by Joey Bui
‘Why aren’t you in school, then?’
Tuấn snorted.
‘You know why, man. I can’t do that stuff. School. Even before seventy-five, I was already running tables at Năm Vương. But you were gonna be a teacher.’
Bình hated it when his friends referred so casually to Vietnam before the war ended, before the Fall of Saigon, as if that event were just another mark on the timeline.
‘Well, like you, then,’ he said. ‘I got sick of it. I mean it! They all think they’re better than us. I don’t need that shit. Look, I’ve got a steady job working with our people. I’ll save a little bit, trade in this shitty car. I can play pool, drink with you and the boys, do whatever I want.’
Bình had never told Tuấn about the broken chair. He had been struggling at university for three months. The classwork wasn’t the problem. It was hard, but he was getting on top of it. No matter what he did, however, he couldn’t get rid of his Vietnamese accent. Students talked to him only when they had to, loudly and slowly. Mortified, he would watch their thin lips stretch grotesquely as they dragged out each word, their eyes widening, questioning: ‘Do. You. Understand?’ One day he spat into one of those faces. Tony Chillinski’s. Tony swung an arm to push Bình back. Not expecting the strength of the meaty palms, Bình staggered, then lunged forward to drive his elbow into the big man’s stomach.
The counsellor was even worse. His obvious pity enraged Bình, who smashed a chair in the counselling office against the desk.
‘It’s different,’ Tuấn said. ‘I mean, I couldn’t be in school, I don’t have the brains. You could do it, but what the fuck are you doing instead? Stacking shelves with freeze-dried noodles and greasing off every white man who walks past the shop.’
‘Fuck you. So what if I could? I don’t want to. I don’t like it. You know what I get stacking shelves? Freedom. Nobody looks down on me there, I’m nobody’s fool.’
In his peripheral vision, Bình saw Tuấn pick up the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird off the seat. Disgusted, he met Tuấn’s gaze, lunged sideways and, in a split second, snatched the book and threw it out the window. He saw the pages in his mind’s eye, already loosened by the spine he had broken four years ago, tearing apart and littering the freeway with Scout’s overalls and Boo’s metaphors.
They didn’t speak again for another long stretch of road. On top of his self-loathing, Bình now felt ashamed that Tuấn had to suffer his company. He eyed the petrol gauge, calculating the hours he’d need to put in at the store to pay for this reckless drive. He wanted to explain. He had been trying to explain ever since they left Bidong, hadn’t he?
‘Even back in the refugee camp, they didn’t treat us like this,’ Bình said haltingly. He felt like crying. ‘Because they didn’t expect us to be like them. They only expected us to be us. But here. At a university where white people go to learn how to fucking be older white people, I…’
He slammed his palm on the dashboard again.
‘I used to go running every morning around the camp. In the stinking hot, bare feet, empty stomach. Fuck knows, no one could afford runners. I thought I should keep fit, you know? Because I wanted to be going somewhere to make myself better.’
His knuckles strained against the steering wheel. He imagined his bone ripping through his skin.
‘Let’s go,’ Tuấn said.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go running. Take the next exit and we can head back into town, to the Alexandra Gardens. There’s this great running track that goes for miles and miles around the park.’
‘No way. That’s so fucking white,’ Bình said, recalling the paths filled with women in bright sports bras and yoga pants, old men with hairy chests and sagging bellies, businessmen in silky sports clothes, carrying designer water bottles.
‘Nobody owns running, man. It’s just running.’
‘Doesn’t feel right.’
‘No, fuck you.’ Tuấn was smiling. ‘What could be more right than two guys going running because they feel like it?’
More to please Tuấn than anything, Bình drove to the Alexandra Gardens and parked next to the running track. Their old T-shirts and daggy fleece trousers were for work or home, but it seemed the wrong time to talk about clothes. Nervous, they didn’t say much as they got out of the car and started jogging. They didn’t know anyone who ran around the gardens in Melbourne. Bình was right: only white people did it.
But no one looked at them twice and Bình started to enjoy the sensations of his body finding a running rhythm. It had been a long time since he had done any exercise; his lungs felt constricted and his calves stiff. He turned to look at his friend before they both picked up the pace.
