Listen, Slowly (3 page)

Who’s annoying?

I wake up to a really loud knock. Dad and Bà, already dressed, should have awakened me. We checked in around noon yesterday and went right to sleep. Now it’s morning. That’s jet lag for you. We’re all in one tiny room in an antiquated hotel because Dad feels guilty living in luxury. Mom is not here to make him. Every seventy-five dollars saved buys one of his patients a bike, so she can whoosh to school instead of walking two hours to and two hours from. I’m all for that, but couldn’t Dad at least get a hotel with Wi-Fi? I won’t even ask about room service although I’m starving.

No matter, I’m sure the trip is wrapping up. The quack is here. I mean that in the friendliest way.

Dad opens the door while Bà pushes me into a bathroom the size of a closet. I try to get really close to Bà so she can hear my hunger growls and feel sorry for me, but no, in I go. When there’s something superserious that adults in my family want to discuss, they always banish the kids. This is old-world child rearing, where it’s not required that every family member be made to feel important.

The most I can do is crack the door and peek.

The detective is the most leathery, wrinkly, skinny old man ever. When he steps into the harsh fluorescent light, I can see the bones shaping his eye sockets and jawline. He bows at Bà and smiles, brows wiggling like gray caterpillars doing the salsa. Both say it’s been too long, that the years have been kind to them. Really?

While he talks some more, a lot more, I can see yellow teeth blackened at the roots like rotten corn kernels. On him, they somehow look right. I’m hearing Vietnamese but not understanding a thing. I squint, listen harder. Dad keeps trying to interrupt but the detective can’t control the hundreds of words gushing from his mouth. Bà is enthralled. I keep squinting, as if that might help me understand.

Finally, the detective takes a breath.

Dad jumps in, his voice urgent, angry even.
“This man let my father go? He was his guard?”
Yeah, I can understand.

More sentences disappear into the air.

“Not acceptable,”
Bà says.
“Urge him to come to me.”

Blah, blah, blah from the leathery man.

“He last saw my father alive?”

More ghost words. I should have kept learning Vietnamese. But who knew I’d be listening to Bà’s most important conversation ever through a cordial yet incomprehensible prune?

“I have money. Is that the problem?”
Bà loves to hand out money. She says you might as well spend it when you have it because who knows what man with big dreams will rise up and claim everything that was yours for his cause.

“My mother has crossed the world. This man can certainly get in a van and come to her.”

How the wrinkly one can go on and on. Finally, Dad cuts in.
“So it’s not money but his
thanh liêm?” His what? I’ve never heard anyone say
thanh liêm
. Dad must be repeating what the detective said. I can’t stand people who use five-dollar words. When I use my five-dollar SAT words, it’s not like I want to. Mom has branded them on my brain and they pop up automatically. I’ve been programmed to devour one new SAT word a day, all to satisfy some contest in Mom’s mind.

The detective accepts a white envelope from Dad and puts it inside a leather notebook so worn it looks like it might decompose in his hands. He takes out a stump of a pencil and writes superslowly. As he’s going out the door, Dad adds,
“Use every method to bring him to our village.”

Wait, what just happened? I didn’t even get to show off my friendly side and the detective left? Did Dad confront him? I come out of exile.

“He told Bà that Ông is truly gone, right?” I put an up beat in my tone because even though Bà doesn’t understand English, she’s known for guessing the message behind your words.

“The nerve of that quack,” Dad says, ignoring me. “He’s very good, I’ll give him that.”

“Ông isn’t here, so that means what I think it means?” I repeat, still sounding cheerful.

“Things have gotten much more complicated. Now there’s a guard who, of course, Bà insists on meeting.” Dad is beyond frustrated. “So you’re here until she does.”

Gallons of blood flood my heart. It hurts to breathe. I stop being cheerful. Alarm rings out when I ask, “What guard? Did he see Ông alive? When?”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly what?”

No one explains. Dad paces, while Bà sits with her back straight and hand irons her silk blouse. She’s worried, and I probably caused half of it. I can’t take it anymore, the hunger, the jet lag, the confusion, the guilt. I slam my body on the bed and scream and scream into a pillow.

A hand pats the back of my head. It’s Bà. She did this when I was little to get me to sleep. One part of me wants to shout it’s her fault I’m stuck in a hot, crowded, sweaty, loud country while another part of me craves her gentle hand on my head.

