Listen, Slowly (21 page)

It’s pointless to complain to Mom about Dad. They are a halo-ish couple doing halo-ish work and they always stick together. Bà, of course, understands her son’s dilemma, saying,
“If he cannot arrive, it’s already more than enough that you are here.”
I think speaking in Vietnamese makes her unreasonably diplomatic. I might as well try to speak more of it.

Bà napped while I ordered room service for breakfast and lunch. Both times the waiter brought baguettes and triangles of cow cheese. I don’t know if that was what they thought I ordered or if that was all they had. My Vietnamese is much better live, where people can see my expressions and gestures. I’ve started eating the fluffy beef jerky and dried banana sheets that have been jammed inside my backpack for weeks. Food is food.

I’m so bored, the kind where you bite off all your nails and wish they’d grow back instantly so you could bite them again.

I could try pronouncing each word in the book Út gave me. She pressed it into my hand before I climbed into the van for the airport. Didn’t say anything, just ran off. What kind of a good-bye is that? I wasn’t going to hug her, honest. I’m thinking of asking Mom and Dad to buy her a ticket to Laguna next summer. They do owe me. Montana will be out of her mind offering makeover tips, and Út will swat her off. I can’t wait.

Út chose a book completely in Vietnamese. Like a preschooler, I did a picture read. It stars a frog, of course. Bà said in this folktale a frog goes to heaven to ask for rain during a long drought. I will have to learn to read Vietnamese. It can’t be that hard. Every little kid here has learned it.

“Máy giờ rồi con?”
Bà is awake, asking for the time. Finally.

It’s late afternoon. Out the window the world has reinvigorated after nap time. Oh no, SAT alert. Have I succeeded in abolishing them or did I not notice using them? Who cares, they’re embedded inside me. Accept them.

“Bà đói quá.”
Bà says she’s hungry. Score! That means she would never settle for a stale baguette and last-forever, nonrefrigerated cheese. She never eats dairy, saying it puts bubbles in her stomach. That’s her delicate way of alluding to farts. I love the word fart, which has art in it. Who doesn’t like art? Do you see how bored I am?

We are preparing to leave the hotel. I’m beyond the beyond excited, as I’ve played every possible mind game in this room. Every crack already imagined as an animal, every ceiling stain a face. One has averted eyes and a shy smile, so HIM. Bà puts on her traveling suit, meaning she plans on staying out for a while. Happiness!

As soon as we step outside we go right back in. The air is ten times hotter than up north. Okay, I’m going to stop exaggerating. Five times hotter.

“We must ask for damp cloths or the heat of Sài Gòn will drain us in half an hour.”

She sits in the lobby while I talk/pantomime at the front desk. It’s literally one wooden desk with one man behind it. He also played waiter when I called for room service. He understands exactly what I want but refuses to hand over the cloths because the detective berated him into keeping us in the hotel/jail. Everyone fears Bà and I will get run over or mugged or lost. I have to call Bà over.

“Why should I fear my own city? I once knew the name of every flowering tree and the date each would open its petals to greet spring.”

“The gentleman was adamant that you both must not leave our protection.”

Bà holds out her gentle, grandmotherly hand, and the man has no choice but to reach into the square, single-person refrigerator behind him and pull out two folded cloths, wet, cold, and smelling of orange peels. Mom thought she was being green by composting citrus peels. I’m going to teach her to never buy air or fabric freshener again.

We step back outside, the cloths pressed tight against our napes. Shockingly better, like carrying around personalized air conditioners. We walk, holding hands along a wobbly sidewalk where we have to maneuver for space at each step. Our feet touch food baskets and stools and blankets holding endless things for sale. Most of all, we step around people, sitting or squatting or standing five deep. Noises ring out like millions of frogs. I must be missing a certain someone. As for the smells, I must be acclimating because everything has mingled into this scent called life.

Bà points across the street. A sign on a pole between two baskets says
BÁNH CANH
. That’s her favorite food, the only time Mom and Dad could get her to leave the house.

But the vendor sits all the way across the street. Swarms of beeping mopeds zigzag past us in both directions. I didn’t think it was possible, but traffic here makes Hà Nội look like a country town.

