The House on Dream Street

by Dana Sachs

  “Why would that Việt kiều go to such an effort to lie?” Todd asked.

  “A lot of Việt kiều want to show the folks in Vietnam how well they’re doing,” I explained. I had heard of people getting their pictures taken in front of expensive sports cars they found parked on the street, then sending the photos back to Vietnam.

  The lies disguised the less glamorous truth that many, if not most, Vietnamese immigrants worked ten- and twelve-hour days as janitors and dishwashers just to survive in the West. People remaining in Vietnam, however, expected that every Việt kiều was rich. When the emigrants finally saved enough money to return to Vietnam for a visit, they had to spend hundreds, or thousands, of dollars on extra gifts and cash to dole out to their huge extended families. They had to take the whole neighborhood to eat at Maxim’s. Plus, Mom needed a new house. Little Brother wanted a motorbike. Sis wanted to start a new business. A simple trip to Vietnam could set a person back for years.

  Todd wasn’t sympathetic. “It’s their own fault. They’re raising expectations by telling everyone they’re rich,” he said.

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand,” I said. “They are rich. Even if they wash dishes in the States, they’re rich compared to people in Vietnam. There’s nothing they can do to ease the expectations.”

  Our dinner arrived, and it looked like Denny’s food, down to the wilted parsley. My macaroni and cheese contained more cream, butter, and cheese than I had eaten in a month. I was ecstatic. Breaking a piece of crusty cheese off the edge of the dish, I put it in my mouth and let my tongue absorb its sharp saltiness. Todd looked less delighted with his fish, but he gamely picked up a fork and scraped the thick blanket of tartar sauce off the top.

  He took a bite and chewed pensively. “Ngon,” he said, doing his best to pronounce the word for “delicious.” “Really, really ngon.”

  There was something about the way Todd and I dealt with each other that I’d never quite managed with anyone else. Even when we were so irritated with each other that we didn’t even want to talk, we always managed, eventually, to pull ourselves back out of it. No one had ever told me that being able to be annoyed with your partner could be such a necessary quality in romance.

  That night, I dreamed I was sitting on the couch in the living room in Hanoi. Phai sat next to me. He was talking, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. After a long time, the walls and ceiling began to change colors, like sky growing dark at dusk. Phai touched me on the shoulder and I shivered.

  I sat up in bed, forcing myself awake, and remembering that I was in a guesthouse in Saigon. Next to me, Todd turned over onto his stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. I ran my hand down his arm to his fingers, which closed around mine. He was already breathing heavily again, in sleep.

  For the next two and a half weeks, Todd and I made our way north through Vietnam. In the southern coastal city of Nha Trang, we spent Christmas Eve with the family of a bus driver we’d met on the road. We were delighted by their invitation to join them, though we explained that we were Jewish and would be going to mass with them out of curiosity and not devotion. On that tropical night, the huge French-era cathedral overflowed with thousands of worshipers, many of whom, like us, were not Christian, but were drawn by the festive spectacle. The bus driver didn’t understand the meaning of “Jewish”—người Do Thái in Vietnamese—but that only mattered when, after mass, he set a bowl of pork in front of Todd, who wouldn’t eat it. That led to a serious confrontation between Todd and me, as his religious beliefs conflicted with my sense of good manners. I demanded that he eat the pork, and he refused to touch it.

  But neither of us held grudges. When Todd came down with an ailment we labeled “the mysterious exhaustion disease,” I brought him food, rubbed his back, and played cards with him during the brief intervals when he wasn’t sleeping. In the highland town of Buon Ma Thuot, we rented a motorbike that broke down as soon as we got far enough out of town for it to be a problem. Todd pushed the bike all the way to the repair shop, while I walked along beside him, entertaining him with Helen Reddy songs and watching him sweat.

  For better and worse, we got to know each other very well. Todd was willing to wait while I told our life stories to every meat-seller and cyclo driver in Vietnam. I was willing to listen to every masterful plot twist from the movie The Abyss. I got used to the fact that he sometimes liked to wait an hour or two after waking up in the morning before he’d say a single word. He got used to the fact that I wanted to translate everything from Vietnamese for him, even the most boring conversations with the most boring people. I didn’t complain when he became addicted to sunflower seeds and cracked his way through a bag of them every day. He didn’t complain when I insisted he sing the same Bob Dylan song to me every few hours. I discovered that if I wasn’t bossy about what I wanted to do he would follow me anywhere.

