The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

by Aimee Phan

“She told me about the American officer,” Lum said. “You tried to force her to marry him instead of my father just so you could make a business deal.”

  “Is that what she told you?” Kim-Ly said with a snort. “Then you really are as stupid as Dat says.”

  She expected her grandson to deny her provocation, to defend himself. He remained silent as he switched lanes to pass another car. Kim-Ly furtively watched him, the tightness in his cheekbones, the squinting in his eyes. She wondered if he was sincerely wounded by her words.

  “I believe her,” he finally said. “I know what you’re capable of. It shouldn’t surprise me, given how you and Uncle Thang made money back in Vietnam.”

  “We never sold anything illegal! Your mother never understood the family business.” The pressure returned to her chest. “Do you want your mother to know how you mistreated me tonight? The activities you participated in?”

  Her grandson had the insolence to smile. “You can’t leave anyone alone,” he said. “Not those poor people you give loans to and not your family. You meddle and meddle, and make things worse. You drive Uncle Viet away because you refused to see his children. You destroy lives. I don’t have to stick around and let you do that to me.”

  Looking over at him, the oncoming traffic manipulating the lights and shadows across his face, he appeared menacing, deranged. “You should not speak to your mother this way,” Kim-Ly said, loudly, forcefully.

  He turned to her, his eyes thinning, focusing, seeing her. “I am not your son.”

  They returned to her home at Hien and Chinh’s at nearly two in the morning. Lum walked her to the front steps and after she unlocked the door, left without saying good-bye. At breakfast the next day, Hien told her that someone in Huntington Beach had won the SuperLotto jackpot while she’d been in Vegas. A lawyer’s housewife who clearly didn’t need the money had bought the ticket on a whim.

  The family sipped on asparagus and crabmeat soup and said nothing about Kim-Ly’s early return. When Dat stood to leave for the library, Kim-Ly pressed his hand to stay. She waited until Dat’s sister and parents had left the table to tell her grandson everything; the false driver’s licenses, the drinking, the gambling, even Lum’s foolish plans to propose to Quynh. Dat didn’t seem surprised. He listened to what she said, never interrupting, and they both sighed at the trouble Lum had fallen in.

  “You have to help your cousin. He’s not smart enough to help himself. He’ll say anything to hide his addiction. He’ll even say I am not well.”

  Dat slowly nodded, pushing up the bridge of his eyeglasses with his pointer finger. “I’m glad you confided in me, Grandmother. I promise you, we will help him. He will not disgrace this family.”

  “I trust you, Dat,” Kim-Ly said, smiling and patting his shoulder. “I know you will fix this.”

  At such a crucial moment in her family’s life, Kim-Ly felt grateful to have a family member she could rely on. Although she knew some of her family considered her rigid, even impossible, Kim-Ly set high standards for their own good. She wanted the best for them. To see Lum throw his life away because he overestimated his intelligence, because he trusted those he should not, was all too familiar. The world could be cruel to the weak and slow-witted. Just look at what happened to Viet. She had loved her son too much to help him properly. Such suffering would not continue down her lineage. Lum’s parents couldn’t see it. Neither could his sister. Only Kim-Ly could. So she and Dat would help him. Lum would never know it, but they would rescue his future.

  1986

  Cuc Bui

  Paris, France

  … I received a postcard from my grandchildren in America the other day. They had taken a vacation to Mexico, which they can drive to by car. Lum and Cherry say they have been swimming at the beach and visiting street fairs. How exciting for them.

  While I’m aware they sent that card out of respect, I can’t help but feel offended. Wouldn’t you? If they have free time from school, shouldn’t they be visiting their grandpère? I can’t imagine what Mexico has to offer over their family. They have a beach in California. But how often can they see us?

  I do not blame them. They are too young to understand. But their parents, their father, he is the one who disappoints me. I know I tried my best with my boys, but it still pains me to watch how my youngest turned out. Not as smart as Yen, not as loyal as Phung. Always bowing down to that serpent of a wife, who has always hated us, even when we cared for her when her family kicked her out to the streets. She dares to blame us for our family’s separation. An aberration of a human being, I shall never say or write her name again.

