On a toasty summer afternoon, Dad’s side of the family makes an hour-long drive to my house for a small BBQ. Uncle, Mom’s only relative in attendance, and two of Dad’s sisters huddle around the corner of the kitchen counter, heads bent together as though in conspiracy. A Filipino man and two Jewish women, two halves of my life that are disconnected, like a crossover episode between a sitcom and political thriller. It doesn’t seem like it’ll work, but it somehow it does, because I am here and my sister is here and we’re okay. I am nineteen, fresh into college, and my sister is fifteen, neck-deep in high school politics.
My sister is biking through the quiet neighborhood with our cousin, and I’m watching the Hernaez-Feinberg crossover episode from a sofa in the living room. From my vantage point, I can only make out the centerpiece of their murmured conversation: a plastic container and the dark, cloudy liquid inside. Uncle gestures to the container, probably describing the leftovers of a Filipino dish he made in the afternoon. Curiosity glows on my aunties’ faces. Whatever’s inside, they’ve probably never seen it, and I’ve grown up with it. I don’t know all the names of the Filipi- no recipes that populated my childhood, and if Mom or Uncle ever told me, I’ve forgotten.
Then I overhear one of my aunties say, “That’s a huge egg,” and the low chuckle of my Uncle. He almost sounds evil.
I wander over, unfamiliar with huge eggs in Filipino culture, except for a particular egg, and I don’t think this is that egg because America doesn’t sell it. Or…maybe it does. Surely Asian supermarkets have it.
Uncle withdraws a dark shelled egg from the murky liquid and holds it over a plate. It’s dripping water, and something about its largeness strikes me. I can sense its fullness, like there’s life inside and if he cracks it open, a chick will fall out.
“Is that the pregnant egg thing Mom talked about?” I say, my gut starting to crawl.
Confusion spreads on my aunties’ faces.
“It’s balut,” Uncle says.
“The pregnant egg thing.” Oh no.
“Fertilized duck egg.” Uncle cracks the shell it’s not what I expect. Years ago, when I looked up balut on the internet, the photos showed an embryo, a mass of slimy goop in the shape of a baby duck. Gray, sightless eyes. What comes out the egg is something feathery.
A tsunami rises in my stomach. The aunties lunge backward, hands flying to their pale faces. I can’t hear anything as I stare at the thing that Uncle puts onto the plate. My brain rejects it, refuses to form a memory around this.
“Oh my gosh,” an auntie says. I can’t tell which one. Maybe it’s me.
My aunties stare for several horrified seconds as Uncle talks about how balut is a street food in the Philip- pines and how it can be prepared in different ways and how he prefers to eat it. In voices light as helium, my aunties ask about animal welfare and diseases. As Uncle answers, they get paler and paler, and then they excuse themselves to use the restroom.
“You’re going to eat that?” I say. The tsunami hasn’t quite settled in my stomach. I tell myself this is Mom’s culture. This is my culture. I shouldn’t be repulsed.
“It’s very good,” Uncle says. “Pregnant women eat it to make their babies smart.”
“Are you pregnant?” I say.
Uncle laughs and throws away the egg shell pieces.
Dad comes over, smiling casually, and confronts Uncle about scaring the crap out of my aunties. He wrinkles his nose at the sight of the…duck thing, and though his face is calm, I know he’s pissed by the tension in his gait. In kinder words, Dad tells Uncle to quit screwing around. Uncle smiles, and I have to wonder if he whipped out the dead birdy on purpose.
While Uncle apologizes, his words interspersed with low laughter, I go to the backyard where Mom hangs out with another of Dad’s sisters and her husband. They’re BBQing chicken and steak on the grill.
I wait for a gap in their conversation about my cousin’s middle school pursuits, then tell Mom, “Uncle’s eating balut.”
She sighs. “I told him to wait.”
“Well, he did it and Dad’s pissed. Did you eat balut when you were pregnant with me?” I say.
“No.” Mom smiles.
“Good, ‘cause I was going to say it didn’t work.”
Mom pushes on my head, making me tilt my chin to my chest. It’s her way of playfully scolding me.
Years later, when I ask if she ate balut while pregnant with me, she says, “only the outside part. The liquid, not the duck,” and I will be disappointed. And years from then, I will ask a Filipino exchange student if she had ever eaten balut, she will say she tried but it was too disgusting, and I will be happy.