by Aimee Phan
After Grandaunt prepares a breakfast of pan-fried noodles or vegetable soup, they walk around the neighborhoods, attempting to fulfill Cherry’s request to see the city her parents once knew, before the Microsoft billboards and ubiquitous Kodak photo shops. In the Cholon district, Grandaunt points out the Trans’ old apartment and former friends’ homes. They pass the food markets her grandmère once frequented and have lunch in Grandpère’s favorite garden. They visit the cemetery where the Trans’ sons are buried.
Cherry never feels more American than when they are walking. She guiltily buffers herself between her much frailer relatives, who never seem nervous as they weave through the steady cross flow of cars, motorbikes, and pedestrians, pulling Cherry through the city current.
“They won’t hit you,” Granduncle tries to assure her, “if you go slow enough.”
“In America, we stop for pedestrians,” Cherry says, eyeing a family of four sailing past on a scooter.
Grandaunt shakes her head at yet another illogical foreign habit. “If we all stopped, no one would get anywhere.”
No matter. Grandaunt feels most comfortable at home, cleaning the rooms and preparing meals, and when Cherry sits with her, Grandaunt likes to tell stories. Her subject taboo is clear: nothing about the war and its aftermath (Bad memories, she says, I’m too old to cry anymore). She prefers talking about her childhood in Nha Trang with Grandpère, her sons, and the fables she learned from Cherry’s great-grandmother. Her favorite is the Trung sisters, legendary warriors from the first century, who successfully drove out the Chinese (the first time anyway) to establish the country’s independence. They are considered Vietnam’s national mothers.
“But they were married to the same man,” Cherry says.
Grandaunt waves her hand dismissively. “All marriages have their problems. Look at your grandparents. Perhaps they would have been happier with that kind of arrangement.”
“You mean, Grandpère would have been happier,” Cherry says.
Grandaunt only smiles. “They had a complicated marriage. Many of us do.”
The Tale of Kieu, which Cherry tried to read in college, is another fable Grandaunt likes to repeat. Though the main heroine is a prostitute, her despised social position is a tragedy she is forced into. Every story ends with a lesson: everyone has choices taken away from them. Despair is pushed into our lives. We can only control how we recover.
“Like you,” she says carefully, as they assemble salad rolls for dinner. “You look so healthy and strong now. Your parents must be proud.”
So Lum has told her about the accident. This shouldn’t surprise Cherry, although she suddenly feels self-conscious, wondering how much Grandaunt knows.
“Lum had me call every day while you were in the hospital,” Grandaunt says, dipping another sheet of rice paper into a bowl of water to soften it. “I tried to get him on the phone, but he didn’t want to speak to your parents.”
“My parents don’t know the whole story,” Cherry says. “They still can’t understand.”
“Have you tried to make them understand?” Grandaunt asks.
Cherry falters briefly under the woman’s firm gaze. “Yes.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Grandaunt says, returning to her rolls. “He is fine now. I don’t have to tell you, you can see for yourself. We have been good for your brother.”
“They did ask him to come back.”
“He has a life here now.”
“But it’s not home,” Cherry says, struggling to control her impatience. “It’s not America.”
Instead of becoming angry, as Cherry expects, Grandaunt only smiles faintly, bemused. After spreading the mint, basil, bean sprouts, and shrimp together, she wraps and tucks it into a perfectly shaped roll.
“You know who you sound like?” Grandaunt says. “Your grandfather, when he tried to convince Bac Tran and me to leave Vietnam.”
Cherry peers down at the saturated rice paper between her fingers. She held it underwater too long. It is ruined now. Folding it up, she tucks it behind the water bowl. “Grandpère wanted you to escape, too?”
“He’d already bought our seats,” Grandaunt says. “He bothered us until the night they left. But the point is, he was wrong. I am glad we stayed. How could I have left my two boys before they were properly buried? And now we have your brother. Not everyone was fated to leave.”
