by Philip Huynh
When I arrived home from Tiet Linh’s house, the dan bau player was gone. My first thought was to call the police, but he had taken nothing from me. Then I worried about his own safety, but there was nothing I could do. Tiet Linh would not answer my texts or my phone messages.
The next evening I walked to the site of the New Year’s concert, a high school gymnasium not too far from where I live. As is my routine, I arrived a couple of hours before the start. I carried an uneasy feeling in my belly at the chaos that would reign in Tiet Linh’s absence. To my great relief, though, the ticket-punch girl was already there, resplendent in her ao dai and setting up her table at the entrance. Inside the gym, Ba Kim rolled in her banh mi sandwiches on trays and my trusted volunteers were tying colourful streamers. Someone had already placed a small hoa mai tree on the stage and hung red ribbons off its yellow-blossomed branches. Men from the light and strobe company were moving cables across the polished gym floor and put before me a clipboard with a voucher to sign. I should have known, of course, that the world would go on without the likes of Tiet Linh and me.
Soon the Aquamarines arrived and started unpacking their drum kits and guitars. Then I heard a commotion in the back dressing room and put my hands over my stomach: the divas had already arrived. I walked to their room, their voices echoing off the plastered brick wall of the hallway — the cai luong singers, the engineer-cum-balladeer, the aging New Waver. And then I heard one more voice among them, a very welcome one. Tiet Linh’s. I stepped inside.
“We were wondering about you,” she said. They were all laughing and Tiet Linh’s eyes were puffy. They had been talking about Anh Binh. By now Tiet Linh had already arbitrated the lineup and taken care of all the musicians’ personal needs — marbles for the engineer, Styrofoam cups for the New Waver.
“Where are the vong co musicians?” I asked.
Tiet Linh had no answer. “He came back to my house last night,” said Tiet Linh, “and then the two left together. Who knows if they’ll show up?”
“The artistic temperament knows no boundaries,” I said.
“At least of decorum,” she said.
I left Tiet Linh to her musicians and tended to the details of the stage. There were too many problems to deal with in the time remaining, but when the rafter lights were lowered and the strobe lights came on, I could no longer see any imperfection. The crowd filtered in and took their seats at the long cafeteria tables, and I took my customary seat off to the side. All the generations came, from grandparents my age in suits and ties or ao dais and evening pearls to young people who wore as much mascara and glitter on their clothes as the performers did. The old danced the cha-cha to the standards while the young sang along to new numbers.
The evening flowed as harmoniously as any other until midway through the concert when the rafter lights came back on. The Aquamarines then left the stage except for the guitarist, who replaced his instrument with a moon lute. The rafter lights dimmed again and the spotlight froze on a couple resplendent in ancient dress. Our vong co players had come after all.
The man stood behind his dan bau, its single string untouched yet already resounding, its buffalo-horn spout rising from its gourd, its lacquered soundboard shimmering in the strobe light. The woman turned to her husband and appeared to smile before stepping up to the microphone.
Tiet Linh joined me at the table, looking eternal in her own ao dai. The crowd cheered as soon as the first notes of “Da Co Hoai Lang” were released from the moon lute. This was the song that gave birth to the genre — written by Cao Van Lau, who was forced by his mother to dispense with his wife after three years of a barren marriage. A legend persists that the poor composer would choke up every day he brought home his catch of crustaceans, because his wife was no longer present to sort the shrimps from the crabs. Old men wiped away tears when the singer chimed in above the moon lute. For much of the song her husband stood still and considered his dan bau with a silent stroke of his finger against the spout. When finally he struck his first note against the single string, his wife did not crack or hurl herself off the stage as I had feared. Rather she sang alongside the dan bau, whose note stood up as its own voice against hers, into a true duet of mourning.
