The Forbidden Purple City

by Philip Huynh

  “You live here?” she says.

  “Somewhere around here. I’m meeting some people.”

  As soon as she drops him off, he is standing at another bus stop.

  It is dark when he gets home. There is an empty taxicab parked out front. To his surprise, his mother is inside. He did not know that she has the night off, and has company.

  She and a man with a moustache are sitting cross-legged on the living room hardwood floor, a picnic blanket of newspapers on which are plates of banh xeo — Vietnamese crepes — whole prawns, and half-empty bowls of fish sauce. They are done eating. Lee can tell that they have been smoking as well because there is a single candle in the middle of the newspaper spread, the flame to clear the air of smoke.

  “Why so late?” asks his mother.

  “Homework.”

  The man she is with is named Bao. A social worker, his mother says, although he drives a cab on the side. Going out with a Namer is a change in style for her. She went out with white guys when they first moved here. Some with money. Some who didn’t know her real age, that she was older than she said she was. It’s because of the pigtails and pink lipstick his mother sometimes wears. They had no idea how old she was until they met Lee. Then they hightailed it.

  “You work at a restaurant too?” asks Bao.

  “It’s his school uniform,” says his mother.

  “He goes to one of those?”

  “He has a gift for mathematics. He got a scholarship.”

  “It’s called a bursary,” says Lee.

  “Sure, I’ve heard of those,” says Bao. “I also heard you were good at math.” Although they have never met, Bao knows enough about Lee to make him squeamish. And it’s knowledge that doesn’t come from his mother, even; rather, it’s just how the community is. Bao knows the business of every boy whom Lee has grown up with, the ones in jail, the ones still dealing freely, the cars they drive, the girls they are seeing. Their families all go to the same church.

  As Bao gets up to leave, he grabs Lee’s shoulder in a fatherly way, the shoulder that stings. Lee winces. He hands Lee his card, with the address of the immigrants’ community centre where Bao is a volunteer.

  “Call me any time,” Bao says, before leaving to start his shift in his cab.

  Jude is like a figure on a Roman urn, some mix between lady and beast. She stands at five foot eleven, just on the edge of freakish. Her blonde hair, short in the back and perfectly tousled in the front, is in the windblown style of Amelia Earhart. Her bright, broad, open face is soft in every manner except for two stubbornly hard places: her eyes and chin. She is big in the bone, svelte around the hips, light in her step, heavy in the bosom. She has an intelligence both diamond sharp and coarse, filtered through a husky prairie drawl. She is both elegant and unwieldy, a beast made of gold. To Lee, Jude’s elegance radiates through her fingertips, where she spins out her magical computer code.

  They find each other on the riverbank, both smoking. He thinks he is the only one there.

  Jude is leaning against a birch tree, the one with its branches hanging over the swollen river. She holds a cigarette in a fingerless black glove, teardrops slipping off her stone-cold eyes, the way the leaves fall off the birch to be stolen away by the current. Resolution has been all but worn from her face, except for her stubborn chin.

  “You’ll drown your cigarette at the rate you’re going,” says Lee.

  She wipes her face with her free hand, perhaps to humour him. He thinks he knows why she’s crying, so there’s no reason to talk about it.

  “You know, this tree, it reminds me of the painting in the computer class,” says Lee. “Branches hanging over the water. Kind of serene.” It seems like the right thing to say, and Lee only realizes that it is a silly comment after he says it. Jude, for the first time, looks right at Lee and her eyes soften. Perhaps she is humouring him again.

  “The painting isn’t meant to be serene. There are blossoms falling, not leaves, which means premature death, or something.”

  Lee can see the painting in his mind. “That’s too deep. You’re making it up.”

  “Well, the artist has been dead for a thousand years, so we’ll never know, will we?”

  “So how do you know?”

  “My dad bought that painting.” Lee returns Jude’s hard look. “He donated it to the school.”

