The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

by Aimee Phan

  The next week, a young boy came to the apartment with a letter from Tuyet. His family lived next door to the Truongs. He was instructed to give Kim-Ly Vo the letter on this day. He seemed relieved handing it off to Hien.

  The children took turns reading the letter since Kim-Ly neither wanted to read or hear it. Then they burned the letter in the kitchen stove, according to Tuyet’s instructions.

  When Viet found Kim-Ly hunched in the bathroom weeping, he pulled her off the damp, grimy floor and gathered her in his arms, ignoring the stench of fresh vomit in the toilet.

  “There was no more room on the boat,” Viet said. “But once she’s safe, she said she can still help us.”

  Such a good boy, so unwilling to see selfishness or evil in people. Just like his father that way. Kim-Ly didn’t have the energy to tell him he was wrong. Who was she to take this only hope away from her children? If they needed to believe there was still a way to escape their lives here, if this fantasy helped them to endure, Kim-Ly would keep her mouth shut.

  But she wouldn’t be deluded. While she and her loyal children and grandchildren suffered, year after year, while they scrapped for demeaning jobs and sold off heirloom belongings for food and medicine for an ailing Chinh (he’d developed a congestion in his chest from the camps), the hate she felt in her heart stirred her to stay alive, determined not to allow one narcissistic, spiteful brat to destroy her family.

  * * *

  The investigation turned up nothing. The committee could not verify that any money had changed hands. Still, the discussions in the Vietnamese newspaper editorials and radio shows and between gossipers in the community soured much of the beauty pageant’s joyful afterglow. Duyen packed her crown and the glittering ao dais in her bedroom closet, and seemed embarrassed whenever someone mentioned anything to do with the pageant.

  “It’s over,” she said at a family dinner after Linh had teasingly called Duyen by her title. “I’m sick of it.”

  Her mother said Duyen was finished with the pageant circuit, which frustrated Kim-Ly, because she knew her granddaughter could win the senior title of Miss Little Saigon. She blamed Ba Nhanh’s lack of discretion the day of the pageant. If only the old woman weren’t so obvious, none of this suspicion and misunderstanding ever would have occurred. Duyen could have been proud of her accomplishment instead of ashamed.

  Kim-Ly had not moved out of Tuyet’s home. She didn’t feel comfortable moving into her other children’s homes just yet, though they’d made the obligatory offers. The twins lived with their own children, so she couldn’t move in with either of them. She did have enough money for her own apartment, but the thought of living alone frightened Kim-Ly. She didn’t speak English fluently (her language lessons when she first arrived to America had been miserable, condescending, and she quit after two weeks). She couldn’t drive. After hearing horror stories from the twins about where Americans sent their elderly, she didn’t want to move into a senior citizens’ home and sit around, waiting to die.

  She’d have to determine which child she felt deserved her company, and unfortunately none immediately came to mind. Following the humiliating confrontation in her bathrobe, they hadn’t spoken about the missing money or the pageant again. The children probably whispered about it among themselves, but after the investigation closed, the hushed conversations faded as well.

  One night after dinner, Tuyet cornered Kim-Ly in the kitchen as she prepared some tea to take upstairs to her room.

  “What do you want to accuse me of now?” Kim-Ly asked while she steeped the press into the loose jasmine leaves and boiling water.

  Tuyet held up a thick envelope in Kim-Ly’s handwriting that was addressed to Viet’s ex-girlfriend. Kim-Ly wiped her hands on her pants, squinting. The post office had stamped something red across the envelope and stamps.

  “Cherry found this in the mailbox this afternoon,” Tuyet said. “There wasn’t enough postage on it.”

  Kim-Ly snatched it from her daughter’s hands. “Then why didn’t she give it back to me? This is my private mail.” Kim-Ly flipped over the envelope and saw it had been opened.

  “She thought it felt strange,” Tuyet said. “I’m glad she gave it to me.”

