by Aimee Phan
“We have tempers,” Sanh admitted, his voice soft, though the counselor’s door was closed off from the waiting room. “Both of us. It can be stressful.”
On the floor, playing with one of the brochures from the waiting room, Lum looked at the counselor and back at Sanh. “Mommy’s mad,” he said in Vietnamese.
“Yes,” Sanh agreed, “Mommy was mad last night.”
Sanh had pounded on the bathroom door that night, demanding she open it. Lum curled up on the air mattress in the bedroom, weeping that he needed to use the toilet, yet Tuyet had refused to listen to either of them.
“What are you going to do?” Tuyet’s voice had taunted him through the door. “Are you going to hit me? Are you finally going to act like a man?”
“Mr. Truong,” Mr. Stoops said, leaning his elbows on the desk. “Domestic violence is a serious offense in America. We do not hit our wives or children. It’s against the law.”
Sanh had taken the soiled bed sheets and Lum’s clothing to the laundry machine in the building’s basement; they only had the one set. When he returned to the apartment, Tuyet was telling Lum a bedtime story Ngoan used to recite to the children back in Vietnam. At the end of it, Tuyet glared at Sanh as if he were intruding.
“I’m not hitting my wife,” Sanh said, offended at the counselor’s suggestion.
“There are other ways to resolve disagreements,” Mr. Stoops said. “We have marriage counseling classes here twice a week. I can have the social worker call you and your wife tonight to talk about it.”
They had lain in bed last night looking at the popcorn ceiling instead of each other. When Lum began to snore softly, she said after the baby was born, she and the children were going to move out. Thao recently rented his own apartment, and it had an extra bedroom. One of her instructors at cosmetology school said she could work at her nail salon. Sanh could go to France, to live with the family he truly cared about. She’d find another father for the children.
“They’re my children,” Sanh said.
“You’re such a fool,” Tuyet said. “Have you ever looked at Lum?”
He drew a breath, digging his fingers into his thin pillow.
“You’re lying,” Sanh said. “You’ll say anything right now.” But after she fell asleep, Sanh examined Lum’s resting face, and thought of Thao. He recalled the man’s high forehead and lean body standing next to Lum’s own gangly figure, so different from Sanh’s compact stature. Lum was only a toddler, not fully formed. Still sleeping, Lum stretched his arms, patting Sanh’s chest, a familiar gesture that Sanh usually took to mean the boy was having a bad dream. Instead of comforting him, as he would have last night, Sanh softly pushed the boy’s shoulder and turned him to face his mother.
Mr. Stoops agreed to follow up on his job applications and promised to call within a week. After returning from the refugee resource center, Sanh prepared a lunch of instant ramen noodles with a raw egg mixed in. Lum complained of the orange and green flakes floating at the top of his Styrofoam cup.
“They’re vegetables,” Sanh said, between bites of noodles. “They’re good for you.”
“Mommy always takes them out for me,” Lum said, sullenly poking at the cup with his chopsticks.
“Speak to me in English,” Sanh said. “You have to practice.”
“I want something else,” Lum said stubbornly in Vietnamese, slamming the cup on the dining room table. The Styrofoam cup cracked in his tiny grasp, and the noodles and broth broke through, gushing off the table and splattering the carpet.
Before Sanh could lunge for him, Lum scrambled out of his seat and ran for the bathroom, nearly falling as he turned the bedroom corner. Lum had already slammed and locked the door by the time Sanh caught up with him.
“Open this door,” Sanh screamed, pounding on the cheap wood with the palm of his hand. “Open it now!”
There was no answer on the other side, no taunting, no chiding, just short gasping breaths.
“I’m going to count to ten,” Sanh yelled, slamming the door again with his hand. It vibrated against the hinges. “And if you don’t unlock this door, I will kill you. Do you hear me? I will. I am your father!”
He had never said anything like that before. He’d never felt so angry, remembering how only twelve hours earlier, he had been yelling at the same door, at another family member who should have respected him. But once he spoke the words, he felt compelled to count, loudly, steadily, until he reached eight, and the doorknob turned, the door slowly swinging open.
