A Wedding Invitation (21 page)

Suddenly, I am reliving those days at camp when Lien was accused of stealing and Carson was certain she had not. I remember the way I felt misunderstood and how Carson avoided me after we disagreed about Lien. I cringe as I recall how that situation drove a wedge between us.

Lien once told me, as many of the Amerasians I knew at camp did, that she wanted to meet her father in America.
“I hope I find him,”
she’d said,
“when I go to America.”

I don’t think these children understood how big America is, or how much the odds were stacked against them. The statistics were dauntingly grim. And when birth fathers were found, they often had wives and children and no desire to look at a flesh and blood “mistake” they’d brought into the world in the heat of their youth and between enemy lines in an uncertain war.

I do not know if Lien has searched for her father after arriving in the U.S. seven years ago. And I understand why she wants her birth mother at her wedding. But how feasible is this going to be?

“So,” says Carson as he drives me back to Dovie’s, “we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

“How do we start? How do you go about finding a missing person? I can’t even find my mom’s cat.” The task seems huge. I think of Taylor and wonder if he could help.

“We’ve always worked well together,” Carson says as he slows to stop at a red light. With his eyes on mine, he adds, “We can do it.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I can trust you.”

Carson seems perplexed, the very reaction I was going for. “What do you mean by that?”

“At PRPC you gave up on me after we disagreed. We were supposed to work on a project then, too. But you ignored me after Lien was accused of stealing.” I pause, not sure how he’ll respond. Perhaps he thought I’d forgotten all about this.

“Sam, that was long ago.”

“I know, but I still don’t know why you weren’t up front with me.”

“We were spending too much time together. We needed to be more involved with other aspects of the camp.”

He thinks I should be happy with this explanation, I can tell by the look on his face.

The light turns green, and we curve down the streets, passing city signs for Old Salem. I decide I will thank him for taking me there and tell him the date was fun but that I cannot help with this project for Lien until I get more answers from him. I see myself standing in the admin room so many years ago, waiting. Carson and I were assigned to decorate the room together, and I can still feel how sad and disappointed I was when he didn’t show up.

I swallow, dig my nails into my palms, and say, “It hurt me that you told Dr. Rogers you didn’t want to work on that project with me.” When he doesn’t respond, I aim to clarify his memory. “Remember how you sent someone else to take your place?”

“I did?”

I let out a snort. “Did you really forget that, or are you just pretending you have? How would you have felt if I suddenly decided I didn’t want to be friends with you anymore?”

The silence between us is long, but I refuse to be the one to break it. I asked him questions; he needs to find a reply. Carson has a habit of being evasive.

At last. “Sorry.”

“That’s it?”

“Sorry for all the times I messed up, Sam. I was dating Mindy. I planned to be faithful to her. And there you were . . .”

“And?”

“Things got complicated.” He pulls the car over to the side of the road. Putting it in park, he turns to me. I watch his face glow momentarily from the headlights of a passing truck.

“Let’s start over. We get to be together again.” His smile is the lopsided one I’ve missed seeing over the years.

Even so, I am not in the mood to put a mere bandage on my seething feelings. “Start over?” I push the words past my closed throat. “Just what does that mean?”

“Like the refugees start over. A new life. We get to live as Sam and Carson here in America in 1993.” He seems pleased with his explanation.

“What is that going to be like?”

He takes the car out of park and starts to slowly drive again, turning back onto the road. “I’m looking forward to finding out.”

Unsure how to respond, I turn on the radio, grateful the song playing is one that has no meaning for me. For us.

twenty-six

December 1985

I
rarely saw Lien after she was accused of stealing. Huy told us that Minh demanded that she keep to the Hongs’ billet, wash clothes, prepare meals, and clean. Huy said his dad and the elders in the Vietnamese community were shunning her because they believed she was guilty. Huy said that people had stepped forward and said they’d seen Lien in the past with articles of clothing and jewelry that did not belong to her. I often wondered how much of what I’d said had influenced the elders.

“Minh wants me to stay away from Lien,” Carson told Brice and me one evening. “When I told him that Lien is innocent, he told me that I have no business interfering in the neighborhood’s decision, that just because I’m white doesn’t mean I know everything.”