  Kim-Ly opened the envelope and saw that the letter had been refolded and lay outside of the wad of cash. She suddenly remembered her granddaughter at dinner, looking sulkier than usual. She scanned the house, fuming. Sanh and the grandchildren were upstairs, likely hiding in their rooms. This was an ambush.

  “Is this what you were doing with the salon’s money?” Tuyet asked. “Paying off one of Viet’s ex-girlfriends? Is another one pregnant again?”

  Instead of answering, Kim-Ly turned and began walking toward the stairs. When her daughter pulled at her arm to stop her, Kim-Ly spun around, enraged. “What do you want from me?” she screamed. “You know everything now, why aren’t you happy with that?”

  “Why didn’t you confide in me?” Tuyet asked, eyes shimmering—a manipulation that perhaps worked on her husband and the Truong family, but not Kim-Ly.

  “Why would I want your help?” Kim-Ly asked. “The child who has betrayed me again and again?”

  Tuyet shook her head, that imperious expression from her childhood once again spoiling her face. “Who brought you here? Who has always given you a place to live?” she asked. “Who has taken care of you since you’ve been in America?”

  “That’s not love,” Kim-Ly said. “That’s guilt. I trust the child who cared for me in Vietnam, when I really needed it. You chose to leave me there.”

  Tuyet raised her hands and dropped them, always the dramatic. “I never wanted to leave you, Mother. But you forced me, didn’t you? You’ve made mistakes, too.”

  “I certainly have,” Kim-Ly agreed, glaring at her.

  “I can only hope one day you realize which children have truly been loyal to you.”

  “And the same for you,” Kim-Ly said. “If your daughter can betray her own grandmother, she will do it to you any day now.”

  Walking past the grandchildren’s bedrooms in the hallway, she couldn’t contain the rage tickling her throat, itching at her fists.

  “Are you happy?” she shrieked at their silent, closed bedroom doors. “Your unwanted grandmother is leaving. You finally get your wish.”

  In her room, Kim-Ly sat on her bed, her spine tall, and tried to breathe. She’d been through worse humiliations than this. There was no question she would survive this one. She picked up the telephone on her bedside table and dialed Tri’s phone number. When her granddaughter Linh answered, she asked the child to hand the telephone to her uncle.

  “Viet?” she whispered, in a tone so quiet and different from a few minutes before, but familiar, correct, because this was her real voice, her true voice. “Viet, this is your mother.”

  1984

  Cuc Bui

  Paris, France

  … No son should have to grow up without his father, especially as a young boy. I feel lucky for the opportunity to have been with my boys since their births, to have raised them personally. They have grown up understanding the values every Truong should live by.

  Daughters are fine to be left alone with the women. Ngoan was a good mother to Cam while Phung was away. She taught her all the necessary skills a woman should know. Cam can be willful at times, but that can help her in this new country. Whatever happens to her now, she will always have her decent upbringing to guide her in making wise decisions.

  I worry for Xuan. I did the best I could for Yen’s boy. But his mother is so frustrating, so stupid. You remember how she behaved on the boat, refusing to let anyone else hold him? She coddled the boy, and the other women condoned this. Too much female influence. Sometimes he listened to me, but most of the time, he would run behind his mother’s legs. They complained that I was too harsh. A boy needs that.

  I have warned Yen about this. Xuan needs to see his father as a man. But Yen feels too guilty. You can see it in the way he caters to Trinh�
��s every complaint, every tear she sheds. A father should be stronger for his son. If Yen believes it was a mistake to leave Xuan for the first years of his life, then the boy will believe it, too. He must have faith in his choices. He must make the boy understand that the decision was the correct one, the only one.…

  Hung Truong

  Paris, France

  Chapter Five

  XUAN

  PARIS, FRANCE, 1992

  Is dialogue the path to truth?

  This was the bac’s most popular philosophy question from the previous year. Reported in the daily newspapers, it inspired speculative editorials from the country’s leading philosophers and write-in rebuttals from politicians, doctors, soccer players, and pastry chefs. The debates stretched into the late weeks of summer. Xuan remembered, because he clipped every article. The question would likely not appear on this year’s bac, but his cousin Cam still wanted to go over it, not because she was studious, but because debating amused her.

