Aperture on the East

by Meris Lee

  Zoe continued to sit in the living room, her feet propped up at the coffee table.

  Ana said, “This also means that when you start school, you’ll have to do homework on your own. That goes for you, too, Zoe.”

  “What school? I don’t speak Vietnamese,” said Zoe.

  “You’ll learn Vietnamese in school,” said Ana. “Besides, it’s a school for Russian children. It’s about twenty minutes’ walk from here. We live here now, at least for this year, so we need to start doing things that people who live here normally do. This is not a permanent vacation.”

  The corners of Ivan’s mouth turned down. He stopped eating, and pushed his sandwich away.

  Sensing that Ivan was apprehensive about his prospect at the new school, Ana said, “Ivan, you’ll be okay. As long as you study hard you’ll get good grades like you always have.”

  “He’s not worried about the grades,” said Zoe. “He’s worried about the bullies.”

  “Shut up, Zoe,” said Ivan.

  “Just make some below-average grades and don’t be a know-it-all, and you should be okay,” said Zoe. “Bullies can’t resist beating up nerds, so try not to be one. Oh, and try and lose some weight. That’ll help.”

  “I told you to shut up, you anorexic freak,” said Ivan.

  Ivan was breathing hard and fast, and Ana could feel his fists trembling across the table.

  “That’s enough, both of you,” said Ana.

  No one said a word for a moment. Ana wondered whether they would ever have a normal dinner where they could all sit around the table, share stories from the day, laugh through the whole meal, and just have a good time.

  “Everything will be fine, Ivan,” said Ana. “You will be staying at this school for at least a year, I promise you, and you will make friends. You won’t be changing school every few months like before. I will do my best to keep the job and the apartment this time. No one knows us here, and we can all start over.”

  “That’s right,” said Zoe. “No one here knows how screwed up we are. To the locals we are just like the rest of the weirdoes from Russia anyway.” She grabbed her guitar and went to her room, slamming the door shut.

  Ivan pushed his chair back, stood up, and with slumped shoulders, walked back to his room as well.

  Ana took a deep breath, and tried to figure out how the evening had ended this way. She pondered her errors; there had been many in her life. She had wanted so badly to make things right, but now she was unsure whether she had the will or the strength to do it. It would’ve been so much easier just to give up.

  Chapter 3

  “Listen up. This is Ivan Romanov. Let’s be nice and welcome him,” said the Vietnamese teacher in Russian. She had Ivan stand in front of the class to greet everyone. She then turned to Ivan and said, “I am Ms. Mimi Tran, but you call me Ms. Mimi. Too many Ms. Tran’s out there.”

  The students giggled as Ivan took a seat at the first row, which was the only available open seat in the room. The long wooden desks were made to accommodate two students each. Ivan’s neighbor was a tall, skinny boy with blond hair, wearing a very neat white button-down shirt and a pair of khakis. The book storage area underneath the desk was divided in the middle, and Ivan saw that his desk mate had stuffed it with notebooks and snacks. The chairs were also made of wood. Ivan’s chair was a little loose at the joints, and it wobbled a little as it received its new owner.

  “Everyone, open your textbook and turn to page fifty-six,” said Ms. Mimi, this time in Vietnamese.

  Ivan looked over his shoulder to see his neighbor take out a textbook with a blue cover. Ivan looked into his backpack and found the same textbook, but he didn’t understand what he was supposed to do with it.

  His neighbor whispered to Ivan in their native tongue, “Page fifty-six.”

  Ivan quickly complied.

  The first class of the day, held by their homeroom teacher Ms. Mimi, was the Vietnamese language class. The textbook was completely in Vietnamese. Although Ivan had been learning a number of words and phrases from his phrasebook, he had trouble following Ms. Mimi.

  “Ivan,” said Ms. Mimi in Russian now, “don’t worry. We’ll catch up after school.”

  Ivan didn’t know what “after school” meant. He was told that classes ran until four o’clock in the afternoon. Could there possibly be more schooling after that? It was just eight o’clock in the morning, and it was shaping up to be a very long day already.

