by Aimee Phan
Dat arrived not long after the twins left, exactly on time, hands gripped around the shoulder straps of his gray nylon book bag. He obediently greeted his elders in the salon, then stared at his dawdling cousins and their friends.
“What’s going on, cousin?” Lum asked.
Dat shrugged, looking down at the shiny floor, littered with dirt and hair. The boys had never gotten along. Kim-Ly blamed it on their mothers’ competitiveness, which she’d encouraged when they were younger, never believing it could grow so petty.
“Nothing,” Dat said. “What are you doing?”
“That’s not true,” Quynh said. “Your sister told me you won the President’s Award. Congratulations.”
Dat blinked at her for a moment. Sighing, Kim-Ly bumped his elbow with her bag.
“Thanks,” Dat finally said. “It was a statewide essay competition. I’m the first biology major to ever win.”
The other boys weren’t listening, looking over their shoulders at the clock on the wall and exchanging glances. Linh rudely snapped her chewing gum.
“That’s great,” Quynh said. “Your parents must be so happy.”
“Of course they are,” Lum said insincerely, his arm still looped around Quynh. “Good luck.”
“Hey, I’m up for a big award, too,” Huy said. Linh sat back in his lap again. “Worst attendance in World History. Think they’ll give me scholarship money for that?”
The children laughed, all except for Quynh and Dat. Dat’s cheeks flushed red, but he was too dignified to respond to such childishness. Kim-Ly quickly gathered her bag and scarf to stand, taking her grandson’s arm. As they walked out of the salon and descended the escalator, they could still hear laughter echoing throughout the mall. Or perhaps that came from the children in the arcade on the third floor. No matter.
Dat remained silent in the car. Kim-Ly adjusted her seat and secured her seatbelt, impressed with how clean and pine-scent fresh her grandson kept his car. Kim-Ly had contributed a significant sum to help his parents buy the used Honda for Dat’s high school graduation gift, and he was clearly grateful. After Viet’s abrupt move to Houston six months ago, Dat had dutifully stepped in as Kim-Ly’s driver and companion to her doctor’s appointments.
“They’re a little rambunctious,” Kim-Ly said. “Your cousins and their friends. But they are harmless. They need discipline.”
“They encourage each other’s laziness,” Dat said when they stopped at a red light. “Quynh was on the honor roll in high school, but now she’s always at the bottom of the grading curve. She doesn’t even care. If she only spent time with other people who took studying seriously…”
While her grandson looked rather stoic behind his sunglasses, his fingernails dug circles into the steering wheel. “She’s a smart girl,” Kim-Ly said. “She will realize.”
“She loves Lum,” Dat said. “She always has. I know he’s my cousin, but he drags her down. She’ll never get anywhere with him.”
“They’re children,” Kim-Ly said. “Their affection is not serious. She will grow out of this crush and become more ambitious with her life. Do not worry, Dat.”
Dat looked at his grandmother, his chapped lips slightly parted in surprise. “I’m not worried about them. I have a lot of other things to think about. You know how hard I study. You know how much I work.”
“Of course I do,” Kim-Ly said soothingly. “It is so kind of you to think of others.”
At the clinic, Dat stayed in the examination room to translate, even though the hospital provided a medical interpreter. Kim-Ly never trusted translators to tell her everything because they were not family. The nurse checked Kim-Ly’s blood pressure and found it still elevated. Kim-Ly and Dat listened to the doctor’s recommendations to monitor her diet, perform moderate exercise, and limit alcohol consumption. After consulting the most recent blood tests, the doctor prescribed another medication.
After waiting half an hour at the pharmacy, they finally returned home with the new prescription. Alone in her room, Kim-Ly pulled out her new medication and held the orange bottle under the bedside lamp. She rattled it and unscrewed the cap, watching as the little yellow tablets spilled neatly across her rosewood nightstand, over the edge, and under her bed.
