Listen, Slowly (11 page)

I write back in English but Út can’t read it. Mom always nagged me about my scribbles while I argued we have technology for a reason. Who knew I’d be across the world scratching on paper with a stubby pencil?

Now I talk and Út writes. But I have to speak Tarzan-ish Vietnamese because Út says she doesn’t understand my non-Frenchy English. It’s exhausting, but so is my life.

“Làm gì?”
What to do?

Perfect cursive: “Anh Minh and my sister must stare at each other alone.”

“Làm sao?”
How?
“Ði rồi.”
He’s gone.

“We will email that you require him.”

“Cho gì?”
For what?

Út frowns, staring me down like I’m useless and she has to think of everything. I smile sweetly. It feels weird, all this effort to be charming, but life would be unbearable if she and my translator were to disappear.

“No, tell better your Bà needs him here. Now.”

“Cho gì?”
For what?

She gives me another exasperated look. Fine, think, think, brain, think.

B
efore lunch the next day, our scheming takes us to the stacked house where everyone first greeted me and Bà. Red of blood, yellow of skin, five stories. You can’t miss it. The woman who answers has the smoothest, clearest skin I’ve ever seen. Mom, who spends half her paychecks on jars of face cream, would be so jealous. She’s Cô Hạnh, Út’s real aunt and I’m sure my maybe-one.

“
Ah, Út, right on time, I need you to pick
rau muống.
And you, come in and sit.”

Apparently, you can’t show up to someone’s house with internet service and zoom straight to the computer. First, Út asks after Cô Hạnh’s husband, son, daughter, mother, father, countless cousins, barking dog, algae in the pond, some ripening fruit at Chú Tư’s (
chú
means uncle, another maybe-relative?).

We all head to the back to look at the fruit. I’ve yet to meet anyone in the village who doesn’t go gaga for fruit and vegetables. I could put this backyard scene on a postcard—it’s that dreamy. Wooden houses surround a huge pond. Each house has a porch that juts out into the water and sits on stilts. Gigantic orange koi swim under the porch planks. Willows are planted like fences so you can kinda see your neighbors, but not really.

Út points to the tree across the pond that has branches crawling out just above the water. So cool. Red clumps cling to the branches.
“Are they ripe yet?”

“I wouldn’t know. You know Chú Tư cherishes them as if they’re his children. I’m lucky if I get one at the end of the season.”

“He’s always given
quả sung
to me. He likes me.”
When Út says something like that, she’s just stating the truth. He probably thinks she’s great. I’ve noticed people either swoon or sneer at her. My sneering is moving toward the middle.

Suddenly, Cô Hạnh grabs me by the chin. Her eyes bug out and zoom in. Forget about swooning over me, she’s even past sneering, she’s downright horrified.

“Tut-tut, what have you been putting on your skin?”

Nothing! Honest! I’m not into makeup. Watching Montana apply rounds and rounds of lip gloss has damaged my view of what is probably a perfectly normal activity. I try to wrestle away but Cô Hạnh grips my chin.

“What’s clogging your pores? We have to cure these pimples before they leave scars
.”

PIMPLES? SCARS!!!
I just realized I haven’t seen a mirror in forever, since the hotel. And I haven’t missed it! That’s because I’ve been living in shock.

How can I have pimples? I’ve been so careful, washing my face with a cloth twice a day and never touching my fingers to my . . . OMG, I have PIMPLES! I thought my face was a little bumpy when I applied sunblock every day, but without a mirror I just imagined I had a heat rash or insect bites or some other consequence of living in muggy land.

“Gương!”
Mirror! Cô Hạnh leads me to a huge mirror with lightbulbs all around like you’d see in a movie star’s dressing room. The megawatts don’t hide one little bump. Tons of yellow dots are pushing up on tiny red hills scattered all over my forehead and cheeks. The colors of Vietnam’s flag. ON MY FACE! This is not how I imagined connecting with my roots.

“Không sao, không sao,”
not a problem, not a problem, Cô Hạnh murmurs, seeing me close to tears. “
I know exactly how to cure this
.”

It’s fascinating that people will talk to me like I understand, even though I’m playing dumb. I think people just like to listen to their voices.

First, Cô Hạnh sends Út to the kitchen to bring back a bowl of raw rice soaked in warm water and citrus peels. I swear Út is kinda smirking. Whatever, deep breath, deep breath.

