She carried the two bowls back to the side where I was sitting. I looked at her, "They didn't want it?"

    "They said the soup went bad." Before I knew what to say, she continued, "It's like that. It's because my father puts in chicken bones to cook it." She listed other ingredients I love in my soup. "Sometimes they love it and others think that it's rotten. There's nothing you can do about what they say they taste."

    Her son was playing with Spanish flash cards on the floor. Throughout our conversation, she kept scolding that he was causing them to lose business because he was playing in the front. We both watched as Peruvians would stop at the entrance to look at the large menu with pictures, peek inside, and continue walking. She carried her daughter on her back and when she had fallen asleep, placed her to rest in the seat across from me, wrapped in a blanket. After a while, she became busy trying to get her husband to stop fixing the furniture at the front of her restaurant.  

#diaspora #peru #chinatown #food
#narrative #nonfiction