Listen, Slowly (6 page)

“Whatever you are thinkin’, miss, I am afraid you are mistaken. Walk and I shall explain.”

I make my face blank, pretending I’ve been imagining an empty gray box.

Anh Minh leads, gallantly leaning his umbrella over my head and forsaking shade for himself. I tell him I’m protected by SPF on steroids, but he won’t listen. Hatless Út follows, with no one offering to shade her maxed-out bronze complexion. She doesn’t seem to care. The two older girls go last, giggling and whispering under their umbrellas.

“Our village has joined together to buy a shrimp hatchin’ facility by the sea,” Anh Minh says. “The men who do not want or cannot get jobs in the city or in the government live and work there, and boys who do not pass the rigorous test into a city high school train there. That way no male finds idle time.”

“What if someone doesn’t like shrimp work?”

Anh Minh looks at me like I’ve asked the most illogical question ever. I could defend myself, but why annoy the one person who can make village life easier? I lean into his umbrella and look up and smile at his serious, sincere face.

We’re walking in this maze where one-story rectangular houses are built close together, separated by waist-high cement walls. Once in a while, a many-story rectangular house pops up, separated by head-high walls. People really like cement here, pouring it in front and back to create yards. It does make sense to not coax grass out of the ground, then mow and fertilize and obsess about it. Mom’s big thing is no lawns. Each house we have bought has a smaller patch of grass, the current one the size of a crib. An automatic sprinkler is forever drowning the yellowing patch. Maybe soon all of us in desert-dry Southern Cal will be graduating to all-cement yards too.

Finally, we’re out on a dusty path where swampy rice paddies line each side. I’m so close I could reach down and pluck a rice stalk. But what if I fall in and go nostril to nostril with a water buffalo? I still love them, but from afar.

The red dust kicks up and sticks between my toes in my sandals. Everyone else is wearing flip-flops, which somehow let the dust fly about and rest back on the path. I’m beginning to think Mom has no clue how to dress here.

At an intersection, Anh Minh points to a gigantic tree where roots hang from thick, muscular branches. The tree obviously has roots underground, but other roots droop down and grow into the soil. The spaces in between the hanging roots create natural hiding spots, where I bet kids spend all their time when not napping.

“This tree has outlived every other livin’ thing in the village. We guess it could be three hundred years old.” Anh Minh glows while saying that, then he actually puts his palms together and bows at the tree. I might as well do it too. Is bowing to trees a Vietnamese thing?

Village life is centered around the tree. In one corner stands a faded, mossy pagoda, its door wide open in the heat. Inside, on tile, dozens of dogs with lolling tongues lie half asleep. Among the dogs and their spilled water bowls, a duck is waddling, sipping here and there. Somehow, perfectly natural.

We head to the opposite corner of the pagoda and into an open market, closed for nap time. Merchants have put newspapers over their goods and handkerchiefs over their faces and are sleeping and snoring on cots spread out next to their stalls. It’s like walking through a Vietnamese-village version of Sleeping Beauty frozen under the witch’s spell.

I like the quiet.

We walk deeper into the market and stop in front of what looks like a cement hut with a door and no window. I’m wondering what goods are stored in there when Anh Minh makes that open-palm swing to mean “go in.” Seeing my alarmed face, he explains, “It is an internet café.”

Okay, let’s not say “café.” You would imagine coffee and muffins and soft lighting and sleepy music and you would be wrong. Imagine instead a hot shack with a tin roof that makes it even hotter and two old computers on DIAL-UP, that’s right, DIAL-UP, but I can charge the cell. Thank you, universe. We have time, so I pay the equivalent of ten cents for the slowest internet connection ever.

I log on. After an eternity, I get twenty-nine messages. Some from Mom. Each with an inspirational message about hanging in there and a new SAT word for the day.
DELETE, DELETE, DELETE
. Being across the world rocks! Most from Montana. A crisis about tan lines, a crisis about too-glossy lip glosses, a crisis about choosing a French, lobster-tail, or waterfall braid.
DELETE, DELETE, DELETE
. There’s an FB notification from Montana. I log on and wait. Mia Le. Weird to see that name. I haven’t been her in a while.

