The House on Dream Street (46 page)

BOOK: The House on Dream Street

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Not all of my friends were happier now than they’d been when I met them. In the summer of 1997, Thailand’s economy had collapsed, sparking the beginning of the Asian economic crisis. Vietnam’s excessive bureaucracy and rampant corruption had already helped to dim the once-glowing forecasts about foreign investment and the country’s economy, and this new regional crisis didn’t help. Fewer multinational corporations were willing to invest in Vietnam, and some that had already invested were pulling out. Among all of my friends, Tra had suffered the most. Armed with her American M.B.A., she had returned to Vietnam in 1996 and, at first, been offered a number of jobs. None had thrilled her, and she’d decided to take her time before settling on anything permanent. Then, as the economy declined, the offers started to dry up. Now, Tra had the exact same job at a Vietnamese government institute that she’d had before she ever
left for the States. Her salary amounted to something like thirty dollars a month, hardly the income she’d struggled all those years in Michigan to earn.

As expected, Tra’s personal life had changed as well. Her marriage to Tuyen had finally ended in divorce, and their son Minh, a teenager now, preferred to spend most of his time with his father. Tra lived alone, renting out the spare rooms in her big house to boarders. She was philosophical about her bad luck, and tried to joke about it, but she couldn’t hide her sadness. “You’ve got to find me a good American husband,” she told me and Todd, as if a perfect spouse were as easy to come by as the jars of Oil of Olay I’d brought her from the States. “I’ve had enough of these Vietnamese men. I want someone
progressive!
” Tra was forty years old and as attractive and resilient as ever. But it was hard to say that her future looked bright.

Before coming to Vietnam, I’d traveled quite a bit. I kept moving, however, and almost never returned to a place I’d already seen. The Scotland I know is from 1983. India, for me, is frozen in 1989. After coming here over the course of nearly a decade, I had enjoyed the luxury of watching it change. I remembered when there were twice as many bicycles as motorbikes in Hanoi. These days, it seemed like just the opposite. I remembered when the typical summertime outfit for a Hanoi woman would be a thin cotton pajama set and plastic slip-on sandals. Now, she’d be as likely to have on hot pants and platform shoes. I remembered when red banners hung over the streets, proclaiming the wisdom of Ho Chi Minh. You could still see the banners these days, but it was hard to spot them among all the billboards for Coca-Cola and Toshiba. I felt grateful to have witnessed this country’s transformation over all these years. But it was the more intimate changes that moved me most. Tung had gray hairs now. Linh’s son Giang had
grown into a shy and gangly teenager. Grandmother Nhi had taken ill and passed away.

And after all this time, I could see how much I’d changed as well. Living in Vietnam had caused a shift in the way I saw the world. When I read about the war in Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, or our bombing of Iraq, the people of those countries no longer seemed so far away, or impossible to comprehend. They could have been Huong, or Linh, or Tra, or me. I had learned, finally, that I am not so different from all the other people in this world. The idea seems simple, and obvious, and I’m sure that my teachers tried, again and again, to teach it to me years ago in school. But it is one thing to hear something and another to figure it out for oneself. I had to spend some time in Vietnam to learn it.

On the night of Phai’s party, Todd, Jesse, and I took a taxi to the Nghia Dung neighborhood. Phai was waiting for us in front of his house. As soon as we appeared, a huge smile spread across his face and he hurried toward us, both arms outstretched. “Allo!” he said, immediately grabbing Todd’s hand and shaking it vigorously. Then his eyes swept over to me. “Duyen!” he said. He’d changed a bit. He sported a sparse mustache, and his skin, older now, had grown less smooth and fresh. His body was as small and wiry as ever, but his face had filled out enough that a Vietnamese would have clucked approvingly, “
Béo hơn!
”—You’ve fattened up! What struck me most deeply, and what stayed with me longest, was the change in his expression. Tonight, he emitted confidence and satisfaction. His eyes showed none of that too-familiar pain, or the failed attempts to hide it. “Baby!” he exclaimed, and, with one scoop, he lifted Jesse out of my arms and carried him like a tiny prince into the house.

I followed Phai back to the private bedroom he now shared with his wife and child, the room he’d talked of building so many years before. It was narrow and plain, furnished with a stand-up electric fan, a wooden bureau, and the bed, which filled an entire end of the room. Bare as it was, however, a fresh coat of pale blue paint and a new linoleum floor gave it a clean, cheerful look. On one wall hung a day-by-day calendar with tear-off pages. Against another wall sat a small case full of books. For an instant, I remembered that I could have been the one to live here with him, but then something pulled my attention away. On the bed sat Phai’s bride, Thuy, with their daughter.

Thuy was curled up on the pink sheet, cross-legged and barefoot, with the little bundle of baby in her lap. As soon as she spotted me, she leapt off the bed and, baby in her arms, rushed in my direction. “Miss Duyen!” she gasped, pushing the infant into my arms. “Here’s our child.” Thuy was small-framed and delicate. She had bright eyes, full lips, and a braid that fell like a rope down her back. A new mother’s cloud of exhaustion hung over her face, but her expression was very
vui.
The two of us sat down on the bed together and I held Ngan, Phai’s daughter, who was still so new to the world that she couldn’t even hold up her head.

