The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (33 page)

Hoa smiled again, relieved. “Relationships when you are too young can cause a lot of waste in your heart.”

“Did you have boyfriends when you were my age?”

“The only young men I knew besides your grandpère were family. We did not socialize like you and your cousins do now.” She sometimes felt grateful for this. She did not enjoy watching Cam suffer these last few years, and disliked how the Bourdains snubbed their family every Sunday at Mass, all due to Petit Michel's callousness. She hated how secretive Xuan acted with his own relationships, never bringing anyone home, only discussing his studies. Neither of them showed any inclination toward a marriage anytime soon. Perhaps Xuan and Cam could use some guidance. True, Hoa had reservations against arranged marriages after her own, which was why her two younger sons chose their own wives. But finding a partner, a suitable partner, especially in a country like France, could be a lonely prospect.

Cherry fingered the crocheted yarn in Hoa's lap. “Did you ever write letters to Grandpère? He was asking for his mail during lunch.”

Hoa managed not to cringe. “I've been with him every day since I was seventeen years old. We never needed to write letters.”

“Aunt Trinh said she never saved Uncle Yen's letters.”

Hoa remained silent as Cherry continued to play with the stitching.

“I guess it's not like she wants to remember that time or anything,” Cherry said.

“No,” Hoa tentatively admitted. “None of us—”

“Lan!” Hung screamed from the bedroom.

“Who's Lan?” Cherry asked.

“One of our servants back in Vietnam,” Hoa said, pushing the knitting needles off her lap.

They could smell feces before entering the room. Hung sat up in bed, his face red and sweaty. He stared at them for a second. Hoa wasn't sure if he would scream again or burst into tears.

“I'm sorry,” Cherry said. “I asked him after his lunch. He said he didn't need to go.”

“That's okay, darling,” Hoa said. “There are laundered sheets in the hall closet.” When her granddaughter left, Hoa strode to his bedside and pulled his sheets away. He'd gotten it everywhere. They'd have to wash the blankets and duvet cover.

“If you keep humiliating yourself like this, you're going to drive all our family away,” Hoa said, peeling the soiled clothes from his thin limbs. She wrapped them into a ball and dumped them in the hamper.

“Where are my letters?” Hung asked as she buttoned him into a fresh pajama top. “Why are you hiding them?”

With Hung incontinent, she'd moved her single bed out of the bedroom to sleep in the study. He didn't like her near his desk, though he rarely used it anymore.

“No one writes to you,” Hoa said, closing the top button, though in the past he complained it restricted his breathing. “All of your friends are dead.”

“You're lying.”

“Why would I lie?” Hoa asked tiredly, pulling an adult-size diaper from the top drawer of his dresser.

“I'm not wearing that,” Hung said with dismay.

“You are.” Hoa easily fended off his protesting hands and pulled the diaper around his legs to fit firmly around his seat. One of the few benefits of Hung's ailment: now she was physically stronger than he was.

*   *   *

Lan. She lived with them back in their old house in Nha Trang. The younger sister of another servant, Lan was sixteen and had only stayed for several months before leaving for school. Hoa barely remembered her name until she found it in the letters. She should have realized how odd it was for a servant to have enough money to go away to school. For someone so young, the girl was shamelessly overdramatic, even if these were love letters—always thanking Hung for his patronage, effusing about the literature and criticism she read in school, expressing how she missed and craved his opinions on her poetry. Some of the poems sounded charming, Hoa had to admit, in a youthful kind of way, but their naïveté and optimism were grating, often unbearable to read through to the end. Love that transcends war and time? Devotion of a thousand suns? Hoa thought Hung had better taste than that. Hung and Lan apparently had met several times during Hung's business trips to Saigon. After recording the dates of their correspondence and meetings in her journal, Hoa stacked Lan's letters into a small pile and returned them to Hung's box in his desk. She wedged the box between old issues of Vietnamese newspapers, where none of the children would ever find them.

