“What is the rate today?” Chị QH asks the jeweler.
“Fourteen to one, miss.”
“Don’t fool me, I know it’s nineteen to one.”
“That’s at the federal bank, miss. Here, we are just a small shop. Fifteen to one then.”
Small shop? There are nuggets of diamonds all over the place.
“Enough, eighteen to one.”
“Think of the gas I paid transferring the cash and the guards I have to hire.” The merchant points at five men holding sticks. “For you, miss, sixteen to one.”
“Meet you at seventeen or we go to the shop next door.”
They settle their weird math. The jeweler opens a fridge-sized steel safe, revealing stacks and stacks of cash. I’ve never seen that much money. Chị QH asks me for two twenty-dollar bills and hands back a wad that could not all be stuffed into my pouch. I give some to Út.
Chị QH whispers, “You have plenty to play with, don’t ever ever pull out your twenties. Understood? I asked for small bills so you can manage. Now put one hundred in your pants pockets. The rest keep in the pouch.”
When she says one hundred she means one hundred thousand đồng. No one says the last three zeros. One hundred thousand đồng equals about six dollars. I love this country! BTW, it’s never dong, but đồng. Tone downward. Dad, for some reason, made sure I knew the difference between dong and đồng even before we got off the plane. He said it again and again.
Where is he? Surely, Mom’s scouts have found him by now. I will text as soon as life slows down. With so much happening, I sometimes forget my focus is on getting home, and more immediately on finding the guard. But believe me, guard, home, exhale.
I whisper to Út, “When . . . find . . . guard?”
She writes, “Must wait. Do what they want first, then you get your turn, then I get my turn.”
I nod to be agreeable, but I have no idea what she’s talking about.
Chị QH leads us to a bánh cuốn stand. I love bánh cuốn. That’s how I learned to eat really spicy, diluted fish sauce. Chị QH orders, tells us to sit exactly here until she gets back, which may be a while, but the merchant has agreed to watch us. I can hear Út swallow a little, me too. She’s never been in a big city, and I haven’t been left without an adult in so long I instantly panic.
“Don’t worry, half the people here know me and Cô Nga, and they all know to not tell her you were left here. Nothing will happen,” Chị QH says in two languages. She waves ta-ta, and off she goes.
I’m too hungry to be scared, sitting at a bench with other customers, smelling sautéed dried shrimp and rice flour being steamed to make a crêpe. Heavenly! The others barely notice me. If I don’t talk and am sitting down to hide my slankiness, I might pass for a local girl. But Út doesn’t sit, instead walks toward the woman who’s obviously the owner, standing around chitchatting and doing nothing. Út shakes her head; the woman shakes her head. Oh-oh.
Út comes back to me and says, “Up.” She does speak English.
“I’m . . . starving. You too.”
“Not good.” Funny how Út can speak English when she wants to.
“It smells . . . great. Don’t . . . bargain, let’s eat.”
“Too much.”
Út actually walks away, as in away from the stand. I want to smack her. That means running after her. The whole place is jammed with moving bodies.
“What is . . . wrong . . . with . . . you?”
She’s madly writing while getting bumped into. “Not pay fifteen for one plate. In village, five, six at most.”
OMG, she’s bargaining over the equivalent of forty cents. I’m going to kill her . . . later.
We walk to a bún riêu stand. I love bún riêu, crab blended with eggs and served with a spicy broth and rice noodles.
“Too much,” Út writes. “In village, six, seven at most.”
“We are . . . in city. Spend money!”
We stop at a phở stand. Too much, according to stingy village girl. A bánh dày stand. Too much. A grilled-fish stand. Way too much. I come up behind Út ready to choke her. Rethinking, I put my hands in my pockets to control myself. My fingers touch paper. Yes! Pulling out a bill of ten thousand đồng, I hold it up to the light. It looks just like real money. The grilled fish vendor sees my money and slyly holds up two fingers, to note that if I pay a bit more we can eat. Út is too busy talking to notice. I pull out a twenty-thousand-đồng bill. The vendor nods. Út and I sit.