Cô Hạnh then goes to the garden and picks lots of leaves and a cucumber. Is the cure a salad? Right away I start panicking about the right dressing because I can only eat salads with this one balsamic vinaigrette. Without it, I’ll gag and that always makes my stomach . . . Focus, focus! I sit on my hands and make myself look away from the brightest mirror on earth to prevent an urge to pick and squeeze.

Út returns first. Patting her own cheek, which I admit is smooth and clear but I bet little cancer cells are blooming beneath all that bronzeness, Út writes, “Go in the sun and clean your skin.”

“No!”

Út shrugs. Look at her, all buzzy and bronzed and bracy and mismatched and frumpy, but she’s as happy as she can be. How is that possible?

Cô Hạnh comes back with handfuls of leaves and asks Út to wash them and bring the pestle and mortar set. Út sighs and yawns. Obviously, she does not share our urgency.

Meanwhile, Cô Hạnh strains the rice water and tells me to splash my face, after tying back my hair and tut-tutting that it should always be off my forehead. The water smells of steamed rice and clementines, like Bà’s room. In tiny pats with a cloth, Cô Hạnh dries my face, where the skin somehow feels tighter, and puts a magnifying glass to it.
“What’s the white sticky lotion on it?”

I pull from my pants a tube of Mom’s sunblock. For as long as I can remember, Mom has bought me clothes with pockets big enough to carry a tube. Cô Hạnh squeezes a little between her fingers, mashes it, then more tut-tuts.
“Like putting glue to your skin, your pores can’t breathe, not in this humid corner of the world.”

I stand there. She’ll keep talking.
“Better to block with cloth and spare your skin from chemicals.”

I have to wash my face again, scrubbing lightly with this really soft, warm cloth smelling of grapefruit blossoms. Not a spa treatment, but not bad at all.

Út appears just as Cô Hạnh pulls something out of her own pocket. She heads straight for Út, who starts backing away. I don’t blame her. Cô Hạnh, abnormally fast, hooks something behind Út’s ears. It’s a flowery cloth mask that starts below the eyes and goes way past the neck, getting tucked inside the collar of Út’s ratty shirt. Not done, Cô Hạnh adds a floppy hat lined with the same glaring cloth.

“Wear them,”
she admonishes. “
In the South, everyone is wearing face masks. But mine covers all the way down your neck. Much better, especially with a hat. These are going to sell well.”

Neither Út nor I look convinced. But if enduring a facial and wearing a ninja mask will lead us to the internet, then we’re in. But then, mask and hat on, Út has to go out back and get into a canoe and paddle around the pond to pick deep green floating leafy stalks called
rau muống
. Út doesn’t even fight back. This from a girl who has a smart comeback for just about every situation? So much more is at stake than the internet. What has Cô Hạnh got on her?

Back inside, Cô Hạnh is grinding leaves and powder and ginger into a paste. I know all about ginger root, Bà’s favorite cure-all after Tiger Balm. Bà nibbles on a fresh, fiery stub to rid herself of nausea, dizziness, cramps, aches, a bad taste on her tongue . . . you get the idea.

Cô Hạnh signals for me to sit in this tilted chair by the window. I’m staring at the ceiling. Then she actually scoops out a green, gooey paste and smears it, ever so gently, all over my face. It smells like mint plus ginger plus decaying organic matter, so basically fancy compost. I breathe through my mouth. I know all about compost—one of Mom’s many obsessions. You throw one apple core away in my house and you’ll be digging in the trash, then taking a trip to the backyard compost bin.

From the left corner, I can kinda see the computer calling me, green light on. The torments a girl has to endure in Vietnam to send one lousy email! Deal with it, I tell myself. Bà says everybody suffers from something at some point. It’s apparently my turn. When down, Bà says, try to imagine a rosier future. How about if Anh Minh would please reappear, I promise to prioritize his drama by playing matchmaker. Then the universe will register my kindness score and bring the guard to Bà. Once she accepts Ông is gone, we will surely be going home.

The more I think about how long it takes to find acceptance, the more scared I am. How long does acceptance take? It’s been decades and Bà’s not there yet. I have to block the thought or I’ll start sweating under the herbal mask and who knows how Cô Hạnh will react?