  “Let’s talk it out,” Cam said, an intoxicated smile playing on her lips, her hands carelessly wrinkling the organized clippings in Xuan’s notebook. “Let’s try to reach the truth.”

  “You’d have to be an honest person to understand,” Xuan said, snatching the binder back from her, smoothing out the damaged pages. “And you’re a liar.”

  “Ooh,” Cam said, her eyes widening. With one hand, she pushed her long, tangled hair from her face, using the other hand to support herself against the toffee-colored lounge chair. “Strong words. But I can rebut. Aren’t lies simply alternate perspectives of the truth?”

  “‘Mother, I’m going to study’ is not another perspective of ‘Mother, I’m going to my boyfriend’s house to smoke hashish.’”

  Cam’s smirk faded at last, Xuan’s wish fulfilled. “Michel and I are friends.”

  “Who sleep with each other,” Xuan corrected.

  His cousin peered behind her shoulder. When she realized Petit Michel was still in the kitchen, her gaze returned to Xuan. “What’s with the attitude?” she whispered. “I brought you here to relax.”

  “I need to work,” Xuan said, stuffing his books and study guides into his backpack. “So do you. The bac is in two weeks and you are wasting my time.”

  “Michel said he will help us,” Cam said, her voice low, but determined. “He got a sixteen, remember?”

  But they had been at Petit Michel’s apartment—correction, the Bourdains’ apartment—for over an hour and all Xuan had learned was that Petit Michel’s hairline was receding, just like his father’s, and despite this, Cam was openly fawning over him. A surprising, annoying revelation; he had no idea how long the two had been seeing each other, and didn’t plan to ask. Xuan also had suspicions about Petit Michel’s too-impressive score on the bac. It didn’t seem coincidental that the richest children in the city consistently received the highest marks, securing them positions in the grand écoles, and further perpetuating the exclusivity of the French elite. Those who failed to possess such luck and wealth had to work even harder for their scores.

  The unfairness itched at his concentration. He stood and pulled on his jacket. “I’m going to the library.”

  “Now?” Petit Michel asked, returning with a plate of cookies and chocolates. Like Cam, he was dressed all in black. Xuan, in blue jeans and a red sweater Grandmère knit, felt like a bright, shiny clown.

  “I really should,” Xuan said, annoyed how his voice turned soft, his politeness returning, just as it would for Petit Michel’s parents. “It closes in three hours.”

  “But it’s Saturday,” Petit Michel said, leaning a hip against the arched entry of the living room.

  “I need to work on my flash cards,” he lied, reaching for his backpack.

  “No, you don’t,” Cam said. When Xuan looked at her, she smiled with her lips. “Xuan has a genius memory.”

  Xuan sighed. “She means photographic.”

  “It’s true. He reads a book only once and he’ll remember chapters, footnotes, everything. It’s frightening.”

  “Yet, I’m rusty on the seventeenth century,” Xuan said, then offered a tight smile to the frowning lovers. “Thanks for the drinks.”

  He turned and walked out, past the furniture and décor, clear indications that Petit Michel’s mother had decorated this home as well. As a child, he would marvel over the Bourdains’ shiny, ornate decorations, items he was afraid to touch without his mother’s permission. When no one else was looking, Xuan’s mother would shove a decorative plate or crystal vase in his small, chubby hands, softly whispering in his ear, “Look at that, darling. Feel how heavy and solid that is? This is worth more than a year’s rations of meals for a child in an orphanage.” When Xuan asked why, his mother would shake her head and simply say, “That’s the rich for you. They have the ability to do right, but they’d rather have pretty things.”

  Why are we sensitive to beauty?

  The air felt cooler outside, and a sweetness had descended upon the boulevards. Early summer evenings were always pleasant. Xuan could walk for blocks and blocks without a jacket or sweater, even beyond the arrondissements, through the suburbs and into the countryside, where his relatives would never think to find him.