  This was Sanh’s choice. He has no one to blame but himself. While I am of the mind that men should choose their own wives, his choice has never made sense to me. Now he must suffer for it for the rest of his life.…

  Hung Truong

  Paris, France

  Chapter Nine

  HOA

  PARIS, FRANCE, 1996

  Hoa realized her granddaughter was troubled the first night she arrived. Cherry acted cranky, distracted. Her appetite, which Hoa remembered as healthy, enthusiastic for her grandmère’s cooking, was poor. Hoa understood this was typical adolescent behavior—she’d seen it with both Xuan and Cam—but unlike her cousins, Cherry accepted no comfort from her grandmère. Her hug at the airport was brief and perfunctory, and conversation at her welcome dinner felt awkward and forced. Cherry excused herself early that evening, claiming to be exhausted. Later that night, Hoa sneaked into the study where Cherry was sleeping to make sure her blankets were covering her properly. After adjusting her pillow, Hoa fought the impulse to kiss those chubby cheeks and delicate eyebrows. It was hard to believe she was already a young woman. And Hoa had only spent a handful of days with her in that short lifetime.

  Hoa knew she shouldn’t push herself on her granddaughter—that she should give her time to recover from the plane ride, and space to reacquaint herself with her relatives—but she couldn’t help her eagerness. She had three weeks with her granddaughter. Three weeks. Cherry had come alone to Paris this summer, without her parents and without her brother, Lum, who claimed he had to work. This was the second year in a row that Hoa had not seen her grandson.

  The next morning, Cherry walked with Cam to her patisserie in the Marais, and returned with a book of postcards she purchased from a street vendor along the Seine. While Hoa picked up the living room and folded laundry, Cherry worked for over half an hour on one postcard, her tight, square handwriting nearly impossible to read when Hoa passed by and casually peered over her shoulder. While Cherry was feeding Grandpère lunch in his bedroom, Hoa sat on the sofa and wistfully stared at the card from across the living room. She could not invade her granddaughter’s privacy. She tried to focus on her crocheting.

  “Why don’t you tell me what is bothering you?” Hoa finally asked when Cherry returned from the bedroom with an empty bowl and spoon. “What can you put in writing that you can’t say to me?”

  “You’re the one who taught me to write letters,” Cherry said. “Sometimes they can be more intimate than talking. You can say more.”

  After depositing the dishes in the kitchen, she walked to the sofa and sat next to Hoa, who was crocheting a blanket. “I’ve kept all of your letters,” Cherry said. “I read them when I miss you.”

  Though she recognized her granddaughter’s strategy, Hoa allowed herself to be swayed. “So you are writing to a friend?” Hoa asked, smiling. “A boyfriend?”

  Cherry’s face flushed pink. “No, just my cousin.”

  “Oh,” Hoa said, immediately regretting the assumption.

  “You don’t have to feel sorry for me,” Cherry said. “I probably wouldn’t have time for one, even if someone were interested.”

  Hoa smiled again, relieved. “Relationships when you are too young can cause a lot of waste in your heart.”

  “Did you have boyfriends when you were my age?”

  “The only young men I knew besides your
grandpère were family. We did not socialize like you and your cousins do now.” She sometimes felt grateful for this. She did not enjoy watching Cam suffer these last few years, and disliked how the Bourdains snubbed their family every Sunday at Mass, all due to Petit Michel’s callousness. She hated how secretive Xuan acted with his own relationships, never bringing anyone home, only discussing his studies. Neither of them showed any inclination toward a marriage anytime soon. Perhaps Xuan and Cam could use some guidance. True, Hoa had reservations against arranged marriages after her own, which was why her two younger sons chose their own wives. But finding a partner, a suitable partner, especially in a country like France, could be a lonely prospect.

  Cherry fingered the crocheted yarn in Hoa’s lap. “Did you ever write letters to Grandpère? He was asking for his mail during lunch.”

  Hoa managed not to cringe. “I’ve been with him every day since I was seventeen years old. We never needed to write letters.”

  “Aunt Trinh said she never saved Uncle Yen’s letters.”

  Hoa remained silent as Cherry continued to play with the stitching.