The gardens were well maintained and the sandy paths easy to run on. Moving through the cool shadows of evening felt like a long sigh of relief.
They didn’t continue for long; both men were unused to exercise. After half an hour, they were back in the car, panting. Bình fished out two cans of Coke from the back seat. He pulled the tab on his can and it clicked and hissed just like in the ads.
‘Shit, that’s warm,’ Tuấn said, taking a sip. ‘Remember when these things were so precious?’
‘Chị Hai used to hide Coke cans in the shelf behind the family altar,’ Bình said, picturing their old apartment in Sài Gòn, so small it didn’t have many secret places.
‘That sounds just like your sister,’ said Tuấn, chuckling.
‘Three or four cans, hot as this,’ continued Bình, ‘sitting behind the statues and incense for months at a time. We shared a can sometimes, when our parents were out. Chị Hai liked to drink one before going on a date. I used to tell her: you should make your boyfriends buy you real Cokes, cold and fresh at the shop.’
Bình smiled, remembering Chị Hai’s haughty response: ‘Please. My boys can’t afford one can between them, the fucking druggos.’ She said it just to amuse him. Back then, she was dating a teacher who doted on her and brought fruit for the family whenever he visited.
‘And the peanut butter! Remember?’ Tuấn exclaimed.
Relaxed now, Bình nodded enthusiastically.
‘Nothing like American peanut butter!’ Tuấn said. ‘One of my buddies was selling stuff from the American soldier packs for a while. Stolen? Left behind? I don’t know. Wow, all of it was so good. Peanut butter and spam. You ever tried spam before seventy-five?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So good, huh? I reckon nothing ever tasted so good to me as American peanut butter and spam. Definitely not the peanut butter here. Why can’t the Australians get it right? Tastes like fucking plastic here. Spam’s still the same, though. Good as ever.’
‘You love spam way too much.’
‘Nothing wrong with a can of spam, man.’
‘It’s gonna give you a heart attack someday.’
‘Nah, come on. Look at me,’ Tuấn flipped up his shirt and smacked his stomach. ‘Nothing sticks.’
Tuấn lived alone. If Bình was there for dinner, he served fried spam on rice, along with a cucumber, a red chilli from the neighbour’s bush and a Carlton Draught.
‘Hey, man, what are we gonna do for dinner? It’s so late,’ Tuấn said. Instantly, Bình felt the banality of their daily lives return: eat quickly, sleep, wake up early to get to work.
‘I’ve got food at home,’ Bình said as he turned on the ignition.
The sight of the freeway made Bình anxious again. The white dashes on the road emerged, then flew out of sight, leaping into the dark blue sky. Bình wondered if he would ever get used to this much space, speed, and all those neat white lines. It was the antithesis of his memory of Vietnam, the unlined roads, the intersections crowded with riders tottering on motorbikes that could only inch forward in the tangle of traffic, their helmets and facemasks dotted with tacky, colourful patterns.
Bình curled his fingers around the steering wheel to brace himself. He felt childish. The satisfication he’d got from the run was already leav
ing him, and the spectre of loneliness loomed again.
‘Hey,’ he said to Tuấn.
‘Yeah?’
Bình tapped his fingers on the wheel, not sure what to say.
‘We should get some new music,’ he muttered.
‘Yeah. What do you want?’
‘Is the new Paris by Night out?’ Bình asked.
‘Oh yeah, the tenth anniversary show. I reckon Bắc Ánh should have a copy by the weekend,’ said Tuấn.
They got most of their videos from Bắc Ánh, who ran a pirated tapes business out of his house.
‘Hey.’
‘What?’
‘Want to come to dinner at Chị Hai’s this Sunday?’
‘Of course, you know I love her cooking.’
‘It’s my mother’s death anniversary.’
‘I wouldn’t miss it, man.’
