Herb of Jelly by Annie Trinh
Associate fiction editor Audrey Bauman on today’s bonus flash: Annie Trinh’s story reminds me of slights I and countless others have endured from white people, how these moments are about hurt feelings but also commodification, fetishization, colonial thinking, violence. And yet “Herb of Jelly” also contains moments of sweetness—making grass jelly with family, inhaling the savory scent of phở—which to me shows the masterfulness of this piece, to handily convey so much within such little space. A beautifully seasoned meal with a bitter aftertaste.
Herb of Jelly
Nina will do this: she’ll get a typical American lunch—pizza with chocolate milk and a side of corn—and she’ll sit at a crowded table with her high-school friends. She’ll hang out with them at the parties and parks, wearing the same clothes as they do, dying her hair to the color of beer and wearing Aquafina blue contacts. They’ll go to the mall, buy the latest clothes that are hung on white dolls and wear makeup until their skin is like glass. Nina will remain quiet when her friends say bánh mì is the Burger King of Viet food or that phở is the new trend for weight loss, something that she’ll never understand. After hours of window shopping, they’ll become hungry and run to Costco to eat free samples and then play hide and seek down the aisles.
Nina will follow.
She’ll follow her friends to the produce section, to the meats, to the frozen foods, where she’ll find herself staring at a box of grass jelly labeled: “Gluten-Free,” “Great for the Health,” “All Plant Based.” Nina will frown at her friends calling her over, giving her a sample of instant phở. The scent—burnt hair and plastic—will cause her to gag. She’ll look at her friends, grabbing more samples, and she’ll try to hold her words back—because a dish like this can’t be made in an instant. And Nina will take a bite, cringe, and lie to them that this is great. She’ll keep eating, letting the plastic fibers clutter on her taste buds, contaminating her tongue until it burns.
Years earlier, Nina was eight when she first tried her mother’s special Vietnamese dessert: little jellies, small black and snow-white gelatin cubes swamped in sweet syrup. She gulped them down, one by one, thinking they looked like black holes. And they tasted good, like the forest, she said to her Mother. No, she imagined as she took another bite—a lotus budding from murky waters, the warmth of the sunlight dissolving on her tongue.
Teach me, said Nina. I want to eat this at school. Birthdays too! Please, Ma—how do you do it?
And her Mother did.
She taught Nina to pay attention to the seasons and when to cook dessert, which warm dishes would go the best in the winter and fall, how to make them during dry days. Her Mother showed her how to boil grass jelly powder, cut up a block of gelatin into small cubes and add cracked ice. And, even better, how to mixed coconut milk in to balance the flavor and add pomegranate seeds that bleed into the dish. To go with the dessert, her Mother showed her the ingredients and steps to her most prized dish—phở.
This takes two days, she said.
Nina watched carefully. The bathing of chicken, massaging plucked skin with salt until it shined. Carefully rinsing organs. Roasting onions until an ember scent filled the house. Nina tried to keep track of all the ingredients. Adding beef bones into the broth, sinking onions to the bottom of the pot, a brown miniature star anise that looked like it fell from the sky. And every time Nina ate these dishes, she heard about her Mother’s childhood in Vietnam, which she swore she could taste in every bite. Nina liked to close her eyes when she ate. She saw bright, orange phoenix flowers that grew around her mom’s backyard during the humid summertime and her grandma by the riverbank, scrubbing the family clothes in the water while her mother wanders into the chicken coop and grabs fresh eggs to cook for dinner.
Now, Nina is in seventh grade and rushes into the kitchen, grabbing a Kool-Aid Jammer, a half slice of bánh mì, and a container full of grass jelly and phở. She places them into her lunch bag and tosses in extra plastic forks for the new friends she just made. After first period of World History and learning how to find the slope in Algebra, it is time for lunch. Nina rushes to the silver benches outside, watching other students run around playing basketball and dodgeball. She tells her friends about her Mother’s special dessert, that it has the most amazing taste and that they should try it.
Nina opens the container and shows them dark jiggly cubes bathing in sugary black water. Her friends look at each other and then back at the dish.
What’s that? one asks.
Grass jelly, Nina says.
Ew, another says. Is it made from grass?
No…yes—I, Nina pauses and frowns. I don’t know, but it’s really good. Trust me
Both of them shake their heads. No. It sounds disgusting. I don’t want to eat grass.
Just try, Nina says, extending the jellies in their direction.
No, they put their hands up. We don’t want that. Are you going to make us try dog next?
Nina closes her lunch box and remains quiet for the rest of the break. When the bell rings, she stands up with her friends, but walks slowly, making sure that they don’t notice her falling behind. Nina takes out her dessert and drinks the grass jelly, but this time it tastes disgusting, bitter, and sad—like the sadness when Nina saw her Mother’s face on her ninth birthday. No one touched the grass jelly and phở; instead, they slammed the dishes into the dirt. Her Mother picked up the broken pieces as brown ants crept from the soil to the food, but her friends stomped on them, stomping and stomping until they died.
Annie Trinh is an MFA fiction candidate at the University of Kansas. A VONA and Kundiman fellow, she has been published or is forthcoming in the Oyster River Pages, Litro Magazine, Emrys Journal Online, and elsewhere.
