Grass Roof, Tin Roof

by Dao Strom

  This is only the Bolex, she had said.

  And what did her only imply? That there was better technology than what she was showing him and she was familiar with it already, unfazed by such special equipment? Yet she could still show up in their stepfather’s sputtering joke of a car without even the common sense to keep coolant in it. Thien, watching her, thought she had become something else lately, something worse than what he last remembered. She spoke about the camera and its specifics in some sort of specialized lingo on purpose, it seemed, as if to make a point of excluding him. Her clothes (tight-fitting black leotard shirt, paint-spattered orange cut-off sweats, cowboy boots) all had edges that had been cut or altered and were fraying. She seemed to Thien unhealthy, composed of too many disparate elements thrown together. Nothing matched, this flurrying mess under and over her skin. It was that San Francisco thing, he conjectured. Everyone up there looked malnourished, troubled, artsy. It seemed to be a matter of principle, to dress as badly as you felt.

  “Irony,” she was answering his question about Las Vegas, “it’s called irony. It’s so awful it’s beautiful. Some things are just like that—beautiful and terrible.”

  The water on the stove was boiling. She poured some over the dry oatmeal. She stirred with a spoon, pressing her hip into the counter.

  Shortly after this the call came. Mone with an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice. “I saw your car,” he told Thien.

  ***

  The relationship with Valerie is over now. For months. It was a back and forth ending, alternately reluctant and determined, on Thien’s part, mostly. He is sure now, though, it was for the best. She finally found a way to be angry with him, citing his wavering as cruel. She began to blame him. It became easier, then, for Thien to close his own book on her; his compassion for her finally dissolved. And now, when he thinks back to his time with her, he views it (he finds he must) as a period of self-weakness, or self-punishment, for all the years of his life up to this point of having felt: undeserving. They’d had nothing truly in common; he was selling himself short with her. He had not loved her. He had only partially respected her. (He thinks of Tammy, the brunette in the red bikini, but knows she wouldn’t have been right, either, was also of another world; weren’t they all, really?) He has come to believe that even if he’d gotten the things he wanted—the right girl, certain opportunities—he still wouldn’t have been able to accept them, would’ve found some means of sabotage. He’d been just too scared of everything then.

  This is where he is now, able to see this much, without contempt; with mercy. Self-mercy. And what pushed him to move in this direction?

  The night he stole back his car.

  It was like slamming doors and meaning it, it was like tying a firm knot, it was like standing in the light. What that action gave him was more than his vehicle or an adventure. It secured for him the defiant fact of ownership—that he could and would take a stand. (And, now, seven or eight months after the fact is when Thien can sit in his living room and view himself as a grainy black-and-white image on his own TV screen—from a videotape sent to him by April—breaking back into his vehicle by the stark glare of a single flashlight beam. He is surprised at his own image, for he never dreamed he could appear so stylishly angular, shadowed, that a black-and-white representation could convey, so coolly and dauntingly, these facts about himself that he will from now on own with confidence: that he has good cheekbones and well-accentuated eyes; that he is lean and vigilant and good with cars.)

  The body of his car had been stripped of all its adornments—silverplate rims, bumper lights, chrome-edged mudflaps, rearview mirrors, the leather car bra; it looked naked. Mone had recognized it by the pencil-thin pink tubing of light that ran the length of the car’s body; he had recognized this detail, in fact, on another car at a gas station in another part of town and had asked the driver where he got the light. The driver had said he didn’t know, it wasn’t his car. But Mone figured it was a stolen part and had followed that car into another neighborhood, where he had soon spotted Thien’s car parked in front of a body shop. A lot of tank-top clad, mostly Mexican boys were working under and around several vehicles in various stages of disassembly. Some kind of Spanish or Latin-American pop music played from a stereo atop the hood of one of the cars. Thien’s car had sat by the sidewalk, intact but stripped of most of its extras.

  And later that night, Mone, Thien, and April had come back for the car.

  Thien has noted some other changes in himself since the stealing and his breakup with Valerie. One, he has become interested in dating only other people of color. When he meets a woman he likes now, he is struck by an almost familial recognition—a gentle, grace-filled acknowledgment, a small door opening inside of him, giving ever so slightly. Thien realizes he was missing this before, missing out on it entirely, was walking sidewalks as if they were nothing more than sidewalks; he was unaware of the subterranean network of energies linking and testing and shooting messages among people as they pass. Now he notices the subtle nods, the movements of eyelids, the burdens of history that are transferrable in the passing sullen looks of long-haired, brown men in front of bus depots, in the wary strides of certain unkempt black men he previously regarded with suspicion. He is aware of degrees of detachment between himself and white customers dropping off their cars, and he assesses these whites according to how they do or don’t respond to the flow of the question he sends out beneath his feet at every moment now. He has come to recognize a perpetual and deep sense of—waiting. Waiting for what? An understanding perhaps? A promise?