The lights stayed low when the song finished, and a small girl came to the front of the stage to give pink flowers to both the wife and the husband. I looked over at Tiet Linh and her lips were crisply sealed with a look of endurance. How far we have made it, she seemed to say. I thought about how I had not had a chance to properly comfort her in the months since her husband and my good friend had passed away. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to be alone. I wanted to say what I would have wanted to hear when my own wife passed away. I opened my mouth, but no words came, just a trembling of my lips.
“You don’t have to say anything,” said Tiet Linh.
I knew this was an act of kindness on her part.
I thought of our lives together, both on this and the other shore. I looked down at the table. “I can’t see Ngoc’s face anymore,” I said. “I’ve tried everything, but I can’t find her in my memory. It’s been so long now.”
Tiet Linh held my hand, to still it. Then she touched my chin and tilted it up towards the stage as the next singer took the microphone, as the drummer lifted his drumsticks.
Mayfly
You were twelve when you found your homies, but you didn’t know this at first. You were starting grade seven at a new elementary school in that part of East Van where all the street names are Scottish like yours — Dumfries and Fleming and Killarney (years later you learned that Killarney was in fact Irish) — and your new school was named after some inventor of worldwide standard time. He could have been your ancestor, if your ancestors weren’t instead boxcar hoboes who fled the Prairies during the Depression to sleep out on these west coast streets.
The year before, your mother, a corporate secretary at an insurance agency, got sick of your father and shacked up with her boss. She gave your father the heave and you moved out along with his few chattels to your grandfather’s house, to be solid with your men-kin and because you couldn’t stand your mother’s boss-boo.
At your old school you would have been respected as one of the elder peckers, but here you had built up no goodwill, hadn’t yet hit puberty, and your face was as pale as milk, splattered with punch-me freckles. You soon attracted the bullies. They stole your turkey sandwiches during the lunch recess. On a rainy day, when you sought shelter under the covered hopscotch walk, they chased you out because they used the walk for their ball hockey games. Then they took your nylon poncho for their goalie to wear inverted like a straitjacket, to trap the tennis ball-puck.
You were left in the rain-drenched playground among second- and third-graders who were digging trenches into the muddy ground around the wooden see-saws and rusted tire swings. You went to another side of the school to find a dry awning. And that’s where you found them. Huddled and looking as cold as you out in the rain, though they were wearing sweaters and nylon jackets.
They spoke in a strange language. The youngest was your age, but most were older. One had a moustache. Some were smoking. Others sucked juice boxes. Some pointed fingers at you, and you didn’t know whether they were talking to you or to each other. Then the Moustache took off his sweater jacket and tossed it at you, and you ducked. Then one of them stepped behind you. You were surrounded. You put up your fists, elbows at right angles like a boxing leprechaun. And then they grabbed your waist from behind and you couldn’t move, and then they pulled your shirt over your head and spun you around, and you couldn’t see again until your shirt was pulled right off. Now you were bare-chested with steam rising off your pricked nipples. And then the Moustache picked up his sweater jacket from the pavement and handed it to you. “Put it on,” he said. Dry wool calmed your cold, wet skin.
He had your shirt and rolled it up into a rope, then squeezed all the rainwater out. Then the youngest one held a blue Thermos in front of your face
and unscrewed the plastic cap. As you leaned into the Thermos, into the glowing aluminum inner canister, steam from a beefy broth crawled up your cheeks. He poured the soup into the upturned cap and you sipped. Your belly warmed and you could feel your toes again.
The next time you checked the awning, they were gone, though you felt their invisible presence like guardian angels. This made you brave, and though you did not pick fights, in the future you did not shy away from them. The next time someone tried to steal your poncho, you hit back. For that you got a black eye that would forever see floaters against the blue sky.
Later in winter, during another rainy recess, they were back under the awning. “You’re skinnier,” said the Moustache in his heavy accent. The others threw their cigarettes into a rutted puddle. Then the one around your age asked if you were hungry, and you nodded because you couldn’t lie to him. “Come on then.” His name was Sang.