  “I guess it’s not like she wants to remember that time or anything,” Cherry said.

  “No,” Hoa tentatively admitted. “None of us—”

  “Lan!” Hung screamed from the bedroom.

  “Who’s Lan?” Cherry asked.

  “One of our servants back in Vietnam,” Hoa said, pushing the knitting needles off her lap.

  They could smell feces before entering the room. Hung sat up in bed, his face red and sweaty. He stared at them for a second. Hoa wasn’t sure if he would scream again or burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Cherry said. “I asked him after his lunch. He said he didn’t need to go.”

  “That’s okay, darling,” Hoa said. “There are laundered sheets in the hall closet.” When her granddaughter left, Hoa strode to his bedside and pulled his sheets away. He’d gotten it everywhere. They’d have to wash the blankets and duvet cover.

  “If you keep humiliating yourself like this, you’re going to drive all our family away,” Hoa said, peeling the soiled clothes from his thin limbs. She wrapped them into a ball and dumped them in the hamper.

  “Where are my letters?” Hung asked as she buttoned him into a fresh pajama top. “Why are you hiding them?”

  With Hung incontinent, she’d moved her single bed out of the bedroom to sleep in the study. He didn’t like her near his desk, though he rarely used it anymore.

  “No one writes to you,” Hoa said, closing the top button, though in the past he complained it restricted his breathing. “All of your friends are dead.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I lie?” Hoa asked tiredly, pulling an adult-size diaper from the top drawer of his dresser.

  “I’m not wearing that,” Hung said with dismay.

  “You are.” Hoa easily fended off his protesting hands and pulled the diaper around his legs to fit firmly around his seat. One of the few benefits of Hung’s ailment: now she was physically stronger than he was.

  * * *

  Lan. She lived with them back in their old house in Nha Trang. The younger sister of another servant, Lan was sixteen and had only stayed for several months before leaving for school. Hoa barely remembered her name until she found it in the letters. She should have realized how odd it was for a servant to have enough money to go away to school. For someone so young, the girl was shamelessly overdramatic, even if these were love letters—always thanking Hung for his patronage, effusing about the literature and criticism she read in school, expressing how she missed and craved his opinions on her poetry. Some of the poems sounded charming, Hoa had to admit, in a youthful kind of way, but their naïveté and optimism were grating, often unbearable to read through to the end. Love that transcends war and time? Devotion of a thousand suns? Hoa thought Hung had better taste than that. Hung and Lan apparently had met several times during Hung’s business trips to Saigon. After recording the dates of their correspondence and meetings in her journal, Hoa stacked Lan’s letters into a small pile and returned them to Hung’s box in his desk. She wedged the box between old issues of Vietnamese newspapers, where none of the children would ever find them.

  * * *

  When the doctors first diagnosed his condition as Alzheimer’s, Hung’s moods seemed to soften. He smiled more. He picked fewer fights with his sons and teased the grandchildren at the dinner table. But Hoa received no such benefit. Although his eyes brightened around the children, the changing trees in autumn, or a foolish news segment on television, the enchantment dissolved when his gaze found Hoa. Something deeply embedded in his disintegrating brain clicked over, reminding him how he’d treated her, how he should always treat her. At best, he tolerated or ignored her. At worst, his tantrums revealed how much he’d regressed.

  The first time Hoa bathed Hung in the washtub (it had been several weeks since his last bath and the smell had become unbearable), he’d smacked her in the face so hard—drawing blood—they were afraid he’d broken her nose.

  “What are you doing?” Phung yelled, stepping between his parents. His voice sounded so threatening in their tiny bathroom that even Hoa felt fearful.

  “I can bathe myself,” Hung insisted, sullenly cowering behind the toilet, naked. “I’m a grown man.”

  “You do need her help,” Phung said. “You can’t hit her, Father, not ever again.”

  While they argued, Hoa turned her back to prepare the bathwater, initially twisting the knobs to find a good balance of hot and cold, then slowly, subtly, closing the hot faucet until the temperature cooled short of comfortable. Hung submerged in the water, his face grimacing in pain, pulling his knees to his chest, his skin puckering with goose bumps, until Hoa finally relented, and turned the hot water on again to mix with his bath.

