A few weeks ago Emma and I went out to a Japanese family-style dinner at Tonden, a restaurant down the street on Rte. 12. In the spirit of trying as many restaurants as possible before the snow walls us in, we parked our bikes out front and got a booth. The booths were tatami style and the place was brightly lit and comfortable. There were other patrons with big cast iron bowls of soup, empty beer mugs, wearing work clothes.
The menu was an array of sets; sobas, sashimis, sushis, soups, rices. I’m very fond of menus with pictures you generally know what you’re getting when you order. Occasionally what looks like a simple egg custard is a fishy and gelatinous soup. Or what appears to be cooked shrimp is actually raw and recently dearmored.
These meals were huge. I got the green soba with BBQ eel donburi. The egg on top of the rice and eel was new to me. The egg whites were foamy and cold, as if the egg had been lightly steamed.
Emma and I chatted, about schools, about teaching, about our students. She began picking through her bowl of sashimi and we talked about our apartments, winter supplies we still needed, about speaking Japanese. She uncoiled her shrimp and left it alone. I was watching her food as she picked at it and so was she. Suddenly we saw something. The talk stopped. Our eyes and mouths simultaneously grew wide. “Did you see that?” she asked.
“Uh… yeah,” I said.
The shrimp moved.
It curled its little spindly legs underneath itself. Protecting it’s already stripped underbelly. A quick and near-furtive movement to yank onto survival.
“Is it… still alive?” I asked.
“Christ, I have no idea,” Emma said. She poked at it with her chopstick.
“I thought they atleast flash boil those things. You know… to kill them. Are they still alive when you rip their tails off and the exofacialskeleton? Are they staring at you when you as you eat the bodies of their companions?” I asked.
“Oh my God, would you shut up? You’re freaking me out,” Emma said.
We both watched the shrimp for more signs of life as we both chatted about sashimi in general. I thought its pinkness suggested it had been boiled, slightly. I’ve had sashimi shrimp, its cold and fatty, the texture smooth and rich. Emma said that these types of shrimp are naturally pink. Their eyes are literal black beads followed by long and searching antennae. I watched those antennae fearful that they would move, that they would locate our emotions, the sympathies and fear that we tossed on that “dead” shrimp. It would sense our weakness and use that against us. To escape.
Emma said, “Take it away. I can’t look at it. Can we ask the waitress to take it away?”
“That would sound strange wouldn’t it?”
“I just can’t look at it anymore. It’s making me sick.”
I picked up the shrimp. There was some trouble. The body was slippery, the head kept slipping through the wooden sticks and the shrimp kept falling back into the bowl. Finally I caught it. It was limp inbetween my chopsticks. I placed it into an empty bowl and Emma covered it with another. We realized we made a small, spherical shaped coffin.
“I feel like we ought to give it a name,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s almost like a pet now we’ve been talking about it for so long,” Emma said.
Shrimpie, Emma suggested. How about Zombie Shrimp? I offered. Too literal, Emma said. It was a girl shrimp, I saw the leftover eggs under its skin. Okay, how about Paula, I said. No, no, no. Emma was right, there needed to be a better name, something that fit. Brenda the Ebi? Juanita? Isis?
“I know,” Emma said. “Amy Winehouse.”
And so we christened the undead, little sea creature and said a little prayer. Emma dropped a curl of daikon on the top of the bowl, followed by a shiso leaf. It looked pleasant in front of us while we tried to finish our meals. Though, it was challenging trying to keep the imagination from conjuring images of Amy’s antennae flicking in and out of the crack between the bowls. Pink strands searching for an oceanic home.
Explaining the new table decoration to the waitress was a little amusing. For us, atleast. Emma told her that we saw the shrimp move. At first the waitress suggested that it was a good sign of the foods freshness. “Food doesn’t move back home,” Emma said.
All in all, Amy Winehouse has becomes a pretty good story around here. Emma’s told her friends back in New Zealand and now I’m telling you. To think, earlier that morning, there was a little shrimp swimming in the sea that had no idea she would later that day be named for a fantastic, if not troubled, British siren.
