Amber

An Essay About Watching Myself Burn in the Kitchen

I was seasoning the wok. Giving it the old spa treatment in oil.

I rolled the oil over the carbon steel, over the flame, until the metal scorched. Until it changed color. It was a brand-new wok, ordered from Tane Chang’s Wok Shop in San Francisco. A big boy, twenty inches across, that was tinny and silver until I roasted it over flame.

It grew dark, nearly obsidian. 

That’s when I poured the oil out of the wok and all over my hand. 

I didn’t feel it at first. I saw it. 

The oil was the color of the rusty suede of my grandmother's favorite chair in my childhood house. I saw her hands propped on the arms. Her salmon nail polish. The slight crooked bend in her pinky fingers, a doily behind her head. My mother liked that chair, which is why she put a doily right where my grandmother laid her dirty, oily head. 

“She doesn’t like to clean herself,” my mother snarked when grandma wasn’t listening. Or really, even when grandma was listening. 

Mom washed the doilies weekly, religiously. She couldn’t bear not to. 

The oil slipped over the flabby crack between my thumb and first finger. 

I thought: I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt. 

I saw the river of oil break over my skin, more of it splattering the air and landing on my other hand. I could see the string lights, strung around my kitchen, popping light through the drops. Amber is the color.

The amber of a red curry. 

That was the color of the drops on my hands. Both of them. 

But I was invincible. 

The drops were nothing more than curry, I told myself. A pan splatter. Droplets of emulsified galangal, garlic, shrimp paste, lemongrass, the zest of a lime to lift it, a handful of the best-smelling spices, and dried red peppers—not fresh, because you want the pepper to be a little dull, a little desiccated, a little bloomy. Then it all goes from bright fucking red to sun-ball amber with the addition of white, ameliorating, grace-giving, forgiveness-making drizzles of coconut milk. 

I thought: If I licked my skin, I would know the curry. 

I dropped the wok. An instinct, self-preservation. A clatter, then more oil spraying me.

“I’m okay,” I thought. 

My body moved on its own, taking me and my stupid, lagging brain with it. It directed me to put my hands under cold water. I flung myself under the cold water at the sink. I held it there. How long could I hold my hands under water to stave off the pain? Could I sleep, curled up on the counter top, hands immersed in a bowl of ice water all night? I calculated how many times I’d have to wake myself—or would the pain wake me? Yes. It would do the job—four times an hour. Times that by eight hours…

I pictured myself laying on the counter. 

The last time I laid on the counter, I was eleven, maybe. I draped my hair in the sink. I laid there, long and uncomfortable on formica. 

Mom washed my long stringy hair twice a week, religiously. She couldn’t bear not to. 

I had about three seconds of running water at the sink before the adrenaline washed backwards. Before it exposed the pain. 

That’s when my skin seized and bubbled. 

+++++

I had questions: 

• Is this what it starts to feel like to be burned alive? 

• Will the burn keep eating away at my skin?

• Am I burning alive as we speak? 

It felt that way. 

The pain was exquisite. 

Later, I Googled immolation and learned that “the pain is greatest at the beginning, before the flame burns the nerves. After that the burned skin does not hurt.”

Little consolation. My nerve endings were fine. 

It was only later that my skin peeled off in layers. Blisters formed. Puffy skin clouds filled with liquid dared me to bust them open, which I did without meaning to, the first time I went to cook eggs. We scrolled to determine how serious this was. David and I conferred about second degree versus third degree. There was an emergency run to Walgreens for burn cream and bandages, and discussions about going or not going to the hospital. 

We decided:  Three hours in the ER might be worse than the burns themselves. 

My son, Raffi, asked that I not season the woks again. 

We both know I will. 

My woks are beautiful. Especially my 20 inch. They hang over the butcher block in my kitchen. Like victory medals, like soldiers, like mercenaries. Like dolls that offer me community and solace.

The woks are this uniform loveliness, oily and shining.