  We spent a week in Hanoi and, though Todd met most of my friends there, he didn’t meet Phai. They saw each other once, but only accidentally. Phai had told me that he wished me well with Todd, but he didn’t want to meet him. Then, on the day we arrived in Hanoi, our train got in earlier than anyone had expected, and Phai was sitting in the living room, talking with two of Huong’s brothers, when we pulled up in front of the house.

  I saw him first, from the sidewalk, as we were getting our bags out of the cyclo. I rushed into the room before Todd and said hello, hoping to give Phai a chance to prepare. As soon as he saw me, Phai sucked in his breath, then glanced toward the door. Todd, the tall, dark-haired American, was carrying our back-packs up the steps. In the briefest moment, a flash of panic swept across Phai’s face, and then, just as quickly, it disappeared. He smiled then. It wasn’t a broad smile, and it certainly lacked the vui-ness that Phai had learned to offer foreigners. It was a flat smile, and pleasant, one that would make him blend in, unnoticed, among the three Vietnamese that Todd would see before him in the living room. “Hi,” he whispered.

  Todd looked around. Every face was new, and he was unable to focus on any of them. “Let’s go upstairs,” I told him. Todd gave a wave to the men on the couch, then turned and started up the stairs. I looked at Phai and Huong’s brothers. “We’re just so exhausted from the train ride,” I explained.

  “Welcome home,” Phai said. I smiled at him, then followed Todd up the stairs. A few minutes later, after we’d put down our bags in my room, I told Todd that Phai had been one of the men in the room downstairs. Todd stared at the ceiling, trying to pull the faces from his memory, but he couldn’t. “It doesn’t matter,” he told me. “I’d rather not know what he looks like anyway.”

  Tung and Huong both decided that Todd was acceptable. Huong declared him “đẹp”—handsome—which came as a relief; if she had found him “xấu”—ugly—she would have pestered me about it for weeks. She and Todd couldn’t carry on any kind of conversation, but whenever they had a chance they traded words. Eating a bowl of Huong’s noodles, Todd would say “ngon” and Huong would giggle and respond with “tayn,” which was her version of the word “thanks.” Todd played so many games with Viet that Huong upgraded “đẹp” to “vui.” Tung and Todd discovered a mutual passion for sunflower seeds, and the two of them spent many hours sitting on the couch, cracking seeds, and discussing everything from pop music to politics, while I acted as translator.

  Of all my friends, Todd got along best with Tra. Like him, she’d taken advantage of her university’s December break and flown to Vietnam for a few weeks. She and Tuyen were still married, but their relationship had shifted to a new stage in the two years since her last visit. Tra no longer hosted large family dinners, and when Todd and I came to visit, Tuyen was always absent. It seemed that, though their marriage continued on paper, in spirit they’d already divorced. Tra was clearly suffering, and hanging around with two Americans seemed to lighten her mood. She delighted in showing us out-of-the-way
spots in Hanoi, whether it be a hidden pagoda or a shop selling traditional rice candy. Whether because Tra was so Americanized, or simply because she had such an engaging spirit, Todd liked her best of all my friends. The admiration was mutual. When Tra and I had a moment alone, she said, “He’s a good guy. A very good guy.” Then she added, “You marry him!”

  Even though I would have told anyone who asked that it didn’t matter whether my friends liked Todd or not, deep down I cared a lot. In a sense, they were like beloved relatives whose ideas about the world were rather different from mine. I wanted them to approve of the choices I made. So I was happy to hear Huong, like Tra, insist that I should marry Todd, and to see Tung nod his head in agreement. It didn’t even seem to matter to them that I was two years older than Todd. “Gái hơn hai, trai hơn một,” Huong told me, using the old axiom with a satisfied smile: If the girl’s older, she should be two years older; if the boy’s older, he should be one.

