by Lan Cao
Neither Uncle Number Two nor our mother has touched the tray of pastries or the pitcher of lemonade. With labored breath, he continues pacing, occasionally flinging his arms in the air. When he speaks, he starts out in a normal voice and then inevitably lowers it. He looks at her intently as if awaiting her cue. Mother smooths the front of her dress, traces its open neckline. She ignores him and then finally she shakes her head. Again and again. No, emphatically no. He nods his head vigorously, yes, yes, as if to deflect Mother’s denials. I am jolted into attentiveness. “General so-and-so,” he says. I cannot hear the name. But I hear a lot of “why’s” and “why not’s.” The words mean nothing to me but their force captivates me. Mother continues to shake her head, a few pins come loose, and a river of thick black hair tumbles down the back of her dress. She opens her palm and runs her fingers through the shimmering current of black before twisting it once again into a knot. Finally, as if exasperated, she allows her voice to rise to an audible pitch. I laugh to myself as she dramatically pleads, “Troi dat oi.” “Heaven, earth. Please listen.” Mother continues, “Let it be, Phong. Leave it alone.” “No. No,” he mutters. She is firm, although Uncle Number Two is on his knees next to her.
“Phong, please,” she says. “Please don’t go on. Please, Theo,” she switches, perhaps as a last resort, to the endearing nickname I have heard our parents call him. Theo means “scar.” I see a thick cross-stitch of scar tissue along the length of his jaw. I was once frightened of its angry, purplish hue. Our mother must have sensed my fear and will sometimes invoke his name as a deterrent against possible bad behavior from me. She tells me he has many scars, a fact that makes me all the more wary of him.
A few moments pass and then I see tears. A grown-up man is crying. He stands perfectly still, his eyes fixed on our mother’s face. He leans toward her, murmurs something, and her face turns even more remote as she looks away.
I am startled by the sound of a door opening on the other side of the dining room. It is too early in the day for our father to be coming home. It is, instead, Uncle Number Five. I can tell it is he even though he sports dark sunglasses and a scraggly beard, perhaps as a disguise. He is surprised to see the dining room occupied at this time of day. He lets out a small cough. Our mother appears equally surprised, and looks at her watch as if he were appearing at a time other than the one agreed upon. Uncle Number Two turns and stops conclusively in his tracks, his eyes fixed on Uncle Number Five before directing his hard, probing stare elsewhere. His face registers but a minimal shift in expression. Our mother leans in the direction of Uncle Number Five, hesitates, then smiles nervously. “Oh,” she says. Both Uncle Number Two and Uncle Number Five nod almost simultaneously. Uncle Number Two is no longer animated or sad, only impassive. To fill in the silence, our mother says, “This is my brother,” pointing to Uncle Number Five with her chin, and, “This is an old friend,” pointing to Uncle Number Two. They both nod, asking no question of or about each other.
I can see that our mother is nervous. Uncle Number Five does not usually visit us in the middle of the day. He is a family secret; his subterranean Vietcong connections can be revealed to no one, not even close family friends.
Our mother takes her brother’s hand and squeezes it, but in an archly restrained way. Uncle Number Two smiles. Uncle Number Five’s face sours. He understands our mother’s signal. “I am sorry to interrupt. It’s a glorious afternoon so I’ll be out in the garden,” he says. Our mother does not try to detain him. Instead she quickly nods. “Good idea.”
Our mother exhales, visibly relieved that the two men are no longer in the same room. Soon after Uncle Number Five leaves, Uncle Number Two looks at his watch and says something to Mother in a much lowered voice. His face reverts to a more gentle version of itself as he removes a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He holds a cigarette in his mouth and its filter tip dangles from his lips. Our mother leans forward to help. She strikes a match and brings the flame to the cigarette. He puffs on it several times until its tip glows.
I am relieved, as if a weight has been lifted. Of course, it may very well be that Uncle Number Two’s presence itself is heavy. He is an important man, especially for our family. He and our father used to fight side by side. Our mother says he once saved our father’s life when father was betrayed by those within our very own armed forces. We owe him devotion, kindliness; in other words, a debt too great to be discharged, one we have to wear on our bodies. Mang on indeed—“to wear a debt,” to be cloaked in its immaculate and terrible beauty.
