Anguli Ma

by Chi Vu

  The spare room was crammed with overstuffed cardboard boxes and bags. In this room, she had several hiding places for her valuables: at the bottom of a box of tissues; inside a ceramic vase bought at the Trash & Treasures; in amongst the clean rags from the factory. Đào carefully rotated her hiding places, and was confident of her ability to recall the ever-changing sequence with the changing days and weeks. The boxes were filled with scraps of fabric which had been precision-cut, fifty layers at a time into shoulder panels, collars, torsos, scooped pockets ready for over-locking into tracksuits. She received these scraps of material for free and used them to clean any spills in the kitchen or to tie around the stems of leaky taps. Đào pulled several wads of twenty-dollar notes from amongst the fabric, turquoise and indigo, and anxiously arranged the offcuts around them.

  Then, she heard a creak from the back door. She ran into the kitchen expecting to see one of her tenants, but to her alarm it was empty. Đào interrogated the scene. She asked herself if a tenant might have seen her hide the money. She hurried to the living room and peered through the window into her front yard, through the plastic lace curtain, the venetian blinds and metal grilles, but could see nothing out of place.

  Đào left the window and returned to the spare room, where she rearranged her valuables in new hiding places all over again.

  Đào dusted the surfaces in the living room and vacuumed. When her granddaughter Tuyết arrived, Đào told her that she would have to stay in the kitchen when her friends turned up for the hụi meeting. Đào changed clothes and brought out her sateen cushions, a tray of dried tropical fruit and pumpkin seeds, pieces of paper and an assortment of biros. People from the hụi group arrived in dribs and drabs.

  Đào invited each person into her living room and with each warm greeting, she yelled to her guests to keep their shoes on, which everyone understood to mean the opposite. So they left their shoes at the front door; their sock-covered feet, in a variety of shades, stepped into her carpeted living room. Only Triều was too young and straightforward to disobey her and kept his laced-up boots on. Đào glared at him, and then pulled her frosted-glass doors closed. Tuyết’s small silhouette could be seen through the glass.

  When she was preparing for hụi, Đào had written everyone’s names on two copies of paper in her old-fashioned handwriting. Now she was cutting one copy into thin strips, and handing the strip that said “Mr Hải” to Mr Hải, or “Miss Loan” to Miss Loan. She did this to all who were present, except for Young Triều, to whom Đào handed the strip of paper with his mother’s name on it – ‘Bà Sáu’. Đào herself had two shares in the game; the one in her name was already extinguished, and the one in her son’s name was the “live” share. Everyone wrote their bid for the monthly loan on their strip of paper. Đào wrote a medium-high bid for her son. The system worked on mutual benefit and trust. Any hụi member who needed money could put in a high enough bid to “win,” which if they did, obtained them the right to borrow the pooled funds for that month. The higher the bid, the higher the yield for everyone else, who only had to pay the total minus that month’s winning bid amount. Consequently, those who lent their money felt their excitement accumulate with each new month.

  Đào collected the folded strips of paper from each of the people and put them in the plastic container. As her fingers tossed the little strips of paper, the room became silent with a hushed concentration as though their individual fates were being tossed in the air.

  Đào’s mind wandered away when she caught her own reflection in the dead face of the tivi on the other side of the room where the Buddha and the Ancestors were; this disparate group of people who had all escaped from a fragmented country. And she was their hụi administrator.

  The hụi game was not popular in her country; it was outsiders such as the Chinese who resorted to hụi. The Vietnamese called them “boat people”, for they had arrived by sea. Now Chinese and Vietnamese, người Tàu and người Kinh, were both considered “boat people” in this new country, and hụi groups were popping up where these new arrivals settled. Fate had churned together rich and poor, educated and illiterate, strong and weak. Yet Đào believed that the same fate would settle everything back into place eventually: those of worth would rise to the top, while those who were like mud would sink to the bottom. Perhaps it was only Jesus on the Cross who did not know the significance of the gathering beneath His toes.

