Listen, Slowly (10 page)

Út’s sister, Chị Lan, speaks. Her voice, which I’m hearing for the first time, is as clear and pretty as she is. Anh Minh stands taller while translating for her. “If everyone is unique, how can one stand out?”

“I guess then you’d have to be superunique, like beyond the beyond. If everyone is dyeing their shoelaces to represent their true selves, pink for romantic, baby blue for innocent, fuchsia for independent, raspberry for countercultural, then maybe you’d paint your shoes or attach buttons or glue on beads to stand out.”

Út just has to butt in. Translation: “Who decides pink is for stomach-coiling feelings and fuchsia for self-freedom? If everyone agrees on the meanings of those colors, how is that unique?” She sits there rubbing her buzz cut like it’s a fashion statement. Oh, she’s so annoying.

I blind her with my braces. “You’re unique when you’re the first one to do something unique.”

Anh Minh barely has my comeback translated when Út already has her mouth open. “How can you possibly know if you are the first one? At your school? In the world? No one is unique if everyone is tryin’ to be unique. If a male frog is croakin’ a special pattern to attract a female, the act itself is mundane because every male frog has a song but its pattern is particular to that frog. Yet it is rather impossible to ascertain that no other frog anywhere else has tried the exact pattern.”

Bet you she’s the type to raise her hand in class and everyone groans.

I’m not backing down. “When my friend Montana wore a thong to class the first day of sixth grade, everyone thought she was unique and started copying her. Not just our grade, but the whole school, then everywhere. I’m not kidding, everybody wears them in America.”

Okay, not even close to everyone, especially not me, but who would know here? I can say anything about life in America and they’d believe me. I’ve appointed myself an expert on America.

Many are asking,
“What did she say?”
I understand but have to look blank. This clandestine double-language trick is exhausting.

Anh Minh seems panicky. “Miss, are you talkin’ about the truly revealin’ undergarment of ladies? I don’t know if there’s a Vietnamese name for it.”

I try to help. “Could you ask Cô Tâm for a pair of panties?”

Anh Minh turns red. He whispers to Cô Tâm and then just leaves. Walks straight out of the house. Hey, can an official, personal translator just blow off his duties? Not professional at all! Fine, I’ll do everything myself. I pull down my capris just a bit to show the top of my panties.
“Có không?”
Have this?

Cô Tâm, looking worried, comes back with a pair: white, big, grade school.

I hold up a pair of scissors and ask with my eyes if it’s okay to cut. Still looking worried, she nods. I must say the Vietnamese are the best hosts in the world. They just want to please you, even if it means ruining obviously brand-new underwear.

I cut two half circles from the cheek-covering part, leaving the unmistakable tree shape of a thong. Then I hem each side. Not even close to perfect stitches, but good enough. I hold it up, ta-da. Massive confusion. Making a point is such work. I’m going to have to do it . . . put on the thong outside my capris to show how it works. The girls just shake their heads.

“They wear tiny underwear on the outside? Is that unique?”

“Why can’t the buttocks be covered?”

“Is this like that yellow-haired singer wearing a bra shaped like two miniature cone hats?”

Ugh, I go in the back and put on the thong under my capris. I come out and pull my pants in tight and point to my butt.
“Không thấy,”
can’t see. They gather around.

“Can’t see what?”
Út says.

“Cái lằn,”
the lines, I almost scream. I spin her around, pull tight her icky man shorts and point to the panty lines. “Yes.” I point to her butt. “No.” I point to mine.

“Why can’t we have lines?”
Út again.

I answer,
“Không sạch,”
not clean. I mean not clean lines, as in you’d want smooth, sleek slopes down your butt cheeks, but my speaking skills only go so far.

Cô Tâm understands.
“Ðúng, sạch hơn,”
yes, it is cleaner.
“Con hiểu tiếng Việt phải không?”
You understand Vietnamese, don’t you?

Did I just give my secret away, over a thong? Noooo, I was waiting to reveal my listening skills, imagining some dramatic scene that would embarrass Út, the ultrapain, like telling everyone that Froggy is actually a toad or, hmmm, what else would annoy a girl who’s forever rubbing her buzz and grinning?

I panic and lie.
“Không,”
no. Not really a lie because speaking at a Tarzan level doesn’t actually count as speaking.

