I’ve stocked away food that will keep: dried banana sheets, roasted cashews, crunchy mung bean cookies, tamarind balls rolled in raw licorice flakes (I swear they look just like miniature horse poops rolled in hay but taste like sour-sugary dreams), butter biscuits, beef jerky that’s somehow fluffy, and, best of all, these crispy coconut cookies that melt in your mouth. When I lost my first tooth and insisted I could no longer chew, I made Dad go to Little Saigon to buy those melty cookies. At times he can be the coolest dad.
I bought everything by signaling for the merchants to write down the cost. Whatever amount each wrote, I counted it out in Vietnamese money. I wouldn’t dare bargain. Dad said we are here to be taken advantage of and that’s okay with him. Of course, I could only buy food that was cooked, nothing raw or washed in unboiled water. Dad has gone on and on about how my stomach needs time to acclimate to local bacteria, parasites, worms, what have you. And he wonders why I didn’t jump up and down to come here? I already had to endure a tetanus shot and a malaria pill as big as my thumb. Sly Dad gave them to me last week and said they were an early flu shot and a digestive enzyme pill. People don’t know, but Dr. Do-Gooder can be quite manipulative.
We’re passing rice paddy after rice paddy, green rectangles separated by red-dirt lanes. Water buffaloes dot the landscape, rolling in mud, lumbering along dusty paths, so many that I’m beginning to understand they’re as exotic as all the stray dogs running around. Once in a while, I see two girls facing each other, holding on to a rope in each hand, and in unison they swing the bucket tied to the ropes. The bucket picks up water from the irrigation pond and dumps it into a paddy. Genius!
Bà has fallen asleep. Another magical blue pill. This way, she doesn’t have to endure carsickness.
I lean my head out the window, letting the wind rush deep inside my ear, the sound of a lullaby. It’s still sticky hot, making oil ooze all over my T-zone. There’s no point in blotting off the shine, more would just come. But I refuse to break out. I will not, I mean it, I will not touch my fingers to my face, which Mom has admonished me against since birth. She works very hard to have minimal wrinkles, even tones, small pores, and, of course, to stay as pale as possible. There was a time, though, when she ran around under the subtropical sun without sunblock, something she still regrets. This part of her childhood she shares once a day. The rest, I have no idea.
I stick my head all the way out, inhaling the scorching air, half expecting my lungs to catch on fire. But they don’t. Strange as this sounds, and not that I’m at all getting used to the heat, but any other kind of weather would feel completely wrong here.
The van turns off the major road and right away people swarm us. The driver has no choice but to stop. Bà is awake and takes my hand, knowing I’m a bit freaked out. It’s like a carnival outside. People stand five, ten deep, shouting, laughing, crying.
Our passenger door opens and someone lifts Bà into a padded, high-backed wicker chair. I jump out. Our hands have been forced apart, so I cling to her chair as she’s carried along. I wish I could tell them to be careful, that Bà gets dizzy easily, but we are smooshed among clumps of bodies.
We stop in front of a tall house painted yellow with red wooden trim. People here really do get into the flag colors of skin and blood. This house towers over all the others. It has five same-sized rectangles stacked on top of each other to create five stories. Each level has doors with balconies facing front and back but there are no windows on the sides.
They set Bà down in the courtyard. She seems overwhelmed. Who wouldn’t be? I reclaim her fragile hand and remember not to squeeze. The crowd circles us. Lots of shouts, tears, calls to the heavens, trời ơi! trời ơi! Bà starts tiny head bows to no one in particular, so I bow too. The crowd bows back. But no one tries to hug us. Vietnamese do not hug. And definitely do not kiss. They do bow, again and again, plus they offer endless smiles. Bà joins them so I think it’s perfectly fine for me to smile too. Suddenly, the whole place hushes. All are pointing at my mouth.
Braces! Sometimes I blank out and forget I have a mouth full of wires. One by one people come up, signaling for me to bend down so they can squeeze my mouth open. Bà nods for me to do so. Not shy, this group. “Our village has one girl with teeth also covered in wires, our first,” a man says. “Now you. Amazing!”
He speaks normal Vietnamese, so at least I understand him. Only one kid needs braces? Do teeth just naturally grow straighter here? No one around me has braces. But they’re older, and to be honest, I see overbites, underbites, crowdings, spaces, crookeds, lots of yellowing. They don’t seem to care, so why should I?
