The clients he didn’t like were the salesmen who came in wearing expensive business suits yet always asked him to give them a deal. He recognized them by the sheen of the watches on their wrists, their slicked-back hair and warm-weather tans, their perfect English. The way they looked at him like he was going to be some joke they’d tell a friend about later, calling him “buddy,” correcting his spelling. He always chased these men away with a “Fuck you!” Sometimes, when he was in a good mood and had time to spare, he would humour them, allow them in his shop for fifteen minutes, let them talk on and on and show him their graphs of sales and profits—some fancy business-school way of doing things. But eventually, he’d get around to yelling at them like he did the others who had come before. Those men were protected by their glass office towers and their secretaries and lawyers and cheating tax accountants, but in his shop, one he owned and operated alone, he was boss! To own a thing yourself, and to be able to say, “Fuck you! All of you all! Fuck you into hell!” It had been something that was said to him and it was fun to turn the tables and say it to someone else, to see them lose their cool and make a quick, fumbling exit.
Of all the things Mr. Vong made and printed at the shop, though, it was Lao wedding invitations that gave him the most joy. Mr. Vong took great care with his invitations. He made his own paper, every fibre dried and flattened in his shop, the process taking several months. He even mixed his own pigment, creating a final shade that was unique. He kept a record of all the colours and shades he had used in a scrapbook, little tiny squares with the names and date of each one. To use the same colour pigment more than once might invite the idea that no marriage was unique. He wore a headpiece with jeweller’s magnifying glasses attached and went over every single letter on the invitations. He was determined to get the smallest of details exactly right—a spelling error could be a sign that the couple was not perfect for each other. He was the guardian of their good fortune. And he was the best.
The engaged couple was very pleased with Mr. Vong’s care and expertise. When they saw the Lao language on their wedding invitations, its loops and swirls, its curlicues like ribbons, the couple squealed and said, “Oh Mr. Vong! Mr. Vong! We love these. They’re perfect. So beautiful. What are you doing in June? You must come to the wedding. You must! We couldn’t have done this without you.” The both of them grinning wide with their blindingly bright, even teeth.
It was while the bride and groom were having their first dance as husband and wife that Mr. Vong made his bold prediction.
“Just you mark my words,” Mr. Vong continued. “The marriage will last less than a year. “
“Ai, why are you saying this for?” Mrs. Vong said. “Keep your voice down!” she urged, slapping him on his arm and glancing around at the people seated at their table to see if they had heard. But everyone was paying attention to the bride and groom, some reaching for their spouse’s hand, musing over their own first dance in front of family and friends, or eating the food on their plates so they could go and get seconds. The guests had just been served a nice meal of papaya salad, spring rolls, sticky rice, minced chicken with fresh herbs and spices, and sweets wrapped in banana leaves.
“Less than a year. That’s my prediction. And you know I’m always right about these things. You know,” he said, pointing to his twenty-seven-year-old daughter. She nodded her head in agreement, and he went on. “If I paid for a whole lobster, I’m going to get it.” He was referring to how whenever they ordered a lobster dinner—the most expensive thing on the menu—Mr. Vong just had to make sure that he got what he paid for. The lobster shells might have been cracked open or chewed to a pulp, but he told everyone to put the shells back onto the main plate so he could rearrange the broken bits, unfold the bones to their original shape, and reassemble the lobster’s body back together to see if there was something missing. Once, there was one claw, half a tail, and some legs missing. Mr. Vong knew it! He called the waiter over, made a big show out of being cheated, and made sure the whole restaurant knew he was not one to tolerate such a cheat.
“I know. I know these things,” he said. Then he returned to his meal, gathering up the minced chicken with a flattened ball of sticky rice.
True enough, in less than a year the bride and groom were divorced.
Later that year, Mr. Vong made another one of his predictions. This time he made it the minute he opened the wedding invitation. He said, “Ah, not even going to happen.”
“Dad, what is it? How can you know it’s not going to happen?”
“Look at it. The invitation was printed at some fancy downtown place.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, they don’t do Lao lettering at that place. Look at that,” he said, pointing to the text of the invitation, “it’s all in English.”
“Maybe the bride and groom don’t read Lao.”
“It doesn’t matter! The language should be there whether you can read it or not. It’s where you come from. Why leave it out?”
His daughter came over to look at the invitation. There was no Lao lettering to be found anywhere on this particular invitation. It was fancy—thick paper and raised print she could feel when she ran a hand across the lettering, the little silver-glinted bumps forming the names, addresses, dates. And yes, Mr. Vong’s prediction was correct. The would-be groom broke off the engagement to marry someone else named Sue. Phone calls were made. The wedding was cancelled. Called off.
“Dad, seriously, how did you know?”
“Look, I know these things. You just can’t have a Lao wedding without Lao letters on the invitation. And you have to have your real given name on there. Yeah, it’s a long name—but that’s your name. Why would you want to be Sue when your name is really Savongnavathakad? Because, you know, the real Sue will end up marrying the guy if it says so right there on the invitation.”