  “So you’re Jude Dunster. The Dunster Computer Room.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Jude finishes her cigarette and flicks the butt into the river. “Do you have another?” she says.

  He shares his last Player’s with her. When they leave the river, he smells of cigarettes and lipstick. They dodge other people to make it back to the computer room, where the rest of her cigarettes are in her bag. They continue their smoking after class. It is already dark, and on the way to the riverbank Jude stops under the lighted porte cochère and takes out a small white bottle.

  “Eye drops,” she says, and tips her head back. It is so cold that he can see the steam rising from her eyes.

  They quickly finish the other pack, but they are not ready to stop smoking. They make a 7-Eleven run in her car. He stands in front of the Sev, opening his fresh pack of Player’s while watching a couple of skateboarders, but she won’t let him take out a cigarette.

  “Let’s go somewhere more interesting,” she says. She drives to Grosvenor Avenue, and they walk to a grocery store that looks closed. The door is unlocked. Inside, it is so dark that he bumps into a Popsicle freezer. “Watch your step,” says Jude, who is in front of him. She turns around to tug his sleeve, urge him forward.

  It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and at first all he sees are fireflies scattered throughout the black void of an otherwise empty store. Then his eyes begin to distinguish moving shadows, and he realizes that he is in a room full of other people. In the centre of the store, in front of the cash register, where there should be rows of dry goods, there are instead tables with diners.

  “We can smoke in here,” she says. Cigarettes, in fact, provide the main illumination in the room. A smattering of the tables have a tea-light candle, but Jude waves off the offer from the waitress.

  “Let’s just sit in the dark,” she says. “We don’t do that enough.” There is a catch in Lee’s throat and she adds: “I meant as a society.”

  Lee can see hints of the red Coca-Cola button sign on the wall behind the cash register. He can make out Jude’s face only when she brings the cigarette close to her to drag, and even then her features are only illuminated in splotches, a spotlight on one eye, part of her cheekbone, the edge of her lip, intensifying Lee’s focus on these parts of her. The only time he can make out her whole face is during the billow of light that strikes her when she flicks her Bic for another cigarette.

  In the dark she is more of an abstraction, more a ghostly presence, an oracle of code. He wants to sit back and let her explain to him the intricacies of her routines and subroutines. Yet he understands that miracles are ultimately inexplicable. He would settle for listening to her read her code straight-up, watch her little mouth inhale smoke and exhale C++.

  She is desolate. “I miss my friends,” she says. “But my father went to this school, and so did my grandfather. He slapped his face when he found out it was going coed, like he was trying to wake himself up from a dream, he was so happy. He thought he would have to skip a generation. But here I am.”

  “So you listen to your dad. You’re a good girl.”

  “I’m really not,” she says. Her eyes are so hard at this moment, he can see them glitter in the darkness. “Good at listening, that is.”

  “Girls can’t have real friendships, anyway,” says Lee.

  “What?”

  “It’s all based on talk. Real friends suffer in silence with each other.”

  “Right, I see where you’re going. You’ve got to go to war to make real friends. Well, if only you knew.”

  “If you hate it here so much,
why don’t you just leave?”

  “It’s a good education, if you can survive the people.”

  He wants to talk about computers. Jude wants to talk about The Tale of Kieu.

  “Whose tail?” he says.

  “It’s a Vietnamese folk tale. Part of your national story. How can you not know it?” All he can see of Jude is a sliver of her jawline where it is illuminated by her cigarette.

  He cannot tell if she is serious because he cannot see her expression. He does not answer, going through his memory bank for any reference to The Tale of Kieu from his mother.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” says Lee.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be condescending,” says Jude. “It’s about a prostitute. But not really, because she was forced into it by her husband. I read a French translation that my father brought home from one of his travels. It’s funny that the greatest Vietnamese epic poem is a hooker’s survival tale.” When Lee doesn’t respond, Jude says, “I mean that as a good thing.”

  When they are done their last pack, Lee has her drop him off at the Exchange District again. If this is an odd thing to do, Jude does not make him feel as if he has to explain himself.