Lum’s hooded eyes, eyes that belonged to Tuyet, were large and puffy, tears streaking his cheeks. His red-and-blue striped shirt and gray shorts were dark with soup stains. He crossed his arms in front of him, already bracing his small chest. It occurred to Sanh that he’d never seen his son cry so much until they moved to America.
When Sanh stepped through the door, the boy recoiled, covering his head and neck with his arms. Sanh wrapped his hands around Lum’s tense shoulders, turning the boy, and walked him out of the bathroom.
From under the kitchen sink, Sanh found several dishrags and the wastebasket, and brought them to the dining table. Together, they picked up the cold noodles from the table and floor, and sopped up as much broth from the carpet as they could. When Lum tried to dangle a dusty noodle into his mouth, Sanh pulled it away.
They pressed the rags into the carpet, using all their might. “Does it still smell?” Sanh asked, burying his nose in the carpet’s dark spots. Cocking his head to the side, he saw Lum’s face split into a joyful grin. He called his father a silly puppy. Sanh kissed the top of the boy’s head, trying to shut out the words he screamed only a few minutes earlier. Children. They forgave and forgot so easily.
* * *
Like others in their neighborhood, their father thought it best to register early, to appear compliant and to appeal to the Communists’ sympathy, or at least to their sense of efficiency. Anyone affiliated with the former regime or the American occupation was required to enroll in the reeducation program to assimilate to the new Vietnamese government. Completing the program promised access to state benefits, such as official status in the party and food rations for their new lives in the unified country.
Of course, whisperings and suspicions abounded. A family down the street revealed themselves as Viet Minh, which had stunned the neighborhood. Spies living alongside them all this time? But Hung, Phung, and Sanh had discussed the prospect of trying to escape the country on unreliable boats or rafts, and it had seemed dangerous and foolish. They had Cam and Xuan to think of, too young for such a risky journey. And the new government was promising reunification. One country. Forgiveness, forgiveness. At the time, it didn’t seem naïve to believe in these words, not when they had few other choices.
At registration, officers informed them that the program would take place in a training facility only a few hours from Saigon, and that it would be brief. They should bring enough food, pens, paper, and clothing to last ten days. Higher-ranked officials would be gone for a month.
Tuyet hadn’t looked frightened or nervous when they kissed good-bye. In fact, Sanh couldn’t recall her looking more beautiful and optimistic, and he was impatient for the ten days to finish so he could return home. This last image of Tuyet was likely embellished during his time away, but it also could have been the glow of her yet unknown pregnancy. She promised to take care of the other women and children. She talked of opening their own business to help support the family once he returned from the program.
As their cadres determined their reeducation progress unsatisfactory, the brothers’ sentences stretched longer and longer. It pained Sanh to count the days on the calendar he and Phung had drawn with the pens and paper (they never ended up using them for anything official) and hid under their cots. In a suspicious gesture of humanity, the brothers were allowed to share a tent, along with four other men. They worked fourteen hour days of hard labor. Their tent mates were especially sympathetic to Sanh, the youngest, who�
��d never spent time in the countryside before, and endured in grueling succession dehydration, heat sickness, and malaria.
Years later, his children would ask Sanh to describe the reeducation camps to them. The word camp was not a proper translation. Nor the word reeducation. The two put together compounded a lie that still tasted vile in Sanh’s mouth. They had been in prison. The regime’s refusal to use the correct term only further demonstrated its hypocrisy.
Since he could see no benefit in frightening the children and generating needless nightmares, he kept the facts simple: their work unit was in charge of digging wells and latrines the first year, planting crops the next. After two years of labor, written confessions and sworn allegiances to the new government, he and Uncle Phung were released. Sanh assured Lum and Cherry that they only signed those documents to get back to their family. By that time, Lum had already celebrated his first birthday and needed his father.
