Frozen Momos by Rachana Pathak
In her flash-length essay, “Frozen Momos,” Rachana Pathak drops the reader immediately into an active scene. Water is boiling, “hissing on the stove, making a mess the way things do when no one is watching.” This is a clever nod to the art of creative nonfiction: someone is always watching, spying in on even the most private moments, as documented by the narrator. The entirety of this slice-of-life essay takes place inside the narrator’s Brooklyn apartment as she attempts to boil dumplings, or momos, the way that her mother taught her. However, the commonplace diversions of everyday life seep in, and shape this essay into something larger and more complicated. Just as each momo is “its own small trembling country” where “borders had to hold,” the newscaster speaks “of how nations held together, how walls kept danger out.” For the narrator, one does not exist without the other.
The narrator provides us with sensory signals that divert her attention from the task at hand: a newscaster on television whose “words crept into the corners of the room,” and a siren that signaled “someone else’s emergency that for a moment sounded like mine.” A knock on the door. The smell of Thai food. Pathak describes this in her author’s note: “The interruption at the door reflects how threat appears in everyday life: without spectacle, easy to misread, quickly absorbed into the day.” But the interactions with these “threats” (specifically here, threats to having her momos boil without complication) also give us insight to who the narrator is. About her neighbor, the narrator says, “I wish I had asked her name, though I would not have used it.” The reader has not learned just about where the narrator lives, but about how she lives.
In the craft essay “Landscape as Character,” Sarah Leamy writes, “Our responses to place come from our ideas and reactions to/for visual beauty, a drive for comfort, home, psychological, physical needs… The environment affects us and characters, storylines and atmosphere. It’s all related; you can’t split one from another.” The narrator of Rachana Pathak’s essay can no sooner separate herself from the sights and sounds of her living space than the momos can from the boiling water that threatens at every moment to break them apart. —CRAFT
The water spilled over the rim, hissing on the stove, making a mess the way things do when no one is watching. I turned down the flame, wiped the counter, and cleaned what could be cleaned. The bubbles subsided. From the freezer, I pulled out a bag stiff with frost. Fifteen pale crescents, folded and waiting. I had bought them months ago in Jackson Heights for nights like this, when the news grew too loud. Frozen was easy. Raw required intention, and intention could wound.
The man on the television spoke of how nations held together, how walls kept danger out. His words crept into the corners of the room, coating the tile and kettle alike. I wiped the counter again, as if that could erase him. The ticker scrolled raids, lawsuits, a storm moving east. Names appeared, then vanished. Below, a siren rose and fell, someone else’s emergency that for a moment sounded like mine.
I placed the momos on the steamer tray, careful not to let them touch. Each one its own small trembling country. The borders had to hold. That was the rule, older than us. Hold or be lost. My mother said the trick was in the pinch. My brother never managed it. His always split, spilling their insides. “Don’t crowd them,” she’d told me. She meant more than she said.
At five minutes, the lid rattled. Left too long, they would rupture, leak their hearts, and collapse into ruin. The pot hissed; I flinched. The chair behind me held a pile of clothes I hadn’t worn anywhere. I poured a glass of wine and drank, not for joy. Food meant for sharing, eaten alone, changes shape in the mouth.
At nine minutes, I lifted the lid. Steam rose into my face. The momos looked sealed and obedient. Everything had held for once.
Then came the knocking, soft at first, then steady, as if it had a right. I waited. It came again. I opened the door. A man stood in the hall, breathing hard, hoodie damp, plastic bags in his hands.
“4B?”
I shook my head, and he turned away. The smell of food lingered. Across the hall, a woman opened her door and music spilled into the corridor.
“Thai?” I asked, naming the smell.
“Yes.”
She smiled politely. For a moment, the hallway brightened with what could have been said. Then her door closed. I wish I had asked her name, though I would not have used it.
Back in the kitchen, the pot shook. The momos had burst, their skins torn, their bellies undone. Shreds of cabbage and cubes of tofu clung to the tray. A slow undoing. I had tried to follow the rules, yet they still came apart.
I turned off the burner. The water stilled. The air smelled of dough and salt, and of something once whole. For a moment, I was in another kitchen, my brother beside me, elbows on the counter, our fingers gummy with flour, shaping dough into small promises. My mother’s voice behind us: “Don’t crowd them. Give them space.” Then it was gone.
The man on the television kept talking, as if the truth belonged to him. I turned him down, not off, as if muting him might change what was true. The apartment returned to its rented brightness. Inside the microwave, the sesame paste had spun and splattered the walls.
The smell of dough clung to my fingers. I wiped them on my jeans. It stayed. It always stayed.
I poured the cloudy water down the sink. It gulped, as if swallowing a secret. The timer rang, though nothing was left to save. I laid the torn momos on a plate. They looked like evidence of care or of failure. I ate one anyway, just skin and salt, the taste familiar and foreign, a memory translated poorly.
Outside, footsteps climbed the stairwell. Someone laughed. Another door shut. A siren circled the block, turned left on Twelfth, past the deli, and faded. Or maybe it did not. The plate cooled. The man kept talking. I waited for him to stop, knowing he would not. The news moved to weather, to storms moving east, outside, inside, everywhere.
RACHANA PATHAK is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the City College of New York. Her work has appeared in Peatsmoke Journal, Fractured Lit, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), and others. She is working on a collection of shorts about the Nepali diaspora. Find her on Instagram @plantistan.
Featured image by Charles Chen, courtesy of Unsplash.
