If You Lived Here (26 page)
The girl looks up. Behind her, the strings of beads that separate the front of the café from the private rooms behind it rustle open and my sister appears. She says something to the girl, then she strides toward the front of the café. She wears a flowered skirt, a string of beads, pumps. She’s gained some weight in twenty years and the change makes her curvy and even more alluring. Her gait is slow and unconcerned, confident, the walk of a woman who knows that men often look at her. I look at her. I can’t move. I watch Lan glide in my direction. Lan, the orchid. My mother always said they should have named her Phuong. The flower of the flame tree.
As she approaches the door of the café, her little sister runs back across the street, into the park, and tries to disappear.
y travel alarm
clock says 3:27
A
.
M
. I stare out toward the dark-ened windows of the buildings across the road. Above my head,
Hai Au has worked his way up onto the pillow and he sprawls across it sideways like someone climbing, his head nestled in my curls. He and I inhabit the same room now, but not, apparently, the same time zone. My body seems to think it’s still in Wilmington, refusing to sleep away the afternoon. From the other bed, I can hear the soft sound of Mai breathing. Could she have adjusted more quickly, simply because she’s Vietnamese? I reach up and untangle my hair from Hai Au’s fingers, wiggle out from under the covers, and stand up.
Quiet. Not even the sound of a motorbike. I pull on some shorts, and step out onto the balcony. Even at this hour, there’s not a trace of cool-ness in the air, but it doesn’t feel as oppressively hot, either. To the left, the street makes a gentle bend, leading, Mai told me, toward the market and the little alley where she used to live. To the right, it goes toward the public square just above the lake. The houses are tall and narrow, wedged against each other. The architecture seems random: The balcony
of one house will sit two feet higher than the balcony of its neighbor. Some buildings rise straight up from the street, some taper back, some jut out over the sidewalk with awnings, balconies, metal signs. Even at night, the colors look rich. The deep yellow glow of the streetlights. Blue walls, dark green shutters. Once-white plaster with dark stains of mildew creeping up it. It’s three-thirty in the morning, but, still, I see so many signs of life. Below, two lovers stroll, flirting and toying with each other, reluctant to get home. I watch them until they round the bend and disappear. Bats dart in and out of the streetlight. On the roof of the house next door, a yellow cat stands, stretches, then settles again. Geckos chirp. A bare-chested man steps out of a house, pulling on his shirt as he ambles down the street. In the dark silence, I hear the door lock behind him. A few minutes later, a light upstairs flickers out. I have a sudden sense that everyone’s making love with not quite the right people.
For two minutes, I’m all alone out here. Then, a group of women peddles past, heading in the direction of the market, their conical hats hanging on straps from their handlebars. A few doors down, a middle-aged man in shorts steps onto the sidewalk, throws his arms into the air, and begins a set of calisthenics. I look down to see two blind people walking in the middle of the street, arms linked, their walking sticks scratching back and forth across the pavement. Night and morning hang in balance. It seems so peaceful. What would Martin think of this city, this country, this Vietnam? And, am I wrong to take Hai Au away from here?
I go inside and take a shower. When I come back into the room, Mai’s up on her elbow, her head resting on her hand, watching Hai Au sleep. I sit down next to her on her bed and begin to work a comb through my hair. It’s matted and full of snarls. I haven’t combed it yet in Asia.
Mai watches me, wincing. “That hurt?” she whispers.
I tug at one complex tangle. “I’m used to it,” I tell her. “Ow.”
She seems impressed. “If I see hair like that when I’m little, probably I run away, scared.”
I keep tugging. “Like I came from another planet?” She smiles. “Something like that.”
Our voices are low, soft. Hai Au sighs in his sleep. Outside, the sky
of the Vietnam that I know begins to gray. I say, “I feel embarrassed that I never took the time to learn what happened here. The war and all. I should know. For you. For Martin. For Hai Au.”
Mai takes my hand. It comforts me to have her as my friend. She says, “What you see now is better.”
“But I don’t have to be ignorant,” I say. “What was it like for you?” She lets her head fall back onto her pillow and stares up at the ceiling, still holding my hand. “Here’s something. We didn’t cry during the war. We cried when it was over. April 30, 1975. In our neighborhood, they invited my father to lead the singing at a rally. After, when we went home, my father start crying. You know, a war over, everyone crying. Even my mother cried, a little. Relief and joy and we don’t have to be scared no more. That’s what my father said, ‘We don’t have to be scared no more.’ ”
“What did your mother say?”
She laughs. “My mom say, ‘Now what?’ ”
I let her doze again. I squeeze back into my bed next to Hai Au, careful not to let my wet hair touch him and wake him up. His breath is warm and sweet and I am glad that he refused to sleep in his crib. Down below, the traffic stirs to life. These sounds must resemble the sounds that Martin heard, all those years ago—honking, engines sputtering, people yelling to each other across streets. What happened to him here?
Hai Au squirms, stretches, rolls over, and looks at me, rubbing his eyes, registering the fact that he’s still here. The realization doesn’t seem to affect him either way. He scoots across the bed, slides to the floor, totters to his toy train, and sticks a wheel into his mouth.
Mai sits up in bed, her feet crossed, the bottom of her nightgown bunched and tousled in her lap. Together, we watch Hai Au knock the train against the floor. “I saw my sister last night,” she says.
I can’t read anything in her face. “You okay?” I ask.
She shrugs, staring down at her hands. “I don’t say anything. Just stand outside her café. She look like a real business lady now.”