“Maybe,” Cherry says, distracted. It doesn’t matter what she thinks, this relative she hardly knows. Instead, Cherry imagines these two seats on the boat, empty, wasted. They mold the salad rolls in silence, allowing the chorus of children’s chatter and motorbike engines from the alley to fill the kitchen.
* * *
The legend of Grandmother Vo’s grudge against the Truongs was far juicier than any mundane story about how any of their parents met. Grandmother Vo always referred to them as those relatives, reminding Cherry and her brother every opportunity she had that their father’s family had gone back on their promise to help the Vos escape, disappearing into the night to selfishly save themselves. While the Truongs lived the good life in France, the Vos endured the vengeful wrath of the Communists. They tortured Cherry’s uncles in reeducation camps, killed her eldest uncle, and harassed Grandmother and her daughters, who were trying to make any kind of living they could manage, so Cherry’s cousins wouldn’t starve to death.
Of course, it was more complicated than that. Her father had explained that the Vos were supposed to be on the same boat with the Truong family. Grandpère, who had purchased the contraband seats from the boat captain, was unable to secure enough. He was lucky to provide for his own family. When he came home from his meeting with the boat captain, Grandpère told Cherry’s mother that there were no other seats left—not even for Grandmother Vo.
Her father’s explanation had never satisfied Cherry, but then again, she had no reason to push for further details—until now. Although she believed she understood both sides, she felt protective of Grandpère and Grandmère in France, who had never even met Grandmother Vo, and couldn’t defend themselves against her accusations. Cherry knew she couldn’t always trust her maternal grandmother, who painted herself the victim in every story. As Cherry knew firsthand, Grandmother Vo was no martyr.
But what had happened to the extra seats? Couldn’t Grandpère, with all his connections, have found another boat for the Vos? Couldn’t he have offered another way to help?
Her grandmother, aunts, and uncles, and even her cousins, talked as passionately about these lost years as if they had just happened. If they’d escaped Vietnam earlier, perhaps Uncle Chinh would have earned his business degree. Perhaps Linh’s little brother, born prematurely in Vietnam, would have survived in America. Perhaps Grandmother Vo’s heart condition would have been detected earlier. Perhaps Lum wouldn’t have lost his way. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
When they put it that way, Cherry couldn’t help but dream with them.
* * *
After dinner, when the relatives go upstairs to bed, Cherry finally has her brother to herself. They sit on vegetable crates in the alley, smoking cigarettes and throwing the butts into the dumpster so Grandaunt doesn’t find them in her herb garden. Stray dogs poke their noses into loose garbage, occasionally sniffing at their feet.
“Is this how you got so thin?” he asks, handing over his lighter.
“I don’t know,” she says, not mentioning that smoking is a recent habit. He still occasionally looks at her like he doesn’t recognize her, startled by her company.
“Do you remember Mom’s old nail salon in Tranquillity?” Cherry asks. “They gutted the shopping plaza last year. They’re putting in condos.”
“That was a long time ago,” he says, distracted.
“We played in the parking lot,” she persists. “You organized these huge games with all the merchants’ kids.”
Hardly a response. Cherry tries another tactic.
“Dat and Quynh are getting married.”
Not eve
n a sharp inhale or blink of the eye. Lum slowly nods.
“You already knew,” she realizes out loud. She wanted to be the one to share this news with him, to observe his initial, sincere reaction.
“Of course,” Lum says. “I’m in Vietnam, not dead.” The muscles in his cheeks tighten, preventing her from pressing further.
They retreat to typical chatter. Cherry again complains about his busy schedule, and Lum again promises it will let up soon. After the company’s big debut next week, he will have much more time to spend with her.
“You can meet Tham at the ceremony,” he says. “She’ll be back from Hanoi by then.” His girlfriend, this Tham, slips into every conversation they’ve had since Cherry’s arrival, but she exists only in name. She does not drop by the house, and there are no pictures of her in Lum’s bedroom. The relatives never speak about her. It is difficult to take this Tham seriously.
