As a burgeoning eater, I was fearful of the mix. I can remember sitting at my family’s dinner table, staring down at my plate, and immediately going to work. Knife in left hand, fork in right (I had not yet learned the European style I so preciously attend to now), I would nudge the chicken breast to the lower-left corner, keeping the flowing lemon-pepper sauce at bay with the flat edge of the knife. The vegetables were fairly reliable in their stoicism; still, my fork pushed them back toward the perimeter of the plate, in case a broccoli floret happened to tip and the resulting momentum urged it on toward the mashed potatoes. My plate management had no firm guidelines, though a buffer zone of an inch or two usually sufficed.
And then there was the rice. My mother the cook was nothing if not consistent, and her strict adherence to the unwritten rule of three was stirring in its regularity. The rule of three: Meat, Vegetables, Starch. My accompanying glass of milk almost completed the Food Pyramid quidfecta – it was if she expected representatives from the FDA to barge in unannounced, brandishing special measuring devices looking suspiciously like syringes, and test our plates for the recommended allotment of proteins and carbohydrates. On those days when mandarin orange slices topped our cottage cheese salad, the missing Fruit portion was accounted for, and the spying neighbors went to sleep that evening assured of my mother’s meal-crafting dominance.
But back to the rice. Its strengths and my own commingled like squid ink over oatmeal—not at all well. I prided myself on separating each of my meal’s components like instable chemicals, as if not knowing which might be the catalyst for catastrophe. This may or may not have been the product of my father’s own dinner plate tectonics; he mashed chicken into potatoes, finagled peas into flounder, coerced cube steak into an A-1 aided roux. I was horrified by the resultant muck on his plate, and even more terrified when he shoveled it in with voracious glee. I took pains not to mimic his disgusting manner; I kept my opinion of his habit like my lap napkin, secure and out of sight.
The rice, seriously. If allowed to absorb the sauce, it would undoubtedly be a tasty and satisfying side. If taken in bites with forkfuls of seasoned veggies, the texture would add a much-needed quality, I am certain. The necessity to limit any touching between plated foods admittedly did a disservice to this otherwise capable carb. The white rice on my plate remained plain: the maneuvered pile, a clump of flavorless, granular nothing. I should have blamed myself. Instead I blamed the rice, and as such, did not deem it worthy of my swallowing. Most nights I choked it down. One evening, I decided to revolt.
I took a forkful of plain white rice in my mouth. The fork came out; the rice stayed in, but it was not going down. And if it did, its next direction would surely be up. Tight-lipped and silent, I thought about swallowing, but did not. My abstinence was not demonstrative; this wasn’t a protest to Rice-Eaters around the globe, just to the clump of it in my mouth that, for some reason, I could not bear to let slide down the food tube. My father-the-mixer’s prognostication was keen—he ordered, “Swallow the rice, son.”
But I couldn’t. It sat in my mouth, slowly dissolving into a mass of white, unchewed cud.
“You may not leave this table until you swallow that rice,” my father said.
I mumbled a rice-addled retort indecipherable to the room. The remaining occupants—my older brother and sister, my mom—silently chewed and swallowed their food. Then my sibs left. Though I don’t remember for sure, they might have caught my eye while leaving, a gesture-free nod of solidarity—Stay strong. I remained, my cheeks puffed, the back of my tongue pressing more and more firmly against the opening of my esophagus with each passing second. In hindsight I do not even know why I was so dead-set on not eating the rice. I’d done it before; sure, it wasn’t my favorite thing, but neither was brushing my teeth, yet I hadn’t set an embargo on Crest Fresh Mint Gel. There was something else at work here, some malevolent, unseen, psychological force. Perhaps I knew in five years time he would not be living with us anymore, moving into an apartment two miles down the road, and this was my one chance, feeble as it might have been, to take a stand. Or maybe I just really didn’t want to eat my rice. The longer it marinated in my saliva-filling mouth, the worse the eventual gulp would be. There had to be another way.
“Swallow it,” he said, rising from the table. My eyes widened. He stepped heavily over to my seat. I made a few more sounds of resistance. He placed one hand over my already clenched mouth—
“Swallow it!”
I shook my head meagerly back and forth, humming more and more resistant cries into his palm placed against my lips. My mom finally piped in—“R_______, please, stop it!”—and he relented, storming off, leaving his mess of combined food to stew on his unkempt plate. I peered over to my mom, silently asking permission. She nodded, and I opened up, letting the clump of soppy white mush fall onto the plate, uncaring that it plopped squarely on my remaining bites of chicken and broccoli.
I was sent to my room. My father came up later, maybe ten minutes, maybe two hours, to spank me. That was the sole example of corporal punishment against me I can remember.
Fifteen years hence, the “rice incident” has become one of those family myths, often referred to, the story never regurgitated fully. “Swallow it” is now a tagline or sorts, a quip playfully thrown out during mealtimes whenever anyone gets a bit testy. You mean you liked that movie? A good-natured argument breaks out. “Swallow it!” someone says, our plates long since cleaned. We laugh. My dad honestly says he doesn’t remember saying it. And I now possess an almost compulsive desire to have each bite I take incorporate every single element on my plate. A slice of ham, a segment of pineapple, a trace of sauce, a wedge of potato, a sprig of cabbage. And sure, maybe even a grain of white rice.
(Alternate Title: "Rice of Passage")
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