The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

by Aimee Phan

  Cherry’s mother finally managed to announce Lum’s news to the relatives, though with some creative editing: she claimed that Lum and Tham had already married, and were so in love and eager to start a family that they already had plans to conceive a child. (Just let me do it this way, Cherry’s mother had said after catching her disapproving frown. I know what I’m doing. What harm can come? They’re in Vietnam.)

  The relatives dutifully exclaimed their happiness at the news, and in her benevolence, Cherry’s mother decided to throw a California reception for the newlyweds. So what if the guests of honor couldn’t attend? Or didn’t even know about it? Their parents could collect the gifts for them. And they would need the wedding money to help with the baby.

  Their mother put down a deposit at a Chinese seafood banquet hall in Garden Grove. Since she didn’t have a wedding picture, she improvised with a candid shot from Cherry’s trip, taken during a walk along the Saigon River. Her mother asked the clerk at the photo shop to blow up the picture, airbrush the smog from the boats, and crop out Tham’s belly. After enlarging the picture to near life size, she bought a bright-gold picture frame. The picture sat on their dining room table for a week before the reception, so Cherry would occasionally startle when passing it.

  Though their mother wanted to invite more people, hoping to beat Dat and Quynh’s 300-plus reception attendance, their father held firm that the guest list stay under 200. Cherry’s mother requested she wear her red ao dai at the reception, along with Duyen and Linh, as if they were bridesmaids just arriving from the imaginary ceremony. Her mother grew obstinate over the smallest details—fighting with the banquet manager over the appetizer choices and refining the song list with the band daily. Her moods worsened as the reception neared.

  “Just humor Mommy,” Cherry’s father pleaded the morning of the reception, after her mother barked for her to call the florist again. “She will be better after this day is over.”

  Bold red tablecloths and matching roses decorated each table of the ballroom. The Vietnamese variety band that had played for Quynh and Dat’s wedding—the one Cherry’s mother believed was exceptionally talented, and worth the inflated fee—had already set up their instruments on the stage and were performing a microphone check.

  Since only Cherry had ever met the lovely bride, the guests congratulated her and expected her to intuit her new sister-in-law’s thoughts about the marriage. Of course, Tham was thrilled. She loves Lum very much. She is eager to meet the rest of the relatives. Oh yes, she cannot wait to start a family. Hopefully it will happen soon!

  Cherry’s smile endured until dinner. She sat at the honored table next to Grandmother Vo, who wore her blue velvet ao dai. Dat and Quynh arrived late, during the shark fin soup appetizer, weaving through the tables to find their places. Quynh had also dressed in a red ao dai. Cherry hadn’t seen them since leaving the country before their wedding.

  After dinner, the banquet hall’s floor manager projected a slideshow onto the wall above the buffet tables. Cherry’s mother coordinated pictures of Lum growing up to his favorite Vietnamese music, three old love songs, played on a loop. Some of the pictures Cherry barely recognized, the sepia-toned photographs taken when their family lived in Vietnam and Malaysia. Tham only showed up in the last few frames, all pictures Cherry had taken in Vietnam. When the lights turned back on, Cherry noticed her mother grasping her father’s hand on top of the table, tears shining in both of their eyes.

  The MC and band returned to the stage, entreating guests to join them on the dance floor. Linh dragged Huy to dance. She believed her longtime boyfriend planned to propose soon. Duyen danced with one of Dat’s colleagues, a pediatrics medical resident. Cherry sat at the table with her parents and grandmother, continuing to greet and accept gifts from people she’d never met. With the lights dimmed and while no one was looking, Cherry unfastened the top two side snaps of her constrictive ao dai, indulging in the luxury of breathing after so many hours.

  Dat finally found Cherry in the hallway, stepping from behind a ficus plant and surprising her as she came out of the restroom.

  “So, how is Lum?”

  “Jesus,” Cherry said, putting a hand on her chest. “He’s fine.”

