by Andrew Lanh
Nervous as hell, he froze in the doorway, then stumbled in, bending to take off his spotless blue-and-gold sneakers and carefully putting them aside. An elaborate ritual, untying each lace, folding the laces in, lining the shoes up as if in a store display window. So stylized a procedure that we stopped, enthralled, watching. Worried, he picked up the shoes, held them up in front of his chest, and then, spotting a pile of shoes on a mat nearby, positioned them there—neatly, next to each other, at the edge of the mat. He smiled at me.
Hank led him into the kitchen where he blinked rapidly as he looked from one person to the next. His goggle eyeglasses kept slipping down his nose. Under the overhead light, the bruises on his cheek and his purplish black eye were fresh, scary, made dramatic by the eyeglasses.
Leaving the counter where she’d been chopping ginger into miniscule flecks, Grandma approached him, smiling, for a brief second touching his bruised cheek lovingly. “Xin chao.” Welcome. In English: “I wanted to meet you. The boy I see all over TV.”
Said, the words startled Hank, who flushed, stammered. His mother, her back to the counter as she spooned oil into a wok, started to speak but changed her mind. Yet Dustin wasn’t bothered. He nodded back at Grandma. A tiny woman with a head of ivory white curls under a lace bonnet, she stood eye-to-eye with the short boy, and he stared back at her, muttering a hesitant thanks. Cam on. A half-bow, awkward. But Grandma suddenly grasped his elbow, tugged at him, and with an infectious laugh led him to a chair. “Sit, sit. We are all family here.”
Dustin’s expression suggested he didn’t believe a word of that, but he welcomed the chance to sit down, spine erect, hands folded in his lap.
Hank made the introductions, ending with, “And of course you know Rick, I think. He was not invited but the aroma of homemade cooking always draws him from the street.”
“Shush,” his mother said as she gently rapped him on the shoulder. “A comedian—he should be on TV.” She stopped, alarmed by her own words. A nervous glance at Dustin. “I mean…I mean on TV…”
Hank saved her. “Mom, it’s all right.” He reached out and touched her wrist.
Hank’s father walked in, followed by Grandpa, who seemed unhappy there were strangers in the house. Dutifully, Dustin sprang to his feet, half-bowed, and shook their hands. Strangely, he introduced himself as Anh Ky and not Dustin. The Old Country, I thought, respect for elders. Surprisingly, Hank’s father gripped Dustin’s forearm and thanked him for coming. I caught Hank’s eye—this was an unexpected wrinkle. But Grandpa, who barely tolerated me as the impure mongrel feasting on his bounty, simply grunted and sat down, grasping some chopsticks between his fingers.
Hank caught my eye again and mouthed: That went well. I told you so.
I ignored him.
I sat back, breathed in the smells of the Nguyen kitchen. Today the pungent scent of chopped ginger covered the room. At the counter Grandma whacked the brown tubers until glistening bits and pieces of dull gold speckled her cutting board.
I followed Dustin’s eyes as he surveyed the room—the walls covered with calendars from Asian marketplaces, a redundancy that bothered no one at all. Above the knotty-pine cabinets was a carved wood clock in the shape of Vietnam, always offering the wrong time, which also bothered no one, a clock covered with gaudy stencils of peasants in conical hats carrying water buckets on their shoulders. A water buffalo. A South Vietnamese flag. A smiling cartoon-faced girl staring, for some reason, at the numeral three.
Grandma turned from the counter, her cleaver in hand. “You like ginger chicken with broccoli?”
Dustin nodded.
“Everybody likes that,” Hank volunteered.
“A guest must be pleased,” Grandma told her grandson, who beamed back at her.
Hank leaned into Dustin. “You hear that, Dustin? You’re the official guest.”
Dustin stared as he chewed his lower lip.
“Anh Ky,” Hank’s mother said to him, “you must tell us a little about your life.”
Grandma was still waving that cleaver. “Anh Ky, we know of your problems. That foolishness. Tell us about your real life.”
“My real life?” he echoed, confused.
“You’re at Farmington College,” she said. “A scholarship, yes?”
“I was at the college,” he mumbled back.