  Todd went back to the States after a week in Hanoi. Though Huong might have liked the idea, he and I had never even spoken of marriage. Far from it, in fact. We still shied away from words like “love,” but our relationship didn’t seem casual anymore, either. For the first time, my consideration of how long I’d stay in Vietnam had quite a bit to do with him. When I took him to the airport and said good-bye, I had trouble letting go of him. And I knew that, whenever I did return to the States, he’d be waiting.

  Tung, Huong, Viet, and the new baby finally returned to Dream Street about a week before Tet. For the first time in months, the place didn’t seem like a boardinghouse anymore. When I left for my Vietnamese class in the morning, I could hear Duc crying in their loft. When I came home in the afternoon, the smell of frying fish or simmering chicken wafted out from the kitchen and through the front door. I decided we had to have a party to celebrate their return.

  Todd had brought me a package of treats from the States. I’d finished the bag of Doritos before we ever left Saigon. We’d gone through every single Three Musketeers on the train ride to Nha Trang. I still had ten or twenty Oreos, though, as well as some wintergreen Life Savers, a box of Lipton Earl Gray tea bags, and two cans of anchovies. I hadn’t known what to do with cans of anchovies in Vietnam. Now I had an idea.

  Pasta puttanesca was one of the only dishes I knew how to make by heart, and so, when I took off for one of Hanoi’s new imported food shops, I knew exactly what I needed. The little food stalls ringing the outer walls of the Hang Da Market had once carried almost the only selection of imported items you could find in Hanoi. These days, however, there were small specialty stores springing up all over the place. Items that would have been considered dull staples in the grocery chains of America—corn flakes, jars of pickles, mustard—were luxury items, and expensive, here. But now you could find them easily in Hanoi. Within just a few blocks of my house, I managed to get Italian linguine, French olive oil, and even jars of olives and capers to round out my sauce. After all these months in Hanoi, I got an inordinate amount of pleasure simply from spotting familiar brand names. I’d lived in Vietnam long enough to understand why people from former Communist countries often turn into the greatest capitalists of all.

  I came home that afternoon with my arms full of packages. Huong was curious, but, after the hamburger evening, skeptical about my ability to cook. She believed that burgers and fries were something American women learned to make when they were toddlers. What I’d proven to her of my cooking skills was less about what I knew than about what I didn’t know. And, I was planning to cook a dish that wasn’t even American. It was Italian. She was even more skeptical when I explained that pasta puttanesca meant “streetwalker’s pasta.” What did I know about Italy, and prostitutes? Besides, she believed that I knew almost nothing about cooking in general. When I’d returned to Vietnam, I’d brought her a carrot peeler as a gift, thinking it would ease the chore of making dinner. Huong had merely laughed and looked at me with pity. What kind of a cook, she’d wanted to know, couldn’t even peel a carrot?

  This time, I was determined to make the meal myself. Rather than looking uncertainly around the kitchen, I started my preparations purposefully, chopping garlic, then sautéing it with the anchovies in olive oil, explaining every step to Huong as if I were Julia Child.

  “That’s weird,” Huong told me, eyeing the pan full of garlic and salted fish. A few minutes later, when I dumped an entire jar of olives into the concoction on the stove, she gasped, then shook her head. “Well,” she told me, “we can always go out for noodle soup.”

  Huong lurked in the doorway the whole time I was in the kitchen, watching me cook. I only had to glance around the room and she would jump to find me exactly the right knife. As soon as my fingers touched the chili sauce, she hurriedly opened it and helped me measure out a spoonful. She might have been doubtful of my ability to cook, but she was also determined to make sure I didn’t flop.

  By the time dinner was ready, Huong was heavily invested in the meal’s success. While Tung set the table and opened his cache of Johnnie Walker for us to drink, she stood in front of the kitchen shelves, trying to figure out how to make Vietnamese dishware work for an Italian dinner. Although both cultures eat noodles, it was actually quite an awkward fit. Vietnamese rice-based noodles are light, and slurped, with the help of chopsticks, out of deep bowls. Italian pasta, on the other hand, is heavy, and eaten in small quantities out of shallow bowls. If we gave each person enough pasta to fit in a Vietnamese noodle bowl, we’d either end up throwing away a lot of uneaten pasta, or we’d all get sick. In the end, we abandoned the noodle bowl idea and decided to eat out of tiny rice bowls.