When Sanh found out Lum had been born, he’d only known about Tuyet’s pregnancy for a few weeks. It took months for mail to arrive to their work unit, and Sanh suspected the cadres delayed screening their letters longer than necessary to antagonize more work out of them. Hoa wrote that Tuyet had given birth to a healthy boy, nearly seven pounds, the quickest delivery of all the grandchildren. Their father had given his third grandchild the name Lum, which meant lush forest, a jungle, the very debris the Communists ordered Sanh to destroy every day.
Sanh had burst into tears upon reading the letter, his brother and tent mates quietly celebrating with stolen beer from the mess hall. The men shared tales of their own children’s births and encouraged Sanh to express his hopes for his new son’s fortune. Since the guards frowned upon prayer, Buddhist or Catholic, Sanh whispered these expectations. A father had the right to predict his son’s success. Phung assured him they would remember Sanh’s hopes for the rest of their lives, praying for Lum’s destiny to follow Sanh’s wishes.
* * *
In America, a father was allowed, even expected, to witness his child’s birth. As long as he sterilized his hands and wore proper garments, he could stand alongside the doctor and nurses in the delivery room. He could even cut the umbilical cord.
Tuyet didn’t like this Western custom. She didn’t wish to feel vulnerable in front of Sanh, especially when they were barely on speaking terms. The nurse warned Sanh that husbands found it difficult to watch their wives endure so much pain, but he promised he would not leave Tuyet’s side for even a restroom break. Whatever happened between him and Tuyet—whether she left him, or he left her—he would not miss his child’s birth.
What she didn’t know—what he wasn’t sure he wanted her to know—was that while she was at her last cosmetology seminar, he had received and accepted a job offer at the water treatment plant. Carlos’s brother had arranged for the interview, and the executive manager who hired Sanh told him he’d served in the Vietnamese war and held nothing against his people or his country.
“That’s not my country anymore,” Sanh replied as he shook the man’s hand.
“Course not,” the manager said. “You’re going to be an American soon. And I know from experience you new Americans make the best employees.”
Sanh would give the job six months, but as soon as he made enough to afford airfare to France—as soon as the new baby could travel—he planned to take his legitimate child back to his family. Tuyet and Lum could stay in America. She could work on getting her drug-dealing mother and criminal siblings to America on her own. And if she wanted her second child back, she could buy her own ticket to Paris and try to find them.
Sanh’s father finally found a daughter’s name: Cherie. In French, it meant “darling, dear one.” Cherie Truong. It signified the promise of new affection and love. Sanh thought it was a much better choice than Lum had been.
“I thought I should come out there with the new baby next month,” Sanh said.
“So soon?” his father asked. “What about Tuyet and Lum?”
“They’ll be fine,” Sanh said. When his father didn’t respond, he pushed forward. “Maybe we could stay out there for a while, see if I can find a job there.”
“Are you having problems with money?” Hung asked.
“No, I just thought—”
“So your wife was wrong about America,” Hung said. “And you want to punish her by leaving her and Lum there alone?”
“I thought you wanted the family together,” Sanh said, trying to control the anger creeping into his voice. He glanced up to where Tuyet and Lum were obliviously washing dishes in the kitchen.
“You chose your family,” Hung said coldly. “No son of mine will ever run away from his responsibilities. Not even you.”
On a late Wednesday night, Tuyet’s labor contractions began. After a few hours, Sanh called the Nguyens, who had agreed to give them a ride to the hospital.
Lum held on to his father’s hand as Sanh was trying to leave the car. The hospital orderly was already helping Tuyet into a wheelchair.
“I want to come, too,” Lum said, his arm snaking around Sanh’s elbow, trying to lock in his grip. “Don’t leave me.”
“You need to go home with the Nguyens,” Sanh said, peeling his son’s arms away from him. “I’ll come get you after the baby is born.”
“Promise?”
Sanh impatiently glanced into Lum’s tearful, expectant eyes. “Yes.”
In the delivery room, a nurse noticed Sanh fidgeting and asked if this was his first child’s birth. He said yes, then no, then yes again.