When done squeezing my mouth, the same hands reach over and slap my butt, thighs, arms, head. I’m a one-person tag game. They laugh, finding me highly entertaining. Everyone says cao quá đi, so tall. At five feet seven and ninety-eight pounds I slouch even in Laguna, but that doesn’t fool anybody. Mom said it’s much easier to look elegant when you’re tall and have no breasts or hips. That’s Mom being comforting. Then someone yanks my hair, saying I have paint on it. Henna highlights. Montana and I were first to get them this summer.
One woman pats me on the head and says she’s the third daughter of Bà’s maternal cousin whose father introduced Bà’s mother to her husband’s aunt. What? Bà answers for me and says that I’m so honored to meet her. I do my part and keep smiling.
A man says he’s my distant cousin but although he’s older he’ll address me as Chị, meaning older sister, because my father is a distant uncle to his mother. I smile bigger. Another man says he’s the fourth son of Ông’s second cousin. This could go on forever because I bet somehow I’m related to every person here.
Bà answers each comment meant for me. Everyone is tut-tutting the fact that I, a Vietnamese, do not speak Vietnamese. Bà has no reply. In my defense, I did not know I would ever need to speak Vietnamese for real. So I do what I can, smile and wave, smile and wave, braces and all. The comments are endless.
She looks just like her dad. Bà answers: it’s a strong bloodline. Dad and I both have the square jaws of extreme carnivores.
No, much fairer. Bà: skin like boiled egg whites. Mom bans me from the sun.
Thin nostrils mean she can keep money. Bà: that is our hope. I can store gobs of money and I wish Dad would give me some.
That wavy forehead means she’s stubborn. Bà: as said, the bloodline. Lots of people have wavy foreheads.
She looks like she knows more than she needs to about boys. Bà wrinkles her brow. Are the villagers clairvoyant? Am I giving off some signal?
Too smart can turn dumb. Hey!
CHAPTER 5
It takes a long while for every villager to have a say, then Bà and her chair are lifted and carried inside where it’s a little cooler. I’m right there with her.
The ground floor is one open space storing three shiny mopeds. A garage? On two diagonal beams hangs a hammock, where a boy with a deep tan lies and pets the slimy smooth back of a gigantic frog. Or is that a toad? Whatever it is, it sits on his chest and burps a ribbit. Great, I’m in PBS Nature.
“Út, put it in the basket, NOW!” That must be his mother hissing because the boy stands up as if every muscle is annoyed, something I do too. No way, it’s a girl! She stands there rubbing a military-style buzz cut like she’s proud to be one inch from baldness. Strange, but she’s kinda pretty, with a perfectly proportioned oval face Bà would call mặt trái xoan and long, thick eyelashes.
The girl rolls her eyes, but the mother doesn’t see it. That’s also my specialty. She’s wearing crumbly khakis rolled up to her knees and a huge, dark blue T-shirt. The girl strokes the frog/toad’s head before putting it in the basket. She bows at Bà and stares straight at me. There’s no expression. I sneer at her. Can’t help it, it’s my automatic face. She doesn’t even sneer back but looks bored, staring me down even though she’s a head shorter. Who is this girl?
We’re pushed onto the second level, where food fills a long table.
It’s definitely hotter up here with air barely moving through the doors facing front and back. What, exactly, is wrong with having windows? Three or four dishes are grouped together under lots of half-moon nets to keep out flies, which are zooming into and bouncing back from the nets.
I recognize cellophane noodles sautéed with bits of chicken and tons of vegetables, dried bamboo-shoot soup with chopped drumsticks, rosy sticky rice with sliced sausages where you can see clear bits of pig fat, stuffed bitter melons, boiled chicken feet, a whole roasted piglet that looks so real it could run away, a gigantic bowl of sautéed leafy greens, carrots and daikons carved into flowers. There’s much more I can’t name. Everything smells so good.
Long benches run alongside the table. Bà is seated at the head of the table in her cushioned chair. I’m the first one on the bench to her right. Everyone is elbow to elbow, sticky skin to sticky skin. Ewww! Hmmm, if I scream “ewww” and do all sorts of mannerless and embarrassing things, Bà might send me home right now. But I’m trained to be obedient, I can’t help it. One disappointed look from Bà and I would crumple. She’s only done it once or twice, and it burned. I will have to force myself to be patient and let the detective do his thing. I’ve only peeked at him, but I can tell he takes his work way seriously.