  Thien also feels in the world around him lately a sensation of reverberation. The flow of traffic, the floods of faces lined up at supermarkets, the quick dazzle and din of sound bites on the radio, billboards on the freeway—all this crazy merging and diverging at last makes sense. He is willing to watch and wait and not search every day. (He has locked up his guns.) Sometimes, driving along the seaside in a stream of traffic at sunset, he will glimpse the rooftops of houses stretching row upon row over the coastal hills, all their matching peaks turning orange in the setting light, and, with the thin clouds curling in, and the smell of salt and mist from the sea, suddenly he will be awed by the number of lives being conducted inside this panorama. An intensely euphoric feeling will grip him and turn him almost emotional as he stares at the gold sparkles on the water.

  And only seldom does a reminder of Valerie creep back in, some small hint of a forgotten shame.

  ***

  That night they waited down the street in Mone’s car. April was hunched in the space behind the two front seats, winding her camera steadily, her hands and the camera and the film all in a black vinyl bag across her lap.

  The garage had been long closed. Lights flickered on and off behind curtained windows and several groups of revelers exited houses to loiter on driveways or the curb, then piled into their vehicles and drove off. The three waited. Initially, Thien had wanted to call the police but Mone had persuaded him not to. The biggest problem Thien foresaw now was with the camera, which needed light. April had brought along a very bright flashlight for this purpose. Thien had tried to dissuade her from coming at all, but she’d insisted, her argument being that you had to take chances and Thien never did. Thien had thought she was being juvenile and impetuous, until Mone had taken her side.

  When the neighborhood finally fell quiet, Thien and April got out of Mone’s car and walked quietly up the dark sidewalk with their jackets zipped and their heads down, because this was how it seemed to them they should walk. Thien could hear their footsteps and the whir of the camera, could see their shadows cast long in the oblong patch of light April was shining straight at the back of his head. Thirty seconds was a long time on film, she had said, and she would film their walking for only thirty seconds; she had promised him she would use the light as little as possible. They startled once at the sight of a trash can, and giggled despite themselves. April cut the camera and they continued in silence
. It occurred to Thien the filming was silly but his adrenaline was high, and soon there was no more room in his head for opinions, only motion. April had already taken what she called her establishing shots: street, exterior view of Mone’s car, interior views of their faces waiting inside Mone’s car, frivolous details such as the gearstick, the radio glow, a hand, a knee, fingers on the steering wheel. She had asked them to repeat certain actions with their hands wider apart or closer together to fit into the frame; she even asked Thien to hold his cigarette in a way he never would, to make the ash fall at a particular angle. Thien had thought this was stupid (though now, as he watches the tape she has sent, he sees what it was she was trying to get).

  On screen, his fingers loom in closeup and the ash flakes off the tip of his cigarette in fine gray detail, then disappears out of the frame.

  Then he is walking shakily to the car. His black-gloved hands are graceful and quick, sliding the long silver tool under the window frame. The door opens without a sound. It’s a silent film; her camera didn’t record sound, and this soundlessness lends his actions a fluid, diminishing quality even though the camera shakes and jars, and the images slip in and out of focus. The camera pans up: his profile close, the sharp shadow under his cheekbone, the dark arch of his eyebrow, the big white of his eye. He is in the driver’s seat and the inside of the car is abruptly lit with a bright white light, his head and torso blasted away for a moment, but then the light changes, dims, the picture is darker but clear once again. His hair, which was shorter then, makes a square, spiky helmet above his forehead as he bends over the steering wheel. Then comes the jumbled moment, the surprise. The picture jumps up and down and turns dizzying, moves quickly, sloppily backward, not coming clear again until a gun is already pointed.

  Instinctively he had reached under the seat, groped for it, found it, stood. But when he looked at it, he saw it was not his gun. It was smaller, lighter, made of cheaper materials. And he felt then as if he were watching someone else’s hand pull it up and point it at the person coming toward him. A man not much younger than himself, and all he actually saw of this person at the time was his color. Brown. The aura of a scavenger more than a predator, and now the TV image reveals exactly how little this man was, the same size as Thien, with a wan black moustache, barefoot and shirtless and shocked-looking. Mexican or Filipino or otherwise Asian or Indian, even. Like two animals in a spotlight they stood beside the car, Thien backed into its open door. This moment—he remembers it all, of course, in very slow motion (and he is a little sickened, now, somewhere low in his gut; he will not watch this tape again)—he had felt it gratefully as an agreement between them, he and this other man, this stranger, an agreement about the manner of contact they could make with one another. They could push or relent or try to stand one another down. Thien had felt energized, sinister, strong.

  This is mine — mine, you know.

  All right. That’s fine. But that gun’s mine.

  Where is the one that was in here?

  It was sold, man, it was sold.

  Somewhere in the middle of this Thien had remembered his insurance claim check, and that was when his urgency lessened (that he had enough money to buy a new gun if he wanted to slightly quenched his indignation toward the other man). More words exchanged. Here, the picture flashes, white bands cutting vertically across the frame, Thien lowering his gun as the camera stops.

  He remembers the rest. He and April got in the car and drove it away and threw the gun out onto the sidewalk for the man to retrieve at the corner.