Minh realized that many of the Vietnamese continued to hold doubts about Lien due solely to her half-breed status. Prejudices died hard, even in the camp. The Vietnamese loathed the Cambodians and were not fond of the Laotians, either. All of these refugees were war refugees, having left their countries due to fighting and mayhem, and yet fights often broke out among the three ethnic groups in the camp.

One night a Cambodian man waved a butcher knife at a Vietnamese boy, threatening to cut his heart out. “What caused the reaction?” I’d asked when our director told us the news at the staff meeting the next morning.

“Hatred and tension” was the reply. “A long line of historical events has caused disharmony among these people. When you’re taught to hate, you learn how.” His sigh was deep. “Only in Heaven will we all really be united in love.”

“I heard the boy was causing trouble in the Cambodian neighborhood,” said one of the teachers.

“We live in a broken world,” Dr. Rogers said, his eyes dark with remorse. “Let’s just do our best to show God’s love to each refugee. God loves them all.”

While there were plenty of horror stories told by the Vietnamese and the Laotians, the one that bothered me the most was told to me by a Cambodian student’s father. The Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot had killed his friend simply because the man was of Chinese descent and had an extensive education.

I looked at the young faces of my students and wondered how they could continue on so happily when they had already seen so much brokenness. Yet they did, always showing up to give me bottles of soda and angelic smiles.

twenty-seven

N
atasha and I choose a Mexican restaurant because she’s avoiding the handsome waiter at the Native Thai. This restaurant is one we’ve been to before, and she likes it, if only for the décor. Sombreros with tassels line the plum-colored walls, and there’s a life-sized donkey over the bar. When you pull its tail, it brays “Viva Mexico!” three times. The music filling the establishment is the kind you can salsa to, if you choose. Neither Natasha nor I feel like dancing.

Natasha slips a finger around one of her curls as she scans the menu. She orders the special, and when it arrives at the table, piping with steam, it’s on a plate the size of a sombrero, filled with five different kinds of meat, chunks of pineapple, and grilled onions and green peppers. Three warm tortillas in aluminum foil are brought on a separate platter. I nibble at a soft taco and wonder why I bothered to order anything.

“Tell me about your week.” Natasha cups a soft tortilla in one hand and spoons the meat into it with the other.

I start to say something about Carson, then reconsider because I know that’s what she expects to hear. I decide to start with Dovie. “My aunt has a new boarder.”

“Okay, let me guess her name. Ummmm . . .” Natasha pretends to be in deep thought. “Let’s see. Greenie?” She smiles. “Or Stringy?”

“Oh yeah, Greenie Beanie or Stringy Beanie.” Natasha thinks Beanie is the most peculiar name.

“Not even close?”

“No. It’s Pearl.”

“Pearl! I had an aunt named Pearl. She wore three-inch heels and grew radishes.”

“Really?”

“We always thought she should have grown onions.” Natasha notes my confusion. “You know, pearl onions.”

“Oh.”

My thoughts slide to Lien’s request. I sip my Pepsi while Natasha chews a forkful of meat. When she finishes, she says, “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

So I decide to tell her about Lien.

“So she didn’t really steal anything?” Natasha wipes her mouth with a napkin.

“Apparently not.”

“And Carson believed all along that she was innocent?”

“That’s right.”

“And you?” She adds some hot sauce from a bottle to her food. She claims that most food needs a kick of hot sauce.

I add a little to mine, too. “At the time, I thought she was guilty. Lien was a handful.”

“Her mother gave her up?”

“Yeah. When she was three or four.”

“That had to be painful.”

“For whom?”

“I would imagine for both of them.”

Natasha tells me I should confess to Carson that I care about him.

I laugh. “When you tell that waiter at the Native Thai how you feel about him, then I’ll say something to Carson.” I know I’m safe; she’ll never tell this waiter her feelings.

“At least I don’t think about him every minute.”

“I didn’t say you do.”

“Not like you think about Carson.”

Mom is glad to be back at work. She hums a tune as she moves some pencil-straight skirts to the clearance rack. After a while I recognize that it’s Elvis’s “Always on My Mind.”

I help a customer who tries to convince herself and me that she wears a size five when I can see she is more like a size ten. After trying on three pairs of jeans that do not fit, she accepts my suggestion to try on a pair of petite-length size-ten Levi’s.

“How are they?” I ask her from outside the dressing room.

After a few incomprehensible mutters, she comes out modeling them.