The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (12 page)

As her mother and aunts descended into another argument, Cherry's father stood. He walked across the living room and out the door, saying nothing to excuse himself.

Only Grandmother Vo smiled knowingly. “You see?” she said. “How can I turn over so much money to your husband when he is this selfish? Just like his father. That is why I will move into your home, Tuyet. It's clear your family needs me more than anyone else right now.”

*   *   *

Lum and Cherry went outside to find their father. The sun had set, the air cool and gray in the parking lot. Cherry shivered, wishing she had brought a sweater. Dad stood by the station wagon, smoking a cigarette.

“Grandmother's coming with us,” Lum said.

Their father, continuing to puff, didn't say anything. Cherry wasn't sure where he got the cigarette, since he didn't smoke regularly, only at parties or when he had a bad day at work. This wasn't the time to remind him about the statistics of tobacco and cancer.

“Maybe a beauty salon is better,” Cherry said. “Dad, didn't you say we should work with family?”

“Shut up, Cherry,” Lum said, staring at their father.

“Go help your grandmother,” their father said, with a nod to Cherry. “I'll bring the car around.”

She turned around and stepped away, slowly, heel first, toe last, heel, toe.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” Lum said. “I didn't mean—”

“You stupid, stupid boy. Do you want to prove to everyone that you're worthless?”

“Dad—”

“Is it all you're good at?” he asked. “Destroying things?”

Cherry walked faster, turning the corner of the apartment building, determined not to hear her father's words, and ran straight into the rosebush. The thorns dug into her elbows and kneecaps. Cherry tried to untangle herself, grabbing fistfuls of branches, pulling back, but the thorns snagged at her dress. Twisting away, she stared at her palms, already prickling with bright dots of blood. She panted, struggling to calm herself, determined not to cry. That would only make her mother angrier. She started to count. After twenty seconds, maybe forty-five, the initial pain would subside, and Cherry wouldn't need to cry.

Voices lingered above her head and Cherry looked up to the sky. Uncle Viet and her mother stood on the balcony. She couldn't hear what they were saying, their voices were too soft, but that didn't matter. She could see their faces. He was clearly trying to calm her down. When Cherry began walking again, her shiny shoes clicking along the sidewalk, their chattering stopped. They peered down the balcony. Knowing what they wanted, not wanting to be pinched, Cherry pretended not to see them.

 

1983

Cuc Bui
Paris, France

… It must have been the cooking and how loud we are. Not that they weren't loud with their wooden shoes and constant dinner parties. But we won out, eventually. They moved away. I thank God they did. Eight people living in Yen's apartment? We could do it in Saigon, but that was because we felt comfortable leaving it whenever we wanted. We were always doing things in the city, going places to eat, visiting friends. It was our country. In France, all we want to do is stay inside. It is so cold here.

When the neighbors moved out, first upstairs, then downstairs, the landlord suspected we wanted the apartment house for ourselves. He tried to raise the price of rent on the downstairs unit, but Yen talked to him. Doesn't he remember my son is a lawyer? We are fortunate to have the whole building to ourselves. While we can pretend this is our own house, we know the truth. We do not own it. We are only tenants.

When I was a student, I dreamed of living in Paris. Our teachers in French school spoke of the historical architecture, the meticulous gardens, the wide pedestrian boulevards. Vietnam's imitations in Hanoi and Saigon could not compete. But to tell you my true feelings? What I can never admit to the children? I am too homesick to appreciate the original inspirations. We walk down the Champs-Élysées or through Les Tuileries, and I long for Saigon. I do not care that it contained cheap replicas. It was home.…

Hung Truong

Paris, France

 

Chapter Three

HOA

P
ARIS
, F
RANCE
, 1985

Cam and Xuan knelt in the corner of the stairwell, dusting up their good church clothes. They whispered to each other, giggling. Xuan scraped a stick against the painted wall.

“What are you doing?” Hoa asked. The children peered over their shoulders. They didn't realize their grandmother had been watching. Hoa liked to prop the front door open while cooking to let out some of the oily smoke.

“We're looking for Jerry,” Xuan said.

“I haven't seen him all week,” Cam said. “Do you know where he is?”