I can kinda see Út hunched over in the canoe, picking picking, stopping often to push back the floppy hat. Shocking that she hasn’t flung it into the pond.

After the mask dries, we wash it off with more rice water. Wow, the yellow bumps have been sucked out of me, leaving little pink hills. Cô Hạnh grins as if saying, I’m that good. She puts thin cucumber slices all over my face. In the canoe, Út is hunched way over, about to fall in, talking to something in the water. Weird for anyone else, but for Út . . . not so much.

“Don’t use the white paste anymore,”
Cô Hạnh says.
“This company came over and gave away free tubes and after one usage everyone threw them in the trash heap. Skin does not like chemicals, which will enlarge your pores to resemble dots on a grapefruit peel. A cloth mask lets your pores breathe. I will make one as a present for you. What color?”

I’ve never been so self-conscious about my pores. Maybe I should cover mine behind a mask and be done. As for the mask color, no need to respond. Cô Hạnh will answer her own question.

“Ðỏ?
Yes, I have the perfect red cloth
.”

Út comes in just as Cô Hạnh removes my cucumber slices. The hills are flat with a hint of pink. Amazing. Cô Hạnh taps a watery lotion on me.
“Don’t touch,”
she warns.

Út leans in for a closer look.
“You won’t scar.”

That’s the nicest thing she’s ever said to me.

Finally, after mashing up more leaves for me to take home (yippie), after eating a mound of
rau muống
sautéed in garlic to cleanse our liver thus our skin, after slurping scorching lotus tea in the middle of a hot afternoon to harmonize body and air temperatures, after soaking our feet in jasmine water for I don’t know why, after listening to Cô Hạnh talk about how pretty she used to be (apparently it’s fine to compliment yourself here, as I’ve heard countless other maybe-aunts gush about their youthful beauty), Út and I are led to the holy computer. If I ever make it back to my very own PC, I shall kiss it once in the morning and once at night.

While my phone charges, I open emails from Mom with taglines like “urgent” and “near death with worries.” Mom loves melodrama. We’ve been texting and she’s cranky with worries about her court case yet she still has time to write. Answer: “don’t worry, please, i’m actually doing really great. you’re right; village life is so fascinating. i’m learning so much. the internet here is mercurial and could shut down any minute. love you 100,000 times to the moon and back, mai mai.”

I might have slapped on too much mush, but Mom will love it and back off. Notice I did not type anything about going home. Mom knows I want to, so I’ll be mature and leave it at that. Besides, that ultimate wish isn’t happening, at all. Notice my strategic use of an SAT word and my childhood sign-off that has always melted Mom. We should be good for a while. We probably won’t even need to text.

The emails from Montana I delete without opening. Better not to know. I immediately regret it and retrieve one from the trash. It reads, “should i trim my hair half or one inch?” In Laguna, I would have indulged her and answered with a straight face, but across the world,
DELETE
. We haven’t talked or texted since that one call and, weird, but I don’t really miss her.

As Út and I planned, I compose an email to Anh Minh, who already emailed me a while back so we can be FFL. He actually knows some slang.

I learned melodrama from the best source: Mom. Út nudges me out of the way. She adds, with equal urgency:

How did she add those little marks in an email? I bet those are the exact ones Anh Minh would love to cram in my already saturated brain. Maybe he doesn’t need to come back all that soon. Just kidding. I need drama, intrigue, something to cheer for while I’m on the longest wait ever for the most stubborn guard ever.

Út can barely stand still she’s so happy. I don’t bother to ask. From the way her eyes sparkle, I’m guessing it’s devious. Poor Con Ngọc, she has no idea what she’s up against.

Then, because I can’t help it, I click into FB. Mistake! On my wall, in color-popping photos, is Montana with her towel around HIS waist, trying to get HIM to dance. She’s bent over, boobs spilling, butt bow wiggling.

I flick off the screen. Not fast enough. All around me are maybe-relatives, where did they come from? Of course, not quiet maybe-relatives, that’s like asking for world peace. Instead, I get the ones with amplified tut-tuts. They let loose all sorts of comments, but I’m so hot and heart-poundy I can’t really understand. I sit still and let exclamations singsong around me. No doubt this will take a while, as anyone who first sees Montana and her butt bow will have much to say.