Cô Tâm looks confused, trying to process that I understand enough to answer I don’t understand. She smiles and pats me on the head anyway. Told you, perfect host.

I did it; I got to the mom. She loves me. I point to her mismatched, frumpy, froggy-obsessed daughter.
“Làm?”
Make? Meaning make a thong for Út?

Her mother nods and runs off. I can feel Út’s stare searing through my skull, but I still look straight at her and smile, huge and metal. Cô Tâm comes back with not one pair, but an armful. Each girl begins cutting. The afternoon should pass quickly for me, not so much for you-know-who.

There’s no computer. A whole afternoon spent gnarling my fingers and going blind—for nothing. Add to that the awful truth that I’ve forced a whole group of clean, trusting girls to become self-conscious about lines on their butt cheeks. Each girl is wearing her new thong. Some have embroidered chrysanthemums or orchids around the hems. They took the project way too seriously.

We’re leaving now to go eat
phở
, in celebration of our creations. I started this mess so I have to come along.

On the main dirt path to the open market, we begin picking at our cracks, straighten up, then pick again. I can’t believe I got myself into this. I hate thongs. I hate how they look, how they feel, what they represent. Never have I worn something so tight as to need a thong. But I can’t backtrack now. They think I’m an expert on American girly cleanliness.

I’m making it a point to walk behind Út, who’s really slow. She doesn’t just pick but scratches, wiggles, lifts a leg, and writhes in obvious misery. This is so worth my own suffering. I don’t see how Montana wears them every day. Come to think of it, she did spend most of the time picking at her booty.

Because Út and I lag behind, we’re the only two to see her sister’s best friend, Chị Ngọc, come out of nowhere in a . . . fluffy light-pink skirt! I have to address Lan and Ngọc as Chị to show, you guessed it, r-e-s-p-e-c-t. Just a while ago, Chị Ngọc was wearing flowy silk pants like everyone else. How did she change so fast? She doesn’t see us. Without saying a word, Út and I hide behind dusty leafy bushes on opposite sides of the dirt path.

Chị Ngọc keeps glancing back as if waiting for someone. It can’t be for her best friend, who is way ahead with the group. I hear stomping. Anh Minh comes running up the path, panting, stirring the red dust. I almost sneeze but catch myself just in time. Why is he running? Where did he go after walking out? He’s really panicking.

Chị Ngọc stops. Is she smirking? I know that smirk, all eerie like Montana’s.

“Where is Lan?”
Anh Minh asks.
“I must inform her I have to leave now.”
Anh Minh is sweating and inhaling gulps of dust.

Where’s he going? I’m about to jump out when Chị Ngọc flips her hair. Please, the predictable hair flip. She’s talking to him in a baby voice, all the while tilting her head and twisting a strand of hair around her index finger. Has she been watching bad Hollywood teen movies? Or did the American teen movies copy Asian flirty moves that probably have been around from way back when?

He runs away. Hey, I almost yell, but Chị Ngọc calls out his name in a helpless voice, forcing him to turn around.

She turns and flips up her skirt, exposing two white moons separated by the silky tree trunk. The moons bounce a little. NOOOO!!! I can see Út’s eyeballs about to booong out of their sockets. Anh Minh chokes, stumbles, then runs even faster. Chị Ngọc (should I keep calling her Chị?) fluffs down her skirt and prances along. I notice her heels, not Hollywood heels, but in this land of flip-flops, heels!

I look over at Út. We blink, no doubt trying to wash away the image of white, bouncy moons. Both our faces scrunch up, then we look at each other, really look at each other, and crack up, braces glinting in the sun.

A
nh Minh has been called to the American embassy in Hanoi, this much everyone knows. His parents, who have sold their home and moved in with his aunt and maternal grandparents so all can pitch in to cover what his scholarship doesn’t, talked about their son to his aunt’s cousin. That cousin told someone, who told Cô Hạnh, who acts as the village newspaper.

Now during meals/chewing events, villagers come by to ask Bà if I, being American born, have some magic dust that can poof away their darling’s student visa problems. I wish. If I were so embassy-connected, I’d be home already, parental approval or not.