Thuy gazed at me. “I’m so happy to meet you,” she said in Vietnamese, her hand gripping mine. “As soon as I met Phai, he told me about his American friend Duyen, and about how precious you are to him.”

Thuy had used the word “
qúy,
” which translates as “precious” or “esteemed.” One could use the word to describe one’s feelings toward one’s grandparents, but I could also remember how Phai would whisper it into my ear while he and I were lying in bed.

“Phai is
qúy
to me, too,” I stuttered, wondering what she knew.

Voices drifted in from outside the door, and within a few moments the room was crowded with women cooing over the baby. Huong and Linh arrived, then an American named Kyra, an expatriate whom I’d introduced to Phai years before. The one-month birthday of his daughter turned into a reunion, and we moved into the main room of the house, where a feast of a dozen dishes had been laid out on straw mats spread across the floor. Down at one end of the room, the men ate, smoked cigarettes, and drank their beer. Jesse played on the floor, alternating his attention between Todd and Phai’s father, who knew how to whistle like a bird. Thuy sat down at my end, holding Ngan in her arms, gently caressing her. Linh and Huong admired each other’s clothes and gossiped. Phai’s mother, debilitated now by illness, sat on a bed eating rice with a spoon.

Seeing Phai’s mother reminded me that his life still had its sorrows. None of his enterprising job ideas had evolved into a successful career. And according to Huong, he had no work at all. Because he and Thuy lived with his parents, their expenses would be low. But now they had a child to raise. Phai could no longer get by on only a few thousand dong for a week. Whenever I looked at him, though, he was smiling. Even when he and I had been intimate, he had never allowed me to fret about his future. He certainly wouldn’t do so now.

We’d finished eating. Son, Tung, and Todd were laughing, telling jokes. Phai got up and walked over to where I was sitting. “Duyen,” he said, squatting beside me. Thuy had taken baby Ngan into the bedroom to nurse her to sleep. Jesse, worn out from so much play, was curled up in my lap, sucking his thumb. It was almost time for us to leave. “Are you happy?” Phai asked, in Vietnamese.

For years now, I had considered my life and Phai’s as two lines that had intersected briefly, then veered off in opposite directions. But now we seemed quite similar. We were the same age, both recently married, and each of us had a child. In the most fundamental ways, our lives were running parallel after all. I looked at Phai and nodded. “I’m happy,” I told him. “And you?”

His face eased into a wide grin, and he shifted into English. “Happy very very,” he said, and he had a look in his eyes that told me he meant it.

Acknowledgments

The verb
acknowledge
sounds too unenthusiastic to express the gratitude that I feel for the support I’ve received while writing this book.

First, and most importantly, I’d like to thank the people whose stories I told here. In order to protect their privacy, I changed their names and certain biographical details, but I struggled to capture the truths of their lives in a way that I hope will satisfy them.

I have learned about Vietnam from many sources, but I especially wish to thank Robert Brigham, Nguyen Ba Chung, Nguyen Nguyet Cam, Barbara Cohen, Lou Dematteis, Dan Duffy, Wayne Karlin, Le Minh Khue, Natasha Kraevskaia, Bui Hoai Mai, T. T. Nhu, Peter Saidel, Lisa Spivey, Vu Dan Tan, Nguyen Huy Thiep, Bac Hoai Tran, and Peter Zinoman. Thanks to Kyanh Tonnu for her astute analysis of Vietnamese attitudes toward illness and to Neil Jamieson, whose
Understanding Vietnam
helped me do just that.

Nell Bernstein, Bill Clegg, Linzy Emery, Sara Frankel, Laura Fraser, Randy Frisch, Sherry Goodman, Carolyn Jones, Eileen Kelly, Hope Mitnick, Kathryn Olney, Kathy Steuer, and Kathryn Winogura all either read pieces of this book or offered other forms of valuable advice along the way. I don’t know that I could have finished this manuscript without the unfailing guidance and unwavering support of Paul Wilkes. Thanks also to the community of writers at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, particularly Wendy Brenner, Stanley Colbert, Rebecca Lee, Lindsay Pentolfe-Aegerter, and Bob Reiss. Thanks to my agent, Sarah Lazin, and her associate, Cory Halaby, for all of their efforts, and to my editor, Kathy Pories, whose wisdom and precision added immeasurably to this book.

Finally, I wish to thank everyone in my large and loving family, especially Diane Sachs, Ira Sachs, Lynne Sachs, Ira Sachs, Jr., Rose Sachs, Todd Berliner, and Jesse Berliner-Sachs. I’ve had many blessings in my life, and I can trace every one of them back to you.

Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

Parts of chapter 13, “Firecrackers on Dream Street,” appeared in a different form as “Tet” in the January/February 1995 issue of
Destination: Vietnam
magazine.

ISBN 978-1-56512-872-9

Table of Contents

The House on Dream Street