  Ms. Mimi’s class today was on simple phrases used during travel, helpful in situations such as those when one needed to locate a restroom. Vietnamese was a difficult language for Ivan to learn, but he found it rather beautiful in its various intonations and sounds.

  Ms. Mimi paused and said, “Raise your hand if you know how to say ‘I need one ticket for the nine o’clock train to Saigon.’”

  Only one hand went up. It was that of a girl with red curly hair that draped over her shoulders, the front of which decorated with white lace collars adorning the top of a knee-length plaid dress in blue and gray.

  “Yes, Sofia,” said Ms. Mimi.

  Sofia stood up and translated the phrase in Vietnamese, with no Russian accent.

  “Very good,” said Ms. Mimi. “Hopefully we will see other hands go up next time. So, homework is to do the worksheet at the end of this chapter. Tomorrow we will have a Vietnamese-speaking only teacher here to chat with each of you. Everyone will get five minutes with this teacher in front of the class. So practice very hard at home. You don’t want to be embarrassed. Class dismissed.”

  The bell rang right on cue.

  All the students rushed to get out of the classroom, but Sofia came to talk to Ivan. She held out a hand and said, “I am Sofia, the class president. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Ivan was stunned for a few seconds, as he was not expecting to be greeted by a girl as pretty as Sofia. He extended a tremulous hand and shook Sofia’s, but didn’t say anything.

  Sofia withdrew her hand and said, “I just want you to know that recess lasts about fifteen minutes and you need to be back in your seat for the next class, which is math. I am sure you have looked at the schedule.” She pointed her chin to the poster next to the chalkboard, which was being erased by two students shrouded in a mist of chalk dust.

  “I glanced at it,” said Ivan.

  “The boy sitting next to you is Misha. I see that he ran off before properly introducing himself to you. Anyway, some people are quite rude,” said Sofia. There was an aristocratic tone in her voice.

  “It’s fine. I am sure I will get to know him soon since we are going to be in this room all day it seems.” Ivan shrugged his shoulders.

  “After math, we get a thirty-minute recess, but we have to gather and do aerobic exercise before we can play or eat snack. Then, it’s Russian language class, and after that the science class. You’ll love it,” said Sofia. Her eyes enlarged for a second.

  Ivan thought it was funny that Sofia took it upon herself to inform him of the schedule. He had already looked at it the night before, and he had a copy in his notebook.

  “Then, we will have a thirty-minute lunch break, and another thirty-minute quiet time, during which you can nap, or read, or whatever. You just can’t talk, or you will get points taken off,” said Sofia. She looked serious.

  “What points?”

  “Every student earns points by doing something good or completing assigned tasks, like them.” Sofia pointed to the two students who were now beating the erasers with a stick outside the window. “And you lose points by breaking the rules, or getting a bad grade on a test.”

  Ivan nodded his head, even though he didn’t know if he liked what he had just heard.

  “At the end of the semester, whoever earns the most number of points will be awarded a trophy, and two tickets to the movie theater, with cash to buy snacks there too.”

  “I guess you have won this award before,” said Ivan. He scratched his head.

  “I am proud to say, yes,
I have. I won it last semester,” said Sofia. “Anyway, after the quiet time, it’s English language class, and then social studies, and then arts and music last. As Ms. Mimi said, you would be staying after school to catch up on Vietnamese with Ms. Mimi. She does this for all new students, except for me. I already spoke Vietnamese pretty well when I started.”

  “Where did you learn it?”

  “I was born and raised in Hanoi. My father is a businessman, and we lived there until about a year ago. Nha Trang is getting a lot of Russian tourists nowadays, so my father came down to expand his business.”

  “And what is the business?”

  Sofia didn’t answer.

  Ivan was very curious. One did not come across a Russian girl born and raised in Vietnam every day. “So, is it a secret?”

  “It’s not. He gathers information on people.”