When it was time for Mr. Vong’s daughter to get married, he spared no expense. He ordered sparkled paint from Laos made out of the crushed wings of a rare local insect. The gold specks were real and not artificial—real shine and shimmer for a real marriage. He printed the invitations by hand and left each one out to dry on a metal rack. Ten on each rack for a total of two hundred invitations, an even number, always divisible by two—an important number in a marriage. Mr. Vong didn’t use a fan to dry the paint because he wanted them to dry on their own. What might have taken only a few hours instead took four days. It was his opinion that using a machine was cheating. He did everything he could possibly do to ensure that his daughter’s wedding invitations were perfect and ready to be sent out into the scrutiny of the universe.
On the day of the wedding, Mr. Vong’s daughter wore a sleeveless white wedding dress. It was plain, without lace or buttons, but the fabric cascaded down her body like a fountain of milk.
But the groom was not there. Jilted.
When it became clear the groom was not coming, Mr. Vong’s daughter lifted up the bottom of her dress and ran over to him, furious. “It’s all your fault, isn’t it? The invitations. Something must have gone wrong!”
Mr. Vong tried to think of an answer, one he could use to explain how the wedding had come to this. “I … I found one invitation behind the door,” he said. “I must have missed it. All invitations must go out at the same time. It was just the one. I didn’t know the universe would be so cruel. I am sorry.”
It was not true, of course. Not even close. He had accounted for everything! And now, no amount of fuck-you-to-hells could make a difference to that boy. But how could he tell her that the boy she loved wasn’t kind or good, that he didn’t love her, that sometimes what felt like love only felt like love and wasn’t real. He couldn’t do anything about that but say, “Yes, yes, it was my fault. It is all my fault.”
Edge of the World
When I was about four, my mother and I spent our days sitting side by side on the couch, watching soap operas and eating chocolates and laughing. My mother’s laugh was loud and wild. She never covered
her mouth, which would open so wide I could see the half-chewed chocolate mashed up against the inside of her cheek. She would only laugh this way when we were alone. With my father or in the company of others, she would giggle and put a hand over her mouth. I wanted everyone to see what I saw when we were alone.
My mother learned to speak English watching these soaps, and soon she started practising what she learned. When my father didn’t feel like eating, she would ask who he had been eating his meals with that he had no appetite? When a sock went missing from the dryer, she would ask where it went, and when he had no answer, she would accuse him of having an affair.
My father didn’t take my mother seriously. He tried to keep their talk light, saying he sure wished he wasn’t so busy working and that life really was as full of opportunities for affairs as she imagined it to be. But he would turn serious afterwards, saying, “You don’t know, do you. What it’s like for me at work. They all talk so fast in English. Barking at me all the time about keeping up. Sometimes I don’t even feel like a human being.”
My parents didn’t spend much time alone, and when they did, there were no Lao bars or cafés or restaurants for them to go out to. Occasionally, we were invited over to get-togethers at the homes of other Lao refugees. There were those who had been here a long time, like us, and there were those who had just arrived. These parties were where everyone went to dance and listen to music, play cards and eat, reminisce and talk about old times. They would laugh all night—sad, faint bursts of air—and shake their heads in disbelief at what they had made of themselves in this new country.
My parents went to these parties to hear the news from back home or to ask what had happened to those they left behind. Who was still there? Was their house still standing? And if they made it out of Laos, which refugee camp did they end up in? How long were they there? And where did they land? When my parents read the newspaper or watched the evening news, they never heard anything about what was happening in their country. It was almost as if it didn’t exist.
My father was often at the centre of these parties. A wave of laughter would crash in from the living room and when I peered inside he would be there, telling everyone his stories. The one everyone seemed to love to hear him tell was the “Yes, sir” story, and even though they had all heard it before, he would begin the story as if they hadn’t. He told them how he said “Yes, sir!” in English at work whenever anyone told him what to do, but he said it with the tone and force of a “Fuck you!” Then he marched around the room and saluted everyone like a dutiful soldier, saying in English, “Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” each time. He cackled with glee at how the people at work thought he was so polite and nice.
My mother watched and listened to all of this from the kitchen, but she never joined in. She kept to herself, eating a plate of food while surrounded by Tupperware, glass casserole dishes, steaming pots, simmering pans, plastic forks and spoons and paper plates. I stayed there with her, and she told me what each dish was and how it was supposed to be cooked. She pointed out that some of the key ingredients were missing and said that none of the dishes could live up to her memory of the real thing. She said the food in Laos just tasted better and that maybe someday when I was older we could go back and visit. She said all this to me in Lao.
A woman in the kitchen overheard her and said, “Your child understands Lao?” My mother was proud that I could still have something from the old country even though I had never been there. But the woman said to her, “Oh no, no! Oy! You better start speaking English with her. How’s she going to fit in once she gets to school?!” When the woman left the kitchen, we laughed at her, how worried sick she seemed about not fitting in with everybody, as if that was a thing to want.