*   *   *

When the doctors first diagnosed his condition as Alzheimer's, Hung's moods seemed to soften. He smiled more. He picked fewer fights with his sons and teased the grandchildren at the dinner table. But Hoa received no such benefit. Although his eyes brightened around the children, the changing trees in autumn, or a foolish news segment on television, the enchantment dissolved when his gaze found Hoa. Something deeply embedded in his disintegrating brain clicked over, reminding him how he'd treated her, how he should always treat her. At best, he tolerated or ignored her. At worst, his tantrums revealed how much he'd regressed.

The first time Hoa bathed Hung in the washtub (it had been several weeks since his last bath and the smell had become unbearable), he'd smacked her in the face so hard—drawing blood—they were afraid he'd broken her nose.

“What are you doing?” Phung yelled, stepping between his parents. His voice sounded so threatening in their tiny bathroom that even Hoa felt fearful.

“I can bathe myself,” Hung insisted, sullenly cowering behind the toilet, naked. “I'm a grown man.”

“You
do
need her help,” Phung said. “You can't hit her, Father, not ever again.”

While they argued, Hoa turned her back to prepare the bathwater, initially twisting the knobs to find a good balance of hot and cold, then slowly, subtly, closing the hot faucet until the temperature cooled short of comfortable. Hung submerged in the water, his face grimacing in pain, pulling his knees to his chest, his skin puckering with goose bumps, until Hoa finally relented, and turned the hot water on again to mix with his bath.

Hoa wondered if Hung's illness was not a tragedy, but rather, nature's way of correcting their relationship. With his memory fading, finally, finally, her home would be under her own control. She would decide what they would eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, without his approval. She could contribute to conversations with the children and grandchildren without Hung telling her to shut up. With Hung silenced, she could finally utilize her voice.

“What does he remember?” Cherry had asked one afternoon after returning from a shopping trip with Aunt Trinh. Hoa was washing lettuce leaves in the kitchen while Cherry set the table for dinner.

“It is different every day,” Hoa said. “Sometimes he can only remember when your daddy and uncles were little boys in Nha Trang. Other days, he asks for one of your cousin's cakes.”

Her granddaughter stopped in front of one spot at the dining table, chopsticks still in hand. “What if one day his memory doesn't come back?”

“That may happen,” Hoa admitted.

“I guess there are some things worth forgetting,” she said.

“You speak like you've lived long enough to regret things,” Hoa said, a soft smile on her face.

“I was thinking about Auntie Trinh,” her granddaughter said. “She told me about Pulau.”

Hoa turned off the water, the leaves shaking in her wet hands. Cherry looked at her expectantly.

“What did she tell you?” Hoa asked.

“Enough,” Cherry said.

The expression on her granddaughter's face baffled Hoa. Was it horror? Sympathy? Blame? If it were Cam or Xuan's face, Hoa would have known immediately. The ambiguity in a face that should have been familiar disconcerted Hoa. Before she could look deeper, Cherry turned her back to finish dressing the table. Such a simple motion, and the moment slipped away.

“She asked me,” Trinh said, when Hoa found a moment alone with her that evening. “I wasn't going to lie to her.”

The grandchildren had gone out to listen to music with some of Xuan's friends from school. Trinh had brought up the laundry from the basement to fold clothes before going to sleep.

“But she is so young,” Hoa said.

“She is sixteen,” Trinh said, almost laughing as she smoothed out a crease from a clean pillowcase. “I was with Yen by her age.”

“Cherry is different,” Hoa said. “She wasn't born in Vietnam. We don't know what her parents have told her.”

“I don't think it's much,” Trinh said, “or she wouldn't be asking me.”

Hoa's grasp on Hung's sock tightened, imagining the two of them confiding in each other, sharing such secrets on their outings away from the apartment house, away from Hoa. “You need to be careful,” she said.

But of course, her daughter-in-law only chuckled. “If she wants to talk, I'm going to talk. Look what happened to me when I didn't. Aren't things better when we are finally truthful?”

That was debatable. Since confessing all to Yen, to the rest of the family, at her therapist's prompting, Trinh had no choice but to believe that her life was better. Yet, not much changed. Yen, who had always been devoted to her, stayed true to his marriage vows, but Xuan, the poor boy, who had never recovered from all he'd seen his mother endure, remained wary, distant, suspicious. Trinh pretended it didn't bother her, but Hoa knew she felt hurt. Hoa hoped such an estrangement would never split her from one of her sons. Even with Sanh far away, she sought comfort in her freedom to pick up the phone and call him whenever she wanted, as he often reminded her to do. Perhaps she should call him tonight, and ask about Cherry, if there was anything Hoa should know, if there was anything she could do. But that could just needlessly worry her son. Hoa didn't want that. She wanted this to be a good visit for Cherry. She wanted her to come back.

