A Day at the Pulled-Candy Kitchen: The Five A.M. Batch and the Thumb I Burned Thinking About Something Else

5:10

The pot of sugar is at a low simmer. I stand next to the stove with a long wooden paddle in my hand, and the smell of lightly scorched sugar spreads through the little kitchen, so sweet that after a minute I can taste it in my mouth.

Friday. Two batches today, the first for the afternoon order, the second to hold until Saturday morning. I've made pulled candy for seventeen years, and every morning starts with not being allowed to go anywhere. Turn your back on cooking sugar and it burns. The pot doesn't ask me to think about anything, only to stand there.

I stir slowly. Big bubbles rise on the surface and shrink, the color moving from pale yellow to amber. The paddle gets a little heavier every minute. I notice my hand knows before my eyes: it feels the sugar thicken before I see it.

6:40

I pour the sugar out onto the stone counter. Quý, my younger cousin who helps out, stands on the other side with his hands clasped behind his back, like someone waiting for an order.

"Is it ready?"

"Not yet."

"Now?"

"Touch the back of your hand. When you set the sugar on it and it's hot but you can stand it, then it's ready."

I know that answer sounds like a trade secret, but there isn't any secret. The heat differs every morning, depending on the weather, the stone, even the pot. The only thing that's right is to ask your hand.

I plunge both hands into toasted rice flour, lift the slab of sugar, and right then it tells me it's still hot. I set it down, wait twenty more breaths, try again. Hot but bearable. Now we pull.

Let me say this here to be sure: hot sugar burns fast. When it's too hot, let go, don't tough it out. My hands have had seventeen years of scars to remind me.

I loop the candy over the steel hook, pull it out, fold it back, pull it out, fold it back. The color clouds from amber, goes pale, then turns ivory. As it pulls, the candy sticks to the hook with a very faint sound, tak, tak, and I think about nothing but my two hands. On a morning like this, I know for sure I'm here.

8:20

The first batch is done, laid out on trays. I pick up a ribbon and snap it. On the underside of the ribbon there are a few cloudy patches, with tiny grains like sand.

"Is it because I let the sugar cool too long?" Quý asks, looking about to cry.

"I don't know."

I tell him the truth. Some days I do exactly the same thing, same flame, same hands, and the sugar still turns grainy. Some days I change everything and it stays clear. Seventeen years, and I still can't name the moment it changes its mind. I push the cloudy tray aside, to sell cheap later, and tell Quý to go get water.

The boy goes. I stand a little longer, looking at the cloudy ribbon under the light. It's ugly. But in that ugliness I see each grain more clearly than in any of the pretty ribbons.

10:30

Second batch. I'm pulling steadily, Quý beside me cutting. My phone rings in my apron pocket.

I pin it between shoulder and ear, because my hands are busy. On the other end is a customer from the district market asking about the weekend price. I answer, calculate, tally the order in my head, talking and pulling at the same time.

"Dear, can I take another twenty packs this week?"

"Sure, sure, let me work it out..."

Right then, my left thumb touched a drop of sugar that had fallen near the edge of the hook.

Hot. Very hot. I jerked my hand away and dropped the phone onto the tile.

"Sister," Quý called out, sharp.

"I'm fine. I'm fine."

I stood there, thumb gone red with a white dot. I held it under the tap, cool water, my ears still ringing with the customer's voice from the line a moment ago. I ran water over it a long time. No blister, only a sting. If it had blistered badly I'd have gone to a clinic and not tried to tough it out.

That's where I went wrong. Not because I took a call, but because I let my hands do the most dangerous job of my day while my head was already inside an order at the district market. My hands kept pulling, kept steady, just like every morning, and that's the frightening part: they stay steady when nobody's watching.

I don't know why I took that call today. Every other day I let the phone buzz and call back later. Today I thought, "just a moment."

12:30

Lunch at the little table by the back door. Rice with braised fish and a bowl of soup. My thumb throbs every time I pick up the chopsticks.

Funny thing is, today I eat very slowly, because there's no faster way. For the first time all week I notice the whole meal: each grain of rice, the small fish bone, the click of chopsticks on the bowl. The pain keeps me with my hands.

I don't know whether to call that a good thing. Probably not. But it's also true that today my hands were present at a meal.

14:10

The neighbor's little girl, about six, is propping her chin at the back door crack, waiting for candy scraps like every afternoon. I snap off a piece and set it in her hand. She doesn't put it in her mouth right away but holds it up to the light.

"Auntie, it's got a star shape."

I look. A scrap really does have corners like a tiny star. Seventeen years I've broken thousands of scraps like it, and this is the first time anyone's pointed it out to me.

15:00

Cutting the candy. Each long white ribbon gets rolled thin, then cut with a broad knife into small, even pieces. The sound of the knife on the wooden board, clack, clack, clack. It's my favorite sound of the day, because it's steady and because it tells me my cutting is steady.

At one point I put the knife down, tip pointing inward, not near the edge, and stand listening to the quiet after the last clack. Only about three breaths. Quý looks at me and doesn't ask.

17:45

Cleaning up. Washing the sugar pot is my least favorite job, because scorched sugar sticks to the bottom and has to soak in hot water before it lets go. Today I don't mind. I stand at the basin and bring my hand up to my nose. The malt smell is still on my fingers, sweet and slightly burnt.

I remember someone telling me, back when I was an apprentice: "Keep at it long enough and you find out your hands know more than your head." I never thought of that as a warning. Now I think it's both.

This is a relative of the moment of washing the dishes without thinking of anything else, except that here, if my mind goes elsewhere, the price lands right on my finger. And if all you have is three seconds in the middle of a day, three seconds of mindfulness is the shortest version.

Before bed

My thumb has settled. I leave the phone in the front room, face down, next to the pot I finished washing.

Tomorrow the sugar will be boiling again at five.