  Tung, who’d eaten Italian before, was almost finished with his first bowl before Huong even started. She ladled a small spoonful of sauce over her pasta, explaining, “I don’t want to put too much on it. If I don’t like this, I’m going to take the noodles into the kitchen and stir fry the whole thing.” Then, she took a bite. I sat without moving, watching her chew, then swallow. She paused for a long time, like a judge contemplating the texture of pie at the state fair. Then she looked at me and shrugged. “Not bad,” she said.

  Tung was already having thirds. Viet was ladling sauce into his bowl and drinking it straight. Ly held a piece of garlic bread in her hand, tearing off tiny pieces and nibbling on them, as if she wanted to eat it slow and savor it. But it was Huong who pleased me most. “Not bad” was the only verbal compliment she offered, but she ate the sauce like soup, with a spoon. I was more pleased than I cared to admit.

  By early February, I had lived in Hanoi for over a year altogether. I’d experienced every season, from the coldest days of winter to the most sweltering summer heat. I’d witnessed all the holidays, from International Women’s Day and Teacher’s Day to the Mid-Autumn Festival and the birthday of Ho Chi Minh. I’d experienced every holiday—that is, except for Tet. Most Americans hear the word “Tet” and immediately combine it with “Offensive.” But for Vietnamese, the word conjured entirely different ideas. Tet, Vietnam’s Lunar New Year, was the most important time on the Vietnamese calendar. For Vietnamese, it was like Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and everybody’s birthday combined.

  I decided to stay in Hanoi through Tet and then return to the States. Certainly, Todd had a good deal to do with the comparative ease with which I decided to go home. But, more than that, after living for more than a year in Vietnam, and over a span of two, I finally had confidence in the durability of my relationship with this country, and with the strength of my friendships here. When Huong talked about me coming back to visit her again when we were old, I no longer worried that I would never see her again. I fully expected to grow old with her, even if the gaps between my visits lasted years. Huong was like a family member who lived far away, whom I wouldn’t see very often, but with whom I managed to feel just as close, and happy, when we did.

  Now that Tet was fast approaching, everyone I knew, and even people I didn’t know—shopkeepers, friends of fr
iends, the guy who fixed my bike—asked the question that seemed foremost in all their minds: “Ăn Tết Việt Nam?” Translated literally, it meant, “Are you going to eat Vietnamese Tet?” but, more roughly, they were anxious to find out if I was going to celebrate Tet here. For Vietnamese, Tet was so fundamental that they seemed to take it as a sign of my commitment to their country.

  It did take commitment, really, to spend a Tet in Vietnam. It might have been the vui-est holiday of them all, to Vietnamese, but many foreigners considered it a chore. After all, we didn’t have the spiritual and traditional connections to it that would make all the more grueling aspects of the holiday worthwhile. For one thing, when people talked of “eating Tet in Viet Nam,” they meant it. According to an old Vietnamese adage, “You can go hungry even on the anniversary of your father’s death, but you must be full for the three days of Tet.” Just as revelers at Mardi Gras consider it their duty to drink, in a country as familiar with hunger as Vietnam, tradition demanded that people stuff themselves at Tet. The eating was intimately connected with the other central activity of Tet, going from house to house to “chúc Tết”—wish one another a happy New Year. More and more people were getting lazy and deciding to chúc Tết by phone these days, but most people still spent the holiday visiting—and eating. A host would feel insulted if the guest didn’t eat something, and though the eating could be as inconsequential as a couple of pieces of candy sampled from the Tet candy dish, just as often it involved sitting down to a feast. Every household I visited had virtually the same menu: five different varieties of fresh fruit, spring rolls, pork sausage, pork-stuffed mushrooms in broth, and bánh chưng, a lard- and egg-filled steamed rice cake. Dense and tasteless, bánh chưng was the fruitcake of Tet. Vietnamese liked to have it around, but they wouldn’t necessarily eat it. They ate everything else, though. American Thanksgiving was like a midnight snack compared to Tet. Rather than one enormous Thursday afternoon feast, Vietnamese would eat this meal twice, sometimes three times a day for at least three days. Vietnamese believed that the way you spent the days of Tet would set the tone of the entire year. Eating a lot at Tet was a way to help insure that you’d have plenty to eat for the next twelve months as well.