I sit straight up in bed and scream at him, “Don’t poke me and don’t call me lazy!”
He stands looking at me, stunned. Lan jumps out of bed and runs to the bathroom.
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he screams back at me.
“I’m tired of this,” I tell him. “It’s not necessary. I’ve got an alarm clock that can wake me up without hurting me, putting me down by calling me lazy.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he says again. He takes a step closer and raises his arm. My mom appears in the doorway, watching. He turns and leaves. I breathe deeply, relieved, hardly believing that I stood up to him—well, really, I only sat up to him. That makes me laugh, all by myself, in my bedroom, sitting on my bed. I sat up to him. I wonder what will happen next.
“You scared me,” Lan says on the way to school.
“Me, or Khanh?”
“You because you made him mad.”
I want to say more to her, but we’re out of the house, in the American part of my life, and it’s too complicated for her to understand in English. Maybe we’ll talk later, about why she says I’m the one who scared her, when it’s Khanh who acts all tough.
The next morning I am surprised to be awakened by the alarm clock, not by Khanh. He doesn’t speak to me for four days, but he also doesn’t poke me and call me lazy anymore.
Some months after Lan has been here, the dream starts again. I awake, trembling. I don’t care about all those ideas about how important it is to let your dreams tell you something. I don’t want this dream! Lan turns on the light, concerned.
“It’s nothing. Only a dream,” I say, trying to discount the fear within me. “Go back to sleep.”
She turns off the light and soon I hear the deep, regular rhythms of Lan’s sleep. Me, I battle sleep, forcing myself to repeat in my head the list of presidents and the dates they held office, from George Washington to now. The arrangement of biological classification. “King Philip Come Out For God’s Sake”—Kingdom, Phylum. Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. The five kingdoms: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Monera—so many living things, how important is the dream of one Homo Sapiens?
I keep myself awake until dawn by pulling facts from my memory, repeating them in my mind, shuffling through them and then refiling them. As the sky grays on its way to dawn, I drift into the sleep my body craves but my soul fears.
In the morning I turn off my alarm and, finally, am overcome by sleep. Lan shakes me gently. “Get up you lazy,” she says, mimicking Khanh, laughing. I drag myself out of bed, knowing all he needs to start his old poking and yelling routine again is for me to oversleep one morning. I jump in the shower, dress, and get to the breakfast table at my usual time.
“Good morning, Trinh. How are you this morning?” Lan asks in the formal beginning English dialogue she’s memorized from her textbook.
“Fine,” I answer in Vietnamese.
After school and dinner and cleanup, I stay up until one in the morning, studying, hoping if I am exhausted by the time I crawl into bed I will not dream. But it comes to me again, the huge waves against the boat, my mother holding me, her face fierce but frightened, and the men closing in around us, reaching for us, and I cry out, suddenly awake, my body stiffened, expecting blows.
“I sometimes dream of my father, too,” Lan says.
I lie there, hovering at the edge of my dream, not understanding what Lan is saying.
“Your father,” Lan says. “When your body trembles, just before you awaken, you call out to him.”
This puzzles me, but I don’t want to pursue it. It is bad enough that I have no privacy in my waking life. At least I would like to keep my sleeping life to myself.
“I am afraid I will never see my father alive again,” Lan says in a sleepy voice. “But at least I have known him. I know this is very selfish of me, but I was relieved to leave home. I was afraid of seeing him die. I know he is dying. I miss my mother so much, but I live in hope that I will see her again. I think, though, I must have said good-bye to my poor father forever.”
Lan must be almost asleep. She is rambling in a dreamy way. I am only half listening, longing for sleep and afraid of it, when she says, “I’ve been afraid of seeing my father die ever since I was very young, when my mother told me of how you, my cousin, had witnessed the death of your father.”
My whole being awakens. I hold my breath, listening to the story I knew but didn’t know, the story beyond the dream, as Lan continues her slow, captivating reverie.