* * *
Whenever the doctors or her grandchildren would bring up the potential consequences of high blood pressure, she had to laugh. How could they guarantee that if she took this yellow pill in the morning and that blue pill at night that her quality of life would increase by 15 percent? Unlike playing the lottery, which was all gain and tiny loss, a person’s survival could not be determined by odds. If bad things were going to happen, they would happen. The pirates did not care if your boat had a 65 percent chance to reach Malaysia unscathed. They would threaten and pillage you anyway.
There were nearly forty people on their fishing junk, and though Kim-Ly had complained that their family had been shoved into the undesirable middle section, with no quick access to pee or vomit off the side of the boat, she realized when the pirates appeared how fortunate they were to be protected by so many bodies. Everyone knew who they were, what they wanted, when they saw the boat creeping up the horizon, hours earlier.
There were only six of them. Six Thai pirates versus forty Vietnamese refugees. Logic dictated that the Vietnamese could simply overpower six thieves whose only weapons were dull fishing knives and rusty razor blades. Yet so many of her boat companions threw over their valuables, hysterically weeping for mercy. Their cowardice incensed Kim-Ly. The pirates hadn’t even bothered to jump onto their junk, sluggishly circling the boat, and gathering their unearned spoils like monks collecting donations at temple. This was the laziest pirate attack Kim-Ly could imagine.
Odds had nothing to do with the volume and clarity of her scream. When the pirates drew near enough that she could see the moles on their faces and smell the stench of their ragged clothes, she reached her mouth up to the sky and with all the breath in her lungs, she wailed and wailed and wailed. Kim-Ly wasn’t even sure what she was saying, if words uttered from her throat or nonsensical, guttural moans. But when she felt her son Viet grab her face, press his forehead against hers, and she was finally calm enough to look around the boat, Kim-Ly realized that it had worked. The pirates had left. The rest of the refugees stared at her, frightened or impressed, she wasn’t sure. They said nothing for hours. They simply listened to the waves, dreading the appearance of another boat, but armed with the security of Kim-Ly’s shattering, powerful siren.
Later, the other passengers would say the pirates were too lethargic to bother jumping on the boat to slash Kim-Ly’s throat. They’d gotten what they wanted and had left. Kim-Ly felt these ungrateful dissenters had missed the point. If someone were going to take something from her, she wouldn’t allow it to happen quietly.
Years later, her children would still have to wake her from these screams. The pressure of Viet’s or another child’s hands around her shoulders, the soggy texture of the sweat and tear-stained sheets, the warmth of the bed, these sensations returned her to America. She was not on a boat. She was not falling into an ocean. There was no need to shout.
* * *
On Sundays after the salon closed, her daughters stayed late to disinfect the pedicure tubs and sinks, clean the mirrors, and mop the floors. They also caught up with Vietnamese soap operas, touched up one another’s roots, and tried to convince Kim-Ly to consider letting them color her hair. But Kim-Ly only wanted to watch the soap operas and scolded her daughters for such childish vanity. She’d grown to admire her increasing white strands and hoped she’d live long enough to have an entire mane of stunning white hair.
That night, the girls were too busy looking up American names to bother Kim-Ly. Middle daughter Tuyet had recently changed her legal name to Tanya. She said she’d grown tired of hearing Americans butcher her name.
“Tanyaaahh,” Kim-Ly said when her daughter showed her the new driver’s license. “Taaahhh-nnyahhhh.”
Hien and Tri didn’t think the name change was so strange, and consequently, were following their sister’s example, like mindless ducks, as they always did. Just look at their newest hair color: spicy nutmeg, another fancy way to say brown. Copycats. So while Tuyet/Tanya scrubbed the pedicure tubs with smelly chemicals, Tri hunched over Hien’s hair roots, cheerily counting the new white hairs she found as she touched them up.
“What about Helen?” her eldest daughter asked, dog-earing a page from the name book. “It’s similar to Hien.”
“It sounds old,” Tri said, pulling back Hien’s hair part to reach the roots in the front. “It’s a retired woman’s name.”
“Those women used to be young, too,” Hien said. “I like the sound of it. Helen of Troy, like that movie on television last year.”
“Do you know why I gave you that name? Because it was your grandmother’s. Your father and I wanted to honor her memory. And now you want to change it to some character from a movie?”