And Cherry still finds it strange to hear him talk about another girl. “How often do you talk to Quynh?” she asks.
Lum exhales loudly. “How often do you?”
Her nose wrinkles, but he can’t see this in the dark.
Lum stares at the lit embers on the ground. “She’s family now, Cherry.”
“You’re family,” she clarifies. “You could talk to her, if you ever came home.”
Lum smiles. “I’ve been busy.”
“Busy. It’s too much to get on a plane to America, but you can make it to France? Twice?” Cherry tries to keep her voice even, but the resentment scratches at her throat.
He doesn’t even look ashamed. “Someone from our family should visit Grandmère.”
Cherry doesn’t answer, stubbornly staring at her nails.
“She asks about you,” Lum says. “She misses you.”
Cherry fights the urge to roll her eyes. “I miss you. We all do.” Her head has begun to ache, but she resists the urge to pull at her hair. “They’re getting older, Lum. Mom is okay, she’s always okay. But Dad. He’s starting to forget things.”
“C’mon,” he says, looking doubtful.
“It’s true.”
“He sounds pretty sharp every time I call home and he passes the phone right to Mom.”
“You don’t know,” Cherry says, shaking her head. “You haven’t been home with them.”
“That’s right,” Lum says, “because they didn’t want me there.”
One of the stray dogs approaches Lum, licking his hand. He tenderly looks at the mutt, caressing its flea-infested ears, and when he turns to Cherry, his eyes look large and sad. “The thing is,” he says, “if I were a parent, I probably would have done the same thing. I know that now.”
Her vision blurs. Her hands grasp for the sticky underside of the vegetable crate. “But it wasn’t just you,” Cherry says.
“I didn’t mind,” Lum says. “I had to take responsibility. I understand that.”
“You can still come back,” Cherry says. “We’re still your family.”
She waits for a spark in his eye, a nod, anything. But it doesn’t come. Instead, he sighs. “Cherry. That family doesn’t exist anymore.”
The pain has seeped to her forehead. She throws her half-finished cigarette to the ground and digs the heel of her flip-flop into it, realizing how silly she must look. Lum’s hooded eyes blink sympathetically. Piteously. She is tired of people looking at her like that.
Cherry’s eye is drawn toward an open window in the house across the alley. Two button-down shirts hang from the window like curtains. Can the neighbors hear them? Their words barely register above whispers, but given the houses’ proximity, the neighbors can eavesdrop on every word. As recent as yesterday, she sat in the kitchen, listening in on the neighbors’ bickering. But despite the harshness of their voices, the screams, the taunting, their words always felt rooted in intimacy.
She rolls the back of her head against the concrete wall, then stands. “My head hurts.”
“I didn’t mean to give you a headache.”
Standing in the doorway, Cherry watches Lum finish his cigarette. “When they sent you away,” she finally says, “it hurt all of us.”
“I know,” he says, but she cannot see his face in the dark. She has to trust his words.
Later, Cherry lies in bed, watching a spider move across the cracked ceiling. She imagines her brother fast asleep, so comfortable with his life, confident in his knowledge. He hadn’t asked what it was like for her after he left. Maybe he didn’t want to know. But siblings should share each other’s pain. That is part of the responsibility.
People don’t realize how long it takes to heal. They never dramatize recovery time in the movies because it is slow, the rehabilitation tedious. After months of surgeries, physical therapy, and X-ray consultations, Cherry’s body had begun to repair itself. Cherry’s parents tried to distract her from these hospital visits by giving her anything she wanted … anything, except Lum’s return. And when she had resumed her normal life, they couldn’t understand why she looked so miserable. Her rehabilitated body was in better shape than before the accident and she had just received a Chancellor’s Scholarship to UC Irvine. They never realized that a part of her wanted to feel that way. Cherry welcomed the scars on her back, the aches that vibrated along her spine. Even now, years later, she can sometimes feel a loose sliver of pain travel through her body, floating around her tissues, something the doctors will never be able to locate and remove. She hopes they will never be able to find it. As long as this abnormality lives inside her, scraping at her nerves, she remembers that while Lum suffers, so far away from home, she does, too.