  She and her cousin silently watched as guests took calls on their cell phones or passed them to reach the restrooms.

  “It all worked out, didn’t it?” Dat asked. “Quynh and myself, and now Lum and…”

  “Tham,” Cherry said, rolling her eyes.

  “Right. We’ve all been through so much, but we survived. We prevailed.”

  “Yes,” Cherry said, nodding. “Especially with the family sending Lum off. That worked out perfectly for you.”

  Dat snorted. “When are you going to let it go? There’s a reason some of us succeeded here, and others didn’t. Maybe Lum never should have left Vietnam in the first place. Maybe he’s where he belongs.”

  “Well, then I hope we all get what we deserve,” Cherry said. “Especially you.”

  “We’ve all gotten over it,” Dat said, tilting his head. “Except you. You’re the only one. If you think you need to talk to a professional, I could help you find someone reputable.”

  His face was serious. Before she could respond, a tipsy Duyen wandered over, her head bopping to the samba music, pulling Cherry away to complain about the pediatric resident’s body odor. Once they returned to the table, Cherry spied Dat whispering something into Quynh’s ear, and the couple quietly left during her mother’s final toast of the evening.

  After the guests had departed, the rest of their relatives packed the minivan with leftover floral centerpieces, food trays, and the wedding presents, though most guests had observed custom and simply left money envelopes for the newlyweds. At home, Cherry’s mother displayed the roses on every available counter and tabletop space available. Cherry knew in a few days they’d start to wilt and darken, and that her mother would wait until the last possible moment to trash them. She missed having flowers in the house. While her father went to bed, exhausted from the day’s events, her mother stayed in the living room to organize the presents. Around two in the morning, Cherry noticed the lights were still on from under her bedroom door. She wandered out of her room and found her mother sitting on the living room floor, still in her lilac ao dai, reading each wedding card and filing every check and cash gift into a manila folder. Early the next morning, her mother left for the bank to deposit the money into a savings account she’d opened under Lum’s name.

  * * *

  A week after the reception, Grandmother Vo called. Unfortunately, Cherry picked up.

  “Come over,” she said. “I need help with my closets.”

  “I’m busy,” Cherry said. Just because she was unemployed and not in school, her grandmother thought she had nothing better to do. This afternoon she and Duyen planned to go to the beach.

  “Your mother just told me you were watching television,” Grandmother said. “And bring over some banh cuon from that deli on Magnolia. I’m hungry.”

  Though her closets really did need a thorough cleanout, Cherry suspected she also felt lonely. Without anywhere to go during the day, Grandmother wore a long-sleeved oatmeal blouse and simple black pants. She didn’t bother tying up her hair, and her thin gray mane hung past her knees. Since Ba Nhanh’s stroke, she no longer spent much time with the twins; most of her days consisted of television and nagging telephone calls to her children. She didn’t like sitting at the salon because she tired easily and had no convenient place to nap. But she did miss talking to people, talking at people.

  After she finished her lunch, though Cherry was still eating hers, Grandmother seized her opportunity. “Your mother is concerned about you.”

  Cherry swallowed her bite of food and looked at her grandmother with dread.

  “We thought you’d be different,” she continued. “You finally had everything: brains, looks, an education—and what do you do? You run away like your brother. Very disappointing.” />
  Cherry lowered her chopsticks. “Lum didn’t run away.”

  “Then where is he?” Grandmother asked. “Not one phone call to his grandmother on her birthday or for Tet celebration. He’s become as disrespectful as your mother.”

  “Why would he want to talk to you?”

  Grandmother smiled rarely, so it startled Cherry to see her lacquered teeth. “You think you’re so smart. I try to help my grandchildren, and somehow, I am the villain. Why are you blaming your cousin? You know better than that. He may be smart at medicine, but didn’t this show us how inept he is at deception?”

  Even in screwing up their lives, Dat somehow managed to look good.

