Van believed she wouldn’t care so much about being short, wouldn’t continue thinking about it still, if the subject hadn’t always consumed her father. But it was the one thing he liked to talk about, the one thing she could get him to talk about. His pronouncements at the dinner table—about how short people were discriminated against, and how short people had to work extra hard to get good salaries and respect—well, these did seep into Van’s thoughts.
There’s a core insecurity about you, Miles had told her once. This was weeks before their wedding, when a sentence like that could both shatter Van and make her determined to be the opposite. I’m not criticizing, he added. I’m just curious about where it comes from. Van didn’t say what she really thought: Didn’t he think she’d tried to figure that out a thousand times already? She’d blamed her height, and being Asian in a mostly white, conservative town in the Midwest, and sometimes called it a shyness coded into her genes. Van had never explained to Miles, or to anyone, how exhausting it was to work against the sense of inadequacy that arose whenever she felt on display—whether it was on the Model UN team or in the courtroom. She had been standing on her tiptoes for most of her life.
There were times, of course, when she did forget about herself altogether, when no one else reminded her of her place in the world. That was why she only liked going to theaters that had stadium seating. It figured that the movies Miles always wanted to see were in the old-fashioned indie art houses where the barely graduated rows forced Van to strain her neck around the tall person who inevitably sat in front of her.
In college Van’s favorite job had been at the university fund-drive office. Everyone else loathed the work, and the turnover was high because people couldn’t handle the rejection of rude responses and phones slammed down. But Van got bonuses for completing more transactions than anyone else. Each call she made to coax a donation seemed a game. She was allowed to identify herself as Vanessa, and she knew that the people on the other side of the line, if they talked to her, would never know who she was. They couldn’t see her; they couldn’t perceive her race, her height, or anything about her. She relished being a disembodied voice.
Her mother had expressed a similar thought, once, about sewing at Roger’s, where she and the other seamstresses worked in one large room above the floors of shopping. Van had only been there a few times but would never forget the sound of the sewing machines, all the individual buzzes adding up to a roar, and the black-haired heads of Vietnamese women bent over hundreds of yards of accumulated fabric. “It’s nice to be up here, out of the way,” Mrs. Luong once said. “Most people shopping don’t even know we’re here.” Hearing this, Van had felt both understanding and aversion. She knew well that secret feeling of being tucked away, unseen. But she hated that her mother had known it too.
When Dinh Luong came into the kitchen the next morning Van couldn’t tell if he’d just woken up or if he’d been out all night. He was wearing the tan windbreaker he’d owned for as long as Van could recall, and the same clothes from the party. He’d slept in his clothes before. He even made a point to do this sometimes, claiming it was easier to get up in the morning when already dressed.
Looking a little dazed, probably hung over, he walked past Linny at the kitchen sink and sat down at the table where Van was starting to eat a bowl of cornflakes, the only cereal her father kept in the house. “Problem with Na,” he declared. The skin under his eyes looked like dark putty, his hair an oily mess. Van wondered, as she had so many times, what he and his friends did with all their time—what did they talk about when they were drinking and playing cards?
“Problem with what?”
“Na Dau,” he said impatiently. “Nancy Bao’s brother. From the party. He’s in trouble.” He explained that Na had gotten pulled over, after leaving the party, and arrested for drunk driving. “Rich Bao just go to get him out of jail.”
Van’s body felt heavy with the morning. She was instantly irritated with her father, his friends, the same old ways. Wouldn’t they ever learn? “It was only a matter of time before this happened, Dad. I’ve told you a hundred times that you and your friends need to be careful. You should be thankful this didn’t happen to you.”
“This is not about me, it’s Na.”
“Well, he was drinking at your party. And drunk driving is drunk driving. You can’t do it. It’s dangerous, not just to you but to everyone.”
Her father put up a hand to stop her. “I already heard it before. What all I want to know is: how much trouble is it for Na?”
“Is this his first offense? Is it an Operating-while-Intoxicated or what?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking about the green card.”
“If it’s a basic OWI, then he should be okay, I think. There’ll be a fine, maybe some community service, probation.”
“Rich is asking about the green card.”
“He probably won’t have to worry too much. DHS doesn’t look kindly on drunk driving, but as long as it’s a first-time OWI he should be okay. Besides, Na’s from Vietnam.” Van was more alert now, answering these questions.
“What does all of that mean?” Linny asked from where she was washing dishes by hand, the old dishwasher having died years ago. “What’s DHS?”
“Department of Homeland Security.”
“What happened to the INS?”
“I don’t know what news you haven’t been paying attention to, Linny, but DHS just absorbed Immigration. It’s all part of controlling the threat of terror and tightening the reins on civil rights.”
“What you mean,” their father interrupted, “about the part about Vietnam?”
Van explained how Vietnam was one of the few countries that wouldn’t accept deportees from the United States. She was certain she had mentioned this to him before, during one of her warnings about how he needed to be careful not to drink and drive. It had become a chronic problem for guys in his generation, in the community.
Linny asked, “They can deport people for getting DUIs?”
“Even if they’re permanent residents.”
“Jesus.”