* * *
Though the air feels humid, everyone pretends otherwise. Tall dandelion-colored canopies rustle over noisy oscillating fans. Guests wilt in plastic chairs, clutching portable automated fans and personal water spritzers. No one but the servers and musicians dares to step out from under the shaded tent. The guests nibble on French pastries and sip iced jasmine tea as they wait for the ceremony to begin. Granduncle wears his brown suit with a yellow tie that Lum bought for him. Grandaunt shows off a pale blue dress she’s been working on for the last week. At her relatives’ urging, Cherry concedes to a blouse and skirt, but soon regrets it, as the fabric sticks to her sweaty skin, perspiration spots already appearing.
The housing development’s model home, the Magnolia, has already elicited approving nods and whispered speculations. The crew has transplanted roses into the garden beds around the perimeter of the house. A silky green ribbon drapes across the double doorways.
Along the aisles, journalists snap pictures and interview clients. Several prominent Asian financial newspapers and wire services are covering the debut of the New Little Saigon Community Project. As Lum stutters through his practice speech in his office trailer, Cherry smirks at his nervousness. The old Lum. But by the time he reaches the stage to introduce his boss, his voice is smooth and assertive, the suave salesman.
After a few speeches and brief applause, Mr. Pham, the chief financier, cuts the ribbon and the audience stands. The words sounded pretty (most expensive housing community project in metropolitan Ho Chi Minh City, private 220-acre golf course, twenty-four-hour guard-gated security), and the space looks idyllic, but now business can commence. The people make their way past the stage, forming a line to enter the model home.
While her relatives get in line, Cherry steals off to Lum’s office trailer to avoid the outhouses. Someone is already in the restroom, so she relaxes on the sofa, enjoying the trailer’s climate-controlled temperature. Cherry peers at the walls decorated with housing permits, real estate awards, and photographs of Mr. Pham shaking hands with assorted Vietnamese officials. Lum’s desk is covered with miniature dioramas of the development’s different housing options: the Magnolia, the Westminster, the Bolsa, and the Brookhurst.
The woman who steps out of the restroom looks like Lum’s type: tall for a Vietnamese woman, graceful, with long, straight hair down her shoulders and razor-sharp bangs
across her forehead. Her face reminds Cherry of the young military women she has seen around town: determined, arrogant. But instead of an olive-green uniform, she wears a long gray jersey dress.
“You must be Tham,” Cherry says, standing.
Tham steps back, looking as though she’s been ambushed. “Hello,” she says in English, then shakes her head, realizing Cherry spoke to her in Vietnamese. “And you are Cherry.”
“Did you just arrive?”
“Yes,” she says. “I took a motor taxi from the train station. I was just freshening up.”
They stare at each other for several long seconds, smiling, blinking. Finally, Cherry nods to Tham’s slightly swollen belly. “How far along are you?”
She drapes an arm across her stomach, protective. “You can already tell?”
“I’m going to be a doctor,” Cherry says.
“Well, I think you’re going to be very good,” she says. She thinks Cherry is pleased with her news. Cherry has a feeling that outside of Tham’s family in Hanoi, she must be the first to know.
Although Tham wants to walk together, Cherry persuades her to go ahead and meet up with Lum, saying that she will see them soon. Cherry counts five minutes in the office trailer. Then she counts five more. The numeration, in sync with her heartbeat, grows comforting. Finally, she stands. Her damp eyes wash over the walls that contain a world she knows so little about.
Stepping outside, Cherry sees Lum, Tham, Grandaunt, and Granduncle standing in front of the model home. Lum has his arm around his girlfriend. He gazes at her tummy, then kisses her cheek. The four of them, plus one on the way, make a lovely picture: a family Lum has created on his own, without their parents, without her.