Later, my mother encouraged me to go and play with the other kids at the party. They were rowdy and running around and speaking English with one another. I wanted to play with them, but they kept pushing me on the arm and telling me I was “it.” I did not know what “it” was, but every time I tried to get near one of them, any time I came close, they’d run from me like they didn’t want to play with me at all. After a while I went back to the kitchen, and when my mother saw me return she asked what had happened, why I came back so soon. I told her, “All they do is speak English. I don’t know what they’re playing.” Then she paused a moment and said, “Maybe it’s something they learned at school. You’ll learn too, when you go.”
The closest my mother came to having friends were the cashiers at the Goodwill. They were friendly and knew her by name, and they’d let her wander the aisles there for hours. They might only have been doing their jobs, but my mother didn’t see it that way. Once, she brought them egg rolls wrapped in aluminum foil, and they took them to the backroom to eat while we picked through the clothing together. But the way my mother walked by the racks, with a hand trailing behind her, it was as if she wasn’t really looking for anything she wanted. It made me wonder if she might have wanted to be invited to the backroom to enjoy the food. To distract her from thinking about her egg rolls, I grabbed a yellow dress and brought it to her. I said, “What do you think of this colour?” She looked at the price tag—one dollar—and nodded. Before we left the store, my mother glanced back at the cashiers. She said to me, “You think they liked it?”
Once I started school, my mother watched the soaps alone and told me about them when I came home. There was always an affair, a long-lost twin, someone in a coma, a handsome doctor. After a while, I didn’t want to hear about them anymore. I started reading books, and my mother would come sit with me and have me read them to her. She would ask questions about the drawings inside. The books she liked best were the scratch-and-sniff ones, and the ones where animals popped out at you. Each time I pulled the paper tab and a cat or a dog jumped out, she would draw in her breath, surprised and delighted by such a thing. There was one book about a sheep, with a cotton patch inside. My mother would pet the cotton with her finger as if it was alive.
At night, she would bring a book to my bed and insist I read it to her. There were not too many words inside. Sometimes she’d fall asleep right away, but when she didn’t, I would make up stories for her. “No one is ever alone in the world,” I said. “There is always a friend somewhere for everyone.” She must have been twenty-four then, but she seemed much younger—and smaller. I watched over her, and when she shivered I pulled a blanket up to cover her, trying not to wake her. Sometimes she had nightmares. I could tell by how she was breathing— short, panicked breaths. I would reach out and stroke her hair, tell her things would be all right, though I didn’t know if they would be or what it meant to say those words. I just knew it helped to say them.
I never thought to ask my mother why she slept in my room most nights. I was just glad not to be alone in the dark.
One Saturday morning, we wandered into the toy section of the Goodwill, and my mother picked something out for me. It was a map of the world, a puzzle, a thousand cardboard pieces inside a paper box for fifty cents. Each piece had a unique shape that fit into another. The point was to find the other pieces that fit into it somewhere in this pile of shapes and lock them together.
When we got home and I sat down to work on the puzzle, she did not pick up a piece or try to help me put it together. Instead, she watched me and what I did. She’d say, “That one doesn’t go there. Try another one.” When one fit, she’d say, “Every piece belongs somewhere, doesn’t it.”
I worked on the puzzle when I came home from school, and piece by piece, I put the colours together. First the blues, which stood for the oceans. Then the reds, greens, oranges, yellows, and pinks of all the many different countries. Weeks later, there were only a handful of pieces left, and when I put in the last piece, I announced, with pride, “Ma, I’m finished!”
My mother peered at the puzzle and pointed at a green spot, said that was where she was from. A tiny country on the lower far right. Then she pointed to where we were at this moment, a large pink area at the
top far left. After a moment, she pointed to the puzzle’s edge and then to the floor, where there was nothing. “It’s dangerous there,” she said. “You fall off.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “The world is round. It’s like a ball.”
But my mother insisted, “That’s not right.”
Still, I continued, “When you get to the edge you just come right back around to the other side.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“My teacher says. Miss Soo says.” There was a globe on Miss Soo’s desk at school, and whenever she talked about the oceans or the continents or plate tectonics, she would point to those features on it. I didn’t know if what Miss Soo was telling me was true. I hadn’t thought to ask.
“It’s flat,” my mother said, touching the map. “Like this.” Then she swept the puzzle to the floor with her palm. All the connected pieces broke off from each other, the hours lost in a single gesture. “Just because I never went to school doesn’t mean I don’t know things.”
I thought of what my mother knew then. She knew about war, what it felt like to be shot at in the dark, what death looked like up close in your arms, what a bomb could destroy. Those were things I didn’t know about, and it was all right not to know them, living where we did now, in a country where nothing like that happened. There was a lot I did not know.
We were different people, and we understood that then.
A few weeks after, we went to the park. It was cold and the grass was yellow underneath a lumpy sheet of ice. Earlier, I had been reading and my mother had been watching television. She usually found a show to make her laugh, but that day she couldn’t settle on one. She kept pressing the button on the remote control, flipping to the next channel, and then the next, until she started all over again.
How to Pronounce Knife Page 6