“I’m not replacing your name, Mother,” Hien said. “I’m just adding an American one.”
“If I’d known we’d be in America forever, I would have named Linh differently,” Tri said as she wrapped her sister’s hair in a stained orange towel. “Maybe Jessica or Amanda. American teachers treat students differently if they can pronounce their names. They don’t judge them as harshly. That’s why Cherry does so well.”
“That is ridiculous,” Kim-Ly said. “What about Dat? He does very well and no one is calling him Dan or David.”
“Do you know how much he has to work for it?” Hien said. “He studies harder than any other student in his classes. It’s not easy for him.”
“And that is because he is Vietnamese? Listen to you girls, victimizing yourselves all over again. This is not wartime. Why do you worry so much about the Americans’ opinions of you? Do you really think they are thinking about you so much?”
“Viet is changing his name,” Tuyet/Tanya said.
“No, he isn’t.” Kim-Ly would know if her last surviving son would do such a thing.
“Yes, he is,” she said. “Ask him the next time he calls. He wants to be called Victor now.”
Kim-Ly didn’t reply. Viet suddenly felt even farther away from her. She hadn’t realized that was possible. After he decided to move away, ostensibly to be closer to that trashy girlfriend and her bastard children, Kim-Ly was unable to leave her bedroom for a week. Viet had been too polite to reveal his true reasons for leaving: he’d grown tired of listening to his mother’s advice about limiting his card playing, and pursuing a law or business degree instead. Though he nodded and pretended to agree, Kim-Ly knew her words were not as valuable as her deposits in their joint checking account. Now, he only called her to ask for an increase in his monthly stipend, or to promise once again that he was just weeks away from settling into his new home and inviting Kim-Ly out for a visit.
“We live in America now,” the former Hien said. “We’re not ever going back to Vietnam, you said so yourself.”
“That doesn’t mean you forget who you once were,” Kim-Ly said. “A name is your identity. You’re going to regret it. And I hope I don’t live to see that.”
No one responded. Perhaps she’d made her point, but more likely they’d grown weary of arguing with her. Their eyes traveled to the television, where the vapid lead characters from the latest Vietnamese soap opera were arguing about a scandalous conversation between the husband and the maid. Kim-Ly despised how fascinating she still found these shows. Illegally imported, they always revolved around family woes. No one ever mentioned a world outside the home, nothing political or historical. If any outsider tried to understand her people from these soaps, instead of those atrocious American films, they would think the war had never happened. That the Vietnamese were pretty, self-absorbed elitists instead, not so different from Americans themselves.
The girls were talking about an academic debate that Cherry had qualified for. Her granddaughter participated in some school-related event every weekend. This one was in La Jolla. Tuyet/Tanya wanted to make it a family outing and go to SeaWorld.
“I can’t,” Kim-Ly said. “I’m going to Vegas.”
Her daughters all stared at her, with that stunned expression they had inherited from their father.
“Are you crazy?” Tuyet/Tanya asked.
“How are you going to get there?” chimed Hien/Helen.
“Who’s going to make sure you take your medication?” Tri asked.
Kim-Ly was prepared. She would take the Johnny Luck Resort and Casino Complimentary Luxury Coach to Las Vegas with her dearest friends Ba Liem and Ba Nhanh. They planned to stay for three days and two nights. She was perfectly capable of administering her own medication as she always had been. And no, she was not crazy, simply bored. She needed a vacation.
“This might be okay,” Tuyet/Tanya said, more to her sisters than to Kim-Ly. “Lum will be in Las Vegas that weekend for a school project. His business class is taking a tour of a resort construction. He can keep an eye on her.”
“School project!” hooted Kim-Ly. “You believed that?”
“Why are you going there?” Tri asked suspiciously.
“We’re going to see a free show. And to go window shopping.”
The girls exchanged a knowing glance.
“Don’t worry,” Kim-Ly sneered. “I won’t be taking any of the family money. I have been saving my own. It isn’t related to the salon in any way. We have all learned from that misunderstanding, haven’t we?”