  Everyone was perched on Đào’s second-hand furniture watching her. She quickly returned her attention to the little strips of paper, which were the reasons why they had gathered amidst her sateen cushions, glass-topped coffee table and pastel-coloured walls. Đào announced each hụi bid, one by one as she drew them.

  “The top bid is from Bà Sáu, Young Triều gets the Pig today,” she exclaimed.

  Everyone else handed their money over, in varying degrees of swagger, or intimacy with their administrator, but all with a sense of confidence in her.

  The frosted-glass doors opened and the train of gossiping started up again: who’s borrowing a lot of money to build what where, whether they were repaying, and why they had not gone to the bank in the first place. As the guests were leaving, Đào signalled for Young Triều to come over. The loud, cheerful talk continued its way to the cars parked out the front of her house.

  When they were alone, Đào handed Young Triều the wad of cash and told him that her own contribution was short, considerably short in fact, and then she told him the amount.

  “I know that’s a lot, so please tell your mother that I am really sorry. I’ll pay her next time I go to the store.” Đào’s cheeks were burning and she was talking faster and in a higher pitch than usual. Đào lied about her boss delaying her payment this week, which was almost the truth, and besides, she didn’t want people to know that her new tenant was already late in his payment for board and lodgings. As Đào scrawled her IOU onto a piece of paper, she could already hear Bà Sáu screeching down the phone line at her. Young Triều bade Đào goodbye and left.

  Đào replaced the biros, and then carried the sateen cushions and the container of biros to her room and locked it. She took the teapot and cups back to the kitchen. To her surprise, she could hear Young Triều’s voice in the backyard, laughing like a cúc-ca ba-ra. Đào brightened immediately, for she thought Sinh had returned home and was talking with Young Triều. She went out to the backyard ready to tease the girl, but when she came out, it was not Sinh at all. Young Triều was with Anguli Ma.

  Young Triều

  It was Young Triều’s first time at a hụi game. He was inevitably the subject of curiosity by all present, and was asked how his studies at the local university were going. He told Đào he had just completed his final year, and had passed all his subjects. Everyone in Đào’s gaudy living room beamed at the young man.

  When Young Triều was on campus, he only went to the lectures or tutorials, he didn’t spend his weekends at the student pubs or any of the extra-curricular activities. He felt old there, even though he was the same age as his fellow students who were born and raised in Australia, and whose parents ran their own companies and owned holiday homes. Then there were the kids who studied less than him, who walked around with a blank notepad and a pen, but still got higher scores than he did. Falling behind, Young Triều tried to memorise the patterns of the maths problems as an approximate to understanding how to solve them. But during exams, the problems were written as little narratives rather than as equations, and so it was in the application of things that Young Triều found difficulty. He blamed his mediocre results on his language ability. The truth, unrecognised by all, including himself, was that even if the problem was written in Vietnamese, he still would not be able to make the equations work.

  Young Triều stared at the plastic tray of sugared coconut-meat, roasted pumpkin seeds and desiccated jackfruit on Đào’s coffee table. Young Triều wasn’t saving for himself, he was at the hụi game on behalf of his mother. The hụi
game seemed to be for people to make money, to be put in some dusty drawer away from life.

  “Bà Sáu’s son got the Piggy today,” Đào exclaimed. Everyone congratulated Young Triều for his mother having successfully borrowed that month’s funds. The lady of the house gathered everyone’s cash and counted the notes. Then she handed the bundle over to Young Triều.

  It was the weekend and he was bored with being there. But if the money had belonged to him, if he had a few thousand spare, he would go overseas to Hollywood to see how violent movies like Scarface or Taxi Driver were made, to shake hands with the likes of Al Pacino or De Niro.