We step off the sidewalk, take two steps, get back on. Our cloths are getting warm. The man at the hotel desk must have been watching because he’s right here, saying he’ll get the soup for us.

Bà shakes her head.
“One cannot eat
bánh canh
cold, and the noodles must never sit in the broth.”

No doubt he has a grandmother and knows better than to argue. He takes Bà by the arm. I hang on to her blouse tail.

“The trick calls for not looking at any driver but listening to the engines,”
he says.

We step into the death zone, pause for two mopeds, step forward, pause for four mopeds, step forward, pause, step, pause, step, and we’re across with limbs attached. I didn’t do much, but I’m impressed with myself. The man jots back across like he’s doing the cha-cha-cha, pausing and stepping in a joyful rhythm.

Most customers are squatting, holding bowls and chopsticks to their mouths, and sucking in thick, white noodles. Someone offers Bà a plastic chair, the kind you’d see in preschool. All over Vietnam, skinny and agile people sit on miniature chairs. Bà is lucky to get one. As I said, this is the land to be old in. Knees to her chin, Bà calls for two bowls. I can squat and eat with the best of them.

The seller sees us and nods. She rinses two bowls in a pot of grimy, dark water, dries them with an equally grimy towel, then by some miracle she pulls out a bacterial wipe, the kind that kills everything on contact. She skips this last step for the locals. Fine by me.

Her two baskets contain the entire
bánh canh
operation. One has the broth pot, kept hot somehow, with containers of noodles and veggies arranged on the lid. The other basket holds the rinse water, bowls, chopsticks. When the seller is ready to leave this spot, she’ll put her stool on the pot lid, then carry away the baskets already attached to standing handles. The baskets swing on a pole balanced on her shoulder, one basket in front, one in back. How many times have I seen this image? Of course she’s wearing soft, black pants and a cone hat. It’s so Vietnam, I mean, Việt Nam!

After two bowls each, we’re really thirsty. All we want is water, but none can be bought. Merchants around us do sell every kind of soda, but never diet ones because as far as I can tell no one is on a diet.

“Why would you pay for water when you can boil it at home?”
one vendor asks while trying to sell us warm, carbonated orange drinks. So not the same.

We wander to a fruit stand and buy longans because I’ve always loved them. After peeling the hard brown shell, they look like eyeballs and after eating you get to spit out black-pupil seeds. Sugary and sticky, the fruit makes me even thirstier. But it’s worth it.

“Let’s get drinks from our hotel, get new cloths, and go visiting,”
Bà suggests. I don’t know whom we’re visiting but, of course, yes.

Problem: the hotel stands way on the other side.

We hold hands, step off the sidewalk. Mopeds roar past us like gigantic dragonflies. We step back on. I can hear Bà inhaling deeply. Then she holds up one palm to the traffic. Forward. Traffic weaves around us, pausing, speeding, swerving, beeping. Bà doesn’t glance at any driver, keeps marching. No moped can go that fast, but I swear some come within hairlines of us. I expect to be hit any moment. Please, please, please, let my head remain undented. I couldn’t stand it so I look at the drivers. They dodge us, slowing, braking, almost bored they’re so used to maneuvering like guppies in an overcrowded tank. One looks like it’s aiming right for us. I close my eyes. Suddenly, we’re across!

Bà smiles like I’ve never seen before, long teeth flashing, cheekbones lifted high. If she can cross the street in Saigon, I mean, Sài Gòn, which seems twenty times more congested than Hà Nội, all right, five times, what else can she do?

The detective is waiting in the lobby, marching back and forth, one familiar, leathery finger waving at the front deskman. Seeing us, he has a new aim for that finger.

“Why have you risked going out? What if you were injured? We have not come this far to have our plans ruined by a moped collision.”

He really is upset because I can understand every word. Bà just smiles and asks for water, which someone in the hotel has boiled and stored in glass bottles. We drink and drink and buy more.

“You must register the importance of remaining within this locale and be prepared to leave the instant I require your presence.”
Oh no, his vocabulary is resurging.

Bà sits down, eyes closing as she asks,
“Have you seen the letter?”