“Did she see you?”
She shakes her head and shrugs. “I ran away.”
We eat breakfast in a café that Tri from downstairs recommended. It’s a Western-style place, long, narrow, and crowded with both foreigners and Vietnamese. The menu boasts European-style items like fresh croissants and “French” coffee. We stand at the counter and order omelets and baguettes, orange juice, coffee, and rice porridge for Hai Au, then find a table near the back. Mai seems distracted. She hasn’t said a word about finding her father, and I haven’t brought it up. It occurs to me that she might decide to go home without ever seeing him.
While we wait for our breakfast, I entertain Hai Au with the wiggle-finger game that Minh taught me. Around us, the café hums with morning chatter. It is a simple place, furnished with small wooden tables and chairs. Closer to the entrance, a few Vietnamese sit hunched over plates of cake. One young woman sprinkles sugar on hers. I’m surprised, of course, but not disgusted. I wonder why I never thought of it myself. Before I left Wilmington, Lindi warned me that I’d experience culture shock in Vietnam, but what’s so different, really? Here we are, a bunch of humans coming together over breakfast.
At a table in the back near us, a Western couple with a sleeping Vietnamese baby quietly argues in French, apparently over whether or not they should wake the child to change a dirty diaper. The baby, hid-den inside an infant carrier against the man’s chest, has fat pink legs, and every time the man moves they flop against his shirt. He points to the child, then mutters something to the woman. She’s anxiously gripping a diaper she’s pulled from their gargantuan diaper bag. I believe she says “It’s too hot,” but I don’t know much French. She waves the diaper like a flag. We are compatriots in the means we’ve used to have our children, but we pretend that we don’t see each other.
The waitress brings our food, omelets like yellow half-moons and hunks of French baguette, a small steaming bowl of porridge that Hai Au reaches for with delight. Mai cuts her omelet in half with a fork, stuffs some into a piece of bread, and douses it with chili sauce. I hold Hai Au in one arm, pour some milk into the porridge to cool it down, and begin to spoon-feed him.
Mai watches me and smiles. “You a real relaxed mother,” she says.
“You’re surprised!” I slide a bite into Hai Au’s eager mouth, scrape a few drops off his lips with the spoon. He and I look at each other with mutual understanding. He knows that I am watching. Sullenly, he swallows.
Mai says, “I’m not surprise. I’m impress. Yesterday, he screamed a lot, but you don’t mind.”
“You’ve always seen me stressed out,” I tell her. “Adoption is a great cure for infertility.”
Against the other wall, the French continue to argue. The father shakes his head defiantly. Even a conversation about poop sounds pretty in French.
Suddenly, the man’s eyes light up. “Dr. Penzi,” he shouts in English toward the front of the café. “Dr. Penzi. Hello! Remember us?”
A tall, Einstein-haired Westerner stands at the front counter. He glances back toward the French couple and waves, then finishes ordering and ambles over. “Yes, of course. Jacques and Sophie,” he says in an accent that sounds European. The expression on his face implies that everything is very funny. Leaning over the baby, he says, “Is this little Josephine? Asleep? Cause for celebration, yes?”
The worried mother nods, but explains their predicament. Dr. Penzi listens to her concerns and then, with a wave of his hand, dismisses them. “Let the sleeping baby sleep,” he says. “What, you think she has never had this problem before? She’s a Vietnamese girl. This is her own climate. Let her sleep an hour in the poopy, then you change her.” He sits down at the table next to theirs, picks up the coffee that the waitress has brought him, and takes a sip. “Relax. Take a walk. Read a book or something. She gave you a short rest and so you take it.”
It’s a strange prescription, counterintuitive to say the least, but the concern on the parents’ faces does seem to lessen. How many days does it take to feel that a child is really, truly yours and that your decisions will probably be wise ones? I don’t feel it after fifteen hours, that’s for sure, but I do feel more confident that, eventually, I will get there. The French couple seem happy enough to have someone else make decisions for them. They grin at each other, relieved, then thank the doctor. A moment
later, they have pulled their various bags and bottles together and headed toward the door. Dr. Penzi takes a newspaper from his briefcase and begins to leaf through it.
“Excuse me, are you Dr. Dario Penzi?” I ask. He raises his eyes over his paper and nods, waiting for me to continue. “My name is Shelley Marino. This is my friend Mai, and my son, Hai Au.” That word—“son”—comes out more easily now, but I can’t imagine when I’ll actually feel anything but amazement over it. “We’re supposed to see you this afternoon, after our G and R.”
The doctor sets down his paper and leans forward, his hands on his knees, looking at Hai Au. “Have I met this child already?”
“You did the preadoption examination a couple of months ago. He had a slight case of anemia.”
I can’t tell if he remembers, but he focuses on Hai Au. “Hello, sweet boy.” Hai Au gurgles happily, his mouth full of porridge.
The doctor’s eyes drift to Mai. “And you, a mother as well?”
Mai looks concerned to be singled out. She shakes her head, then vaguely motions toward me with a finger. “I’m just here helping her.”
“But you’re Vietnamese?” Mai’s nod is noncommittal, more of a shrug. Dr. Dario laughs. “I don’t think a question like that can have no answer.”
Mai is so serious. “I’m Vietnamese”—she pauses—“American.”
“Oh, yes. Well, then, I see what you mean. Sort of Vietnamese. Sort of not.”
She looks down at her coffee, clearly annoyed. “Can we go?” she asks me.