But Mr. Luong was cheered. “But it’s okay for Na. It’s good.” “I wouldn’t say it’s good. Na can’t get deported but he could be detained. He still needs to be careful. You need to be careful. Plus, if you haven’t been in the U.S. for seven years, at least five of them as a permanent resident, then you don’t have as much protection.”
But already Van could see that her father was losing interest. He tapped his fingers on the table, his mind clearly moving on to some other place. “I already told Rich Bao you help just in case. And if they can’t deport to Vietnam, then it’s all right.”
“Help with what?”
“You be his lawyer. I already told him if there’s trouble, you’re going to fix it.” Somehow he managed to sound both casual and stern, his words a directive. Then he stood up from the table.
“Hold on,” Van said. “If Rich Bao wants to retain a lawyer he should get someone here in town, in Grand Rapids.”
“You already the lawyer. You helped him before.”
“That was completely different.”
“He better pony up the cash,” Linny put in.
Mr. Luong didn’t look Van in the eye. His hands ran along the edge of the table as if considering how to wear it down. Then he produced a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and dropped it next to Van’s bowl of soggy cereal. “That’s Na’s cell phone number. He call you if there’s more trouble.”
The discussion was over. That was how her father worked: the beginning and end of conversations were always his to decide. As he retreated to his basement studio he didn’t say thank you to Van, who knew better by then not to expect the words anyway. He had probably never once in his life said thank you to his wife or children. Or the word sorry. That was something you didn’t hear from an Asian dad, Van thought, remembering the time she was in middle school and he had screamed at her for leaving papers on the dining tabl
e, smacking the back of her head for good measure. Later, just before her bedtime, he had walked into her room and silently handed her a twenty-dollar bill.
Linny asked, “What did you do for Na before?”
“I helped Nancy file the paperwork to sponsor him a few years back.”
“He looked out of control last night. I bet the Baos have to take care of him all the time.”
Van picked up the slip of paper with Na’s cell phone number scratched onto it with her father’s calligraphic handwriting. “Dad and his friends are crazy. It’s a miracle they haven’t all been picked up for drunk driving. I used to worry about it constantly. And Mom refused to say anything to him.”
“He went ballistic once when I hid his keys.” Linny swished a soapy sponge around an ancient Pyrex pan as she said, “I didn’t know you ever helped Nancy Bao.”
Van shrugged. She didn’t tell her that over the years she’d filed dozens of applications for her father’s friends. Some of the fees she never got and ended up having to pay herself. Miles gave her a hard time about that but Van always argued the word community. Sometimes obligation. What Linny didn’t seem to feel any measure of, tying her to this place.
Yet why then did Linny seem to belong in this house more than she did? Van never remembered where all of the dishes and foil and utensils were kept but Linny never forgot. Linny knew exactly how to work the old rice cooker, and didn’t even use a measuring cup to pour in the rice. Just yesterday she was sharpening knives on the bottom of a ceramic coffee cup, the way their mother used to do. The knives had flashed in Linny’s hands, singing a note that sounded like preparation. It had sparked jealousy in Van to see how deftly her sister cooked their mother’s Vietnamese dishes.
When Van brought her cereal bowl to the kitchen sink Linny said, “So even if Na fucks up royally he can’t get deported.”
“No, but as I said, he could be detained. And Vietnam could change its policy. There are stories all the time about immigrants who get deported even though they’ve lived here for years and years. If you don’t have citizenship, then you don’t have full protection. Especially these days. For Na, it’s probable that nothing will happen. If this is his first offense he’ll get a fine and probation, community service, and that’s that. But he could get handed over to DHS afterward. Or if nothing happens now, then later on down the line it could trip up a future citizenship application.” Van was aware that her voice sounded like she knew what she was talking about, as if she hadn’t been out of the real game for over a year now. Here too she was on the sidelines, reading newspaper articles about Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE, the acronym too fitting—starting to wait at jails, show up at immigrants’ homes, or raid factories in border towns. In Michigan, ICE was building its own detention centers in Battle Creek and Monroe County. If those filled up, then picked-up immigrants could be sent to one of the new for-profit detention centers beginning to crop up around the country. But she didn’t mention any of this to Linny, who’d never asked much about Van’s job, who didn’t know a thing about the day-to-day paperwork at Gertz & Zarou. Neither her father nor Linny had ever heard about Vijay Sastri, the pregnancy that never took, why she had stopped working at the International Center.
“That’s pretty insane,” Linny said. “I didn’t know all of this was going on.”
“It’s a tough time to be an immigrant.”
“I guess it’s a good thing Dad got his citizenship. Is this what you’ve been doing all this time? Helping people not get deported?”
Van picked up a dish towel to start drying pans. “Not really.”
Linny looked at her as though reading her and it made Van nervous. She’d never been very good at masking her feelings in her face. Miles said that, and it was true.
The door to the basement opened and Mr. Luong appeared again, wearing a fleece jacket over his windbreaker. He had shaved his face and combed down his thinning hair. “You girls driving back today?”
Van nodded and her father said, “I call you about the details of the TV show so you can go see it.” At the very mention of it his humor changed, lighting up in a smile. He clapped his hands and let them fly apart, waving away the previous talk of Na Dau. “What do you think? Pretty great, isn’t it?”