You followed him to the grocery store, but before you went in, he asked if you had any money. You told him that you didn’t, and he said he didn’t either. “That’s okay. Just be careful.” You made it past the potted flowers under tarp at the front of the store, then inside to the aisles of dried goods. Sang disappeared down an aisle, leaving you staring at the Campbell’s Soup labels. Then you heard the exit chime and went outside. Sang was running, and you followed his heels around a corner alley. He handed you his stash of bubble gum and Snickers. “On me,” he said. “Next time, on you.”
You didn’t know when that next time would come. The homies disappeared into the shadows of your memory. Sometimes you thought you saw Sang in school, the black pricks of his buzz cut darting from fountain to classroom. You could never be too sure.
The next time, in spring, the bullies came for you in a pack, surrounded you by the basketball courts like this time they meant to make no mistake. Now you would be the turkey in their sandwich. They pinned you against the fence, but just when you were going to be devoured, in flashed that familiar prick of hair. Sang shoved one of them aside and freed your arms. Newly cocky, you took a punch at a bully. You thought Sang knew kung fu. You would have just run away if you had known the truth — that Sang had only come to offer his body in the beating, to spot his face for yours.
And so you both got your asses kicked. One of the boys dragged Sang by the legs and laid him out flat on the gravel, holding down his shoulders. Then the rest piled on top. You were enough of a pest, biting and kicking at shins, so that you and Sang managed to escape through the back alleys of the neighbourhood, past the shadows of blackberry bushes and cherry trees, the camouflage of barking dogs.
You had a gashed cheek, a fat lip, and only a mirror knew what else. You could not go home looking like you did. Or maybe you could. Maybe your grandfather would be proud and your father newly respectful of the scars that spoke of your bourgeoning manhood. But instead of going home, you followed Sang through the backyard of his house. His mother was waiting with angry resignation. She pulled an ostrich feather duster from a large urn at the entrance to their basement suite and swatted Sang with it. For a while mother and son went pug-nose to pug-nose. She did not look at you. After these soft lashings, Sang led you to the living room, and you were enveloped by a pungent air belonging to another latitude, thick with animal fat and incense.
When you returned to your grandfather’s house, it was dark, and you felt your way around by the smells — the sourdough bread marking the kitchen, the polished cedar of his den where he was snoring, down into the basement past the rusted metal and motor oil of his workshop to the mildew in the bathroom.
Your grandfather had been a high rigger lumberjack. During World War II he took off the tops of spruce trees over twenty storeys high, up in the Interior, while his friends went off to face the Germans. You could not imagine any soldier matching your grandfather’s blow-by-blow tales in the forests, and you learned from him that no tree was just a tree. You either felled it or it felled you.
You went to sleep not sure where your father was. He was a ghost who carried not much more about him than the smell of fabric softener and twitch of static. He was an electrician on disability, felled by something invisible. His war would have been Vietnam, if he had fought, though not having fought didn’t stop him from cursing draft dodgers who made homes in his neighbourhood.
The next morning, your grandfather, as usual, slathered his sourdough bread with liverwurst, while your father buried his nose in cornflakes and a fishing magazine. Neither of them remarked upon your absence the night before or your re-emergence in battle-won glory.
A month later, Sang said next time on you was now, and you said you had no money, and he headed for the grocery store anyway, and you followed him. There the owner put you in a half nelson after you tried to pocket one of the wine gums and Fun Dip candies. You watched Sang walk right past you like you were a sorry stranger. The police came, but because you still hadn’t hit puberty all you got was a kick-ass ride in a cop car right to your grandfather’s front step. At least this time you got a rise out of your old man, and though his disability prevented him from beating you, he was able to clamp your fingers to open splices, submitting you to a low-level shock as your punishment for the day.
You didn’t hit your spurt until the summer before high school, when your voice broke up, your lungs filled out, and your legs inched towards manhood. Lean and lanky, you were destined to become a baller. At the high school you took up junior varsity basketball. But you soon got tired of institutional ball, and preferred to be in civvies out on the asphalt in the open air, where there were hoops beside hopscotch charts or on the edges of tennis courts. After school you started looking for pickup games.
