I feel like a heretic. Heretic. I savor the word in my mouth. Sweet, like peanut candy.
Heretic.
My hands go through the motions of scooping sticky batter into the curved ladle. Curved like the half-moon. The oysters go in next and I smother them with a layer of the white gooey liquid. The ladle hisses, sliding into the hot oil. Two oyster fritters float like golden-brown discs with their rims sizzling away. Sst. Silver. Sst. Silver. Sst.
I scoop them up with a wooden spoon. I know Mother is watching me. She is always watching me. I stare at the bowl of oysters swimming in brine. They smell of the sea. I know, because I have just harvested them from the oyster beds.
My hands still bear the cuts. Oysters bite back.
I want to be an oyster. Sharp shell and all.
“Watch it, Ki!” Mother speaks, startling me. The fritter is almost dark. I scoop it up, cursing softly.
Ki. My milk name. What a sour name. I hear it as Kai.
Oh now I want to shout. But I cannot. To shout is to reveal the real me: a heretic.
Path Of Kindness by Joyce Chng is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at jolantru.wordpress.com.