We eat without talking. I had no idea grilled fish wrapped in lettuce and dipped in fish sauce could be so good. Oh no, I’m not supposed to eat anything raw. Every muscle in my stomach squeezes together. I look around for a bathroom, but everywhere there are people, squatting, stooping, standing, sitting on tiny chairs. My stomach is starting to . . . wait for it . . . nothing. Dad said it would take a little while for my body to acclimate to the bacteria here, so I guess it has. Check me out, I officially have a stomach of iron.
Út is finally full enough to write, “I know how to bargain! 2 plates for 10,000!”
“You . . . are . . . good,” I chirp.
We also sample bánh dày and phở before sitting back down at the bánh cuốn stand. Each time I slyly hand over the equivalent of seventy-five cents behind Út’s back. Everyone treats us so well and Út feels smart.
When Chị QH does come back for us it’s too late to go get my cheek X-rayed.
“How did I become a watcher of two lumps of dough?” Chị QH laments in two languages. “We’ll tell Cô Nga you got X-rayed but have to go back tomorrow to see the results. Nothing about me leaving you, nothing about riding a Honda Ôm. Got it?”
“What’s a Honda Ôm?” It means literally “Honda Hug.”
Út laughs like she knows so much more than I do.
“You are from over there, aren’t you? It’s when you hire a Honda with a driver. I was supposed to take you around in a taxi, but it’s so slow and jerky and I always get sick. I can’t stand them.”
I get it, you hug the driver.
CHAPTER 25
Út and I were so tired last night we went right to sleep, skipping dinner because we couldn’t eat another bite and no one was eating anyway. Cô Nga just kept working.
In the morning, Cô Nga had already canceled the van ride reserved for this afternoon and called her sisters to give an update. Now she’s admonishing Út to never tell her mother that we were left with someone else before handing us back to Chị QH. It’s 7:30 a.m. when Cô Nga greets her first patient. Cô Nga’s husband runs a cancer ward, where he stays overnight a lot, and their only child is studying English in Singapore. Cô Nga works in her private office every morning and evening. In the afternoon, she puts in time at a government dental clinic for a laughable salary. Doing government work allows Cô Nga to be left alone so she can make private money.
By 7:45, we’re in the courtyard, hair and teeth brushed, pouches around our necks, same outfits on. We did wash them last night, and they dried in a matter of minutes on the roof. Út really wants our old clothes back, but Chị QH just sighs.
“I didn’t know I’d be sacked with you two again today or I would have bought double of everything,” Chị QH laments in two languages.
“Listen,” she lowers her voice. “I have to zip through three districts today to gather supplies. I cannot play tour guide. Remember, no tattling.”
She whistles and our Honda Ôm buddy appears with the same four contenders from yesterday. They bargain, then yesterday’s driver inches forward, bringing along a boy on a bright red moped. Chị QH waves ta-ta and off she goes.
“We are your guides for the day,” the girl says in two languages. Why does everyone know English better than I know Vietnamese? “I’m to take you to eat breakfast, then to get an X-ray, then we can do anything for the rest of the day. Would you like to see Chùa Một Cột or maybe something else?” Út and I can barely keep from jumping up and down. It’ll finally be our turn.
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sp; “We want to go to Hồ Hoàn Kiếm,” Út tells her. I’m shaking my head, but she ignores me.
The girl ignores me too and answers, “Not today, they’re blocking off the area for something.”
Út insists. “Drop us near there and we’ll walk in.”
“Absolutely not, you two would get targeted in two minutes. My instructions are to guide you at all times.”
I can’t compete with this level of native-tongue bonding, so I shove a piece of paper at our guide. Prepared, that’s me.
“28–30 Ðường Ngô Thế Huệ,” she reads.
I nod until I’m dizzy and pull on Út’s arm, giving her the evil eye that she agreed we would appease my urgency first, then hers. She reluctantly remembers.
Our guides are basically two Anh Minhs with Hondas. The real Anh Minh went back to the embassy before we even got up. No one asked why, understanding that anything having to do with the government sucks up time.