That was when you ran into the other homies again — on sunny days out on the cracked grey-tops. They were in Adidas hoodies and rolled-up sleeves. Some played in sneakers with no ankle support, and the Moustache was even in sandals.
Now with you they had numbers to play pure form, three-on-three. You, Sang, and the Moustache against the rest of the world. You hit nothing but net with your first shot, if only the bent rim had had a net. Sang, forever short, was the playmaking point, tossing the ball to you to swoosh all day with your jumper while the Moustache drove the basket with a Du Maurier between his lips.
You realized your worth when you played outsiders. Mostly Hongers and Namers at first, who you overpowered with quickness and height. Then the Sikhs came, and the game opened up to full-court five-on-five, with subs. The first time, you rained on them with your jumper, and when you drove the hoop, your homies cleared the lanes for you like cockroaches splashed with light. You thought you were unstoppable.
But that quickly changed. The Sikhs had matching forces. They had height to match yours. They swatted your jumpers. And when you were on defence they squeezed you in picks tight enough to pop your zits. Against the Sikhs, the Moustache couldn’t keep a cigarette steady in his mouth and tore a strap off his sandal. Sang got his neck stuck in one of their armpits.
You played all night against the Sikhs and lost all your skins. When you got home your father gave you hell, but you didn’t bother looking at him because he was just a gimp. You told him that on nights it didn’t rain, he shouldn’t be waiting up for you.
You were hanging with the homies on the weekends now all through grade eight, looking farther afield for games — up as far north as Strathcona, as far east as Burnaby. You would ride in their cars, most of the time in the Moustache’s split-pea-yellow Datsun, a hatchback with all nose and no ass, and you had to squeeze in the back with three other homies. Others had sweeter rides, like a Mazda RX and a Toyota Supra with a souped-up spoiler.
Sometimes, if you had a hot night with your jumper, they would let you ride shotgun in the RX or the Supra. You could barely hear the engine purr in these cars, compared with the Moustache’s Datsun. This cool hush, with the windows up and the streets rolling by, you would forever associate with the sound of money. You thought these rides were the cream Royale, because
you were too hick to tell rice rockets from Ferraris and Porsches.
Your mother worried you were losing weight. You saw her once a week at the old house, which smelled of her perfumes and of the flowers that she would pick from front yards on her walk home from the bus stop, and that she would dry between the pages of her mystery novels. Sometimes you would have to endure the company of her boss-boo, who patted your head like a dog, and all you wanted was to bite his wrist off. Sometimes he would take you and your mother out for gelatos and asked if you ever thought of entering the insurance business. “All the time,” you said.
Your mother used to dress poor but with class. Simple and clean lines, the same blouses ironed to perfection, a dab of Chanel behind each ear. Now she wore wind chimes on her ears, heels with more length than her skirts, and fishnet stockings to cover the distance. She had grown out her hair, permed it, teased it, and dyed it electric blonde.
Once she asked if your father was feeding you right. You nodded, but she made you lift your shirt to see your ribs. She gave you a hundred-dollar bill. “Eat right,” she said. You took that bill to your homies and fronted all of them at the next skins game. Having your money on the line lit your ass aflame. Your jumpshots were keener. You stayed on your man through the tightest picks. This time you took the Sikhs down.
The Sikhs handed your homies a fat stack, but you never saw the take. Instead, the homies took you out for a sit-down meal at one of the neighbourhood pho joints. It was a feast of God’s creatures on land, sea, and air, on beds of rice and vermicelli noodles, drowned in fish sauce and tiny red peppers that made you want to cut your tongue off. The pretty waitresses passed around Coronas and you got high on your first bottle ever, the scars on your arms red from beer blush. The Moustache started a song, more like a chant, which caught on like a candle bent to a candle, and though you could not understand the words, you could slap the table at the same rousing rhythm as your homies. You had never been so high. The next time you saw your mother, you told her that yeah, you did eat right.