The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

by Aimee Phan

  “Lum, if you do this, if you hurt Dat, the family will never forgive you. Not even Mom.”

  “Do you think that matters to me anymore?”

  “It should. They may have set it up, but you did it. You chose to take Dat’s money and you chose to double-cross him. Who are you? Stealing money with a gangster? That’s not the Lum I know.”

  “You think I’m the only one who’s changed?” Lum shifted in his seat, to look at her. “We used to make fun of Dat. Now you two are so much alike it makes me sick.”

  The grass below them started to blur. She rested a hand on the folding chair in front of them. Cherry and Lum had never talked to each other like this before. But they both must have known that it was time. It had been a long time coming.

  “Maybe I understand how he feels,” Cherry said. “You didn’t just take money from Dat and Grandmother Vo. Remember?”

  “I told you I was going to pay you back.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Cherry said, shaking her head sadly, tiredly. “I want to trust you, Lum, but you’ve made it impossible. Every time, you’d make me look like a fool. You’ve made us all look like fools. You think I betrayed you? You did it first, Lum.”

  The dancers curtsied and scampered off the stage, to the sound of scattered applause. A group of little kids in karate gi shuffled onto the stage.

  “Don’t worry anymore, sister,” Lum said. “Once I get my share, this will all be over.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He stood, looking down on his sister, his upper lip curling. “It means you won’t have to worry about Dumb Lum anymore.”

  “You’re leaving?” Cherry asked, but he didn’t answer. He began walking away. She followed. “Lum,” she kept saying, trying to keep up with him as they weaved through the people traffic and lines at the food booths. Cherry bumped into a few shoulders, ignoring the occasional protest or dirty look. “Where are you going? Why do you even need all that money, anyway? To prove a point?”

  “No,” Lum said, spinning around to face her. “To get away from all of you.”

  It lasted only a second. Lum turned and walked away, until he became another dark head in the crowd. But his expression seared into Cherry’s memory, this face she used to know better than her own. Lum’s flawlessly composed mask he’d maintained for so long had crumbled. He looked honest for the first time in years. And in that moment, Cherry could read him perfectly, what he thought, what he felt: he hated her.

  * * *

  When Cherry returned, she found Quynh at the registration table in her family’s booth, taking coupons from patrons in line.

  “Where have you been?” Duyen yelled from the back of the tent.

  Cherry sat next to Quynh, waving at one impatient customer to hand over his coupon.

  “He’s out in his car in the parking lot,” Quynh said quietly.

  “You brought him here?”

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  “What happened?”

  Quynh had arrived at the end of the tournament, when Thinh and his boys were preparing to take Dat outside. Quynh stopped them, and she and Lum had it out over Dat. She believed that Dat must have been tricked by Grandmother Vo. Lum was pretty sure he hadn’t been. That was why he never bothered telling Quynh about Grandmother Vo’s involvement—he knew she’d take Dat’s side. Furious, Quynh demanded that Lum let her leave with Dat to give him time to get the money from Grandmother. Thinh and the club agreed to the extension, provided Dat deliver the outstanding debt to Thinh’s apartment the next morning. But Dat never showed up.

  “Why doesn’t he just go to Grandmother and get the money?”

  “He’s freaked out. He’s scared your grandmother will be mad at him.”

  “He’s more afraid of her than gang members?”

  “Just go talk to him,” Quynh said, looking behind at Cherry’s cousins, who were eyeing them suspiciously. “I’ll take care of the line. He’s parked in front of the library.”

  Dat lay curled under a sun-bleached blanket in the backseat of his Honda. Cherry slammed her hand against the window. The doors unlocked and quickly relocked after she slipped into the driver’s seat. She glared at him through the rearview mirror.

  “You have to leave,” Cherry said. “Lum is here.”

  Dat poked his head above the blanket. He looked terrible: bloodshot eyes, rumpled hair and clothes.

  “I can’t ask Grandmother,” Dat said, his voice hoarse. “You have to.”

  “Why me?” Cherry cried.

  “She told me I could only spend up to $10,000 on your brother. How am I supposed to tell her they now want $20,000 more? She pays my college tuition, Cherry.”