The detective gives the most impatient sigh.
“The guard in spite of my insistence has not divulged the exact nature of your husband’s message. I am conducting a monumental project based on faith. We are asking for permission to access the tunnels where your husband was held, a task that is proving as difficult as stopping a typhoon with my bare hands. Allow me to assure you I have many workers in place trying to dissolve the obstacles before us, and I sincerely hope I can call for your presence in a few days.”

“If you are not ready for us, why are you here?”

Why isn’t he ready for us? I have a life, and I’ve been way patient, doesn’t he know that?

“It is with utmost respect and regret that I must ask for . . .”

Bà stops him, asks him to turn around, fumbles with the pouch at her waist. A white envelope. How many did Dad give her?

“Again, I apologize, but the costs have reached beyond our predictions.”

“What are you doing?”

“I assure you, it’s best to remain knowledgeless.”

“If you are hinting that you must bribe every official connected to the project, so be it. Tell them I am here for a final truth.”

“Despite the consumption of time I assure you until my last breath I shall see this task to its completion.”

His words are melodramatic but they work for him, they really do. I only have to understand half of them to get the message. He looks like he’s far from done talking, but Bà bows and says she has much to see.

“With respect, I insist that you stay. . . .”

“Certainly, we both understand that at my age this trip represents my last look at the city that occupies my memories. Every person possesses a city that is truly her own. Sài Gòn is mine and I shall bow farewell before I cannot. My best and worst years interweaved into a life here. I’m certain you understand.”

After that, even the detective gets a bit misty eyed. I’m going to learn to use words like Bà so I can persuade people without having to pout.

“How do you plan to move about?”
asks the detective. Every time he’s flustered, his words simplify.

I offer,
“Honda Ôm.”

Everyone looks at me like, how do I know about that? The detective knows, but he’s a good actor. We agree a
Honda Ôm
would make Bà dizzy. A cab? Dizzier. A bus? Dizziest.

“Xe xích lô,”
the desk man offers. Bà and the detective nod immediately. I’m too embarrassed to admit I don’t know what one is.

The detective has left, after giving endless advice about how to prevent this and that. But we are ready, with two bottles of boiled water, new cold cloths, and my pouch full of
đồng
s. Wait until Bà sees me bargain.

The deskman has gone to get our ride, which parks in front of fancy hotels because only tourists use them. I thought tourists take cabs, but what do I know? We wait in the lobby.

“Shall we visit Chùa Vĩnh Nghiêm? Your father always loved going there
.”

“Vâng.”
That’s an extra respectful “yes, ma’am.” She could take me to Vietnamese school and I’d be excited to go. Anything to not sit in that tiny room and watch life pass by right outside my window.

The deskman comes in to get us. Outside sits a shiny, glowing cyclo, complete with a red padded seat and yellow fringes around a red canopy already pulled down to block the late afternoon sun. The only bad part is the skinny, I mean skinny skinny, driver who has to pedal. Bà says not to worry, he’s used to going uphill with a two-hundred-pound slaughtered pig.

This is how Bà bargains: she hands the driver a twenty-dollar bill. Simple, effective, not a wasted word.

F
orget
Honda Ôm
,
xe xích lô
is how to conquer Saigon, I mean, Sài Gòn, I mean Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. Blah, Anh Minh has messed me up.

I ask Bà what she calls this city.

“My mind will always know it as Sài Gòn.”

That’s what I’ll call it too. Now we settle in for a shady, breezy ride. With every bump we sink a little more into the thick padding. And I get to eat more longans, my favorite fruit, grown in California too. I love my life. I’m not hot, really full, cocooned from the traffic and noises and smells, and best of all, I’m with Bà.

“Ông and I ventured to Chùa Vĩnh Nghiêm only once together when your father was a newborn. The pagoda was just built, the most extravagant in all of Sài Gòn. Ông had to drive two round-trips on the moped to bring everyone. You should have seen the way children were piled onto mopeds back then. Father driving, mother sitting with legs to one side behind him, a baby on her lap, the next two youngest squeezed between the parents, and two more sat on the gas tank in front of the father, protected by his arms outstretched to the steering wheel. But even if we tried such an arrangement, we would still need to pack on more
.