I ride with Chị BêBê. That’s her actual name and not the name of a pet. Út gets her brother, Văn, but feel free to call him by his internet name, Van. He says that for my benefit, but please, I can pronounce the miniature bowl over the vowel. He keeps correcting me, though, “Please, call me Van.” Fine!
We hug our drivers and off we go. So weird but when you’re on a moped and slithering between cars, buses, bicycles, and hundreds of other mopeds, it feels strangely safe even while you’re pounded with brake screeches, engine revs, and ubiquitous beep-beeps. No one can go fast in this traffic. We have yet to hit anyone or be hit. Win-win.
For breakfast, we stop at another bánh cuốn stand. I love this country! Chị BêBê comes in with us while her brother watches the mopeds. Út bargains while I slip the merchant a ten. At the X-ray place, we are in and out after Chị BêBê tells me to hand over fifty to the receptionist. This must be what movie stars feel like!
By 9:15, we are finally ready to go look for the guard, except Chị BêBê has lost the piece of paper where I wrote the address. It’s not like we can Google it.
I’m about to cry. We’ve come all this way for a brace tightening and some iffy X-rays? But Út offers the address, ever casually, “28–30 Ðường Ngô Thế Huệ.” She does remember the most random things, once reciting the ten most common frogs in North Vietnam, complete with their scientific names, habitats, and characteristics. I’m so relieved I hug her, startling her so much she swats me.
Both of our guides ask, “Phố nào? Which neighborhood?”
How would we know? Then Chị BêBê pulls out a smartphone with a GPS! And Dad was worried about me showing off my old rinky-dink cell that’s as fat as a wallet and screams FREE? At least the one Mom packed has a keyboard for texting. Why isn’t Dad here so I can guilt-trip him into getting me a smartphone? Is he worrying about me? I would ask to borrow Chị BêBê’s phone to call Mom but I don’t know Mom’s number. I know, should have memorized it. Never mind, it wouldn’t be right to run up an international charge on someone else’s account.
Our guides tell us to hug them tightly and off we go. I love mopeds. On one, I never sweat or get mosquito bitten or can smell much because everything blows behind me, and best of all I pass for a real Vietnamese.
No surprise the address leads us to a rectangle-stacked house, this one in brown with green trims, three stories. I don’t have to look at Út to know it reminds her of a certain slimy beloved. A man between the ages of Ông and Dad answers the door. He’s actually plump, but that’s only compared to the men I’ve seen here. In Laguna, he’d be normal.
The other three step back and leave me there. I must look panicked because he speaks softly.
“What do you need?”
I have not thought this through. I point to my chest. “Mai.”
“Are you from over there? What do you need here?”
I yank Út to stand beside me. “Tell . . . him.”
She asks me, “Name?”
Anh Minh told me the guard’s unpronounceable name once and I promptly forgot it. “Ask . . . for . . . man . . . in . . . tunnel.” I make the motion of someone crawling in a tunnel.
The door slams.
Now what? I tell Út she has to knock again and explain about my grandparents and how the detective found the guard and emphasize how I’ll get to go home once we find the letter. She refuses. And the two guides say they are just guides, and besides, they must watch their mopeds.
“I can watch your mopeds,” I point out.
Chị BêBê shakes her head, amused. “One push and the street kids will have you on the ground and be off with our Hondas.”
Desperate, I pull out a stack of đồng.
She shakes her head again. “Do you know what Chị Quỳnh Huyền would do to me?”
It takes me a second to understand she’s talking about Chị QH. Still desperate, I point the stack toward Út. She pushes it away and nose-puffs. Fine, a bribe is beneath her, but I’m not giving up. “You . . . must . . . help . . . Bà . . . know . . . the . . . truth. She . . . will . . . be . . . sad . . . until . . . she . . . knows.”
Út is thinking. She has a grandmother; she knows what it’s like to want to please her. Her notebook comes out. “I will try, but no matter what happens, promise me we will spend time at Hồ Hoàn Kiếm.”
Of course, but I’m so suspicious.
The sorta plump man answers with a face like he’s been expecting us. Út is two sentences into a really moving speech and the door slams. How rude! Út huffs her way back to the guides.
