Rice Pudding
by
Lois Francis
We didn't waste food in our house. Our family of five siblings, plus mother and father, knew the rules, and my mother was the enforcer and that was that. You may have hated something that was on your plate, but for my mother that wasn't excuse enough to waste food. Nothing was excuse enough: it was on your plate, you ate it.
I'm not sure, to this day, whether the rigid table rules were a response to the short supply of money in those depression days, or whether they represented a concern for our health. I know the welfare and nutrition of her family were the primary purposes of my mother's life. But rice pudding? I ask you.
I was revolted by the look of the white and brown blob in my bowl, and at the first taste I gagged on the mealy texture. "I don't want it," I declared, surprised by my own temerity.
My mother sniffed, scoffing at my inability to swallow. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Delicious raisins and cinnamon. What's the matter with you?"
And I knew, we all knew, until the bowl was empty, you didn't leave the table.
Siblings deserted me when their meal was done; I could hear their shouts and laughter as they resumed our game of canny-can in the back lane, without a single thought for me, left sitting at the kitchen table, staring at that hated bowl of rice pudding.
I wasn't totally abandoned, however. While my sister and brothers were out playing and my mother was cleaning up, my father poured himself another cup of tea and sat by my side. He said softly, "Couldn't you eat a little bit?"
And I shook my head gloomily, lips tight, eyes smarting.
He nodded sympathetically. "You know the Chinese are very wise and clever people and they eat rice all the time."
"I don't care," I sniffed.
"You don't care? I think you'd want to be really smart. The Chinese were reading and writing books when the rest of us were still barbarians. They had beautiful artwork and fine china dishes, like this teacup." He held his teacup up to the light so I could see the dark tealine below the translucent clay of the upper cup.
This began to sound interesting.
"I'll tell you what," he said. Take two spoonfuls, and then we'll try something."
I thought I could manage that, and I held my breath with each spoonful, so I wouldn't taste it and gag.
When I had managed to swallow the second spoonful, he took his pen and wrote a few Chinese words on his cigarette package, and held it out to me. "Can you read this yet?" he asked.
I looked at him in wonderment and shook my head.
"Oh," he said. "Well, you better have two more spoonfuls."
And I did.
He added more words to his cigarette pack. "Can you read it now?"
I never did learn to read Chinese, but I did manage to get through that whole bowl of rice pudding.