This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,21

have to sort through their protective wrapping and suss out who they really are. It just makes you that much more likely to peel off your own buffers against the world, to let yourself breathe.

As Jocelyn explains to me the steps of dumpling making, I can’t help but notice that one side of her bottom lip is just a little plumper than the other, and that she has a tiny mole on her left cheek, near her ear.

“Earth to Will, want a pop quiz?” Jocelyn snaps me back from my distraction.

“No need. I got it. Cut off about an inch of dough. Roll it into a ball, flatten it, and use the dowel to thin out the edges while moving it around to make it symmetrical. Put in about a tablespoon of filling. Then you do the twisty thing.”

“Not twist!” Grandma Wu scolds. “Pinch.” She demonstrates the way to crimp the edges of the dumpling wrapper together. Her moves are as perfectly fluid and graceful as a concert pianist’s. I kind of wish we had ESPN here to offer a super-slo-mo replay.

“Do you think you could do that again, maybe not as fast? It looked a lot easier in that Crazy Rich Asians scene,” I say.

“Best way to learn is to do, no to watch,” she insists, waving her dowel. And I prove Jocelyn wrong. My dumplings aren’t lumpy little bags of crap.

They’re lumpy little bundles of crap that pop open and spooge raw pork onto my T-shirt.

After I manage to make four passable jiaozi in the time it takes Jocelyn and her grandmother to make two hundred, we take a break to transfer the dumplings to the walk-in freezer so we can store them for the race. Then we regroup with Grandma Wu and work in assembly-line fashion. We fall into a synchronized swim of movement, my initially awkward motions smoothing out into a clockwork of activity that hums along with the Wus’.

Our rhythm only breaks once, when Mr. Wu comes in after a supply run. He’s glued to his phone and his forehead is furrowed and pinched like one of our jiaozi seams. “… cannot raise rent by ten percent. It unreasonable,” he shouts. “I give you five percent. We have been good tenant for many years.”

He listens for a few minutes, his breath audible in the suddenly quiet room. Beside me, Jocelyn is frozen mid-wrap, straining so hard to hear the conversation that she’s vibrating.

Still listening, Mr. Wu starts shaking his head. “You want to do that? You try. We talk again in July and see what happen.” He jabs his thumb to end the call, his mouth twisted in a rictus of frustration. My reporter’s curiosity is killing me. What’s up with their landlord? Are they really in danger of being kicked out of their space? Mr. Wu puts his left hand over his face and stands there for a second, then storms out of the kitchen to the dining room.

As the swinging door flaps shut, Jocelyn’s shoulders stiffen. Her mouth tightens. And grimly, with increasing speed, she keeps on folding.

Before I know it, we have another five hundred jiaozi cooling in the freezer unit, and we call it a day. My T-shirt is gray with flour and there are spots of grease on my jeans that will take a mighty pretreat to remove. When I get up to wash my hands, my stomach rumbles.

Grandma Wu gets a glint in her eye and barks out some commands in Mandarin. Within minutes she’s shepherded Jocelyn and me to the front and laid out plates like the staff do for their end-of-the-day meal, with side dishes that don’t show up on the menu: smashed cucumber salad, sautéed bok choy, and stir-fried “glass” noodles that Jos says are made from mung beans.

“Why aren’t these noodles on the menu?” I ask as I stuff my mouth. “And these cucumbers? They’re ridiculously good.” They’re obscenely flavorful—salty and sweet, tangy and nutty all at the same time.

“I dunno,” Jos says. She’s barely eaten anything on her plate, using her chopsticks to make a series of mounds with her noodles instead. “My dad just copied the menu my uncle used. Also, mung beans aren’t exactly a big draw here in central New York.”

I nod, but think to myself that the noodles seem like a no-brainer addition—extremely tasty and made from generally low-cost ingredients. On the other hand, I’m beginning to understand that cucumbers are relatively expensive as fresh veggies go. But it could