With Anh Minh gone, Út and I are the only two to have witnessed the moon flashing. Somehow, this unites us. Without actually speaking or even a handshake, we have decided to take down Con Ngọc. BTW, I no longer have to say Chị Ngọc. Út has downgraded her all the way to Con. It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s the equivalent of saying “Yo, Ngọc.”

I’m not even sure what I have against Con Ngọc. I could get righteous and say it’s about taking a stance against deception. But really, Con Ngọc cannot be the first person to use her butt cheeks to maneuver feelings to her advantage. Not classy, but it happens. Or I could say I’m helping out true love, but then true love wouldn’t fall for a moon-flashing trick anyway. Fine, I admit I’m all hyper about Con Ngọc because I have nothing else to do.

Hours here stretch into days and those days disappear into routines and before I know it, I’m hanging out with Út. I wouldn’t say she’s fun but definitely different. I’m so desperate for company I would pass time with Froggy. It’s a bonus that Út comes along.

Besides, focusing on the village triangle keeps me from obsessing about being stuck in this village. If things turn out well here, then the good karma might carry all the way back to Laguna. I know that sounds desperate, but you try being banished to a swampy sauna and not succumb to a little superstition. Did I just release an SAT alert?
Succumb
. It’s a great word. I no longer have the energy to monitor myself. Tap into whatever vocabulary vault you want, brain, I’m just trying to hang on until Anh Minh returns or the detective returns or my life returns.

I wonder what’s keeping the detective from dragging in the overly sensitive guard. Really, who cares if anyone thinks Bà is paying him for information? Doesn’t he want to be paid? I’ve not voiced this out loud because I’m being sensitive.

Dad, still, is waiting to see if his patient will recover. Something about a mom letting her toddler eat real rice instead of
cháo
too soon after the surgery and now the palate has healed with grains of rice stuck inside the roof of the mouth. Mom has hired scouts to hike into the mountains, get updates, then hike back to where there’s Wi-Fi to send her reports. She can arrange that, but she’s as helpless as we all are in getting the guard to appear.

Thank goodness for the fourteen-hour time difference because one of us is always sleepy, so our texts are short. I text that I’m hanging in there (sort of), that I’m eating well (too well), that I’m helping Bà (who’s in easy, quiet mode), that I’m staying busy (plotting a love story, not the most brilliant way to spend time, but I don’t have many choices), that I miss her dearly (which causes an avalanche of smiley faces in reply). My final text always uses the SAT word for the day in a sentence, which is also the signal for my brain to forget the word.

My mind is supercooperative these days. I’ve willed it to put Montana and HIM on pause. I had no idea I was so powerful, but so far, I’ve only panicked three times. I’ve got a bet going with myself. If Anh Minh and Chị Lan do get together, I’ll initiate a real conversation with HIM when I get home. Any other ending, I’ll have to think about letting HIM go. Not that HE was ever mine, but HE has been ultrareal in my mind.

We know where Anh Minh is, we can guess what he’s wearing (blue pants/white shirt, the self-imposed uniform of any boy here who opens a book), we also have detailed reports on what he’s eating (phone calls from maybe-relatives in Hanoi).

But no one knows when he’s coming back. It’s been four long days.

Anh Minh doesn’t have a cell phone. Út, subbing as my translator, is determined to email him. That’s why she needs me. It’s okay for me to email my official translator, but what reason would Út have? Appearances, proper, improper, the rules are endless.

Turns out, Út has been studying English since first grade. She likes to memorize grammar books. No comment. So she’s reading fluently in English, but when it comes to speaking, I can’t understand one word she says. Her Vietnamese-born English teacher studied French first and thinks it’s classy to pronounce everything with a French accent.
Conversation
turns into “con-va-SA-see-ong,” and
iodine
becomes “ee-OR-dean,” which came up in a panicky moment when Froggy hurt his leg. But that’s another story.

Even without understanding her English, I get Út because she talks to herself in Vietnamese, like a lot. It’s not my fault I have the superpower to hear Vietnamese. Út keeps mumbling,
“He has the luck to be in Hà Nội
.
One trip there, that’s all I need, one trip.”

What’s so great about that moped-insane, horn-obsessed, body-congested, nostril-bruising city?

Út, though, is a remarkable speller with perfect handwriting. So, as long as she writes things down, I get it, although it’s still fastest when she talks to herself.

She writes, “We need Anh Minh to confess to sister. His feelings and her feelings are truth.”