  “They are going to hurt you, you idiot,” Cherry said. “Your good friend Thinh is going to make sure of that.”

  “How was I supposed to know?”

  “Because I warned you about that creep!”

  “If you knew so much, then why didn’t you tell your brother?”

  “You’re blaming me … for trusting you?”

  “I had no idea how sick your brother was,” Dat said with a sneer. “That he’d turn on his own cousin. I admit now, I was clearly out out my element. I’m not a hoodlum. I just want to be a doctor.”

  Gripping her hands on the steering wheel, she imagined shoving Dat’s face in it. A shiny car pulled in front of their parking space, sitting idle, blocking them in. Cherry squinted at the familiar vehicle and realized. Thinh’s Lexus.

  “Dat,” she quietly said. “Where are your keys?”

  “Why?” he asked, but balanced the keys on her shoulder anyway.

  She fumbled them into the ignition, but it was too late. The Lexus emptied, Thinh and one guy coming to the driver’s side, and two others along the passenger side. They were surrounded. Thinh cheerfully rapped on Cherry’s window. Taking a breath, Cherry rolled the window down a few safe inches, trying to ignore the pounding in her heart, the whimpers from the back seat.

  “Hello, Little Sister!” Thinh said. “Is Dat home?”

  “We’re going to get the money right now,” Cherry said, “if you’d just move your car, please.”

  “That’s so good to hear,” Thinh said, “but we’d still like a private word with Dat.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because we already did him a favor last night and he needs to pay up for that one. No more freebies.”

  “You can trust me,” Cherry said, staring at Thinh unwaveringly in the eye. She had to appear confident, unafraid. “I will get you the money.”

  “I’d believe that,” Thinh said, “if you were anyone else but Ba Vo’s granddaughter.”

  “Listen,” Cherry said, feigning a look of sympathy, when all she wanted to do was roll up the window and drive over his body. “I know what she did to your father. I’m very sorry about that.”

  “What are you sorry about?” Thinh asked, his smile fading. “The fact that she bankrupted him? Or that she then made sure that no one would give him another loan for a restaurant? Not even clear across the country in Louisiana?”

  “I don’t know about that—”

  “Right,” Thinh said. “Your grandmother wasn’t so eager to tell you about my lowly family, right? How my father couldn’t even find work as a dishwasher?” Thinh leaned over the car, his face pressed against the opening in the window. He exhaled tobacco breath into Cherry’s face. “You know he shot himself? After my mom left him? Did your grandmother ever share that story with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Cherry said, fighting the tears. “But Dat and I … we’re not responsible for that.”

  “Are you kidding? She stole from my family so you can have your nice cars, your pretty houses. So, yeah, you do owe me. A lot more than the money. But I’ll take what I can get for now.”

  Before he could reach his hand through the window, as Cherry prepared to scream, a tall figure, waving his hands into the air, yelled from across the parking lot. Cherry exhaled. Her brother. A
look of concern spread across his face.

  “Wait right here,” Thinh said, pointing a finger at Cherry, his bright, frightening smile reappearing. “We’re not done.”

  Lum jogged up to Thinh’s car, as the four boys met him. They stood together in front of the Lexus, the group of five, a perverse team huddle. Cherry despised how comfortable they seemed with one another, how Thinh casually slung his arm around Lum like they were family.

  “We have to get out of here,” Dat whispered, his sobs vibrating throughout the car.

  So those punks got to stand there and decide their fate? And she and Dat were just supposed to sit and wait for their decree? Thinh looked over at their car and seemed to nod in understanding. Cherry leaned back in her seat, short breaths flaring through her nostrils. She was tired of not acting, tired of sitting when everyone else was standing, and still getting blamed for everything, by everyone. They wanted Little Sister to do something? To act?

  Cherry glanced around their space—surrounded on both sides by cars, but there was the curb, the library walkway. As her eyes returned to the guys absorbed in conversation, her fingers settled over the car keys in the ignition.