OMG, on my wall is a tagged pic of her and HIM at Anita, a beach where almost-teens go to get away from moms and little kids. I click over to her wall. Wait. And wait. Finally, I’m in. More photos, all bikini shots. Did she Photoshop to make her boobs look extra big? How big do they need to be? I don’t want her boobs, but I have to confess I do want the attention they get her. Does that make me pathetic and sophomoric?

There HE is, just as I suspected, standing right behind her butt bow. She’s smiling over her shoulder. I know that smirk. HE’s not smiling back though, kinda looking up, way up. I scroll down and it says HE and she friended the day I left. That means she asked HIM. Still, HE shouldn’t have accepted.

What’s wrong with me? HE can do whatever. Beads of sweat, mixed with sunblock, slide into my eyes, letting me cry a little.

But I can’t indulge and throw myself down. Anh Minh and the girls are standing behind me, not sweaty, but definitely misty, eyes on the screen, looking at the beach photographs. I would give anything to have an hour alone.

Anh Minh, seeing me see him, pretends like he hasn’t been staring at the screen and flips his concentration to the tin roof, like it reveals some unsolved theorem. He’s already told me he’s going to be a mathematician/professor/poet. Please, universe, never let my mother meet him. I can just hear her comparisons and sighs.

Út is twisting her mouth and gearing up for questions about Montana, no doubt. I kick my expression into neutral, but my heart is pumping blood to my face. Stop it, feelings, do not show that I’m flustered having seen evidence of Montana and HIM together. I have no idea if my feelings are listening.

The two older girls keep whispering to each other. I’ve never actually heard them speak. Anh Minh straightens himself, so grateful to have translation to do.

“Who’s she with breasts so full?”
So begins the froggy one.

“My friend Montana.”

“Why is she older in age?”

“She’s twelve, my age.”

“Twelve? And a baby she has?”
Út won’t stop with the questions.

“What baby?”

“Her breasts swell for no reason?”

“Believe me, she has reasons.”

“Are you certain she’s twelve? Did she fail some grades?”

“She’s twelve, I told you.”

“Are breasts the size of human heads admired in America?”

How can one person be this nosy? I think, but say, “Not her fault they’re that size.”

“She has to stuff them into tiny triangles?”

“It’s Southern California. People wear bikinis to the beach.”

“Must she call attention to her buttocks also? Is she trying to mate? But the males are the ones to court the females.”

“She’s not a duck or a peacock. She’s my best friend. She’s smart in her own way. She’s very happy, really.”

“Best friend? She would think of your happiness before her own?”

I make myself nod slowly. I don’t know why I’m defending Montana, but I feel like if I don’t, my life will fall apart. Út is a pain, pain, pain. I’m in no mood to be interrogated. What does Út know? She’s obsessed with a gargantuan frog.

I always talk really fast when agitated, as if words could drown out anxieties. On and on I blab about how Montana and I are borderline teenagers and that means pressure and change and freedom and bodies. I forget to pause to let Anh Minh translate. There’s so much to say about becoming a teenager. The more I talk, the more I can fake calmness. HE was looking away from her butt bow, right? I would be able to tell in two seconds if I were standing right there. Dad could not have picked a worse summer for his must-please-my-momma project. My mind obsesses about HIM while my mouth spews out teen facts. Is this what they mean by “split personality”? When I do pause, Anh Minh seems stumped.

“There’s no word for teenager in Vietnamese, miss. Numbers in English go from ten to eleven to twelve, then thirteen, fourteen. So the jump from twelve to thirteen has cultural plus spellin’ ramifications. But in Vietnamese, we say ten, then ten one, ten two, ten three, ten four, so there’s no change. Literally, a teenager would start at ten and that has no meanin’ here or over there. The closest we have here is
tuổi dậy-thì
, which is the age of puberty at fifteen, sixteen.”

“Just tell them it’s a big deal to go from twelve to thirteen.”

“They won’t believe me because there’s no such change here.”

What is the point of having a personal translator if he’s going to argue with me about facts, actual facts. Everybody knows turning thirteen is a gigantic marker, the way old people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or, for the Vietnamese, where they were the day Saigon fell.