The ones who can’t fit on the benches hang in the background, offering more helpful comments.
Everyone returns to the water’s source.
The daughter of my cousin in Tex-sas . . . she speaks Vietnamese with a crisp northern accent.
My relatives in Cali have a child going to the best college they have, Har-var.
The son of my nephew will be a doctor.
Oh, the comparison game. Mom is an expert. Cousin Justin plays Chopin like a concert pianist, can you? Cousin Brianna won the best science prize in the nation. Can you get a 4.5 like Cousin Dylan? I’m so over it! I’m going to be THE best at something, like pushing back my cuticles. Yay me!
A huge draft goes around the room just before they lift the food nets. All kinds of fans have been switched on to shoo away flies, which try but cannot come in close, buzzing in the background as loudly as my new maybe-relatives. Back there with the flies is hammock girl. She’s actually catching flies in a plastic bag! She squeezes the bag in the middle, dividing it into two parts. The top part is a balloon filled with crazed flies, the bottom part is an upside-down bowl, which she inches toward one at rest. As I watch, she traps it every time. Told you I’m in a Nature episode.
Someone hands me a bowl of rice, then chopsticks start coming at me and leaving food in my bowl. I don’t have time to refuse or accept. My bowl is quickly piled high. Why aren’t they turning their chopsticks and using the thicker ends when offering bites to others? That’s what we always do at home. Mom forbids spit sharing. A woman sucks on the thin tips of her chopsticks, then grips a chicken foot and jams it on top of my pile. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
Bà quietly lifts the foot away, to where I do not know. She turned her chopsticks. Thank you! See why I always want to please her? She also takes away bits of chicken liver and other unrecognizable parts she knows I’ve never eaten. She even removes the skin from a chopped drumstick. From now on, she’s officially my favorite person on earth.
I pick up my chopsticks and deliver a bamboo shoot to my mouth. Everyone stops eating. Someone says, “Look, look at her using chopsticks. Just like a Vietnamese girl!”
What does she think I do at home? Eat rice with my fist?
Someone else asks, “Are you obedient?”
It’s so annoying when people ask questions with preconceived answers. The man should just come out and say, “I expect you to listen to your parents or you’ll shame every ancestor going back four thousand years of Vietnamese history.” No pressure. Like any kid is going to admit out loud, “I just pretend to listen.”
Food keeps piling up in my bowl no matter how much I eat and eat. I love the smell of sautéed ginger, like a zing in my nostrils. The buzz-cut girl’s mother must know I’m beyond full because she finally waves me over. I stand up and my spot fills in within seconds.
The mother actually takes my hand and puts it in the girl’s, saying, “Go play out back, go on.” We both drop hands immediately. We’re not five. Actually, I haven’t had to make friends since Montana and I were in Ms. Vollmar’s kindergarten class. From then on, all her friends were mine too. So were her enemies. With Montana, I’m guaranteed a great seat at lunch and on field-trip buses. That’s worth me controlling my eye rolls when she goes on and on about lip gloss and highlights and especially boys. Thinking of HIM, please, universe, get me home much sooner than two weeks.
“Út, tell her your name, go on,” the mother says. Awkward.
I can tell the girl is holding back a huge eye roll. She manages to mumble, “Út,” which can only be pronounced by puckering. The most mismatched name ever. Buzz-Cut Girl in no way inspires sending or receiving kisses.
I tell her my name with attitude. “Mia, I mean Mai.”
“Her real name is Hương but we all call her Út because she’s our youngest. She has an older sister named Lan. They’re not alike in one trait. Mothers bear children but the sky gives them temperaments. Lan would never do anything to displease me, but this younger daughter, how she makes my blood flood my brain. Her hair, her skin . . . how I suffer. Now you two go play.”
I have no idea if Út’s mom knows I can understand. She’s just talking to talk, smiling and frowning all at once. She leans over and tries to pat Út’s head. Út backs away. I guess parents embarrass their children everywhere in the world.