  Once she started the engine, she jolted the car into reverse, pressing hard on the gas so they could stumble up on the curb. As the boys turned to look at them, Cherry wrestled to get the car into forward drive and slammed on the accelerator, driving over the library flower beds. A giggle bubbled out of her. She couldn’t help it. She’d never driven an automatic transmission, much less a manual, before.

  “Go!” Dat screamed, sounding both terrified and thrilled. “Go, go!”

  * * *

  This is where her perfect narration falls apart, where others have to take over the story for her. Her memories of the rest of that afternoon exist only in flashes. Cherry does not trust these fragments. They contain perspectives that have been fed to her after the fact, and perhaps they are not her own at all, just other people’s opinions, insistent truths.

  Linh had watched it happen. She’d been waiting for Huy at the entrance to give him one of their family’s festival passes. She heard people yelling near the library, then saw Dat’s car lurching through the flower beds, tumbling toward the parking lot. While two of the boys had jumped into Thinh’s silver Lexus, Thinh and one other guy were struggling with Lum. Thinh knocked Lum to the ground.

  Linh didn’t see the gun—she’d only heard it … followed by the sound of Dat’s car window shattering. The car slammed into an oncoming minivan. Linh began to scream. The Lexus’s passenger window closed and the car accelerated around the accident, knocking into two parked cars. It paused long enough for Thinh and his friend to jump in before peeling out of the parking lot. By the time Linh stumbled to the car, Lum had already pulled Cherry out to the ground. There was blood on her shirt, on Lum, on the car upholstery, on the concrete. When Linh opened the rear door, she found an unconscious Dat sprawled across the backseat. She gingerly searched his body for any bleeding, any injuries, finding nothing. The paramedics later confirmed that he’d simply fainted.

  When Duyen first heard the shot, she thought a car engine had misfired, until groups of people started running toward the parking lot. Heightened voices soon mingled with sirens. It took a good fifteen minutes for one of Duyen’s ex-boyfriends to reach their family’s booth to tell them that Cherry, Dat, and Lum had been in a shooting.

  Their parents said Lum refused to talk to anyone when the crowds descended, only following the paramedics as they lifted Cherry onto the gurney. Even with their father and Uncle Chinh yelling in his face, Lum didn’t react. When one paramedic attempted to check his body for injuries, Linh said Lum reacted so violently—thrashing his arms and legs—that he had to be restrained.

  At the ER, questioned by the police, Lum accepted the blame. He never mentioned Dat, Grandmother, or Cherry. It was simply a disagreement with Thinh, a game gone sour between former friends. Disgusted, their father demanded Uncle Bao and Auntie Tri take him home. He also wasn’t to be left alone, in case he tried to run off. Auntie Tri said she didn’t have to worry about that. Once they arrived at his parents’ home, he went to his room, not even coming out when Quynh came by to see him.

  Back at the hospital, one of the nurses gave Cherry’s mother a sedative, while her father signed release forms. Doctors explained that the bullet had punctured her liver, her bowel, and possibly other organs. They didn’t know it then, but she would require a series of surgeries over several weeks to repair the internal damage. Months later, Cherry would go back to talk to the doctors, requesting to see her diagnoses, X-rays, and charts. Explaining that she wanted to be a surgeon one day, Cherry would come to understand the long, arduous process it took to heal her body.

  Cherry’s first memory was a conversation that happened a month later, though her family swore she’d wakened earlier, and had even had entire conversations with them. She awoke to her mother sitting next to her, reading a magazine. After calling for the doctor, Tuyet returned to the bed, looking at Cherry with teary, maternal eyes. Caressing her greasy, neglected hair and rough skin, her mother said Cherry already looked better.

  “What time is it?” Cherry asked, her throat still dry. “Where’s Lum?”

  She wouldn’t answer her daughter’s questions until the doctor on call had been paged to the room. The doctor shone a tiny flashlight into her eyes and ears, and measured her heartbeat. The nurse checked her blood pressure and monitored her fluids. Their gestures were warm but professional, while her mother stood by the window, examining her nails. Once the doctor assured Tuyet that she was healthy enough to talk, her mother closed the door and pulled her seat next to Cherry’s bed.