  “Like a spy?”

  “No,” said Sofia. “I have to go. I hope you brought a snack for after school.” She turned toward the door.

  Ivan watched Sofia walk out the classroom with regal strides, and wondered whether she had any friends because no one was waiting for her to go to recess together. Ivan got up from his desk to stretch his legs. He chuckled quietly as he thought about Sofia, and then he groaned with dismay when he realized that, due to the short notice, he did not bring a snack for after school.

  Chapter 4

  Zoe decided to cut classes on her first day of school. She parted with her brother at the door of their apartment building, and promptly walked to the seaside promenade. Her mother had been sleeping when she and Ivan left the apartment, so she was able to carry her guitar out without much fuss from her mother. She dropped out of school a long time ago, and hadn’t planned on going back.

  She first walked along the beach a little, and then settled on a bench away from where most of the crowd was. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and the sunlight was warm and inviting. She never much cared for the beach, and didn’t even like the color blue, but she had fallen in love with this particular shore since she first stepped on it. She was too proud to tell her mother about it, however. Since it was also the first day of school, she decided to commemorate it with her first guitar practice on the beach, to harmonize with the song of the ocean. She removed her guitar from its case, and attached the small amplifier directly onto it; her mother had given it back to her on the condition that she would attend school that day.

  She tuned it a little, and strummed a few chords. Zoe closed her eyes, and played the melody of “Eva” by her favorite band, Nightwish. The crisp sound of the vibrating strings soon wrapped its tentacles around the salty air, flowing together with the quiet murmur of the South China Sea.

  Zoe sang softly. She kept her eyes closed because she didn’t want to see the ugly glances she thought she was going to get from passersby. Five minutes in and still no one had told her to stop, so she became emboldened. She played and sang louder and louder as she got more and more entranced. She seconded “Eva” with the song “Bye Bye Beautiful.” Her fingers clutching the guitar pick moved faster and faster.

  Zoe did a few boisterous chords before she slapped the strings against the body of the guitar, and the reverberation came to a sudden stop. She opened her eyes.

  To her surprise there was a small pack of both locals and foreigners standing around her. Some were giving a sort of a disapproving look with raised eyebrows, but most were smiling, and a few apparently were rocking and playing air guitar to the music. The latter stopped abruptly when the last twang of the guitar strings vanished, and then they cheered and clapped.

  Zoe opened her mouth in disbelief. She stood up and gave a bow.

  “Play some more!” someone said.

  Zoe shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and immediately started playing “Trip the Darkness” by Lacuna Coil. This time she didn’t close her eyes. She saw the crowd nodding their heads and tapping their feet. There was another round of applause when she finished, and to her amazement, some threw money into her guitar case, which she had left open out of habit.

  The performance and the coming and going of audience went on for another twenty minutes when a policeman showed up.

  “Hey, Miss. You got a permit to play here?” said the policeman in English. He was in his early twenties, wearing an olive green uniform and a cap, with bronze skin and a square face.

  Zoe didn’t quite know what to say. The small congregation of listeners had quickly scattered.

  “You are not allowed to play in public without a permit,” said the policeman.

  Zoe finally muscled out two words, “Okay. Whatever.” She packed up her guitar.

  The policeman dribbled on a pad of yellow paper and handed the top sheet to Zoe. “It’s a ticket for the violation of city ordinance.”

  “What in the world?”

  “You owe the city 500,000 Vietnamese dong. You can pay me now,” said the policeman.

  Zoe didn’t know how to respond. She was unprepared for a run-in with the law in a foreign country. All she could remember was the anecdotes online telling people how abusive and corrupt Vietnamese police officers could be, especially toward foreigners who didn’t know any better. Her hands trembled and she felt warm in the face. Tears started to well up in her eyes, but she fought them back, not wanting to show any weakness.

  “Hey, what’s the matter? You look pretty tough.” The policeman examined Zoe from head to toe, and then focused his eyes on hers.

  Zoe said in a low, soft voice, “I-I don’t have that much money.”