That lovely reminder was enough. Kim-Ly would finally be leaving the state of California with her friends. She only had to agree, several times, that she’d call and meet up with Lum once in the morning and once in the evening for the duration of her trip. They put Lum’s number in her purse, her suitcase, and in both pockets of her cardigan. If Lum didn’t hear from her, the daughters warned, they’d drive to Vegas and find her.
* * *
“Why build a city here?” Kim-Ly asked as they stepped off the bus and the dry heat punched her in the face. She couldn’t believe how much dead land stretched between Orange County and Las Vegas. While her native country was lush with jungles, rivers, rice paddies, and beaches, this landscape could only cough up rocks, weeds, and lots and lots of clay.
“Ahh, but why not?” Ba Liem replied, looking absurd in the oversize plastic sunglasses the resort stuck in every seat pocket. “This is the American Way, Ba Kim-Ly. Arrive broke on Friday, leave rich on Sunday.”
For most people, it was likely the other way around. But they didn’t have a psychic by their side. The bus had driven down the Strip for the virgin patrons to ooh and ahh at the lights and fountains, but their hotel was actually ten minutes away from the main strip in the suburb of Henderson. They dropped their bags in their hotel room and cooed at the floral wallpaper, two double beds jammed against the windows, ashtrays on every surface. After washing up in the cramped bathroom with tissue-thin towels, they eagerly took the elevator to the hotel’s casino floor.
Kim-Ly was glad to be standing between the twins. Everywhere there were stroke-inducing neon signs, singing and dinging slot machines, and people smoking. And women in tiny outfits with doily napkins on their heads, trying to talk to her. Ba Nhanh explained they were taking drink orders.
“Free?” Kim-Ly asked, and then instructed Ba Nhanh to order her a gin and tonic.
As they wandered the casino floor, surveying the slot machines and gaming tables, Kim-Ly realized she hadn’t accounted for the fact that most of the inhabitants of Las Vegas would be speaking to her in English. It was an easy thing to forget living in Little Saigon where everyone spoke Vietnamese. Kim-Ly’s English was limited to the essentials: Hello, Good-bye, Yes, No, Sorry, Thank
you, Restroom. How could she learn enough to play bingo?
“You only have to look at the numbers they show on the screen,” Ba Liem assured her. “And we’ll be with you.”
It turned out most of the players in the Johnny Luck Bingo Parlor were Vietnamese anyway, or at least Asian. As soon as they sat in the plush chairs and brightly colored tables, another doily waitress came by.
“Another gin and tonic water,” Kim-Ly said, and after a look from Ba Nhanh, she added, “that last one was very weak.”
The bingo dealer, a tall Chinese woman with frizzy hair, announced the bingo rules in English, Vietnamese, and several other languages. As a casino employee handed out bingo cards and sponge-tipped daubers, Kim-Ly was surprised by how much a pack of cards cost, and even more surprised at how many packs her friends purchased. This wasn’t like their dollar games of SuperLotto.
“You have to increase your odds with the number of cards,” Ba Liem explained. “Trust me. We’ve watched how people win at this. You can never win from just one pack.”
Kim-Ly reluctantly purchased a second pack. The twins spread their cards across the table, uncapped their daubers, and ordered another round of drinks. The waitress also brought complimentary bowls of peanuts and pretzels to their table.
“And remember,” Ba Liem said, “you have to scream ‘bingo’ really loud here. If you don’t and they hear someone else say it before you, you lose.”
“We’ve seen fights over it,” Ba Nhanh whispered. “In this very casino.”
After only twenty minutes and twelve numbers on the wall screen, a man in the back bingoed. The twins were right. You did have to scream, and he certainly did. Kim-Ly couldn’t tell if he was in pain or joy. They watched as the winner danced up the aisle to collect his prize. Kim-Ly realized why she preferred California SuperLotto. It was cheaper, and she didn’t have to watch the winning bastard skip away with money that should be hers. She also began to suspect the cards were fixed. Kim-Ly couldn’t control what number patterns she bought and she had to work fast to mark the called numbers with the dauber. Kim-Ly’s eyes were not as sharp as they once were. With SuperLotto, the rules were simpler and fairer. The Lotto didn’t punish the slow.