  “You should have stayed out of it, too,” Cherry said. “It’s because of you that Thinh came after us. You ruined his family.” As soon as the words left her lips, Cherry felt breathless, bracing for Grandmother Vo’s reaction. But what could Grandmother do? Tell on her? Let her explain to her mother.

  “So melodramatic,” Grandmother sneered. “Is it my fault his father couldn’t manage a business? Is it my fault that boy overreacted?”

  “He took revenge on your grandchildren,” Cherry said. “You can’t deny that.”

  “It was unfortunate,” Grandmother admitted, her face softening. “But I’ve taken responsibility. Who took care of Lum’s debts? Who paid the deductibles for your hospital bills and physical therapy? You think I don’t care, but I have always provided for you.”

  “And Lum? Did you provide for him?”

  “What did he lose?” Grandmother asked. “He has a wife and a career now, two things he could never achieve with gambling.” She smirked at Cherry’s look of disbelief. “Why are we talking about him? The only person I am concerned with now is you. I thought you’d recovered from your accident, that it hadn’t affected your brains, but maybe not.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Grandma,” Cherry said.

  “I worry,” she said, shaking her head. “You think acting out like Lum is going to make your mother love you more? It’s not.”

  “What?” Cherry cried. “That’s crazy.”

  “It is crazy,” Grandmother agreed, nodding adamantly. “But you see, you couldn’t even rebel with any sense of conviction. Back here within months. It makes you look insincere.”

  “That’s not why I left,” Cherry said.

  “Are you sure?” Grandmother asked. “You’ve done everything you can to be an obedient daughter to your mother. Best grades, best behavior. Yet, she devoted all her love to the boy who only gave his family grief. Why shouldn’t you try and see if acting badly could work for you?”

  “My mother loves both of us,” she said. “She’s not like you.”

  Grandmother laughed. “That is a child’s perspective. Some day, Cherry, when you are a mother, you will realize. Motherhood does not turn you into some benevolent goddess. We have the same flaws we were born with. The difference between your mother and me? At least I can admit my faults.”

  Grandmother had tired of talking. She needed a nap. While she snoozed on Uncle Bao’s recliner in the living room, Cherry approached the task of her closet. After three hours of sorting through yards of untouched mothball-pungent ao dais and fabric, Cherry found three thick wads of letters buried deep in one of her trunks, underneath a pile of decade-old Vietnamese newspapers. They were all from Cherry’s mother, written to her grandmother when she was still in Vietnam and the refugee camp, sealed shut, never opened. She didn’t know if Grandmother Vo had any idea these letters still existed—she had instructed Cherry to throw away any contents she couldn’t sell to the consignment shop. So Cherry stuffed the letters in her tote bag, making sure to dust and polish the trunk before Grandmother woke up and walked into her bedroom to check on her progress.

  After leaving Grandmother’s, Cherry drove to a tree-shaded spot in the nearby park and rolled down her window. After gently unsealing the earliest postmarked envelope, she unfolded the aged letter. For the next hour, she did this for every envelope; unfolding, reading, rereading, refolding, until they once again sat in collated piles in the passenger seat, as if no one had ever read them. But she had. She had read, effectively memorized, every letter.

  Although Cherry recognized her mother’s controlled, precise language, she did not sound like herself. Instead, she came off simpering, self-pitying, phony. The first batch of letters chronicled her years in the refugee camps, her complaints of the living quarters, the food, her in-laws, her husband. The first mention of Cherry came in the form of a sick stomach and burdensome fatigue, and Tuyet’s dread of a possible pregnancy. The second and third batches of letters were from America. The contents were not surprising. She tried to remind herself of this. Still.

  Cherry supposed her mother was being completely honest. The papers felt flimsy, crushable, between Cherry’s fingers. She could easily crumple up her mother’s unfair opinions, these impossible expectations. Looking at the dates of the letters, Cherry couldn’t have been more than two or three years old, barely speaking age, yet her mother already expressed how Cherry disappointed her, how she aggravated her.