“Always I was interested in my American cousins, because I had no more cousins in Vietnam. I would ask my mother to tell me stories of you and your brother and Auntie Mai’s children and I would beg to come join you. She would only say, ‘Soon.’ When I would ask how soon, she would talk of other things.”
I listen very carefully, waiting for her story to turn again to my father. I am afraid that if I ask, she will realize there are secrets, and she will close up, as my mother and brother used to close up when I was young enough to hope for answered questions.
Lan continues in her sleepy way, “One day when I kept pestering my mother about when we could come live near you, she said we had to wait until we could leave legally, not risk the dangers of trying to escape by boat. I cried, saying I wanted to see my cousins right then.
“That is when she told me of the pirates, and how they tied your brother to a railing at the front of the boat. Then, at the back, they beat your father to death in front of you and your mother.
“She told me your mother tried to cover your eyes, and one of the pirates took her hands from your face, so you could see it all, and of how your mother said your screams and hers must have followed your father all the way to heaven. And they were no more or less than the screams of many mothers and many children, who witnessed horrors too terrible to be remembered.”
I am crying now, screaming as I must have when my mother’s hands were pulled from my eyes. My mother and Khanh rush into the room, my mother reaching for me, pulling me into her arms, holding me in a fierce embrace. In my mind I see what I’ve not seen in my dream, my father, beaten lifeless, lying bloody and still before my three-year-old eyes, and I cry out to him as I must have cried out then.
My mother is now, as in my sleeping visions, crying, praying, rocking, holding me so tight I can barely breathe, and in the grip and the rocking I feel her protection. I feel her love.
“It is over, it is over,” she chants. My sobs are uncontrollable, crazed. Khanh stands at the foot of the bed, his face drained of color. Lan is standing by the door, watching, trembling. Slowly the pain that must cry out subsides.
“It is over. It is over,” my mother repeats.
I don’t know if it is over or not, but in the depths of my darkness I see a dull light spreading. I understand now that I must seek my own light, and that my mother cannot help me reach beneath the surface. It is not that she doesn’t care. It is that there are places she must not revisit.
“I’m all right,” I tell her. “I am all right.” We sit on the bed in silence, still touching. She reaches for Khanh, and he takes her hand.
“You couldn’t help it,” she says, and I know then the shame he must have felt, at fifteen, when he could not save his father. And I understand the desperate drive with which he struggles to keep me under control, protected from all of the real and imagined dangers of America.
I go to Lan, who is still standing stiff and scared in the doorway. I put my arms around her and whisper, first in Vietnamese and then in English, “Thank you, Cousin.” The moment I say those words, I know I’m going to stop dividing my life into Vietnamese at home and American everywhere else. That has been the biggest put down of all, and I’ve done it to myself, by pretending to be some kind of Twinkie-girl joke. But I’m beginning to see what is right for me. All of the influences on my life are a part of me, American and Vietnamese, family and friends, good times and bad. Finally, I realize that I’m a person who must
not fear dreams. I must reach below surfaces and look beyond dreams.
Uncle Tweetie
***
Aunt Vicky comes out with a tray of iced tea and cookies.
“I thought you boys could use a little cooling off about now,” she says. “Josh?” She holds a glass out to me and I take it.
“Thanks, Vee,” I say, using the nickname I’ve had for her since before I could say Aunt Vicky. I set my hammer on the sawhorse beside me. I’m dripping wet from the heat, and from working so hard.
“It’s coming along, isn’t it?” she says, running her hand along the new drywall seam, then handing the other glass of iced tea to Rick, my brother.
“Great,” Rick says, smiling. “We’ll finish the walls today. I guess it’ll be another week or so before we’re done with everything.”
