled like Mandy, who was gulping down hers.

Having that long, slippery and terribly soft piece in my tiny mouth, I didn’t want to chew or swallow for fear of feeling it snaking down into my throat. My tongue shifted just a little bit, trying to adjust into a less awkward posture, but the sliver wrestled with me and did not yield. I threw up.

After cleaning up my mess, my mom never made me eggplants again. She tried to encourage me from time to time, but I have been comfortably happy without them.

Even today, I still refuse to have a bite. I realize that I don’t hate eggplants as much as when I was younger, maybe because no one is forcing them into my face anymore. But to even nibble a bit on a piece of eggplant that Mandy seems to find very appealing? No. What if I don’t hate the taste anymore? What if I manage to swallow it without throwing up? What if my mom makes me eat eggplants again?

***

Someone told me that the Roasted Veggie and Goat Cheese Sandwich from Williams was good.

“Hi. What’s in the Roasted Veggie Sandwich?” I asked the lady at Williams. In her Western purple apron, she looked up at me from her cashier machine.

“Zucchini, red peppers, spinach, eggplants—“

“Oh, uhm, is it possible to get rid of the eggplants?” “No. They come together.”

I knew it. “Okay. Can I have the French Onion Soup then?”

I don’t really know why, but I later found out that the sandwich doesn’t really have any eggplants. Though any incident related to eggplants is strange anyway.

***

In Cantonese, we have two terms for eggplants. One is the official scientific term, and the other means “short squash.” In my family, we always use the latter term.

I explained this once to my professor during one of the meetings we had for my independent research about dreams and psychoanalysis. Sometimes I would share my dreams and thoughts as part of the discussion. This time, we talked about how much Mandy loved eggplants and how I threw up attempting to eat a sliver.

“Is your sister older or younger?” She asked as she leaned on her office chair.

“Older,” I said. “Two years older.”

“Ah, so you were the short one.” She stated the fact with a grin.

Yes. I was the short one. I am still the short one, by half an inch—simply because Mandy has a longer neck.

I was a medium-sized kid, but she was tall for her age. Although I was only two years younger, I was already half her size.

“She is the shortest in the family,” my parents kept teasing me as I grew up. But they’re the shorter ones now.

***

Follow your sister. Listen to your sister.

***

Eggplants are also known as Aubergine. Such a poetic name, much more beautiful than “short squash.” And purple is such a beautiful colour that can mix blue and red, two contrasting colours.

Dark purple and shiny on the outside, and white on the inside; raw eggplants look nice, luring me into their trap. But once cooked, they look like shit—soggy and mushy in decay.

I had a dream about little turtles popping their heads out from a piece of clear plastic with holes, like they were trying to escape from what I perceived was the aquarium so that they could attack me. Now that I think about it, those turtles’ necks looked extremely like those eggplant slivers I was forced to eat. The necks were brown, sticky, and squishy, stretching out from the turtles’ bodies—longer and taller until they could reach me and tower over me.

They also smelled like Mandy. I would never want to touch them.

***

Do you want to learn piano with your sister?
She’s doing ballet, you should go too.

***

Eggplants have a smooth and cold skin. They’re hard, but once you cook them, they go soft—too soft perhaps. They taste like fat. And I hate the feeling of fat on my tongue.

I remember sitting across from my dad at the dining table. He spat out all of the oily fat from the lamb he was feasting on as I tried to get rid of the fat on mine with my chopsticks.

“Just bite into the lamb, tear off the fat, and spit it out,” he said when he saw me.

“No, I don’t want to touch it,” I mumbled.

“Just tear it off!”

“I don’t want to touch it.”

“Such a waste!” Mandy roared. She loved the taste and texture of fat.

They didn’t understand—if my teeth and gums had to touch it to tear it off, what was the point of not eating it?

***

Share your sister’s toys. Let’s keep her clothes so you can wear them when you’re
bigger.

***

Eggplants are like snakes slyly striking from the outside to wriggle in between the teeth—trying to get into my body, trying to find a way into my neck and heart.

Mandy  was  born  in  the  year  of  the  Snake.  And  I  am  the  harmless  and innocent sheep, always ready to be devoured.

“Listen to your sister,” my mom said. “Be patient. She has a thyroid disorder, so she can’t always control her temper.”

Oh well, she didn’t even have the disorder back when I was still a toddler. I remember  watching  those  videos  of  her  snatching  toys  from  me  on  my  baby walking-chair, which used to be hers.

We were playing with her toys scattered all over the living room: nurse kit, mini truck, plastic steak, rainbow octave piano, and many more. In my white and baby blue pajamas, I clumsily pushed my walking-chair slightly closer to Mandy, who turned around and grasped the mini soccer ball that was in my hand just a second ago. As she put the ball right next to where she sat, I looked around in defeat and decided to go and see what my mom was doing with the camcorder.

***

Eggplants are sticky when cooked. They also like to cling themselves to other foods
they’re cooked with, which is why I can’t eat anything in a dish with eggplants.

Or do the other foods cling to them? I hope they don’t. Why would they do that? Why do people cook eggplants with other foods anyway? Doing so doesn’t make me feel any better about them at all.

I don’t know which is worse: ruining a dish by cooking eggplants with other foods, or cooking eggplants with eggplants. I don’t even want to think about it.

***

There’s a thin line right next to the Life Line on my palm that ends near the middle of it. It means there’s someone close to me who has been taking care of me in the earlier half of my life. When I learned this information, my first thought was my mom. But no, she hasn’t been with me all the time.

So then, I had to accept my second thought: It is Mandy.

We have been going to the same schools, volunteering at the same places, having some of the same close friends, living together forever—it feels like we have been stuck together our entire lives.

I might have found her as disgusting as eggplants, and she might not live up to my idea of the ideal sister—loving and caring and smart and gentle. But she was still my sister.

***

I walked out of my professor’s office and smelled eggplants. I found myself standing in front of Williams, thinking about them (that was before I knew the sandwich didn’t have any eggplants).

But I turned around and made a mental promise to myself: after the end of the Mandy Line on my palm, I will try eggplants again, and that will be at least some years later. I will also document it with pictures and writing as I dress myself in purple and pick out another harmless-looking piece of eggplant, which I will digest and make a part of my body.

Vincy Wing Sze Kwong is going into her fourth year in Digital Media, Communication & Technoculture as well as Creative Writing. She has always been interested in creative writing and multimedia arts and often likes to merge the two in her projects.  This essay won first prize in the third category of the 2012 Marie Smibert Writing Program Student Achievement Awards Competition.