The doctor explained that the baby was face up, the wrong position. Tuyet screamed obscenities in Vietnamese. She asked for her mother, for her sisters, for Trinh. Sanh stood next to her, providing ice chips and blotting her forehead with the wet hand towel when the nurse prompted him. Tuyet stared at him after swallowing one of the ice chips.
“I’m going to die,” she moaned unhappily.
“No, you’re not,” Sanh said, trying to concentrate on her face instead of the rags of blood the nurses kept taking away.
“You have to take care of our children,” she said. “You know that, don’t you? I was only angry before. You are a good man, Sanh. It’s why I chose you.”
“You’re not going to die,” he repeated. But even as he said it, her words slid inside his ears, traveling down his body, paralyzing him with the possibility of her prediction.
She looked so weak. Sanh now understood why in Vietnam, fathers customarily left the room. He’d never felt more impotent—it was worse than leaving for America on their own, worse than getting fired at the elementary school. Standing there with his useless hand towel and ice chips, which Tuyet waved away, Sanh realized how irrelevant he was. If he couldn’t save his own wife, he didn’t deserve her.
His father had been right. Tuyet was his family. Her face crumpled through every painful contraction, yet she turned to Sanh with eyes full of trust, fear, and love. Sanh realized no other woman would ever look at him that way. Yes, they had hurt each other. And lied to each other. But they’d chosen this life together. They’d abandoned their families to make this new one. If Tuyet could possibly die to give him this child, the least he could do was give her, give their family, all he had.
A final push from Tuyet and the baby emerged. A girl, covered in blood and meconium, howled to the ceiling. Sanh stared at this creature in wonder, then back at Tuyet, who was panting, perspiring, face contorted, very much alive.
After cutting the umbilical cord and watching the nurses bathe the child, Sanh asked to hold the baby first. He would always be grateful for that privilege, and would cherish those exclusive minutes for the rest of his life. The infant’s eyes were still closed, a small mat of black hair on her head. Her complexion radiated a furious blush, which the doctor assured him indicated robust health. Such a healthy girl. His baby girl.
“What are you going to name her?” a nurse asked as he cooed at his new daughter.
“Cherie,” Sanh said softly, stil
l distracted by her tiny hand that refused to uncurl.
“Cherry? Like the fruit?” the nurse asked. “That’s so pretty, a beautiful fresh cherry.”
Sanh turned and looked at the nurse, who was completing the birth charts. “Yes,” he said, smiling, allowing the American word to turn over in his head. “Cherry.”
PARIS, FRANCE, 1997
With all three apartments opened to bereavement guests, Sanh and Lum managed to remain on different floors during the funeral reception. Most of the family had gathered in the ground apartment, ushering out the final visitors. Weary of the prolonged good-byes, Sanh wandered upstairs to Yen’s apartment to begin cleaning up. He found his son hovering around the dining room table, sweeping up crumbs from the tablecloth. His son’s hair appeared longer, but Sanh wondered if that was even possible. How different could he really look after only a few weeks away?
The night of the accident, after leaving Cherry at the hospital, Sanh and Tuyet came home to find that Lum had set out all seven of his credit cards, his driver’s license, checkbooks, and bank account information on the kitchen counter. Sanh saw that his devastated son blamed himself entirely. But while Tuyet could still embrace the boy, Sanh was not ready to comfort, to forgive, not while Cherry still lay in the hospital.
Many of Tuyet’s relatives lived in Orange County. Sending Lum to his Uncle Viet in Texas, another gambler, was asking for further trouble. France was out of the question. His relatives had enough to deal with. His uncle and aunt Tran in Saigon were decent, compassionate people. Sanh remembered how frustrated his father had been at their refusal to escape with them, but the Trans had been determined to make their lives in the new regime. Their sons already buried from the war, the Trans didn’t want to be far from their graves. When Sanh called his uncle, he kept the details of Lum’s transgressions brief and vague. The Trans did not press for details. They promised to care for Lum as their own son.
Sanh approached the dining table, and picked up some crumpled linen napkins. Lum looked up, blowing his hair away with a puff of his breath. He and his sister both did that.