  The Brown Man

  The next time they meet at the park, the monk again invites the brown man to sit with him. His voice is resonant and clear as a bell, which makes the listener become subdued, muted. He stops, ready to set himself down. The monk instructs him to sit and not to move his arms and legs; that when he notices an itch on his face or body, instead of unconsciously scratching at it, to endeavour not to scratch it. The air is still, as though intently listening to them. Upon hearing the challenge, the brown man almost swoops down on the bench, crosses his legs and closes his eyes. With his fierce will and hardened limbs, he arrogantly believes that he can better the monk.

  After six seconds, the man’s rude hand scratches an itch on his face. He comes to be aware of this only after he hears his fingernails scraping his cheek. He stops, and looks at his unconscious hand with a sense of bewilderment and suspicion. He sees that the monk has not moved at all. “This monk must have some secret power,” the brown man curses to himself.

  He tries being still once more, with his eyes closed. Soon enough, a tingle begins in his right leg, and then his anger rises. First, it is directed at the monk who does not seem to have anything better to do than sit around all day challenging people to do silly tricks. Then the anger directs itself at his own leg and its greater sensitivity – perhaps these stupid monks do not feel itchiness and tingling as intensely as he feels them – he who has seen so much of life. Another few seconds pass, and the man opens his eyes just a little to see if anything wondrously magical is happening around him; he sees nothing special, just the river, the prickly grass before them, the reeds swaying by the river.

  Đào

  Wednesday passed, and then Thursday, and then Friday and Saturday, and still Anguli Ma hadn’t paid what he’d owed her. At first she had knocked on the garage door politely, but then day by day as he did not answer, her door-knocks got louder and the landlady grew more and more indignant.

  When she heard sounds in the kitchen, Đào ran in and found Anguli Ma scooping some rice and chicken into a large bowl.

  “Stuffing your mouth until you’re sated are you? Where’s the money you owe me for the food you’re eating and your lodgings?”

  Anguli Ma slowly looked up at her, dug his grimy hand into his pocket and pulled out three twenty-dollar notes. He waved them in front of her. His black eyes were trained on her. His lips, sensual and reddish brown, parted and his voice became sing-song and thick like gravy, “Here, now you can spend it on makeup and expensive shampoo.”

  “You must be deranged, I wouldn’t spend it on anything silly!”

  “Women living away from their đại gia đình, in a foreign country, become lost, even the older women.” He sneered at her. “Without obligation or direction, they become like wild beasts…”

  The phone rang…Đào glared at Anguli and ran to the hallway to pick it up.

  “Allo?” She heard silence, then a dead tone. “Allo?” The caller had hung up. Đào could see Anguli’s dark form in the kitchen. He turned around, smiled at her and then left.

  “Those who are dog-born!” Đào swore aloud. She hung up and went back into the kitchen, but she was too late. Scattered on the table were oily grains of rice. His three twenty-dollar notes lay on the table next to the unfinished bowl of food. She took the wrinkled notes and scraped the wasted food into the bin, cursing his sinfulness.

  Lying in bed afterwards, Đào told herself that perhaps her new tenant’s stubborn behaviour was due to his pride: those who had a higher position in the old society must now feel their decline more keenly. Men lost more status than women, whose status could only be elevated upwards from the strict old ways of Confucianism, when a woman belonged first to her father, then to her husband, and then to her son. Đào hoped getting money from Anguli Ma next month would be easier, and exhaled a long, serious breath. She flattened the crumpled money and placed it with her neat bundle in the bottom of an old vase.

  Anguli Ma

  Alone in the kitchen, Anguli ate his rice without ceremony or companionship. His sneer collapsed and was replaced by the dead countenance of a man severed from history. It is a form of liberation, he thought, from your own conscience, from all your expectations of life. Anguli turned around to grin at Đào, who was down the hallway answering the telephone. All the feelings he had once thought of as beneath him, he now swallowed rapaciously.

  Đào

  Tiệm Bà Sáu was busy. Đào told the girl at the cash register she had money for the boss lady. The girl yelled to the back of the shop and Bà Sáu appeared shortly. Đào took out her cash and told Bà Sáu to count it in front of her, which Bà Sáu had already begun to do.