Út picks up the pet basket and walks off. Her mom pushes me in the back so I’ll follow. In the backyard, Út sits with her pet under a pergola-like frame covered with vines of bitter melons. They look oh-so innocent hanging down like tiny, lumpy, green footballs but, trust me, they are called “bitter” for a throat-tightening, tongue-swelling reason. Bà says they contain nature’s vitamins. In Laguna, she would stuff and stew them with ground pork, and the whole house would smell green and pure. I’ve tried to convince her that just smelling is medicinal enough, no need to actually gag it down my throat. But no. Once a month, the bitter bites went down.
Út doesn’t even look at me. Fine, I’ll just sit as far from her as possible but still get shade from the pergola. With a hint of a breeze, it’s a teensy bit less hot under here. I shall never again take the ocean air for granted. In the shade, Út’s skin looks even more bronze. Mom would so be running at her with ninety SPF. She packed plenty for me and I’ve dutifully slathered it on. Mom has drilled me with enough skin cancer photos to make sure I get it.
Út puts her frog/toad on a banana leaf. It’s even fatter spread out on the ground. She takes the bag of flies from the basket and unknots the opening, releasing a few at a time. Her pet doesn’t move except to unfurl a long, slimy tongue toward dozens of flies, zapping every one. No wonder it’s huge.
I’m mesmerized and throw a pebble in the air. It happened before I knew what I was doing. The frog/toad flicks the pebble into its mouth. Then it gags, or what sounds like an amphibious way of gagging. A croaky, pleading sound.
Út snatches it, hangs it upside down from enormous hind legs and shakes, shakes, shakes. The thing throws up. It’s not pretty but the pebble does fall out.
“Sorry,” I blurt, trying to remember how to say it in Vietnamese. “Sorry, I don’t know why I did that.” Út glares at me, picks up her pet, and runs off, snatching the basket. Only then do I think of how to say sorry, “Xin lỗi.”
Út turns around and hisses, exposing wires that cover both rows of teeth.
CHAPTER 6
I thought Vietnam is poor and hot, so to pass time I would be sleeping a lot to escape hunger and the heat. Wrong! Food is constantly jammed down my throat and who can sleep with this many mosquitoes around? Hundreds of them, aiming for me with baby needles, stabbing, stabbing. They’re hairy, black, superbuzzy and I swear the size of flies, which are also everywher
e but at least they don’t sting. Of course, I’m the only one swollen with pink polka dots. Now I know why no one wears capris here! Despite the heat, girls float around in mosquito-proof, loose silk pants and matching blouses. It’s an all day, every day pajama-ish party.
We ate for the entire day yesterday, pausing only when the women and girls went to the third floor and took a nap. The higher the floor, the hotter, but that was where the host had rolled out rattan mats on the tile floor. It could have been worse. The men climbed to the fourth floor, that much closer to the tropical sun. Vietnam shuts down in the afternoon because most people get up really early, crash when it’s hottest, then rebound by late afternoon.
On my floor, three or four would share a mat and go right to sleep. I lay alone next to Bà’s little bed with a foam mattress. I wished so bad I were old. My bones hurt, crushing against tile that I thought was only for stepping on. At least the tiles were cool in the room with no breeze.
I noticed Út was not rolling on a mat. Where did she go? I still need to tell her I really am sorry.
Toward evening, having eaten and napped in the richest, tallest house of all the relatives, Bà and I were allowed to go to Ông’s ancestral home. It was a fifteen-minute walk escorted by ALL the relatives, except for Út. They dragged along ALL the food, then stayed and ate and laughed until dusk. That was when the buzzing army came out and zinged my exposed calves, arms, neck, and face.
Bà and I were finally left alone. Well, not exactly alone. I’m learning no one can ever be alone in Vietnam. Ông’s younger brother, born in this house, still lives here. He was barely a teenager the last time Bà saw him. She herself was just out of her teens and already a mother. That was in 1954, the year North and South divided, another date that has been tattooed on my brain. Upon seeing each other again, they smiled and held their gazes for a long time, wordless. The weight in their eyes flickered sadness and happiness simultaneously, like in a dramatic movie close-up. Finally, he spoke, telling Bà this house belongs to Ông, thus to her. Bà declined, saying the rightful owner has been keeping it free of cobwebs and mice for a lifetime. They bowed and he retreated to the back bedroom.