  The policeman sighed and said, “Don’t start crying now. Consider this a warning. Keep the ticket to remind yourself of your foolishness. If I catch you again, you are going to jail.” With that, he turned and walked to his motorcycle. Before Zoe could take a breath of relief, he was gone.

  Zoe could still feel the shakiness in her legs. She could not believe what just happened. She counted the money in her guitar case. There was roughly 10,000 dong. That was all the money that she possessed at the moment. Her mother had not given her any allowance and she did not have any savings at all.

  Well, what a shame. People seemed to like her music. Maybe she would research about getting this permit, and then she could earn her way to financial independence from her mother. She could be out on her own again; she could hardly stand living with her mother any longer.

  She walked toward a vendor and spent 3,000 dong to get iced coffee, which was dispensed in a clear plastic bag with a straw thrown in, the opening of the sack tied close by a red string. She sipped her coffee as she turned her back on the ocean to face the busy Tran Phu Boulevard that she was about to cross. She cast her eyes to the row of hotels and restaurants on the other side. Through the rumbling torrent of motorcycles and cars, she could hear the cacophony of different, but all upbeat and rapid, music coming from the restaurants that were now serving breakfast. She knew very well that those restaurants would remain open long after midnight to accommodate the revelers. She drank the rest of her coffee in one gulp and tossed the bag in the trash. She had made up her mind.

  Chapter 5

  “How are your kids doing?” Mai Nguyen, the head chef in Quan Bien Dong, said to Ana, who was washing the vegetables while waiting for the dinner crowd to arrive.

  “I enrolled them in a school for Russians. Ivan seems to be doing fine. Zoe has not been cooperating, however. The school sent me a notice saying that she had not shown up at all.”

  “No,” said Mai, stirring a pot of soup on the stove.

  Ana was not in the habit of talking about her problems, but something about Mai made Ana lower her guard and confide.

  “Also,” said Ana, “Ivan said that she got a ticket playing the guitar in public without a permit, although apparently the policeman let her off with a warning in the end. She was bragging about it to Ivan, saying how she had not lost her cool. She used to have problems with the police back home, too.” Ana paused, and then said, “Well, at least she hasn’t run away. Wh
en I decided to move to Nha Trang, she was not living at home at the time and I didn’t know where she was. I had to stake out at her favorite guitar store for days before she showed up. I was so relieved when she agreed to come.”

  “Your daughter’s a trouble maker?” said Mai.

  Ana didn’t respond. She felt responsible for Zoe’s behavior, and didn’t want to blame everything on Zoe.

  “My son skipped school once,” said Mai. “My husband gave him a beating and he was not allowed to eat dinner for three days. After that, he never skipped school again. He just graduated from college last year.”

  Ana still said nothing. Although Ana was not supportive of corporal punishment, she didn’t want to make a comment that might offend her colleague. She liked Mai, and she needed a friend now.

  “Well,” said Mai, “I’m sure you’ll think of something to make Zoe change. She will get expelled from school soon if she doesn’t go to classes. Without a high school diploma, she won’t be able to go to college and find a good husband.” Mai sprinkled some salt into the soup.

  Ana chuckled, and secretly thought that perhaps that was the reason why she had such trouble finding a “good husband” for herself. Then she remembered that she was in fact married to a good man once, and it wasn’t the lack of a college degree on her part that had caused the marriage to break up.

  When Ana finished washing the vegetables, another Russian waitress, Olga, came into the kitchen carrying bags of groceries. Olga set them down on the counter and said, “I never thought that I’d be doing the shopping, too. Can’t you send one of your cooks to do this, Mai?”

  “I would’ve,” said Mai, “but Mr. Tran’s into this cross-training deal, and in case we are a cook short, he’ll want you here. Ana’s washing and chopping vegetables, too.”

  Olga rolled her eyes, and then said to Ana in Russian, “My friends from the university and I are going for a drink after work tonight. They are mostly Russians. Do you want to join us?”