by Lan Cao
She turns the television on.
“Do we have any doughnuts left?” I ask.
“Yes, you can have one banh tieu and longans,” she says. “Just one banh tieu, please. It’s deep-fried.”
The banh tieu is tightly wrapped in tinfoil and served to me on a plate.
She rifles through her handbag as I use the remote control to surf the channels. After a few minutes, she dumps the contents of the bag onto the floor. “Where can it be?” she asks herself. She is crouched down, searching.
“Your cell phone?” I omit the “again.”
“No, my appointment book,” she says, all the while continuing a frantic search around the room. “Where did I put it?” She frowns. She is flustered. She is silent for a moment but resumes her monologue. “Where is it?” She moves about the room—an elongated blur of agitated motion, opening drawers and lifting cushions.
Turning toward me, she says, as if to explain, “Aunt An should be coming back any minute. But I’m not sure if I have an appointment that will require me to leave soon.”
The rummaging continues. It is an obsession. Maintaining order is a priority and disorder creates hand-wringing anxiety. One slip and the whole constellation of fabricated order collapses. She looks at her watch. “It’s been more than an hour,” she says, ruffled. “Where is Aunt An?”
“She will be here soon, Mai,” I say. I watch her face for a cue, an admonitory look, perhaps. I remember the partially concealed purple bruise on her neck. I have seen this before, the spinning exhaustion, the convolution and repetition that continue until the misplaced item, however inconsequential, can be found. And when it is not, there is no release. I know there is a name for her condition in this country. Something about compulsions and obsessions.
“When did I see it last?” Mai mutters, her brows knit in concentration. “I have a feeling I’ve got an appointment in D.C., so if she isn’t here soon, I’ll have to leave.” I can almost see, right there before my eyes, the little four-year-old girl who sulked when sent to bed against her will.
I know I am unable to reach her. I have no choice but to keep out of it. Even a suggestion meant to be helpful can exacerbate the situation and contribute to further slippage. I will myself into therapeutic stillness. Mai’s tireless energy, not yet slapping or hissing, can be a precursor to something scarier. I cannot always tell what will provoke. Sometimes I suspect she has the ability to read my mind.
A sound at the door tips her into eagerness. She looks up brightly, expecting Mrs. An. Instead it is someone slipping a pizza delivery advertisement under the door. A few minutes later, the phone rings. I tell Mai it is Mrs. An. “She is running late. Only a few minutes, though. They’re short-staffed and she’s been called over to help out in another building.”
Suddenly, there is a crash. My heart leaps inside my chest. A calamitous look flashes across Mai’s face. She has departed irrevocably into a new, inaccessible realm. There is the rage, like a snapped-off end that bleeds after its vital part has been severed. Boom, boom. The sound of a broom whacked against the walls. I freeze. She has turned stormy. She is an exclamation mark that screams out at you. I am unsure. Is she reachable, is she not?
“Child, what are you upset about?”
Mai looks at me. I call her by the diminutive name I made up for her when she was little. “Little Bao. Bao Bao,” I call. Using that name has the effect of miniaturizing and containing the problem. “My little treasure,” I say, doing my best to reach out to her. Ba’o for treasure. “Bao,” I keep calling, blood rushing to my head. But when I accidentally pronounce “Bao” with a sharp dip and rise in tone, it means storm, not treasure or keepsake. Bão. Threatening weather.
A rattling sound reverberates in my chest. I cough into a tissue and see that a frothy sputum colors it red. “Bao,” I say, making sure to use the right tone.
She cuts me short. “No. No.” She wields the broom like a weapon and sweeps it across the air. Whack. Whack. I have seen worse. I cringe. There is the sound of wood striking tile.
“Go,” she screams. “No, no.” She is striking at the open space, then turning her fists against her chest. I hear the dull thwock of knuckles against ribs, against the hard plates of bones, against the soft flesh of abdomen and breasts. I see the fingers scurry to her throat and maintain a halting grip on the neck tissue. I cringe again.