*   *   *

Hoa rarely had the privilege of an afternoon out with her sons, and this excursion was not for pleasure. The tour of a nursing home in a suburb outside the city, was only to look, nothing else. The facilities, swathed in bright shades of violet and yellow, were brochure-worthy. There were fresh flowers in every room. Every floor sparkled with color-coordinated nurses and orderlies and smiling, rose-smelling patients. Yen tried to persuade her to call them residents. These were the residents' bedrooms and this was an assisted-care home, not a hospital. After researching all the facilities in the area, Yen found that this one offered the best services for patients with Alzheimer's. Best of all, they had multilingual staffers, including several physicians and orderlies who spoke Vietnamese.

“Ngoan heard about this place at the community center,” Phung said. “They have other Vietnamese residents so he can make friends.”

“We'll be able to visit him anytime we want,” Yen said. “They even have an extra bed in each room for family to stay overnight.”

“How is that different from our apartment?” Hoa asked. “Where I can sleep in my own bed and not have to take a train every morning?”

“Because there are medical professionals here who can tend to Father,” Yen said. “Instead of waking up every two hours to change his sheets or check his blood pressure, you can have your life back.”

Hoa stopped in front of a bright pink vase of flowers and pulled out a stray wilting lily. “And do what?”

“Whatever you want,” Phung said. “We all agree you deserve that.”

“That's very kind,” she said, placing the dead flower on the counter for a custodian to find. “But this isn't like your wife's illness. He isn't a danger to himself, he just needs my help. I can take care of your father.”

They walked past a common lounge, where several residents were playing card games or reading. One older Vietnamese woman sat in a wheelchair, staring at the television, but not really watching. Her hair bun was not tied properly, likely arranged by a careless nurse. Hoa noticed the woman had slight, but obvious tremors.

“I remember her,” Phung said. “Didn't she used to work at the community center?”

“That's Ba Cuc,” Yen said. “Should we say hello?”

“No,” Hoa said, suddenly afraid. “She will be embarrassed. Let's go home.”

Her sons still wanted to take away some brochures, in case their father's condition worsened, in case Hoa changed her mind. Returning home, they discovered that Hung had barricaded himself in Hoa's bedroom and wouldn't let anyone in. How he mustered the strength to hold the door against three grown women, she had no idea. After listening to several of Hoa's healthy threats through the door, he allowed her in. He wore only a gray T-shirt and green boxer shorts. Her knitting basket was upended, needles and yarn strewn across the room. His desk drawers were pulled open, paper, pens, and photographs littering the floor.

“Where did you go?” Hung asked. “Why did you leave me alone?”

“You weren't alone,” Hoa said. “Our granddaughter and daughters-in-law were with you.”

“You can never leave me,” Hung said. “This is your obligation.”

“I know.” She waited until he was calm enough to walk him back to his bedroom, where he sat in his reading chair. Hoa put a
Paris Match
magazine in front of him.

“I want my letters” Hung said. “I saw them.”

“No, you didn't,” Hoa said, licking her thumb and smoothing some cowlicks in his hair. “They're all gone.”

*   *   *

There was another girl, actually a woman this time, named Ngoc. Her letters were a bit harder to decipher since Hoa couldn't read French, and Ngoc seemed to sprinkle many of the colonial phrases in with the native to flaunt her bilingual education. Hoa thought it a bit pretentious, but supposed Hung found that alluring. Why Hoa even bothered to read the letters instead of immediately tossing them like the others was the discovery that Ngoc knew their sons by name, their interests and strengths, and even deigned to give Hung advice on the children's education. In one especially urgent letter, Ngoc recommended a law school in Paris for the “talented, but distracted Yen.” After several discreet conversations with her son and grandson, Hoa realized that it was indeed the same university Yen had been recruited for years ago, the scholarship that had taken him away from their family, and eventually led all of them to France.