Inside Out and Back Again (4 page)

in front of Mother.

None of us would want

to make her sadder

than she already is.

Every day

Brother Quang races home

from class,

throws down his bicycle,

exhausted,

no longer able to afford

gasoline for his moped.

Unbelievable,

he screams,

and turns on the TV.

A pilot for South Vietnam

bombed the presidential palace

downtown that afternoon.

Afterward the pilot flew north

and received a medal.

The news says the pilot

has been a spy

for the Communists

for years.

The Communists

captured Father,

so why would

any pilot

choose their side?

Brother Quang says,

One cannot justify war

unless each side

flaunts its own

blind conviction.

Since starting college,

he shows off even more

with tangled words.

I start to say so,

but Mother pats my hand,

her signal for me to calm down.

April 8

I, the youngest,

get to celebrate

my actual birthday

even though I turned

a year older

like everyone else

at T
t.

I, the only daughter,

usually get roasted chicken,

dried bamboo soup,

and all-I-can-eat pudding.

This year,

Mother manages only

banana tapioca

and my favorite

black sesame candy.

She makes up for it

by allowing

one wish.

I dye my mouth

sugary black

and insist on

stories.

It’s not easy

to persuade Mother

to tell of her girlhood

in the North,

where her grandmother’s land

stretched farther than

doves could fly,

where looking pretty

and writing poetry

were her only duties.

She was promised to Father

at five.

They married at sixteen,

earlier than expected.

Everyone’s future changed

upon learning the name

H
Chí Minh.

Change meant

land was taken away,

houses now belonged

to the state,

servants gained power

as fighters.

The country divided in half.

Mother and Father came south,

convinced it would be

easier to breathe

away from Communism.

Her father was to follow,

but he was waiting for his son,

who was waiting for his wife,

who was waiting to deliver a child

in its last week

in her belly.

The same week,

North and South

closed their doors.

No more migration.

No more letters.

No more family.

At this point,

Mother closes her eyes,

eyes that resemble no one else’s,

sunken and deep like Westerners’

yet almond-shaped like ours.

I always wish for her eyes,

but Mother says no.

Eyes like hers can’t help

but carry sadness;

even as a child

her parents were alarmed

by the weight in her eyes.

I want to hear more,

but nothing,

not even my pouts,

can make Mother open her eyes

and tell more.

April 10

Wishes I keep to myself:

Wish I could do what boys do

and let the sun darken my skin,

and scars grid my knees.

Wish I could let my hair grow,

but Mother says the shorter the better

to beat Saigon’s heat and lice.

Wish I could lose my chubby cheeks.

Wish I could stay calm

no matter what

my brothers say.

Wish Mother would stop

chiding me to stay calm,

which makes it worse.

Wish I had a sister

to jump rope with

and sew doll clothes

and hug for warmth

in the middle of the night.

Wish Father would come home

so I can stop daydreaming

that he will appear

in my classroom

in a white navy uniform

and extend his hand toward me

for all my classmates to see.

Mostly I wish

Father would appear in our doorway

and make Mother’s lips

curl upward,

lifting them from

a permanent frown

of worries.

April 10
Night

Every spring

President Thi
u

holds a long long long

ceremony to comfort

war wives.

Mother and I go because

after President Thi
u’s

talk talk talk—

of winning the war,

of democracy,

of our fathers’ bravery—

each family gets

five kilos of sugar,

ten kilos of rice,

and a small jug of

vegetable oil.

Inside the cyclo

Mother crosses her legs

so I can fit beside her.

The breeze still cool,

we bounce across the bridge

shaped like a crescent moon

where I’m not to go by myself.

Mother smells of lavender

and warmth;

she’s so beautiful

even if

her cheeks are too hollow,

her mouth too dark with worries.

Despite warnings,

I still want her sunken eyes.

Before I see it,

I hear downtown,

thick with beeps,

shouts, police whistles.

Everywhere,

mopeds and bicycles

race down the wide road,

moving out of the way

only when a truck

honks and mows straight down

the middle of the lane.

We get out

in front of an open market.

We push our way to

a
bánh cu
n
stand.

I love watching

the spread of rice flour on cloth,

stretched over a steaming pot.

Like magic a crepe forms

to be filled with shrimp

and eaten with

cucumber and bean sprouts.

It tastes even better

than it looks.

While my mouth is full,

the noises of the market

silence themselves,

letting me and my
bánh cu
n

float.

We squeeze ourselves

out of the market,

toward the presidential palace.

We stand in line;

for even longer

we sit on hot metal benches

facing the podium.

My white cotton

hat and Mother’s flowery umbrella

are nothing

against the afternoon sun,

shooting rays into

my short short hair.

I’m dizzy

and thirsty;

the fish sauce

in the
bánh cu
n