Our mother too wears this debt. I hear her say “Anh Theo” as he stands up to leave. Anh is a word with dual meanings. It is both intimate and familiar, a word to call an older brother or someone who is respected and beloved. It is also a word to call a lover, and of course when our mother uses it with our father, that is what she means.
• • •
That evening, my sister and I rush to unlace our father’s enormous boots upon his return home. Normally we would give him an ice-cold fresh coconut with a straw sticking out of a hole. The outer husks would be hacked away, leaving behind a smoothly shaven cream-colored shell. Once our father sips all the juices, we would scoop the sweet white flesh from the shell with a long spoon and slurp it with giddy delight. But that night, I suggest that our father drink lemonade instead. Salted lemonade, I add, as an extra temptation.
“Where did you get it?” Father asks.
“Mother made it for Uncle Number Two,” I say.
“Oh? He was here? Good. Very good.”
“And Uncle Number Five too.”
Our father stiffens. His mood darkens. “Really? What a day. And where is he now, your uncle Number Five?”
“Sleeping in the secret room.”
When our father remarks that lemonade made for Uncle Number Two must be special indeed, I quickly run downstairs to fetch him a glass. That night I am awakened by the sounds of a long, drawn-out fight that simmers with whispers, a slow exhalation that eventually collapses into deep silence. For once in my recollection their love fails to comfort. I cannot hear everything they say, but I can feel the stings and smarts that are left behind. I can taste the bitterness on the very tips of their tongues. In a slow but sharp and sibilant tone, our father says Uncle Number Two’s name. “Phong,” he snorts, and the name comes flying out, expectorated. Our mother uses Uncle Number Two’s nickname “Theo” instead, perhaps to dilute the tension. Finally I hear them each, with caution and purposefulness, fail to answer the other’s allegations.
It is a familiar silence. It is the same silence that has slipped into that private space between them with increasing frequency.
I bury my face against my sister’s chest and breathe her in. I tell her what I saw. “Mother and Uncle Number Two were upset with each other,” I say.
“He comes too often when Father isn’t here,” my sister adds.
“Isn’t Uncle Number Two our father’s best friend?” I ask.
“Still. Father doesn’t like him.”
“He was sad. He had tears in his eyes. He was the one who did most of the talking.”
“What did Mother do while he talked?” my sister asks.
“She sat there and didn’t say much. She kept shaking her head,” I answer.
My sister interlocks her fingers with mine. “He must have asked her for something and she said no to it, don’t you think?”
I hasten to nod in agreement. “She should say no to his question. Whatever it is.”
My sister caresses my hair, runs her fingers down my back, and tells me there is nothing to fear. She reassures me that people can argue without doing damage to their relationship. All I have to do is close my eyes and my fears will evaporate. I obey and, remarkably, in no time at all I fall asleep.
6
Karma
MR. MINH, 2006, 1963
Ever since my outing to Little Sai
gon a few weeks back, I have been worried about Mrs. An. I am not sure how to bring up the subject of her son. The very fact that I stumbled upon this knowledge feels intrusive. Is there a newly exhibited nervousness in her? Of course she cannot give up on him. What parent would? His sorrows are also hers. I understand parental compulsion—the need to protect your child.
Mrs. An squeezes past a group of people standing in the doorway of the crazy old woman across the hall from my apartment. I can tell they are medical personnel. White smocks. Plastic badges. Mrs. Amar has been ill. Extended family and other visitors stand in the hall.
“So many people here this morning,” I say to Mrs. An. I glance at her. She pushes the curtains back to let the early morning light filter through my room.
“Old Mrs. Amar had another heart attack,” Mrs. An tells me. The plain gold band on her finger catches the bright sunlight. “She probably should be in a nursing home where she can be watched over all the time. My nursing home, in fact. It’s only five blocks away. The family could walk there to visit.” I nod. I ask her how she is. “Oh, fine,” she says affably. She runs her fingers through my hair and gives it a quick brush. A pleasing but faint aroma of fried dough emanates from her. I know what it is instantly—banh cam, a sweet treat of rice dough wrapped around a soft filling of mung bean paste. The pastry is rolled into a small ball, coated with roasted sesame seeds, then fried to crisp perfection.