  A good daughter would return these letters to her mother, but then again her mother probably would have been angry with Cherry for taking them. And Cherry wanted to keep them. After digesting these words—feeling how they scratched at her pride, her heart—Cherry realized that they no longer belonged to her mother.

  Cherry pulled up in the driveway of her parents’ house and sat there for several minutes, the engine still running. Her father finally came out the front door, waved, and went back inside. Cherry stashed the bundle of letters under her seat, making sure to lock all the doors.

  Her parents sat in the dining room, balancing their checkbook, the bills and checks spread across the table. This ritual occurred every month, on one of the rare afternoons her parents were both at home. Cherry had many memories of walking in on her parents arguing over one of her mother’s impulsive Nordstrom purchases or the insufficiency of her father’s paycheck. Most of the time, Cherry would walk straight past the dining room to reach the stairs for her bedroom, but this afternoon, she stood in front of the table of bills, waiting for her mother to look up.

  “How was Grandmother?” her mother asked, tearing open one of the envelopes with her index nail.

  “She’s fine,” Cherry said. “Her closets were a mess.”

  Her mother finally glanced up, her eyes impatient, shameless. “That’s it?” she asked.

  “What else?”

  “Don’t play coy,” she said, pushing back her hair, recently trimmed and colored by Auntie Tri. “Since you won’t listen to your own parents, we were hoping she’d talk some sense into you.”

  “I guess I’m more difficult than you thought.”

  “Cherry,” her father said, a warning in his voice.

  “What was she supposed to convince me about?” Cherry asked, her gaze on her mother unflinching. “That wasn’t clear.”

  “We want you to stop wasting your life,” her mother said. “You spend every day watching TV or going to the beach with your cousins. Do you think your father and I are going to support you forever?”

  “I said I was going back to school next year.”

  “Why should we believe you? I’ve seen this happen to my clients’ children. We are trying to protect you—”

  “Right,” Cherry said, laughing.

  Her mother’s eyes flashed, her chin rising, and Cherry fell silent. She knew what the look meant.

  “There is nothing worse,” her mother said, her voice still calm, but tightly controlled, “than carrying regret. It weighs on you for a very long time.”

  “What do you regret?” Cherry asked. “What did you do that makes you hate your life so much?”

  “I don’t hate my life.”

  “You’re lying.” Cherry stomped her sandaled foot on the tiled floor, the clack echoing throughout the house. She didn’t care if she looked like a petulant child. “I know you,” sh
e continued, her voice trembling. She needed to sound strong at this moment. She needed to believe in her words. “I know how you really feel.”

  “Cherry!” her father cried, standing between the two women, even though her mother still sat at the table. Perhaps it was enough that he blocked their view of each other. “What is the matter with you? Your mother and I are concerned. You’ve been so depressed.”

  “I will not feel sorry for her anymore,” Cherry’s mother seethed, wiping tears from her eyes. “She has had every opportunity a child could want. I never imagined she could turn out to be so selfish and spoiled—”

  “Maybe you should have sent me away instead,” Cherry said.

  “I knew she would be like this,” her mother said, looking at Sanh. “Just like your father! He never cared who he hurt, and neither does she.”

  “Stop blaming them,” Cherry said. “It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it? It’s never you. You never do anything wrong.”

  “Please,” her father said. “You are both emotional right now—”

  “I want to go back to Vietnam,” Cherry whispered.

  “Oh, God,” her mother sounded like she was both laughing and moaning. “Well, if that’s what you want, then go. You always get what you want, eventually. I’m tired of fighting you.”

  “Go upstairs,” her father said to Cherry.

  Cherry looked over at her father for the first time that afternoon. He’d taken off his reading glasses. His hair, gray at the temples for so many years, now appeared whiter than she remembered. In his hands, he had shredded a bill envelope into slivers of paper. His exhausted, red-rimmed eyes pleaded with her.