The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (48 page)

“But you both have jobs,” Cherry says. “I have school.”

“They'll be there when we return,” Cam says, opening her eyes and spotting Cherry's doubtful expression. “They
will
.”

After they've had enough sun, they begin swimming back to the
Minh Quang
. There is no rush, so they float on their backs, admiring the bright blue of the cloudless, open sky. The children are out on the deck, and Cherry waves at them, thinking that lunch must be ready. They stand at the edge of the junk and one of the boys struggles with something in his arms. Cherry floats over on her stomach, treading water, trying to determine what it is. Then a flutter of papers drops from his arms and off the side of the boat. Another. And another. The children are yelling, and one of their mothers emerges on the deck. She roughly yanks at the boy's arm, pulling him back from the junk's edge. In his other hand is Cherry's camera. He was trying to take a picture of them.

The yellowed envelopes scatter across the top of the water, fanning out like schools of fish. For a brief moment, they stand out bright and clear in the jade-green bay. Xuan and Cam swim ahead of her toward the soaking letters. But Cherry can already feel them growing heavy, sinking, sinking to the bay floor.

 

Acknowledgments

This book belongs to many people.

Thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Washington State University, and California College of the Arts for their support of the research and writing of this novel.

Thanks to Dorian Karchmar, for her insight and quick thinking, to Nichole Argyres, who often understood my characters and plots better than I did, and to Laura Chasen, for having the answers to any and every question that I had.

Thanks to my family and friends, who rallied me through the many versions of this book. Especially AT and Teresa Phan, Andrew and Hannah Phan, Terry and Patricia Shears, Ellen Lee, Anu Manchikanti, Sharon Ongerth, Vu Tran, Alex Kuo, Joan Burbick, and Augusta Rohrbach. To Julie Thi Underhill, for her beautiful pictures and the elegant redesign of my Web site.

And to my life partner, Matt Shears. Your compassion and wisdom is laced throughout these chapters, which you have read and reread for the last seven years. I am honored to share my life, children, and writing with you.

 

A
LSO BY
A
IMEE
P
HAN

We Should Never Meet

 

About the Author

AIMEE PHAN's story collection
We Should Never Meet
was named a Notable Book by the Kiriyama Prize in fiction and a finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards. A recent National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, Aimee is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in
The New York Times, USA Today,
and
The Oregonian,
among others. Born and raised in Orange County, California, she now teaches writing and literature at the California College of the Arts.

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE REEDUCATION OF CHERRY TRUONG.
Copyright © 2012 by Aimee Phan. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Phan, Aimee.

The reeducation of Cherry Troung : a novel / Aimee Phan.—1st ed.

       p.    cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-32268-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-6247-6 (e-book)

  1.  Vietnamese Americans—Fiction.   2.  Orange County (Calif.)—Fiction.   3.  Refugees—Fiction.   4.  Extended families—Fiction.   5.  Family secrets—Fiction.   6.  Vietnam—Fiction.   7.  Paris (France)—Fiction.   8.  Malaysia—Fiction.   9.  Domestic fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3616.H36R44 2012

813'.6—dc22

2011041346

e-ISBN 9781429962476

First Edition: March 2012