Hank cleared his throat. “Grandma, this sounds like an interrogation.”
She chuckled. “It is called conversation.” She went on, “I met your mother, you know.”
Dustin was surprised. “Where?”
“Maybe a Tet festival. The marketplace. And your Uncle Binh and Aunt Suong. There are not many young people in your family.” She stopped to look into his face.
“Me.” Dustin smiled back.
“A majority of one.” Grandma walked over and handed him a piece of ginger. “Eat this. Taste the sharpness. They say that ginger will help you see in the dark.”
He squinted at her, taking the morsel from her fingertips, putting it between his teeth, and biting.
Hank’s mother was watching Grandma closely, shaking her head. “Such questions.” And then, of course, asked her own. “Anh Ky, do you wish a family of your own?”
Hank swallowed a laugh as he caught my eye. Dustin waited a bit, then said clearly, “I want five children.”
Grandma stood behind him, leaning in, hugging his neck. “Oh my. Five. Why?”
He angled his neck and stared into her face. “So everybody will always have somebody to talk to.”
Said, the line hung in the air, naked.
Grandma flicked a finger at him. “Cang dong cang vui.” The more, the merrier. “Many will give you pleasure.”
For the first time Hank’s father said something. He’d gone to the refrigerator for a Budweiser, popped the tab, and finished most of it before turning to Dustin. “Someday you will visit your family village, no? Saigon, yes, your uncle, a man known by reputation as a hero for the South Vietnamese, but the family comes from a village.”
“I don’t know.”
Grandpa, who looked as though he’d not been paying any attention, suddenly sat up. “Ton Dang. Outside Vung Tau.”
“You know that?” From Dustin, startled.
“Folks talk. A place of fierce fighting. The Cong so cruel. The bodies piled up. Americans. Our people.” He closed his eyes and interlocked his fingers.
“No one talks of it.” Dustin’s voice was small, hollow.
“Dead. Everyone,” Grandpa murmured.
“We got cousins there,” Dustin said slowly. “I mean, I think we do. Uncle Binh gets letters, writes back. We send medicine.”
The most words he’d spoken. His glance swept from Grandpa to Grandma, then took in the rest of us. “Mom and Uncle Binh whispering about the hardships. Then. Now.”
“Everyone carries Vietnam with them,” Grandma said. “The war cut our lives in half. Before and after.”
“They don’t like to talk about the war. It’s—like taboo. The wonderful days, yes. But not the war.”
“Everyone should talk about that war,” Grandpa went on, his voiced heated. “It ended a lot of our worlds.”
Dustin wet his lips. “It’s a forbidden topic, I think. I mean, the fighting. Leaving.” He swallowed. “Like I said—taboo.”
Grandpa thundered, “It should be the only topic. What now? Exile? Communists crushing lives?”
“The Commies,” Dustin said quietly. “The Commies are in the way.”
“In the way?” I asked.
Dustin ignored me. “People used to bow to Uncle Binh. Here. In America.”
“All the answers to our lives in America can be found back in that war, Anh Ky.”
“What?”
Grandpa shook a hand in his face. “Do you hear me? Why you are here. You. Tan”—he referred to Hank’s V
ietnamese name—“here. Your footprint is back in the village.”
Dustin suddenly turned pale, as though he’d violated something he didn’t understand. “In school…”
Grandpa shouted in English. “In school they teach you shit about the war.”
“Your mother and father,” Hank’s mother began, frowning at Grandpa and softening her tone. “They came here for you.”
Dustin straightened in his chair. “No. Not for me. Their lives ended when they got on that helicopter.” The shyness had disappeared, his voice firm, clear. “Mom sits and waits. I sit and wait—she tells me to be quiet in a house where no one talks. Me—her. Like…a time capsule, you know. Like someone stopped running the camera, froze the frame, you know, like a movie, and they’re waiting for someone to unfreeze them. It’s a little scary because their lives are in black and white and the world is in color and…” He stopped, suddenly embarrassed, looking down into his lap.
Silence in the hot room.