I knock again. He looks like he’s about to yell. I suck in a deep breath and jam my foot between the door and its frame.
“Nói con xin. Con là cháu của Ông bị trong hầm.” I do the crawling in a tunnel move again. Each little sentence scrapes my brain raw but I have to do this. Breathe, breathe. “Bà của con tìm Ông đến. Bà của con lắm già. Trước chết Bà của con hết phải chờ.” Where are all these words coming from? I’ve always known them but never put them together before. I’m so nervous I could pee. “Xin lằm vui Bà của con. Biết ai có đi Nam đào hầm không?”
Then I start crying. Stop it, tears! It’s so embarrassing, but the possibility of Bà not knowing any more about Ông rips a hole in my gut. Right now, I want Bà to get her wish even more than I want to go home. It’s not like I’ve turned supergood all of a sudden. That’s just how I feel. And it makes me convulse with tears. I never knew my nose could produce so much snot or that saliva could pool in my open, twisted mouth. My vision has blurred, but I think the man is changing his expression. He says, “Chờ đây,” wait here.
I’m now officially bilingual and can rule the world! The man sends out a boy to bring us four coconuts with straws. The best juice on earth! Then the boy signals all four of us to follow him on his bicycle. We go into alleys where houses get smaller and shorter, and the more we turn, the more the houses start to be made of tin panels nailed to posts. The dirt path turns slippery like there’s a greasy film over everything. It smells like sewage. People come out to look at us. Our guides and Út look frightened, so I think I should too.
“This could be a trap to take our Hondas,” Chị BêBê whispers to her brother. She calls to the boy on the bike, “Hey, my tires are getting stuck. Let’s go back.”
Út chimes in, “I left something back there.”
The boy acts like he doesn’t hear them and keeps riding on the slippery path. He’s an extremely well-balanced individual. All four of us are starting to turn around, which is harder than you’d think, when the boy screams, “Ðến rồi,” we’re here. More heads pop out. I recognize two faces with the deepest creases and the boniest cheeks.
I’m now officially a detective!
The detective yells at each of us, using python sentences that strangle themselves as soon as they enter the air. Yet each of us can’t help but grin. The guides because they did not get Honda-jacked, Út because she’s in one piece, and me because I rock in general.
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nbsp; I want to hug the detective as he stomps back and forth waving a leathery, angry finger. Needless to say, he got us outta that alley and inside a café ASAP. Best of all, he dragged the guard with us. The detective just happened to be visiting him to convince him, yet again, to visit Bà in her village.
In between all the yelling, I learn the detective’s plans:
Ông did write something, but the guard won’t tell us what, only that we all must go south.
Somehow, Bà has to be brought to Hà Nội (notice the Vietnamese version).
Somehow, Dad needs to be found and brought to Hà Nội (did you notice?).
Then we will fly south, where all kinds of arrangements have to be made before we can maybe see Ông’s writing. Our only hint is the writing does not exist on a piece of paper.
And then, dare I say it, we can GO HOME.
It’s all I can do to keep from dancing. Sand, beach, life, see you soon, la la la.
The detective sits down, finally exhausted. The waiter brings him a cà phê sữa đá, a potent coffee Dad calls tar water because it’s guaranteed to keep an elephant alert. As for me, I’m on my third glass of sugar cane juice, pressed at the counter. It’s ssoooo good, especially when they squeeze in a dash of kumquat. I know I’m basically announcing to the insect population to come get me, but who cares, they bite me anyway.
Revived, the detective talks some more but remains seated. “You two”—pointing at the guides—“transport the girls to their aunt’s and relay to her my admonition that they must be secured there. I have enough to manage without the additional anguish of them announcing their vulnerabilities to every dire street child in the city. Remember . . .”
I’ve stopped trying to understand. But I do love him. With him here, I don’t have to plan a thing. Besides, he’s not talking to me, so why listen?
I go sit at a back table with the guard, who has not said a word. “Chào.” I’ve figured out it’s best to say hello without a title or a name. My message still gets across.