“Sure, Dad.”
“Linh—what do you think?”
Linny barely turned from the sink to say, “Yeah, Dad. It’s great.” Years of their standard responses, of telling their father what he wanted to hear.
“I tell everyone about that song.”
“What song?” Van asked.
He started singing, “Short people are no reason to live.”
Linny laughed but Van corrected him. “Got no reason. Anyway, isn’t that song supposed to be ironic? The guy who wrote it is pretty short himself, isn’t he?”
“Really?”
Her father’s interest made Van feel eager, like she should keep talking to keep him in the room. “Randy Newman—that’s the guy’s name.” She remembered then that she’d heard he wasn’t short at all. But her father didn’t need to know that.
“I never hear of him. Only the song. Did you know one out of ten infocommercials is successful? The TV show is a good way to go because then people really see. They watch. You saw the Luong Wall, didn’t you? Great name, huh? It’s the big three with the Arm, the Eye, and now the Wall.”
“Very nice,” Van answered, though the very word wall made Van think of boundaries, the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China, the tightening border between the U.S. and Mexico, between the U.S. and everywhere else.
“Yeah,” Linny chimed in.
Their father fished his car keys from his pocket, signaling the end of the conversation. Outside, his truck was parked at the curb instead of in the driveway, as if his wife might still come back home in her own secondhand vehicle and hem him in. When Van thought of winter in Michigan she thought of her father’s truck at the curb, covered in snow. While the engine ran, he scraped ice from his windshield, the sound echoing back into the house.
“Tell Miles I say hi,” he said as he headed out the kitchen door. “Tell him to help you look after Na.” And then he was gone.
Van saw her sister staring at her, reading her again. A vague shift seemed to be happening, and Van didn’t know how to stop it. I’m the older sister, she wanted to insist to someone. I’m the one who worries, not the other way around.
It was Linny who made Van talk, after all, by asking, “What is up with you?”
Van felt the morning draining away and she knew: What use was there? Linny would have to know. Her father would have to know. The realization was one that struck her as irreversible: by telling the truth, she was committing herself to it, to the story she never wanted to create. She was creating fact by admitting herself to it.
Van sat back down in her old place at the table. On the long-ago days the four of them ate meals together, they always took the same seats. Her mother, closest to the kitchen, would ferry plates of lime wedges and bottles of hot sauce back and forth. When Van and Miles visited at holidays, he would sit in Mrs. Luong’s chair.
Van said, “Miles left.”
Linny didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Van, for once, met her sister’s gaze and was relieved not to see the pity or smugness she’d braced herself for. “When?”
“February.”
“February!” Now Linny was really shocked. “Jesus, Van.” She tossed the dish sponge on the counter. “I have to tell you something.”
Van had a sudden, wild thought that her sister was going to say, He left you for me. She truly almost expected those words to tumble out of Linny’s mouth, so much that she was not at all prepared for what Linny said:
“I saw him with someone. In Chicago, last week. They were at a hotel.”
Van had the sensation of falling down all over again, that same inward crumpling feeling she had felt when Miles had first stood in the thrown light from the entryway and said, I don’t want to live with you a
nymore.
“I was at the hotel bar and I ran into them. I saw them get into an elevator together. She’s a lawyer.”
Van tried to speak slowly. “How do you know they were together?”
Linny looked amazed. “I saw them. I even met her. Her name is Grace. She gave me the Asian Once-over. Are you listening? I’m sorry.”
Van couldn’t bear those two words, couldn’t bear the idea of a name. Don’t say Grace, she wanted to say. Instead, she said, “That’s circumstantial at best. You don’t know what they were doing there. They could be working together.”
“They were in a hotel bar, on a Saturday, together. In Chicago. They were getting in an elevator that was going up to the hotel rooms.”
Van got up from the table as if it would stop Linny’s bluntness, prevent her from seeing what Van was feeling. She remembered the image of the photo frame, its blankness. How he had removed her as if from his entire line of vision.
“Look, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here,” Linny said. Her voice softened at the end.
“There’s not necessarily anything to say. Separations are very common.” It helped to remind herself of that fact.
“What are you guys doing about money?”
“We share bank accounts. It’s still all the same.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll drain them and leave with you nothing?”
Van shook her head. “He would never do that.”
“But it’s been more than two months. Where’s he been?”
“He’s just taking some time,” Van said, avoiding an answer. The words were smooth, rehearsed-seeming, but they didn’t soothe her. She may as well have said, He’s on vacation from our marriage. “I need to get going anyway,” she said. The thought seemed to impel her to action, made her hurry down the hallway, until suddenly she couldn’t wait to get out of there, before Linny could say anything more, before her father got back from wherever he had gone. In the old bedroom she stuffed her clothes into her bag. She didn’t bother to brush her teeth or make the bed. Why stay? She should have left hours ago. She never should have told Linny the truth. Now Linny wouldn’t let it go. She’d bring it up forever, demanding answers, spilling forth information Van didn’t want to hear.
Bich Minh Nguyen Page 17