  ***

  And there were other things: where the other pieces of his car had gone and who or what was driving around with them as decoration now; his sister following at his heels with her bright flashlight and that metal box pressed firmly to her eye (how could he warn her— open the other eye, sis— without sounding futile, naive, rote?). And: climbing over a fence into a field with some idea of a deer’s leg in mind, looking for traces of blood in the late-summer grass, what had they ever hoped, really, to recover, to rectify?

  5. LETTERS

  (August 10 and August 14, 1975)

  Dear Ms. Tran Anh Trinh:

  Your story in The Sacramento Bee touched me and caused reflections on what I also had to adjust to some years ago as an immigrant from another part of the world.

  Like yourself I came from a structured society with an entrenched national and historical identity. You must give this up, though, if you want to realize what it truly means to be an “American” — a participant in a society so elastic it can afford permanent outsiders. This is where I feel I should advise you, from the very start, not to think of yourself as an outsider. In this country you may have all the opportunities you want, but only as long as you understand it is necessary to confidently step forward to claim them.

  War is a calamity and can do ruinous things to children’s spirits. My own father was a Socialist (the purer form of what has gone awry in your and certain other parts of the world, as you know) at a time and in a climate when any such unconventional thought was misconstrued as being in line with Nazi sympathies. My father was also a writer like you, well known and politically affiliated — and our whole family suffered the consequences of his unpopularity during and following the war in which I was a child. Thus, my sympathies go out to all children of war who had no choice. Tell your son I, too, know what it is like to wish to forget, to have had not much of a boyhood to recall without fear or anger; your young daughter’s memories will likely be different, hopefully fewer. Though I believe they have equal chances, here and now, as do you.

  I will refer now to the oft-admired American custom, the direct question; from your writing and the photo, you seem an intelligent and attractive woman. Why are you still in the camp?

  I am a 44-year-old bachelor, an Architect, 6' feet with light blond hair and green eyes, speak with a slight Scandinavian accent, love animals and the outdoors, swimming, snow skiing, bicycle riding, good books, and classical music. Though lama private person, I do like and enjoy people. It is with respect that I offer my hand to help you and the children along however I can.

  ***

  Dear Mr. Hus Madsen,

  I should address to you in more friendly way after reading your warm letter as well as ask you just call me by my given name, Tran. I received several letters from my American readers, but yours is the first I respond to with enthusiasm, not because you offered help, but because you mention many things interest to me, especially about your own experience which I thought show a very intellectual person who has known failures as well as successes, and tasted bitterness and loneliness, too. I must say thanks for sending me such a sincere and honest letter.

  So you are an architect. I love architecture...

  6. THE THIRD FORM OF WAR

  It is true I was born on the fringes of several wars. It is true no bullets grazed me, no mortar blast stunned me, no tear gas blinded me, and no mother was actually taken from me; nevertheless, I hold images.

  I was a morbid teenager. A part of me was attracted to the apocalyptic. Is it the lackadaisical, capricious weather of California that breeds this? Is it television? Or is it the simple, not unusual, adolescent urge to flirt with nihilism? I was a science fiction junkie; I entertained scenarios of nuclear holocaust and imagined who might survive it with me; I fantasized about terrorists infiltrating our high school pep rallies. In short, I enjoyed imagining the familiar routine of the world overcome—violently disrupted, evaporated — and the possible ensuing freedom of chaos, of annihilation. I exalted the romance of desolation. In my mind I held clearly an image of a ruined city, rubble and bricks and splintered wood and dilapidated buildings under a cloudy purple-black sky, with no people in sight some place of necessary primal living I was trying to get to or back to. (These images of disinhabited cities are very real to me, I have almost a feeling of nostalgia toward them.) In '92, when the race riots broke out, I wanted to go looting; and as a film student in college I was one o
f those who thought it a prize to capture on celluloid the vision of a burning car on the side of the freeway, or a decrepit homeless person—life at its most dismantled moments.

  But in this was in fact a wish to see people come together. I was not truly callous. I just wanted to meet with others on vital ground, in a more urgent context than day-to-day life seemed to allow: to share with someone even just a millisecond of an understanding of need. This, I thought, might at last break down the barriers. Even though I had my parents, I would often think of myself as an orphan. Something in me knew I did not wholly belong here, wherever here was.

  My mother had told me nothing about warper se, or growing up in the time of one, but her personality (she still took interest in the inconsequential things—little pockets that my sister and I thought were cute on some shirts; our preferences for wearing our socks pushed down around our ankles instead of folded; our favorite snack foods, which she took pleasure in serving to us some days after school) revealed that even within the midst of war, people manage to find some modicum of a “normal” life; that people, no matter what the context or constraints, will at least attempt to blunder through the usual—lusts, intrigues, revelations—of life. People still manage to fall into some form of love, however scarce or violent or misconstrued or visionary it may be. I do know my mother sought men and buried bodies, alike. I could blame her, my mother, or an enemy like the Viet Cong, for passing on an obliviousness to pain, but responsibility is never as simple as that. As it is I have already blamed my mother—for not healing her own losses fast enough to present herself to us as a whole and unafraid parent. In defense I can say only that children are selfish in their helplessness; at least I was.