“Don’t talk to me,” she says. She states her terms: to be left alone. Her voice comes from a place outside herself.
“Please stop,” I plead. I want to meet her eyes dead-on. I want to avert my gaze. I cannot tell how far this will go. Is it madness, spirit possession, voodoo? I keep my mind from scuttling backward into loss. But I cannot command memory; mine comes and goes, skips in and out of focus. I feel its clumsy flutter. An intensifying force presses and squeezes inside my head.
There is a loud smash. Glass tumbles from my television screen, scattering. The set sizzles. The teapot and cups are flung against the floor. She lets out soft, fitful cries. I extend my arm toward her and try to move in her direction. But my spine is curved, my legs weak. Even on the best of days, I can get out of bed only with help.
I hear mumbling and babbling, and then as quickly as it all began, the storm vanishes. The ungovernable impulses have subsided. Without a word, Mai gathers the shards and slivers of glass and sweeps them into the trash bin.
Moments pass. Mai stands still, surveying the damage and her efforts at restoring order. The charcoal black of her eyes deepen. A voice can be heard at the front door. “Is everything all right?” The voice turns frantic.
Mrs. An has materialized—thank goodness—and is helping Mai as if she knows exactly what to do. Her very presence seems to have a calming effect. She positions Mai by a chair and tells her to sit. She treats Mai as if she were a compliant child, and suddenly, she is. Mrs. An squats and bends and curves her body under the bed to sweep up the smallest remnants of glass. Her hair sparks with static electricity. She puts my bed into a reclined position and wraps a blanket around me. Mai is mollified but remains distant. Soon enough she looks at her watch and announces that she must go to work. At the door, she turns back and says something. Perhaps they are words of farewell. I can’t hear but I give her a nod of assurance. There is a smile and a wave and then she is gone. My hands shake even as I push them under the weight of my legs. Mrs. An approaches my bedside and offers me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. We both know my daughter is not quite right, and her departure following what happened has a diminishing effect on both of us.
I wonder if Mai will be able to drive in the crush of ice. The temperature has plummeted below freezing. A slow-moving cold seeps through the cracks in the flashing windowpanes, bringing with it an undercurrent of reproach.
I reach for the music player on my bedside and press a button. A rhapsodically beautiful sound emerges. Of course it was composed by Chopin, the man who wrote poems for the piano. I lie back and consecrate myself in this place, inside this life I never bargained for.
• • •
A few hours later, Mai returns and shares news of the events in Little Saigon in Orange County, California. The infamous Ho Chi Minh poster has stayed glued to the window inside the store, protected by the Constitution of the United States. For weeks, county police were dispatched to guard the store. But in a startling turn of events, according to the press release issued by the office of the district attorney, the store owner will be taken into custody to begin serving a ninety-day jail term. Mai recites the newspaper story matter-of-factly. Mrs. An gloats. “See? You cannot provoke people who risked everything by thrusting a photo of that face in front of them. It’s downright nasty.”
“Actually, he’s been thrown in jail for bootlegging,” Mai corrects. She reads out loud the details provided by the paper. “‘Tran attracted the attention of police when he was escorted into his store because an angry mob had gathered out
side to protest a poster of Ho Chi Minh that hung inside. Officers noticed what appeared to be numerous bootleg videotapes on the shelves of his store. Upon serving a warrant, they found 147 videocassette recorders inside the store, which Tran was using as part of his piracy operation. More than seventeen thousand videos had been fraudulently reproduced.’
“See? It has nothing to do with the poster,” Mai adds, arching her brows.
Mrs. An looks doubtful but, after a momentary pause, smiles knowingly. “This country has its own way of meting out payback.”
“Well, the man has the right to express his views and the protestors have the right to express their views. Peacefully.” Mai continues, “Listen to this. The landlord has moved to revoke his lease. It’s very interesting.”
“Oh?” I say.
“Yes. The landlord claims that he is violating his lease by creating a public nuisance. The protests are disrupting other businesses in the mall.”