  When Lee gets home, he finds Bao with his mother. They are sitting at the table, two glasses and a bottle of beer between them.

  “It’s bitter,” she says.

  “It’s the hops,” says Bao. “It’s not that bitter. It’s more spicy.”

  His mother’s face is flushed. He has never seen her drink before. Around her wrist is a jade bracelet that Lee cannot place.

  “Have a taste,” says Bao.

  “I’m okay,” says Lee.

  “Try some,” says his mother. “So you can follow what we are talking about.”

  To get to his own room, he has to walk past a narrow space between the dining table and the couch. Lee has to turn sideways to get through, and has to brush by the couple at the table.

  “Say good night to Anh Bao,” says his mother.

  “Good night,” says Lee, without looking at either of them.

  Lee finds Jude alone on a bitterly cold day in the middle of January, when the river has frozen over and the leaning birch tree looks so brittle in the sunlight, as if it could shatter from within. They are smoking from their own packs of cigarettes. This big-boned girl in her fingerless gloves seems unperturbed. Lee’s bare fingers feel as if they are on fire.

  She gives him a look of pity, throws the rest of her cigarette onto the icy river, removes both her gloves, and stuffs them into her jacket pocket. Then she blows smoke into her hands, places his hands in hers, and warms them. Her hands dwarf his. He leans into her — leans up to her — and they kiss, her head slightly lowered, his heels slightly raised above the balls of his feet. At first there is a brush of the lips like a lift in the breeze, and then a fluttering of greater urgency.

  He unwraps her scarf, and reaches underneath her sweater. Jude reclaims Lee’s hands in hers.

  “It’s cold,” she says. A piece of him dies. “Let’s get inside.”

  They do not go back to class, as he had expected, but instead she leads him to the old mansion and down a set of steps, to the boarding girls’ laundry room. The sound of the boiler obliterates the noise outside, and they are in a world of fresh sheets that they have spread against cold concrete.

  One of his hands is enveloped in hers as they lie down. He removes her sweater with his other hand. Each of her breasts is the size of his face. The flickering moment when his first girl becomes real, not merely as an idea but flesh to his touch, is a revelation. But it is a pleasure that dies all too quickly, as flesh, made real, suddenly becomes a mountain to climb, and Lee realizes that he is not fully equipped. His mind is consumed by a single thought: they don’t have a condom.

  He gets off Jude with the heaviness of a man getting out of the deep end of a pool. He puts his shirt back on.

  “What gives?” she says.

  He does not want to say what is topmost on his mind, and so he digs a little deeper into the sediment of consciousness. And this is what he pulls out of the mud: “You should meet my mother.”

  A lifetime’s worth of expressions pass through Jude’s face before she finally says, “That would be nice.”

  It is Sunday morning and Lee wakes up to the sight of Bao at the breakfast table, fiddling with something electronic.

  Since he has entered their lives, Bao has fixed the leaky faucet in the kitchen, installed a new television, and changed the tiles in the bathroom. He’s mowed the lawn in the backyard, even though it’s the landlord’s property and, strictly speaking, none of their business.

  His mother is still asleep in her room. As Lee passes Bao along the narrow space between the table and the couch, he brushes against the table and disturbs whatever it is that Bao is working on. Lee tips his cap and walks right past him.

  “You’re not going to have something to eat?” says Bao. “I’ll make you banh xeo.”

  “Thanks,” says Lee. “But I’m okay.” He walks out into the backyard, where the cold stings his face. He gets into the 1984 Passat, which has the body of a station wagon, a hatchback ass, and the colour of piss-smudged snow.

  The car, however, will not start, even though it has been plugged in. He turns the key again, but there is nothing, nothing, and then a wild buckling from the steering wheel that sends tremors down his arms to his shoulders. He kills the engine. His teeth hurt from chattering.

  Bao has followed him outside and is standing by the car. “That was loud,” he says. Lee has no idea what the problem is. “Pop open the hood,” says Bao.