  Hoa wondered if Hung’s illness was not a tragedy, but rather, nature’s way of correcting their relationship. With his memory fading, finally, finally, her home would be under her own control. She would decide what they would eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, without his approval. She could contribute to conversations with the children and grandchildren without Hung telling her to shut up. With Hung silenced, she could finally utilize her voice.

  “What does he remember?” Cherry had asked one afternoon after returning from a shopping trip with Aunt Trinh. Hoa was washing lettuce leaves in the kitchen while Cherry set the table for dinner.

  “It is different every day,” Hoa said. “Sometimes he can only remember when your daddy and uncles were little boys in Nha Trang. Other days, he asks for one of your cousin’s cakes.”

  Her granddaughter stopped in front of one spot at the dining table, chopsticks still in hand. “What if one day his memory doesn’t come back?”

  “That may happen,” Hoa admitted.

  “I guess there are some things worth forgetting,” she said.

  “You speak like you’ve lived long enough to regret things,” Hoa said, a soft smile on her face.

  “I was thinking about Auntie Trinh,” her granddaughter said. “She told me about Pulau.”

  Hoa turned off the water, the leaves shaking in her wet hands. Cherry looked at her expectantly.

  “What did she tell you?” Hoa asked.

  “Enough,” Cherry said.

  The expression on her granddaughter’s face baffled Hoa. Was it horror? Sympathy? Blame? If it were Cam or Xuan’s face, Hoa would have known immediately. The ambiguity in a face that should have been familiar disconcerted Hoa. Before she could look deeper, Cherry turned her back to finish dressing the table. Such a simple motion, and the moment slipped away.

  “She asked me,” Trinh said, when Hoa found a moment alone with her that evening. “I wasn’t going to lie to her.”

  The grandchildren had gone out to listen to music with some of Xuan’s friends from school. Trinh had brought up the laundry from the basement to fold clothes before going to sleep.

  “But she i
s so young,” Hoa said.

  “She is sixteen,” Trinh said, almost laughing as she smoothed out a crease from a clean pillowcase. “I was with Yen by her age.”

  “Cherry is different,” Hoa said. “She wasn’t born in Vietnam. We don’t know what her parents have told her.”

  “I don’t think it’s much,” Trinh said, “or she wouldn’t be asking me.”

  Hoa’s grasp on Hung’s sock tightened, imagining the two of them confiding in each other, sharing such secrets on their outings away from the apartment house, away from Hoa. “You need to be careful,” she said.

  But of course, her daughter-in-law only chuckled. “If she wants to talk, I’m going to talk. Look what happened to me when I didn’t. Aren’t things better when we are finally truthful?”

  That was debatable. Since confessing all to Yen, to the rest of the family, at her therapist’s prompting, Trinh had no choice but to believe that her life was better. Yet, not much changed. Yen, who had always been devoted to her, stayed true to his marriage vows, but Xuan, the poor boy, who had never recovered from all he’d seen his mother endure, remained wary, distant, suspicious. Trinh pretended it didn’t bother her, but Hoa knew she felt hurt. Hoa hoped such an estrangement would never split her from one of her sons. Even with Sanh far away, she sought comfort in her freedom to pick up the phone and call him whenever she wanted, as he often reminded her to do. Perhaps she should call him tonight, and ask about Cherry, if there was anything Hoa should know, if there was anything she could do. But that could just needlessly worry her son. Hoa didn’t want that. She wanted this to be a good visit for Cherry. She wanted her to come back.

  * * *

  Hoa rarely had the privilege of an afternoon out with her sons, and this excursion was not for pleasure. The tour of a nursing home in a suburb outside the city, was only to look, nothing else. The facilities, swathed in bright shades of violet and yellow, were brochure-worthy. There were fresh flowers in every room. Every floor sparkled with color-coordinated nurses and orderlies and smiling, rose-smelling patients. Yen tried to persuade her to call them residents. These were the residents’ bedrooms and this was an assisted-care home, not a hospital. After researching all the facilities in the area, Yen found that this one offered the best services for patients with Alzheimer’s. Best of all, they had multilingual staffers, including several physicians and orderlies who spoke Vietnamese.