  The university library was only a few blocks from Petit Michel’s apartment. Xuan was tempted to take the metro to a library outside the quarter, to avoid any chance encounters with classmates—and being forced into more needless conversation—but he determined that the risk did not outweigh the extra travel time. Xuan hated wasting time. Since his first level of secondary school, Xuan consulted a daily organizer to evaluate and assign every hour of his life. He disliked how sleep occupied at least a third of his days, no matter how many times he tried getting by with less. His mother could do it—she regularly catnapped, sleeping a few hours here and there, never more than four at a time. But she was assisted by prescription pills and chronic insomnia.

  If he turned left at the flower shop where Grandmère bought her Sunday floral arrangements, Xuan would be at his family’s apartment house. He veered right instead, eyes fixed on the concrete, his stride pointed and brisk, hoping none of his relatives was around to spot him. Although Grandmère and Aunt Ngoan occasionally complained about living in such a busy district, too far from Chinatown where they did most of the grocery shopping, Xuan was grateful for the Latin Quarter. It certainly wasn’t the wealthiest area in the city (where the Bourdains lived) and they had their fair burden of tourists (especially in the summer), but there were excellent schools, libraries, and hospitals. The Bourdains had helped Xuan’s father locate his apartment in the building, where the whole family now lived, years before the real estate values and rental prices went up. They considered the building home, despite its leaky pipes and ant infestations every spring. Whenever Xuan’s father would mention the possibility of buying a house in the suburbs, the family members would ask: What about their church? The Vietnamese Community Center? What about Dr. Robin?

  Dr. Robin was his mother’s best psychiatrist. She wasn’t her favorite—that was Dr. Henri, whose solution to every setback was new medication, and who could always make her laugh. Dr. Robin hardly smiled and could not be intimidated or flattered by his mother, which helped tremendously. She was the first psychiatrist to recommend in-patient treatment. Xuan was twelve during Trinh’s first hospitalization. The psychiatric ward was actually located in their arrondissement—a five-minute walk from the apartment house. And while Xuan wasn’t allowed to visit during his mother’s treatments, Grandmère would walk him and Cam to the hospital and stand under the window of his mother’s room.

  “What a nice location,” Grandmère said. “She gets to look out this window all the time and see these pretty flower beds. Aren’t we jealous?”

  They waved to the dark window, three mittened hands in the gray air, even though they couldn’t see anyone or anything inside it. But Grandmère assured them that his mother was there, waving back and growing healthier. When Trinh returned hom
e six weeks later, Xuan told her about their window visits.

  “You were there?” Xuan’s mother said, noticing him for the first time, though she’d been home for hours. He could see the black pupils in her brown eyes as she gazed at him, so dark and deep that he finally stepped back. “Then why didn’t you come get me?” As his father pulled him away to another room, Xuan saw that both her hands had curled into fists.

  His mother had returned last week from her most recent treatment and she appeared significantly calmer—no spells, no crying fits, no inappropriate confessions … not yet anyway. There was no point in getting overexcited. It would take more time to determine if the results would last. The day before she was released, Xuan’s father had asked if he wanted to move into his grandparents’ apartment downstairs to minimize distractions before the bac. But Xuan didn’t see the benefit. After so many years living in the apartment house, he knew how ineffective a locked door was to his mother. If she wanted him to hear her, to pay attention to her, a different floor wasn’t going to matter.

  Can humanity be envisaged without religion?

  Xuan usually enjoyed the Sunday breaks from studying, when his family attended Mass in the morning and then prepared for an elaborate family lunch. He’d stopped believing years ago, but the predictable, comforting rituals of the service, the psalms and gospels, the kneeling and recitation of prayers, revitalized him for studying on Monday. But as the weeks before the bac thinned, he found himself reviewing facts and theories in his head during the homily, imagining logarithm equations scrolling across the altar as he stood in line for communion. When he looked at other students from his class in the church, he envied how calm and bored they appeared.