“I’ll bring some in for you.” She winks at me.
“And some for me?” Mai interjects. As is so often the case, she makes her entrance without a sound and her appearance is a surprise.
Mrs. An smiles. It is not a simple task to make banh cam. Mung beans have to be soaked overnight and then steamed and refrigerated. The dough has to be made and rolled into balls to fry. “What is the occasion?” I ask.
“I am practicing. It’s been a while so I want to be familiar with the recipe before I make it for the hui meal next week.”
“The hui?” I ask, feigning ignorance as a way of prompting her. Mai flashes me a dismal look.
“Yes, the hui,” Mrs. An says agreeably. “It’s at Mrs. Chi’s house. She is the organizer. And of course, as you know, we have a potluck feast on the evening of every draw.”
“Your banh cam will be perfect for the occasion,” Mai says. She nods her head slowly to emphasize the point. “I’ll be bringing a platter of catfish and squid stir-fried in garlic sauce.”
“Is the hui pot big?” I venture to ask. Sometimes lives join together, like connective tissue. Mine is knitted with not just Mai’s but also Mrs. An’s, like tender filaments that form a web.
Mai gives her eyes an exaggerated roll. She knows I am rummaging for information.
“Well, it is a bigger hui than I am used to. We’re both in it,” she says, pointing to Mai. “You know that, don’t you?” She double-checks because my memory has been hazy lately. “The good thing about a big pot is you get to take out more money. The bad thing about a big pot is you have to put in more money,” she says, shrugging.
I hear Mai’s heels clattering from the doorway toward my bed. “I should help you start the day,” she says, adding an emphatic nod meant to end my conversation with Mrs. An.
Naturally I comply.
“You have a busy day ahead, Aunt An. I can stay here and help,” Mai volunteers. “I don’t have to be at work until much later.”
“Oh?” Mrs. An asks. Neither Mrs. An nor I know much about her other life, the one spent at work.
“I have several half-days this week,” Mai explains. “I won’t leave home until two in the afternoon.”
Mrs. An touches Mai’s shoulder appreciatively. It is only for one moment, but Mai leans her cheek ever so lightly, resting it tenderly against Mrs. An’s hand. For a moment, the gesture evokes such a sense of familiarity in me that I have to close my eyes. It is as if we had departed irrevocably into a past when Mai was enclosed in the certainty of her mother’s love and motherly tenderness was both lovingly expected and lovingly offered. I hear Mai’s sigh, like an exhalation of deep longing. She is side by side with Mrs. An, as she was once side by side with her mother. It gives me a tingling, vertiginous sensation. There is Quy, reading to our daughters, one Arabian Nights tale after another. Quickly, I try to come up with a reason to keep Mrs. An in the room, to prolong a moment that contains a strain of something precious, like something we once had but have now misplaced. But I can’t. Instead, I stay inside my own retrograde terror, my own quiet hope.
Mrs. An says, “I’ll not be long. I’ll take a long lunch break today and come back to have a sit-down snack with you before you leave.”
“Wonderful, wonderful. I’ll prepare your favorite tea,” Mai says in a firm, amplified voice. “The three of us can share a pot of jasmine.” Something passes over her, like a bright shining light, and I too, for once, feel an accompanying surge of happiness.
After Mrs. An leaves, I want to ask Mai, “How are you managing, my little daughter?” But I stay in the zone of the circumspect. I do not say anything, and neither does she. Mai clears the night table to make room for the teapot and cups. She folds paper napkins into halves and arranges them in a neat stack. Watermelon seeds stored in the credenza are placed in a little dish. “There,” she says, admiring their red-dye sheen.
“The hui is a delicate subject,” she tells me in a hushed voice.
“She didn’t seem uncomfortable,” I say.
