Kitchen Chaos Read Online Free Page B

the warning—the rest of her must be in the kitchen because the smell of garlic and ginger is filling the front hall. The trouble is, since we just moved in a few weeks ago, we haven’t put any rugs down yet, and the old wood floors are freezing cold.
    â€œThey are off, Mama,” I lie, tiptoeing to the stairs so I can run up to my room and grab my slippers. There’s no fooling my mother, of course, no matter how often I try.
    â€œI hear the clop, clop, clop like a horse,” she says, stepping into the hallway and waving a bamboo spatula at my feet. “Off!”
    I do what she says and then dash upstairs for my slippers. Unlike the rest of the house, my room is a mess, but I find the slippers right where I left them this morning, one sticking out from under the comforter and the other in the laundry basket. When we moved, my parents let Katie and me get all new furniture and decorate our bedrooms ourselves. But even though I really like all of my new stuff, nothing about this place feels like “my room” or “my house”—at least not yet.
    It’s a decent-looking house, I guess, with four floors and gardens in the front and back. And Park Slope seems like an okay neighborhood. But my house is back home in San Francisco, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and a secret stairway right outside my bedroom leading down to the kitchen. My house is just up the street from my best friend, Sierra, and three blocks away from my cousin Chloe. My house is where I learned to walk and read and where everyone in the neighborhood came over for a big party every Chinese New Year.
    Only the smells of our new place remind me of home. As soon as we moved to New York, my mother took Katie and me to Chinatown to find the shops that sell her favorite herbs and spices, lumpy vegetables and dried mushrooms, fish and other things that, trust me, you don’t even want to know about. My mother is a biologist—she studies the way mice behave when you interrupt their sleep or blindfold them, that sort of thing—but cooking is her real passion. She’s taking a year off from the lab because of the big move, and she can’t be happy unless her kitchen is stocked with ingredients and at least twopots are simmering on the stove. The boxes labeled COOKWARE were the first ones to be unpacked when we moved into our new house.
    With my feet now cozy in my yellow fuzzy slippers, I grab a pile of paper and some pencils and head downstairs to set up my supplies at the kitchen table. Liza and Frankie are coming over to work on our social studies project, and I want to have everything ready. It’ll just be the three of us, but my mother is cooking enough food for the entire seventh grade. Right now there are xiā jiăo (shrimp dumplings) boiling, bean thread noodles sautéing, and some kind of whole fish baking in the oven. I told her not to go overboard, but she couldn’t help herself.
    â€œThey are your first friends in Brooklyn,” she said. “I will not allow them to go home hungry. Besides, food is strength. You will need it for your assignment.” Even though my mother has lived in the U.S. for decades, she still believes that the “Chinese way” is the best way, and it’s like she has a hard drive in herbrain full of old sayings and proverbs for pretty much every situation. There’s no arguing with her about food or homework, so I don’t even try. I just hope that Liza and Frankie are hungry—and that they like Chinese food.
    The doorbell rings and I run to answer it. I’m still not used to the skinny hallway that leads to the front door—you practically have to hold your breath just to squeeze by the stairs.
    â€œOh my God, what is that smell?” Liza asks as soon as I open the door. “I could smell it halfway down the block!”
    â€œOh, that’s just my mother. She’s making us something to eat,” I say,