D
ad has dragged me here, and after one little day, he’s abandoning us. We’re in front of the hotel waiting for our vans. One will take Dad toward some mountain; the other will take me and Bà to her village. Without him, who am I supposed to argue with? Or is it
whom
? Why do I care?

I have a much bigger problem. The guard. Maybe I’m overpanicking. Surely, the detective knows where the guard lives and it’s a matter of putting him in a bus or a van. So I should be at the beach in five or six days, tops. I would be so pleasant if other people’s needs didn’t keep squashing mine.

“I won’t learn another SAT word.”

“That’s your mom’s crazy idea, not mine. You’ll have your brain filled with Vietnamese anyway.”

“I won’t learn Vietnamese.”

A sigh. “Then be mute.”

Ugh. “I’ll start making B’s.”

“If you can stand it, go ahead.”

UGH!! “I’ll start wearing eyeliner.”

“Then get raccoon eyes.”

“I’ll wear—”

“Listen, Bà has sacrificed everything for us. We’ve raised you to be considerate, so act like it. Be good, listen to Bà. The detective has to find the guard and that might take two weeks. I should be back before then.”

Dad might as well have whammed a boogie board into my gut. “What do you mean ‘two weeks’?”

He fake smiles. “It’s not that long if you don’t obsess over it. I’ll meet you in the village.”

“Why two weeks?” I hate it when my voice gets all wavy, and this is no time to cry. I’ve got to plot. For six days I could fake patience, but two weeks? I start chewing off split ends, gnawing at each strand like I’m grinding a steak. How can I be so obnoxious that everyone will be disgusted and toss me back home?

Right then, Dad’s cell chimes Mom’s ringtone. She must be going crazy, not having gotten us live since we left. Dad answers the phone, cooing, and I’m sure Mom’s cooing back. I used to think they were so romantic. What was wrong with me? Finally, Dad tosses me the phone.

“Mai.” No one says my name the way my mom does, like she’s packed all the hope in the world into my one syllable. I didn’t even know I missed her until now. The tears come and there’s nothing I can do about them.

“You’re fine,” Mom murmurs. “I know you can do this for Bà, and you’ll be so proud of yourself. Deep breaths in, now out. From what I understand, the guard is reluctant to come see Bà. It’ll all get smoothed out, but that takes time. So hang in there, sweetie. Two weeks aren’t that long. Can I hear your voice?”

I can’t. My throat is clogged and tears keep gushing.

“You’re being so helpful and brave, and try to enjoy your time there because you have no idea what you’ll find or whom you’ll meet. Be open, love, can you do that for me?”

I wish Mom would stop being so sugary. If she yells and tells me I’m a spoiled baby, I could get sassy. As it is, I just keep crying.

“Listen carefully. Wait until Dad is gone, then look inside the zippered bag that’s velcroed inside your luggage. I left you a surprise.”

I love surprises. The tears stop even though I don’t even want to feel better. It’s a cheap trick; Mom knows I can’t resist surprises.

“I think you’re going to love it. Now before I let you go, your SAT word for the day is one of my favorites. Ephemeral, e-p-h-e . . .”

I jerk the phone an arm’s length away, surprised but not really. Mom is Mom. I should have expected her SAT attack. I toss the phone back to Dad.

Dad whispers with Bà, then gives her a white envelope just like the one the detective got. Hey, where’s mine? I think about not waving bye, but as our van pulls out, I do wave. I miss him already. We talked and Dad agreed that should the detective bring the guard to the village before two weeks, he would return immediately. So I choose to believe it won’t be two weeks. Glass half full, that’s me. It can’t be that difficult to find one guard in a country the size of Florida.

I’m told Bà’s village is eighty kilometers from Hanoi. One mile = 1.6 km, so divide 1.6 into 80, where I move the decimal point and make it 16 into 80, where 6 times 5 is 30 and 10 times 5 is 50 so 16 times 5 is 80 and put back the decimal point, so about 50 miles. It’s geeky, but I live for conversions. I have no idea how long it takes to go fifty miles here. The traffic in the city crawls along, but maybe once we reach the highway it’ll be faster.

It doesn’t matter because I’m prepared for a famine. After yesterday, I’ve made sure I shall never be hungry again. Am I the only twelve-year-old who knows that line? Mom and Bà love Scarlett O’Hara. So do all Vietnamese women, according to this other PBS documentary where a professor talks about how the whole country is obsessed with love, war, suffering, and resilience. How does he know how all Vietnamese feel about anything? Do I count? I’m not so into suffering, war neither.

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!”