Rick is going to be living up here, in San Luis Obispo with our aunt, so he can go to Cal Poly. My folks said they couldn’t afford to send Rick away to college, but when my aunt offered to let him stay in a little room at the back of her property, my parents agreed to let him go. That was good news for me. I’ve been trying to get Rick out of my room ever since Dad moved him in about twelve years ago. When my dad started his own business, he took over one of our bedrooms for an office. Rick’s a nice enough guy, I guess. But he thinks he can boss me around just because he’s two years older than I am. And he’s a slob. It’ll be a relief not to have to smell his sweaty socks and T-shirts all the time. He has this habit of tossing everything into a comer until it practically rots and then, when my mom refuses to let him borrow her car until his laundry is caught up, he does a mammoth wash. So for about two days a month our room doesn’t stink. But things will be different from now on.
When I leave here in a week or two, I’ll go home to my own private room, with my own private stereo. My dad promised me a new stereo for all the work I’m doing up here on my aunt’s place.
“I just can’t believe the change in this place,” Vee says, looking around the room.
It really was a mess when we first got here. Someone had lived in it a long time ago, before Vee moved into the front house. But nothing had been done to it for years. The ceiling tiles were all rotted out because of a leak in the roof. The floor tiles were messed up, too. Water had seeped into the walls, and if you leaned against the wrong spot, your hand would go right through the wall. We’ve been working steadily from morning to night since we got here a week ago, and it’s beginning to show.
The first thing we did was check out the electrical connections and hook up Rick’s stereo. Then we started making repairs. My dad does remodeling and we’ve been helping him on jobs for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt, going to a job on Saturday when my friends are off having fun, but at least I know how to fix stuff.
Sometimes in the late afternoon we take a break for a quick swim at Avila beach. Man, that is cold water compared to the beaches down south. And the waves are little, no challenge. But it’s refreshing. After that, we go back to Vee’s and work until dark.
“Have some more cookies,” Vee says. “Keep your energy up.”
I grab three more. I don’t want to seem like a pig, but I could easily eat about two dozen of these things right now.
“When do you register for classes?” Vee asks Rick.
“I see an advisor on the twelfth.”
“I’m glad this is working out for you,” she says.
“Me, too,” Rick says. “It’s really important to me to be able to go away to college. Thanks, Auntie Vee,” he says, smiling the smile that some girls find charming.
“Hey, I’m getting plenty out of this deal besides the pleasure of your company. Having this room fixed up probably adds thousands of dollars to my property value.”
“We’re all happy,” I say. “I finally get Rick out of my room.”
“Your room?” Rick says.
“It is now,” I laugh. “I can hardly wait to get back home—put my new posters up on the walls, get my own stereo set up, hear my own music. Not have to be hearing that old-timey jazz stuff that you always play.”
“Yeah, now you can listen to Michael Jackson all the time,” he says sarcastically. I swear, I liked Michael Jackson for about a week once, and Rick won’t ever let me forget it.
“And you can listen to redneck music,” I say.
“Hey, watch it, Josh,” Vee says. “Don’t start insulting my music now. We may not be as sophisticated up here as you folks are down in Southern California, but we’ve got music with heart.”
“You’re just like Mom,” I say, nodding at the ancient wreck of a Toyota parked in the driveway. “You put more money into Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson CDs than you do into your cars.”
She laughs. “Your mom and I have to keep in touch with our roots, Josh.”
The phone rings in Vee’s house and she walks quickly out the door and across the yard. Rick and I get back to work. We’ve just one more drywall panel to install and that part of the job will be over. That’s the hardest part. The floor tiles will be easy, then we’ll paint, replace a broken window, and put on a new front door. I think that will be it.
It’s nearly five now, and cooler. One thing I’ll say for San Luis Obispo, the air is fresh, not all smoggy like at home. It feels good to take a deep breath and not feel like you’re poisoning yourself just by breathing.
“This is going to be so cool,” Rick says. “My own little pad. I think I’ll get one of those futon things, and a couple of bright colored pillows. We should have about a hundred bucks left even after we buy paint.”