  While Lee sits inside, Bao is standing outside in the cold, under the hood. Lee doesn’t want to seem so helpless and needy, and so he gets out. The engine looks like a puzzle that Lee does not have the energy to solve.

  “Probably a bum cylinder,” says Bao. “Just have to figure out which one. Turn the engine back on.” Lee hesitates a moment, for no other reason than because Bao is telling him to do something. Then he relents and sends the car back into convulsions. Meanwhile, Bao has gone to his cab to pull out a tool kit. Then, with the softest hands Lee has ever seen on a man, Bao disconnects each of the spark plug wires, one at a time. As he disconnects each wire, the buckling dies a little.

  “Got it,” says Bao. “Notice when I cut this wire, but nothing happened to the engine? This must be the one.” Bao pulls out a spark plug, presses it to Lee’s face. “Can you see that?” says Bao. “It’s cracked. I’ll go to the Canadian Tire to get another one. Can you wait?”

  “Take your time,” says Lee. “I’ve got all day.”

  “I’m taking your mother to church today,” says Bao. “You should come. Meet some good kids in the neighbourhood.”

  “It’s okay,” says Lee. “I’m really a Buddhist.”

  “Oh yeah. How’d you get that way?”

  Lee just shrugs his shoulders. “Caught it from someone passing through.”

  Bao smiles at Lee through his moustache. “I’ll see you later.”

  Lee doesn’t see Jude for most of the week. She isn’t avoiding him so much as avoiding the whole school. She isn’t in computer class, and if not there, she won’t be in any class. He starts to hallucinate her, thinks he catches glimpses of her down hallways, hears echoes of mooing down the corners of the hallways where the jocks lumber by, but he isn’t sure.

  On Friday she is back in computer class, the last class of the day. He sits behind her.

  She doesn’t turn around the whole time, not even when class is over and the rest of the students file out. She is in her own world, typing code. When she is done, and turns around, she gasps to see him there. “I guess I was focused,” she says.

  “Have dinner with me,” says Lee. “It’s late.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she says. “It’s frozen outside. I’m calling a cab. I didn’t bring my car.”

  “I brought my car,” says Lee. He believes that if he looks at he
r hard enough, he can will her to come with him. He draws close to her, a move that feels like the bravest thing he has ever done. “I’ll keep your hands warm,” he says.

  Ever since Bao replaced the spark plug, the Passat has been driving like a charm. Lee thinks Jude expected him to take her to Osborne Village, because when he drives past this hip neighbourhood — with its bookstores, coffee houses, ale and toad-in-the-hole pubs — Jude asks him where they are going. “A place in my neighbourhood,” says Lee. He takes her to his mother’s diner on Ellice Avenue.

  His mother has started working nights again. It is just the start of her shift, yet it is already pitch-black outside. Inside, the fluorescent lighting reflects off a newly mopped linoleum floor. The restaurant is almost deserted; they have their pick of the varnished wood tables in the smoking section or the padded vinyl booths in the family section. Lee takes Jude to the counter.

  “Is this smoking?” says Jude.

  “Non-smoking,” says Lee.

  “Odd,” says Jude, but Lee insists they sit down.

  His mother comes out from the kitchen, apron, name tag, hairnet. He is relieved that she is not in pigtails. Her eyes go wide when she sees her son at the counter. Lee has never stopped to visit before. He is a wonder in his mother’s eyes.

  “Jude, this is my mother,” says Lee.

  Both women are flustered, but Jude manages to crack a smile for both of them. When the two women touch hands, it is as if they are each reaching across dimensions. His mother hands two plastic menus to Lee, one of which he gives to Jude. There is nowhere to hide in an empty restaurant, and so his mother spends most of the time in the kitchen. His mother avoids direct eye contact, yet he catches her gaze reflected off the metal forks and water glasses that she serves them.

  “Her English isn’t so good,” says Lee.

  “That’s perfectly all right,” says Jude.