  The good news: they caught the shooter and his accomplices. Enough witnesses and affidavits had been collected that the prosecution was confident the defense would accept their terms and plead no contest. Thinh and his boys turned on one another at the police station. The shooter claimed the gun had fired off accidentally, that it was only supposed to scare them.

  Grandmother Vo arranged to pay off Lum’s gambling debts. Cherry’s mother never said if that included the money Lum and Thinh had scammed at the Tet Tournament. Cherry wasn’t going to ask. There was also no mention of Dat or Grandmother’s plan. Cherry’s mother still didn’t know. The family had come together through this hardship, taking turns at the hospital to sit with her, covering one another’s shifts at the salon, making potluck meals to share at her parents’ home.

  Cherry kept looking at the door as her mother spoke, wondering why she wasn’t calling her father or Lum to come over.

  Finally, her mother said it. “Daddy is in France.”

  “With Lum?” Cherry asked. “They left without us?”

  Tuyet avoided looking at her daughter, her hands smoothing the folds of the bedsheets, and tucking the loose fabric under the mattress, while she told Cherry that Grandpère had passed away two days earlier. Cherry wasn’t surprised: Grandpère had been ill for years. According to Tuyet, two weeks after Cherry’s accident, Uncle Phung had called, warning them Grandpère had contracted a virus and had been admitted into the hospital. His immune system was already fragile, and the doctors didn’t expect him to survive his pneumonia.

  “You haven’t said anything about Lum,” Cherry reminded her. “Where is he?”

  It was one of those rare times Cherry would recall her mother ever looking afraid. She couldn’t even look at her while she spoke about him. The day after the police closed the investigation, only a week ago, their parents put Lum on a plane for Ho Chi Minh City. Her mother claimed it was temporary, six months at most, enough time for Lum to reevaluate his behavior and, though her mother didn’t say it, for gossip to settle around Little Saigon.

  “What happened to France?” Cherry asked.

  Her mother shook her head. “Grandmère doesn’t need another burden. Your daddy talked to his aunt and uncle in Saigon. They remembered Lum from when he was a baby and were willing to help.” />
  Cherry stared at her mother, determining if she was serious. “You sent him to Vietnam?”

  “Vietnam was our home,” her mother said. “Lum can get better there.”

  She claimed Lum wanted to go. Their father thought Vietnam could reshape his perspective, remind him of his humble roots, so when he returned to America, to them, he could have a fresh start. It sounded so redemptive and inspiring. They probably shamed him, guilted him into leaving. No one can force you from your home unless they make you believe you didn’t deserve to be there.

  Cherry lay back on the bed, aware of the stitches in her abdomen, trying her best to turn away, looking out the window into the hospital parking lot.

  “Don’t be ungrateful,” her mother said. “Daddy was prepared to disown Lum. I had to beg him to compromise. We couldn’t lose both our children.”

  “I’m still here,” Cherry pointed out.

  “I know,” her mother said softly, her face looking even sadder. “You don’t think this hurts me? To send my only son away?”

  “You didn’t have to,” Cherry said, thinking of Grandmother Vo and Dat, wondering where they were, how they’d managed to stay so silent, so innocent. How different this all could have been if she’d awakened earlier.

  “This is the only way we can bring him back to us,” her mother said. “Give me six months, and this will be over.”

  Her mother turned away, trying to regain her composure, her chest and shoulders heaving with every breath. Cherry watched silently, the words on her lips, but what good were they now? It was done. She’d slept through all of it. Grandpère was dead, her father was gone, and so was her brother. Her mother was all Cherry had. She imagined how easily Tuyet would turn on her when she realized Cherry was partly responsible. Cherry couldn’t admit anything now, not yet. It would only enrage her mother, upset the entire family. Grandmother Vo and Dat could easily deny it. Who would they believe? What would her admission do but harm?

  Six months. Maybe her mother was right. They could wait six months. She’d be wrong, they’d both be wrong, but that realization wouldn’t occur, not fully, until the first six months had come and passed. And another. And another. But for that afternoon, in that moment, Cherry had to believe her mother. She had no other choice.