I can’t believe Rick the slob has his mind on interior decoration. I’m looking to see if maybe he’s suffered some kind of heat stroke when I hear the creak of the screen door again.
“That was my cousin, Precious,” Vee says. “Aunt Chickee died this morning.”
At first I don’t understand what she’s talking about. The people next door have chickens. Did one of them die? But Vee looks like she’s trying not to cry. This probably isn’t about a chicken. I just stand there, looking at my hammer. I really hope she doesn’t cry. I never know what to do when people cry.
“Aunt Chickee from Arkansas?” Rick says.
“Yes,” she sighs. “I just feel so sorry for Uncle Tweetie. You remember them, don’t you?” she asks, looking back and forth between me and Rick.
“You probably don’t remember him,” she says to me. “I think you were only about three when we all made that trip to Arkansas. But you probably remember some, don’t you, Rick?”
“I remember getting car sick and throwing up on Josh,” he says. God, I remember that too, now.
“Thanks for the reminder,” I say, sarcastically.
Vee laughs. “We were in that old Dodge van of your dad’s. No air conditioning, and you guys fought all the way across the state of Texas. That’s probably the reason I decided never to have kids,” she says.
We laugh again, and then she turns away. I guess she’s crying, but I don’t know if it’s because of this Aunt Chickee person, or because she never had kids. She’d have been a really good mom. I don’t think us fighting was the reason she didn’t have kids. I think she knew her husband was a butthole, and she knew what a rotten father he’d be. She finally left him about ten years ago. That’s when she moved up here.
“I told Precious I’d call your mom and let her know, too,” Vee says, walking back toward the house.
Rick and I stand watching her for a minute, then turn back to our work.
“Maybe I do remember him,” Rick says. “I think he’s the one who let me sit on his lap and steer his car all the way into town one day. I liked him. And Aunt Chickee took me with her when she milked the cow. Man, that was creepy. I stopped drinking milk until we got back home to the stuff that came in cartons.”
By seven o’clock we’re finished taping the last piece of drywall. We go into the house to wash up.
“We’re going to go get some pizza,
Vee,” I say. “Want some?”
She sighs. “No, thank you. I’m not very hungry right now.”
“Did you call Mom?” Rick asks.
“Yes. She’s worried about Tweetie, too. You know, when your mom and I were kids, after our dad died, Uncle Tweetie and Aunt Chickee used to have us spend summers with them. Uncle Tweetie was kind of like a second dad to us . . . he’s eighty-seven years old, and he’s all alone now.”
At the restaurant, over pizza, we start laughing about the names of relatives on my mom’s side of the family.
“What, is this the bird family or something? Tweetie and Chickee?” I laugh. “What’s the name of that place where they live?”
“Flat Hill, Arkansas,” Rick says, choking on his soda.
“They should live in Aviary, Arkansas,” I say.
“There’s that other guy mom told us about, too,” Rick says. “Uncle . . .” he can’t say it for laughing. “Uncle . . .” I don’t even know what’s so funny and I’m laughing so hard I can hardly catch my breath. Finally, Rick blurts out for the whole restaurant to hear, “GOOBER! UNCLE GOOBER!”
Now we’ve totally lost it. The waitress is watching us like
maybe we’re dangerous. I can’t help it.
“I think they named him after a peanut,” Rick says.
“Or boogers,” I say, prompting another loud burst of laughter from Rick.
When we get back home I go to Vee’s house to shower. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with a box of photos in front of her.
“Come look at this,” she says, holding a photo out for me to see. “There’s Uncle Tweetie and Aunt Chickee, and me and your mom in front. I think we were nine and ten there.”
I peer intently at the two little girls, Vee and my mom, trying to see what remains of them in the grown-ups I know today.
“There’s Uncle Goober and his boy, Taft Hartley, standing next to Tweetie . . . both of them are gone now, too,” she says sadly.
I look through the pictures with her, listening to her stories.
Beyond Dreams Page 14