Hoa certainly did. She'd tossed the dirty rat by his tail into her garbage sack a few nights ago. Phung's poison had finally worked on the disgusting creature, but not before the rat had inflated nearly twice its size gorging on fruits and crumbs left on the kitchen counter and dining table. Rats had disease, especially those in the city. Hoa found it on the kitchen floor, barely alive, and after giving it a good bash with her bamboo broom, Jerry finally expired.

“He must have left,” Hoa said. “Gone to a new home where he'll get more food.” She noticed the children's pale, bare feet. “Where are your socks and shoes?”

They grudgingly scrambled from the floor. Xuan balanced the stick against the corner of the wall.

“We're leaving soon,” Hoa said. “You might as well put your coats on, too.”

Cam climbed the stairs to her parents' apartment on the top floor, but Xuan lingered, wandering into Hoa's apartment. Hoa turned off the stove and examined her freshly deep-fried shrimp toasts. The toppings were vibrant speckled pink and the edges felt crunchy. After the toasts completely cooled, she'd wrap them in aluminum foil. Hoa turned to find Xuan standing in front of her, pulling at his starched shirt collar.

“Can I stay here?” Xuan asked. “Mom said not to come up for a while.”

After Hoa nodded, Xuan brushed past her to the living room and turned on the television. Yen and Trinh were arguing again. She could hear their muffled words through the building's flimsy walls and floors. Xuan twisted the volume on the television louder, his face lit with the bright cartoon characters on the screen.

“Don't sit so closely,” Hoa reminded him. “Your eyes will go bad.”

Xuan tucked a pillow under his arm and snuggled into the frayed green sofa, which used to belong in his apartment upstairs. Yen and Trinh had bought a new couch last year, so Hung and Hoa inherited their old one. Most of their apartment's furnishings consisted of castoffs from their children or donated items from the Bourdains, their sponsor family. Yen had offered several times to buy his parents a bigger bed to replace the lumpy twins they currently used. But Hung and Hoa preferred their separate sleeping arrangement. They kept such different hours—Hung reading late at night, Hoa getting up early to prepare the family meals—that it was more convenient. They also didn't want Yen to commit to another major expense. He was, after all, still supporting his parents—taking care of their rent, utility, and food bills.

Hoa had decorated the apartment with Asian grocery-store calendars and Vietnamese music posters she collected from her shopping trips to the 13th Arrondissement. Color photographs of Ha Long Bay, Nha Trang, and Da Lat brightened the hallway. When she could afford to, Hoa wanted to frame the pictures instead of tacking them up with pushpins. The wood floors were covered with Oriental rugs the Bourdains had given as Christmas gifts over the years. Though Hoa wouldn't have personally chosen those patterns, she appreciated their function. Wood floors stung her feet at night.

“Hoa,” Hung called from the bedroom.

Hung stood behind the closet door in front of their only full-length mirror, wearing his dress shirt and slacks, a navy-blue tie dangling around his slightly hunched shoulders. She stepped in front of him, reaching for both ends of the tie.

His eyes shifted up then down as she worked. “Didn't you wear that last week?” he asked.

“I wore the dark-green
ao dai
last Sunday. This one is light green. The pattern is also different.”

“Well, they look very similar.”

Hoa tugged on the knot, harder than usual, but Hung didn't notice. The man who insisted that his wife not dress like a European, with knee-length skirts and bare arms, now felt dissatisfied with the clothes he did permit her to wear. Hung didn't even enjoy the idea of his daughters-in-law dressing in Western clothes, until Yen convinced him it would be more practical for them. Her husband finally agreed, but held on to Hoa's dress code as his final condition.

Hung sniffed a few times, turning his head to the door. “What's that smell?”

“I made shrimp toasts,” Hoa said.

“We just had breakfast.”

“They're for the Bourdains.” Hoa frowned at his glare. “What? I told you last night I was going to make them.”

“Where are we going to put them during Mass?” Hung asked. “They'll stink up the entire church.”

“I'm going to wrap them. They won't smell. And Mr. Bourdain enjoyed them so much last time—”

“He was being polite, woman. Of course he had to say something kind.”