Quietly, Grandma and Hank’s mother served platters of food. We dug into the glistening chicken. Chopsticks sailed across the table, clicking, tapping. Cups of tea. More Budweiser for the men. Grandma with her coconut flavored water. A feast, and we were absorbed now, savoring it. Grandma sat back, her old fingers fiddling with chopsticks, on her face a mysterious smile.
Dustin relished the meal, and I wondered about his daily diet. That pasty bowl of rice on his kitchen table, barely touched. The shriveled chunks of meat. Probably Italian subs from the grinder shop on the corner. Burger King. Wendy’s. A life of fast food paid for by the part-time job at the diner.
He never looked up, devouring the ginger chicken, not surprised when Hank’s mother without speaking used the blunt end of her chopsticks to fill his bowl with more chicken and broccoli. He nodded at her, a hint of a smile.
Grandma finally spoke. “It is our lot to suffer.” She pointed to the statue of Buddha. “War makes evil.”
I added, “Ac gia ac bao.”
Grandma smiled. “Buddha’s wisdom. Yes, evil will bring more evil in the world.”
Dustin narrowed his eyes at me. “You—like follow Buddhism?”
“When I was a small boy, I was left in an orphanage by my mother, who gave me a small book called Sayings of Buddha. Tattered, falling apart. I carried it with me to America.”
“It’s golden,” Grandma said, nodding at me.
Hank pointed at me. “Grandma and Rick are the resident Buddhists. They will paste aphorisms on your soul.”
“They are already there, my boy.” Grandma tapped her heart. “Buddha is always in your heart and tells you to do good deeds. In that village of yours, little Anh Ky, the souls of the ancestors wait. That is why your mother and uncle look back there…the rituals of the dead.”
Hank interrupted. “People shouldn’t suffer.”
Grandma’s voice had a gentle edge. “They have no choice. It is what you do with the suffering that matters.”
“What about greedy people?” Dustin asked out of the blue.
“What?” From me.
“If Buddha is in the heart, why are people, you know, violent, mean, rotten, robbing people…you know?”
“They don’t listen to their hearts,” Grandma answered. “So we need to suffer.” Grandma smiled at Dustin. “Remember that. But you are not your suffering. You hear me? You look to the sky above, where Buddha watches.” She smiled. “You are a blessed boy.”
That seemed to embarrass Dustin, who dipped his head into his lap.
I spoke in English, “‘Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it’s all over much too soon.’”
“Buddha?” Hank eyes got wide, a smart-aleck grin on his face.
“Woody Allen.”
No one laughed except Hank. But Dustin smiled. “I heard of him.”
“A wise man,” Grandma commented, understanding the English.
Hank pointed to the elaborate shrine up on the wall in the corner: a plaster Buddha, gold-plated, chubby and grand, surrounded by joss sticks and artificial flowers, but sharing the space with the Virgin Mary, regal in blue and white, a beatific smile, Sunday palms and a votive candle at her feet. In front a stack of blood red oranges. “Dustin, we are Catholic and Buddhist here. Peaceful coexistence. Sort of. The women Buddhists. The men Catholic. The favorite son”—he bowed—“neither.”
“A heathen,” his mother said, though she grinned at him. “We wait for the day of his enlightenment.”
Dustin concentrated on the shrine. “Both? Wild.”
I smiled. “Yeah, wild. Only in America.”
“We got a shrine like that but I don’t pay attention. My mother and Uncle Binh take care of it.” He grinned. “No Virgin Mary, however.”
“You are Buddhists.” From Grandma. “The ancestors journey to America with them.”
Dustin laughed. “They come for the cheeseburgers.”
Grandma paused as she held chopsticks in the air. “What?”
Now Dustin was embarrassed. “I mean, when Rick was at my house, we looked up, and…I guess Mom ran out of oranges, so she had a McDonald’s cheeseburger in a box and…” He waved his hands in the air, a helpless gesture. “Nothing. Nonsense.”
Though everyone smiled at the image, Grandma did not, her face tense, and the chopsticks, suspended in the air, moved up and down like dreadful punctuation. She never took her eyes from Dustin’s, and I glanced at Hank, worry on his face. Grandma’s face looked shattered.