Mai turns palpably inward. She suggests we take a walk to the community center a few blocks away and so we do, I with my walker and she by my side as we slowly make our way through the long hallway, down the elevator to the ground floor, and then across several blocks of cement sidewalks.
The place is officially known as a community center but it essentially functions as a senior center. It is an L-shaped space with a desultory dab of color on the walls and a sprawl of plump leather couches and tables arranged in a cozy configuration meant to convey amiability. There is a low-hanging chandelier with lightbulbs shaped like candle flames. A large Rajasthani painting of a lord on an elephant and several black lacquered hangings adorn the walls. I pity this room, its low-ceilinged sadness, its dimpled walls. The shag rug is plaid and dark, presumably to better hide spills and stains. Pool tables gather dust on their red felt tops. A solitary piano stands in the corner, and sometimes on the weekends, the sound of piano notes, thin and tinny, can be heard like sulky ripples of an incoming tide.
Mai points me to an oversized armchair by the aluminum casement window, in what functions as a makeshift periodicals nook. I go straight for the many Vietnamese language newspapers published in northern Virginia and Orange County, California. Mai bunches her coat and wedges it behind my back for support.
I catch myself in the mirrored surface of the window, reflecting back the image, blanched by the sunlight, of an old man with hollow cheeks and inky black eyes. I stare, feeling a growing affinity with the reflection that is strangely mine and not mine, like an injured aura that I faintly recognize but cannot place. Silhouettes of bare maples and pines glow against the filmy surface. A solitary bird taps at the window. In this tranquilized quietness, the space between the present and the past narrows to nothing. I recall old, tropical smells of lavender petals. I recall the susurration of crickets in the evening hours in Cholon. Lights float. Sound floats. Time slips from me, and passes through the recess and protrusion of old memories.
I remember a time when windows opened to sad Saigon evenings the color of purple. “Purple Evening” was the name of a famous song. The radio was on. A singer extended her arms, clasped her breasts, and yearned for her lover. My wife hummed along. The murmur of prayers from the streets could be heard and almost felt, like a vibration. Monks passed by as the blue of day made its slow metamorphosis into the purple of night.
I remember the evening’s dark aubergine cast that hung in the gloaming of a departing day.
I remember it; I ask for it now, to see, to smell, to be enveloped in its painterly moodiness.
We are forewarned that love might not last. We go through life trying to prepare ourselves for this possibility. But the deeper tragedy, I think now, might be when love refuses to fade.
What is it about that day that makes my bones ache even now when I remember it?
We were lounging on a sandstone terrace, my wife and I. It was before our life faltered, before the tipping point that sent her on that long descent into her own deep and unreachable self. Sparrows tipped their wings, black flourishes arcing in unison and taking flight. Mai, so little then, asked if the birds were returning home from school and if they were carrying their school bags as they spilled from closed doors into the open courtyard. Her older sister laughed at her question. My wife also laughed, and then reached up to sweep a few wayward strands of hair from her high, curved forehead. I moved closer to her and held her slippered feet in my hand. I was constitutionally bound to her and her alone. Breathing deeply, I smelled it, this exquisite, riveting scent of a purple evening. It could not be more thick, more distinct, than it was.
I am jolted out of my reminiscence by the sound of bickering in front of the television. A voice says, “Stop. Maybe you can keep it here?” I recognize the Puerto Rican accent of a frequent visitor to the center, an elderly man. “Shhh. Shut up.” Clutching the remote control, a heavyset, plump-cheeked woman stares down her challenger. “I am in charge,” she says with pugilistic satisfaction.
I want to avoid the sad parade of aggression and victory, of submission and defeat. I tell Mai I want to go home. Back at the apartment, Mai asks if I want a shave. Yes. My daughter coddles her father. I love most the luxurious shave she gives me when she has time. She lays out the accoutrements elaborately, as if they were decorative ornaments. There is the bottle of shaving cream, the razor, the gel. She places my head on the pillow, which she has covered with a towel. She moistens my cheeks and jowls and squirts the cream. I puff my cheeks. I feel short, slow strokes that start on the sides of my face. After it is all finished, I feel her hand lathering a moisturizing cream on my skin.