  “You didn’t have all the money at the hụi meeting,” Bà Sáu said, without looking up from her unerring hands.

  “I told your son that the shortfall was a one-off…”

  The boss lady cut her off. “Don’t do it again. A hụi administrator needs to be trustworthy, or else people will pull out their money and decent people will get burnt.” Then she finished counting. “It’s all here, the water spinach is very fresh today – take a bundle home with you.”

  Đào walked in the dusk with her bag of precision-cut, clean rags from the factory and the groceries from tiệm Bà Sáu, which was one of three Vietnamese shops in the predominantly Greek, Italian and Yugoslav suburb of Footscray. The cluster of shops on Barkly Street opened up to wide vacant lots, where it was darker and colder. Her breath misted in the cold air.

  In Việt Nam she would not have been so humiliated. She would have borrowed the shortfall from her nine siblings and her parents. If one did not have enough, she would ask the next one, and the next one, and the next until she had what she needed. No one would have dared speak to her like that. Over here, the closest thing she had were the people in her hụi group to turn to. Most were those she met on the refugee island, or the migrant hostel when they were first settled. Or they were close friends or relatives of those people.

  Tiny lights from large ships twinkled on the invisible horizon. Behind her, across the Maribyrnong River, orange warning lights flashed at the docks, revealing then obscuring the rearranging formations of the shipping containers.

  When Đào returned home, she could see her young tenant’s thin outline in the dusty window of the studio. She tapped on the glass.

  “You eaten yet? Come and have a bite to eat with me.”

  “Not yet Cô, cháu ra liền,” Sinh put on her coat and came out.

  Đào noticed that Sinh had already cooked some rice in the electric cooker. She smiled and spooned some into bowls, and reheated the chicken curry in the big aluminium pot.

  “You did overtime today?” Sinh asked.

  “Yes,” Đào said, her fingernails were still stained with magenta-coloured lint from the sweatshop. She ladled chicken and potato into the girl’s bowl; they ate, as heartily and quickly as they liked. The warm glow of the kitchen made Đào feel talkative.

  “When will this girl get married?” she playfully teased Sinh.

  “When this girl meets a decent man,” Sinh answered somewhat seriously.

  Her young tenant’s long hair was tied back with an elastic band.

  “Then you can get your own house,” Đào teased some more.

  “How can I marry without my parents here? Maybe if I win TattsLotto, first prize, one million dol
lars, then I’d buy a house for myself, and you can stay with me if you want to aunty.”

  They laughed at the thought of them being in a one-million dollar house.

  “The house will be so big, I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind,” Sinh blurted and then grew very quiet. After a while, she asked, “Cô, do you think we’ll be reunited?”

  “It’s a very big question,” Đào said, buying some time. “Your parents don’t know where you are either…I’m sure that they miss you.”

  “Thank you. I’m so overcome all of a sudden,” Sinh said apologetically, and smiled.

  Đào tried to lighten things up, “I would love to live in your million-dollar house, and we would swap places, because I would be your tenant.”

  Sinh replied, in between large mouthfuls of cooked potato, “I’ll be so rich, you can stay with me for free.”

  Đào was touched by this simple girl who lived out the back of her house.

  “Ahh, when will we be happy?” Đào muttered to herself.

  “Maybe we are happy now, and we just can’t see it,” Sinh said, then to stop herself from further sadness, she added, “Aunty, I’m giving you the money.” Sinh slipped the next month’s board and lodgings to her landlady.

  “You’re giving me the money ahead of time, without being asked.”

  “So I won’t forget,” Sinh said simply as she emptied her bowl.

  Đào wanted to feed the girl more chicken and rice.

  The Brown Man

  It is unusually still and clear in the park. He has not seen the monk for several days, so he wanders down the hill towards the river. Something grey and white dashes by, and then disappears behind some rocks again. The brown man shuffles more quickly towards the site.