Hank mumbled, “Maybe a sacrilege. I don’t know. Grandma takes this stuff…”
His mother leaned in. “It ain’t stuff.” In English.
Grandma wasn’t happy. She nodded at the shrine, bowed, but then placed her chopsticks across the top of her bowl. Her meal was over. The shadow of that plaster-of-Paris Buddha cast a pall on the warm room.
Bothered, looking at his Grandma and then at his scowling mother, Hank shifted the conversation, addressing his father. “You’re spending a lot of time in Little Saigon, Dad. Rumor has it.”
His father, sitting back and watching the women of the family becoming somber and distant, mumbled, “I’m retired now. What do you want me to do? Stay in this house all day?”
Hank’s mother bit her lip. “When he is home, he is like dust. Everywhere you look. Underfoot.”
Her husband found the remark delightful. “She sends me to the market and I come back with mangoes instead of jackfruit.”
“The wrong rice. The wrong brand of soymilk. He buys the kind that tastes like aluminum foil.”
“Mom,” Hank said, “how does aluminum foil taste?”
She grinned at him. “Like the soymilk your father brings home.”
Hank faced his father. “Mom says you spend a lot of time at Minh Le’s Bar and Pool Hall on Park. With your buddies. Loc and Joe. The guys from your foundry?”
His father nodded. “We have discovered we are”—he switched to English—“the hustlers.”
Hank guffawed. “Good God. I’m gonna have to arrest you.”
“Loc and Joe are fatter than you.”
Hank made believe he was shocked. “I’m not fat. This is muscle.”
“Here we go again.” His mother rolled her eyes.
A voice broke into the humor. “Pool?”
“Yes, Anh Ky. Pool.” His father mimicked the motion of a cue stick striking a ball.
“Dustin plays pool. I’ve seen him at the college.” I watched Dustin’s face.
Hank asked him, “Where did you learn to play pool?”
Dustin answered but he was watching Hank’s father. “At the Bristol Boys Club. After school. It was there or the library.”
“You good?” From Hank’s father.
And then, strangely, Dustin turned his chair so that he faced Hank’s father, who also shifted his position. The t
wo of them began a spirited conversation in Vietnamese, with flakes of colloquial English drifting in, that centered on pool and billiards techniques and trick shots and banking and spotting…the way you break…the shots off the rails…the merits of eight ball over nine…the rules that are violated…this player, that…ESPN…the current Filipino champion touring Connecticut…the legend of someone called Kid Delicious—
“Kid Delicious?” From Hank.
He was ignored.
Thrilling, really, mesmerizing, the most animated I’d ever seen Hank’s father—and certainly Dustin. They talked over each other. The two men, one a crotchety sixty-something and the squirrely, skinny eighteen-year-old boy demonstrated impossible shots they claimed they’d executed.
The rest of us watched. Grandma wore a satisfied smile on her face. She mumbled to me, “Toi khong hieu.” I don’t understand this. But she looked happy.
Seizing the opportunity, Hank mentioned a pool hall on Main Street, blocks away. Classic Billiards, a local East Hartford hangout next to Hooters. He suggested we men hit balls for an hour or so, but his father balked. “I’ve gone by there. Only white men play there.”
“Not anymore,” Hank insisted.
Hank’s mother welcomed the move, shooing us out the door. “Not too late. Dustin has to drive home.”
“I have to drive home, too, Mom,” Hank said. “Aren’t you worried about me?”
She touched his cheek. “I worry about the people you will drive off the road.”
As we stood, thanked the women, bowed to Grandpa who grumbled and said he was going to bed, Grandma stopped me as I began putting on my shoes. “Stay.”
“Grandma,” Hank laughed. “Rick has to be with us. He’s such a bad player. Who else can we make fun of?”
She ignored him, though she waved him off. “Stay.” To me, tucking her hand under my elbow. “Sit.”
Everyone left, and I watched the two women clear the dishes, load the dishwasher, both refusing my help, though I offered. Not the job of the guest—and a man at that. Woman’s work. I thought of Dustin, fiercely Old Country in his definition of marriage. I will tell her what to eat. I will order my wife’s food.