What were my parents thinking, dumping me in a place where teenagers do not exist, where every single person eats some form of rice for every single meal, where napping is a public event, where perfectly well-behaved kids are banished from real conversations?

The worst part? No one here would listen to my many, many, many complaints. No one even complains.

A
nh Minh walks me back to Bà. After blabbermouth Út went off somewhere, the older girls giggled and also left. Anh Minh looked longingly after one of them. He reminds me of myself. The sassy hip-shaker is like Montana, and Chị Lan is like HIM, the one who gets to choose. Why is my most secret heartache being replicated in a love triangle in a tiny Vietnamese village?

The sun, still scorching, is sinking toward midafternoon, almost wake-up time. We pass back through the market and, like in a cartoon, handkerchiefs rise and fall over the faces of snoring merchants. At first, it’s embarrassing to witness something so private, but after a while it makes perfect sense that people who spend all their waking moments together would also synchronize their naps.

I wonder if anyone ever feels lonely here. Earlier, when we walked by a four-story house, I heard Út say if she were home alone in such a huge house she would be scared of ghosts. Strange coming from Út, who seems impervious to everything. But I guess if you’re used to constant company, that much silent space would be creepy.

As we enter my courtyard, the cell rings. Anh Minh bows and leaves.

“What took so long?” is Mom’s sleepy hello. My muscles instantly relax. Yes, the perfect person to complain to.

“You have no idea how crazy busy they keep me here. Every second, something is expected of me. People are everywhere. I never have a second alone. There’s no outlet in the house, so I about died of a heatstroke going to charge the phone.”

“Let’s start over. How are you, sweetie?”

“Terrible. I couldn’t be worse. It’s hot and muggy and I’ve got enough mosquito bites to do an elaborate dot-to-dot, and my pants are all wrong and my sandals are all wrong and my clingy shirt makes me hotter and I don’t know why I’m being punished.”

“Mai.”

There she goes again, saying my name in a way that can’t help but be soothing. I don’t want to be soothed.

“Mai, love. What is it?”

“Everything. I hate it here. Why did you make me come? It’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong. I can’t help that Bà’s husband got taken away in THE WAR. Why is it on me to make it right? I’m just a kid. I want to go home.”

“Mai, deep breath in, now out. I’m sorry, I should have packed long, loose pants and lots of anti-itch ointment. But I know a trick for mosquito bites. Rub your own saliva on the bump to counteract the anticoagulant that the mosquito released when it bit you. But it must be your own to stop the itch, not someone else’s.”

“Mother! I would never slobber my spit over myself! Why would you even suspect I might use someone else’s?”

“My, you’re in a mood. Is this about him? Is he with Montana?”

My insides turn to liquid, surging a gigantic tidal wave of nausea into my throat. I literally drop the phone. The ground spins. I plop down on the dirt and squeeze my head between my knees. Why does my life have to suck this much? How did Mom guess that I liked someone? Have I been visibly pining? I’m afraid to ask. I breathe in and out, in and out. The phone is getting dusty. I pick it up and polish it; after all, it’s my one link to real life. I stand up. Mom is still yakking on and on.

“At times, being away is the best test. If he’s truly worthwhile, sweetie, he’ll be here when you get back. It’s a test for you and Montana too. What do you want in a friend? Besides, you have a lifetime for boys, why not enjoy your summer with Bà and see what will surprise you?”

The only thing worse than Mom guessing my most private, private thought is her using every cliché to advise me about it. Did I talk in my sleep? How does she guess exactly what I’ve been thinking, even when I didn’t want to think it? What do I want in a friend? If that question doesn’t breed a panic attack, I don’t know what will. First, bossy Út asked if Montana would put my happiness before hers, now this pep talk from Mom. I wish people would stop stomping around in my head.

“Mai? Say something, help me stay awake. It’s about midnight here. I’ve had you on automatic dial every hour since we last talked. Are you all right? Say something.”

“Something.”

“Now, now. When you’re ready to talk, I’m here. I’m always here even if I’m not right next to you. I got international calling plans so we can talk anytime.”

“I hear Bà,” I lie, but it’s about the time when Bà would wake and want her tea.

“What if we talk again when I’m up? That’s our only real chance because tomorrow will be a trying day in court. That should be around ten at night for you. Can you stay up?”