It was eleven by the time they got back to Bình’s place in Springvale, a portable room in his aunt and uncle’s backyard. He had a small fridge and a microwave, but no stove. Bình found a box of Chị Hai’s thịt kho, braised pork and boiled eggs in sauce, and some old rice, and heated it up in the microwave. They ate on the patio furniture in the backyard, speaking softly so as not to wake Bình’s Aunt Ba and Uncle Ba. After Tuấn had left to walk home, only a few streets away, Bình stayed sitting in the backyard. Over the fence he heard a neighbour’s screen door squeak open, steps into the backyard, the thump of the plastic bin swinging open, whump, as the garbage bag went in, faint chatter inside the house.
He was much more nervous about Sunday’s dinner than Tuấn knew. Chị Hai hadn’t seen or spoken to him since their fight about him leaving university, although she still sent him food through Uncle Ba. He had known she wouldn’t take the news well and had been too afraid to tell her himself. When she heard it from Uncle Ba, she drove over, after picking up her daughter, Yến, from school. Yến was made to sit in the house while Chị Hai talked to Bình in the backyard. She burst into tears, called him disobedient, selfish, an embarrassment to the family. She yelled at him as if he were a child, even though she was only four years older.
‘You never think of anybody but yourself. Don’t you understand that we have to work twice as hard, grit our teeth twice as much? You have brains but you’re dumb, Bình.’
Her voice cracked and then she hissed:
‘Sometimes I feel like you don’t understand how much I love you. You think I like working two restaurant jobs? You think it’s nice for me? You think everybody is kind to me there? No, I do it so that you can study and make something of yourself. It breaks my heart to love you this way, Bình. It breaks my heart, and my arms, and my back.’
‘Thôi đi,’ he shouted: Enough. ‘If you don’t like it, then stop. Nobody’s asking you to break your back.’
She stormed into the house.
They had the same temper. Standing on the other side of the slammed door, he had glared down at his pale, clenched fists.
They had lived together when they came to Australia five years ago. Sometimes they sat all night on the carpet with a pot of food between them (always an onion omelette if it was his turn to cook), watching Australian TV, making fun of the words and imitating the stiff, bragging style of game-show hosts. Some nights she brought back egg tarts from the Chinese restaurant where she worked. When he had a test coming up, she bought a glass of three-bean drink, his favourite, with a little bag of shaved iced, and another bag of thick coconut milk to pour over the beans. Even at the beginning of her courtship with Long, she was still lighthearted. She made horrified faces at Bình’s impressions of Long, like the way he began a sentence loudly and angrily, and confused himself halfway through. She swatted Bình on the head, and they fought and laughed the way they always had as children. Now her face went dark whenever Bình said the slightest thing to mock Long.
Bình’s mind filled with images of carefree young Chị Hai and disapproving older Chị Hai. He blinked and looked around. The neighbours were quiet now. Tuấn’s company had kept his loneliness at bay, but he knew it was returning. He had to get inside, away from the still grass lawn, the old hose and the view of fences and roofs. The quietness was terrifying: it haunted him with the fear that he lived in an unoccupied world.
Cô Năm picked a fight on Friday. Bình had spent the morning unpacking a new shipment and stacking the freezer. He was sitting outside on a green crate, having a cigarette break, when he heard her screeching.
‘Bình! Where is he? Bình, Bình, Bình, Bình, Bình, Bình, Bình!’ she screamed, until she found him. She grabbed his forearm, her long manicured nails digging into his flesh, and dragged him up.
‘What?’ he shook his arm out of her grip.
‘You underdeveloped motherfucker,’ Cô Năm snarled. ‘Do you enjoy stealing from me? Are you here to steal from me, boy?’
He bristled, trying not to respond, trying to think of her as pathetic rather than evil. He knew he must not lash out as he had in his first week there, when both his aunt and uncle had to plead with Cô Năm to let him keep his job. He looked down at her, a squat woman in her forties, with rings of fat on her stubby arms like a baby’s. Last month, she came back from Vietnam with freshly tattooed eyebrows, eyeliner and lipliner. Bình wondered why so many Vietnamese immigrant women did it. He found Cô Năm’s lipliner horrifying: it hadn’t fully healed by the time she came back and her whole mouth was swollen, the bottom lip thick and protruding. Now she had on dark-red tattoo lipliner without lipstick, and the outlines did not match the lines of her mouth.