Mrs. An flicks her hand in the air, as if to swat away explanations provisioned by mere legal facts. “Karma,” she says, laughing. She looks at Mai and me. Satisfied that she is not contradicted, she turns to more mundane matters. “I can make extra banh cam for both of you. I’m cooking tonight. For real. Not practice anymore.”
Mai murmurs appreciation. “I would love that, Aunt An,” she says, lowering her eyes and dropping her voice amiably. “I like my subscription meals a lot, but of course nothing compares to your food.”
“You are lucky to have secured a com thang provider. There’s been such a government crackdown in the past few years because of health-code issues.” Mrs. An sighs. “Fewer and fewer cooks dare operate from their kitchens.”
Mai agrees. “Mine operates below the radar. They don’t take any new clients. Very traditional but even they have cut down. Home deliveries only three times a week. All the other days, it’s pickup,” she says before going to her bedroom down the hall to retrieve something.
As Mrs. An gets ready to leave, I say, awkwardly, “You should make some extra for your son.”
“My son?” Mrs. An says, surprised. Her shoulders tense slightly.
“How is he?” I ask.
“Oh, fine, fine,” she answers, too rapidly. And then, after a momentary pause, adds, “Why do you ask?”
I am tempted to break from the complicity of silence and stop tiptoeing around a matter that all of Little Saigon in this corner of Virginia supposedly knows. I tell myself to choose the direct approach.
But what I say is “No reason in particular.” I take a deep breath and continue, “I was thinking of him, that’s all. We saw Dinesh the other day and I thought of him.”
“The two of them hustled for months trying to make their new business work.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing big. Doing odd jobs. Handyman work. Neither of them knows how to do anything so they had to find workers. I warned them it was not the right business for them. It’s not so easy to find good, reliable handymen. The young Vietnamese and Indian boys nowadays can’t do anything.”
“How is he now?” I ask.
“He has good and bad days,” she says. “But he’s a very good father to his child,” she adds without hesitation. “When he is at his best behavior.”
“When is that?” I ask, perhaps lurching too presumptuously into candor.
I sense hesitation. A shadow crosses her face even as she grudgingly smiles. “Oh, most of the time. But as I said, he has bad days. I try to help him when I can.” She pinches her mouth shut.
“He is old enough now to be helping you, don’t you think?” I say tentatively.
Mrs. An says in a pained voice, “He does.”
I look at her and I see everything: A parent’s guilt and disappointment. A parent’s despair. Despair when you see what is happening to your child and you are powerless to help.
I feel the onset of a dark mood and so I smile obligingly. I revert to “Yes, I’m sure he does.” I notice that the veins on her neck are thick.
“He is a help. In his own way.” Mrs. An smiles wanly, although her voice seems to carry a bite of belligerence and her eyes glow a hard, unblinking gleam. Fatigue shows in her slumped posture.
She remains near the door, ready to depart. A slight quiver runs through her upper body. I prepare myself to turn away, feigning unawareness. I let my face drift until I see Mai return, her arms wrapped around Mrs. An. Their voices drop and together they stroll out, taking their conjoined but melancholic silhouettes to the dappled pathway outside where Mai likes to take her solitary walks.
Mrs. An returns from the parking lot, pulls a chair to the side of my bed, and perches on the edge. The unease between us a few moments before has dissipated. The evening is our time together. Mrs. An and I will take our usual loping stride into the past, with its pockmarks and scars and occasional shimmery shadows.
“I’ve made tea,” she says, pointing to the pot at my bedside table.
“Yes, thank you.”
She sits next to the bed and takes my hand. “I am thinking of taking a trip back to Vietnam one day.” She laughs lightly. “I say it’s to visit family still there. But I think if I’m really honest, it’s just to indulge myself. To feel what it’s like to return to a place you’ve remembered and imagined for almost thirty years.”
I nod. “Where would you go?”
“Oh, to places I frequented when I was young. Markets, school. The street corner in Saigon where I stood as a thirteen-year-old girl when I got my first pair of dress shoes. Strange. Such a long time ago.”
