Waking up flowers

The dough dozed, ready to be stretched and rolled into hua juan, or flower rolls. My grandmother’s nails clinked against the metal bowl as her fingers hugged up the sticky white mound.

Plumes of flour dusted the air as she pounded the mound into the wooden pastry board. Her rough, veined hands smoothed the dough into a bright lump, like a newborn baby cradled in leather. The rolling pin rumbled as my grandmother’s skinny arms brewed a storm of wood against wood, flattening out the dough into a soft sheet.

Unlike my mother, who sneezed at the sight of flour, my grandmother pushed on with silent satisfaction. Her slippers shuffled in and out of the pantry, and she held a careful grip on the bottle of oil. Clear gold pooled onto the dough, and my grandmother folded the corners in and out to give each edge a chance to dip in, until the entire sheet shined. She rubbed in ground spices and she sighed to breathe in their scent.

The light dimmed outside, sharpening my grandmother’s uneven silhouette in the doorway. I don’t know why she needed such a huge knife to cut through such a thin layer of dough, but eventually the sheet separated out into strips.

Outside the rain prevented my grandmother from tending her green onions and chives, but in the kitchen, she could always grow a different sort of garden. One by one, each spongy white ribbon that striped across the board was folded into snug flowers. They bloomed with spices instead of pollen and their oily surfaces gleamed.

My grandmother turned on the stove and tucked the flower rolls into a metal tower. They fell back to sleep in a bed of steam.