Hoa did not agree. She'd watched Michel Bourdain gobble up four pieces the last time she brought the Vietnamese appetizer to his home. She knew when people liked her food and when they didn't. But she knew better than to argue about this with Hung.

“I don't want to go to their house empty-handed,” Hoa said. “We go to their home for brunch every month. It's only polite that we bring them something as well.”

“You take care of it then,” Hung muttered. “I want nothing to do with it.” He waved her hands away, straightening the tie himself as he walked out of the bedroom.

Hoa gathered the rejected ties Hung had strewn all over his bed and replaced them in the closet. She picked up his pajamas and socks from the floor and dropped them in the wicker laundry hamper. Hesitating in front of the mirror, she adjusted her dress, which admittedly, was getting a bit worn, especially at the sleeves. Would the Bourdains mistake this dress for the one last week? She could change her white silk pants for her black ones, but she didn't have any thermal pants to match with the black. And she didn't like the idea of going out on a brisk autumn morning without her thermals.

*   *   *

The cold. Her first impression of France when they arrived five years ago. Yen, the Bourdains, and other members of the Catholic charity had greeted them at the airport gate, their faces as bright and animated as the hand-colored banners and balloons they held. But Hoa didn't pay attention to these things, or the dizzying, frantic French they sang to the jet-lagged, exhausted travelers. Instead, she focused on the puffy coats their bodies were stuffed in.

When Hoa hugged her beloved Yen, who was chubbier than she remembered, pinching his arms and shoulders for proof, she pulled back, briefly lifted his coat lapel, and dropped it, stunned. How many pounds must it weigh? Then she looked at their feet, encased in thick, rubber boots, planted solidly on the cold, shiny linoleum. Hoa examined her own paper-thin clothes and sandals. She remembered the woolen hats in her suitcase, the ones she traded for back in Pulau, but they were buried too deep to dig out on the floor of the airport.

No one else seemed to be as distracted by the weather as Hoa. Hung burst into tears as he clung to Yen. With his mother's prodding, Xuan kissed his newfound father, but quickly hid behind Trinh's legs when the Bourdains starting snapping pictures. Later, when Hoa would look through the photographs, she'd only see how her teeth seemed to be chattering through her unnatural smile.

Outside, someone from the charity tried to shield Hoa from the wind as they pushed the Truong family into a cab, but Hoa still felt it, the slick air snaking through her inadequate garments, sliding up her thin back and wrapping around her bones. During the cab ride through Paris, she rubbed her face against Hung's shoulder for warmth. Would she be able to walk in such European coats and boots? She was not as strong as she used to be.

Yen's apartment was located in the 5th Arrondissement, where he said some Vietnamese immigrants had lived for years. Many of the newer refugees had settled in the 13th Arrondissement, farther from the city center.

“It's ugly over there,” Yen said, his Vietnamese tinged with French so Hoa had to listen carefully. “Ugly, but cheap. Tall square buildings, like in the Soviet Union. I think they'll leave eventually. Move somewhere nicer when they can save up money.”

Hoa only had to assume the someplace nicer was Yen's neighborhood, which was pretty tree-lined streets dotted with three- and four-story apartment buildings. Some of the houses had small iron-fenced gardens in front, brown and skeletal this time of year, but Yen's did not. Instead, the front space contained a metal bench and an empty stone washbasin, which Yen explained was a birdbath. They could fill it with water for the sparrows in the summer. Hoa didn't understand why people would want to attract bird droppings, remnants of which littered the ground along the building's front door.

His apartment stairwell was narrow, so only one person could fit going up or down. They struggled to squeeze their belongings up the stairs. The stairwell smelled of dust, stale perfume, and incense.

Hoa's body relaxed as the apartment's heat enveloped her limbs. She wiggled her toes, feeling them again. The bright-yellow walls were bare except for a small metal crucifix hanging by the window. The living room had a dark-green sofa, an unvarnished wood dining room set for four, several folding chairs, an inflatable mattress, and a pile of blankets and pillows in the corner. Down the hall, they could see a small bedroom with a twin bed and a fire escape outside its window. Another bedroom with a few cardboard boxes on the floor gave access to the single bathroom. The kitchen, with one broken burner, could fit only two people in its floorspace. Yen admitted he rarely cooked at home.