“Not really. At our age, my age, those years feel just like the present. Or yesterday.” I understand the geographical pull.
Mrs. An, slumped in her seat, leans closer toward me. “Do you ever want to go back? You carry so many memories in you and I know you can’t let them go. Or they don’t let you go.”
I nod. It’s true I have memories. But I will not ever go back to Vietnam.
Mrs. An must have read my mind. “Of course. I see why you wouldn’t want to return.”
I look at her. My heart unfolds. I do want to return, but not by going there. I drift instead, softly but surely, back to the event that changed our lives.
In November 1963, a few days after the coup, I stood on the edge of the Saigon River, watching its reflections of the city’s darting lights. Water has a natural pull for all of us who yearn for contemplation. I saw the seamless beauty in its expanse, severe and stark, yet seemingly eternal and infinite, visible to everything, yet revealing nothing.
Before me was the dock of Bach Dang Harbor. It was late evening and a low-hanging mist had settled above the rippled water. I was grateful for the mist. I took it as an offering, an invitation to be consoled. Through the haze, things were simply less rigid, and even the hardness and sharpness of life could appear a bit less severe, less savage, more bearable. I stood still and watched a cloud shroud the city in a veil of vapors and steam, muting its edges. As the sun fell and then disappeared over the horizon, darkness itself began to deepen, pulling colors out of objects, shielding a wounded landscape from its own melancholy. Imagine it as an open palm shading a pair of tired eyes from the sun’s glare.
Of course it was bound to happen again. I expected it. I saw the preparation on my way to work. The cook was busily washing, paring, slicing. A meal was being assembled and it was not for the family alone. Morning glory leaves, a type of water spinach, were soaked in a shallow basin of water, their stalks thick and lush. They were known to be temperamental. Too much heat and they quickly wilt. Too little heat and they defiantly resist, making themselves fibrous and rough against the tongue. But in the right hands, they could be exquisite; peasant food elevated into the realm of the sublime. No sauce, nothing aggressive to meddle with the revelation of their natural taste. Morning glory needed nothing more than a dash of salt, a pinch of chopped garlic, and a f
ew drops of oil into a flashing-hot pan sizzling on a coal-fired stove.
Phong loved it that way. That was how I knew he would be coming to dinner, as if to say that politics can bash open empires, or divide and partition countries, along this and that parallel line, but it cannot do the same to friends. We had joined the army at the same time, gone to the same training school, endured similar heartaches. To celebrate our enduring friendship, we were going to have a meal en famille. Of course, the coup did change everything, even a long-standing friendship. But I understood that part of the change meant the need to act as if nothing had been altered. Or if it had, presumably only for the better, as a friendship was supposed to be better after one friend saved another friend’s life.
Phong and his wife had arrived before I got home. The voice of Thai Thanh, despairing and tender, soared through the speakers, mourning love’s end. The songs we Vietnamese loved were about farewell and separation, spiraling sadness, rainy nights, solitary souls. Even before the calamity of country lost, sorrow was deeply carved and deeply felt in Vietnam’s soul. A strange grief had long ago roped itself around the country’s neck, leaving deep, indelible marks on its flesh.
Phong lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings that sulked and wafted to the ceiling. His cigarette tip glowed. I noticed he had a cigarette holder. This was new. The gold flashed ostentatiously. He downed one drink, then another. My wife stood across from him, her arm looped around the slender waist of Thu, Phong’s wife and her good friend of many years. There was the aroma of salt-and-pepper crabs tossed on a hot wok. There was the rise and fall of their voices.
I saw that he had undergone a fleshly change. Or was it something else? He pivoted with the confidence of somebody who had already done what was almost impossible. He had stood on a perilous ledge, yet here we were, together, as the long hot day began to slide into the cool twilight. For the sake of our friendship, it could be managed. He would be welcomed in my house and exercise the prerogative of one who had saved his friend’s life. And we in turn would admire this generosity. We would take our time to eat, to talk. I saw Phong’s smile reflected in the mirror. This was how the four of us had shared our evenings for years. Food, smiles, conversation, music.