‘What are you looking at me like that for, you insolent boy? This boy has problems. I swear this boy will kill me in my sleep!’ she declared, glancing back at her husband, Chú Phụng, who was skulking inside between the aisles.
‘I’m sorry, what’s wrong?’ Bình kept his tone measured.
‘I’m sorry, what’s wrong,’ she pronounced in a mock-sophisticated Hà Nội accent, even though Bình had a Sài Gòn accent. ‘What’s wrong is that you took in ten boxes of king prawns when the order was for fifteen. You think you can steal from me, but you’re not as smart as you think you are.’
‘I checked the order. It was right.’
‘Do I look scared to you? You think because you went to university that I will be scared of you?’
‘No, that’s not what I think. I checked all the orders,’ Bình said.
‘What’s this about?’ Chú Phụng emerged from the shop, looking exhausted as usual.
‘This boy…’ Cô Năm began.
‘Let’s just check the orders, shall we?’ Chú Phụng said. ‘Come inside. Come on. Here. King prawns. Fifteen.’
‘It is always fifteen,’ Cô Năm said shrilly.
‘All right. And now we check with the supplier,’ said Chú Phụng, closing the notebook and reaching for his address book. Bình could not remember a time in his life when he had been so bored, or done any job so poorly. He didn’t care about the work. It was meaningless and Cô Năm hated him.
‘This is Phụng at Phat Tai groceries in Springvale,’ Chú Phụng said into the phone. ‘Yes, yes. I’m good, thanks, I hope your family is well. Good, good.’
Bình idly ran his hand against the boxes of Pocky behind him. He wasn’t the best worker, it was true, and often snacked on the produce when Cô Năm was out, but he was just like most of the young workers at these Viet/Chinese groceries: bored, lazy and sullen. Self-important managers like Cô Năm ran the shops, getting rich, or at least richer than the other Vietnamese, who waited tables or worked in factories.
‘King prawns—yes, king prawns,’ said Chú Phụng. ‘I see. That’s fine. No, just the refund. Thank you. Good.’
‘Well?’ Cô Năm demanded.
‘They delivered ten instead of fifteen.’
‘They’re always trying to cheat us!’ Cô Năm shouted. ‘Those dirty motherfuckers.’
She rounded on Bình, pinching his upper arm.
‘And you, idiot boy, you want
to lose all my money? No wonder the university kicked you out. What good are you if you can’t even count?’
Bình wrenched his arm away. Her eyes grew wide.
‘What? Are you mad? Are you going to hit me?’ she goaded.
‘All right,’ Chú Phụng said dryly. ‘You are giving me a headache. Everything’s figured out. Bình, check carefully next time, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Bing was increasingly frightened that his boredom with the job was corroding his mind. When he checked the shipping documents, he took nothing in; he could no longer figure out the smallest details. Even at home, when he looked at newspapers, he felt exhausted by the words.
He began stacking the sweet drinks in rows along the freezer. He peeked through the cans and saw Cô Năm behind the counter. She had settled onto her stool and was holding the phone to her ear. Every day she spoke for hours on the phone with her relatives in Vietnam. The shop never had much business until three in the afternoon, when people came home from work. There was no trace on Cô Năm’s face now of the drama that had just transpired.
Bình’s hands were going numb from the frost on the cans. He stared at the pale, disembodied fingers. He kept stacking.
He met Tuấn at Café Saigon after work. Tuấn finished the lunch shift at three and had a dinner shift starting at six on Fridays, so he stayed at the café. He was watching a soccer game with two of their friends, Quân and Trịnh. Their glasses of black iced coffee had turned watery.
‘Hey, look at these guys. Soccer, now that’s one of the games where us Asians can actually compete with white guys,’ said Tuấn.
‘That South Korean team is awful,’ said Bình.
‘Yeah, but at least they get to play.’
‘No Vietnamese up there, that’s for sure,’ said Quân.
‘South Koreans got it figured out way better than us. We should’ve split the country when we could’ve,’ said Trịnh.
‘Who could’ve, huh? Your skinny ass?’ said Tuấn.
‘But seriously. We almost had a Korean deal going on,’ Trịnh persisted. ‘Bình, you’re the scholar. What went wrong?’