The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (8 page)

Hoa felt fine on the boat. It was the bus that made her sick. The curving Malay roads, the potholes and dips, the freezing blasts from the air conditioner, the bursts of static booming from the bus radio. Hoa curled herself into the vinyl seat, resting her head on the cool window. She vomited in her paper bag several times, and then had to use Hung's bag.

During the six-hour layover at the airport, Hoa spread herself out on the carpeted floor to rest, though the lounge chairs—gray, soft, and new-looking—seemed luxurious. But she was afraid if she sat upright any longer, she'd grow sick again. There was nothing else in her stomach to throw up.

Ngoan regularly returned to Hoa's side with a fresh damp paper towel to press against her forehead. Phung urged her to drink water and rehydrate. The children offered to sing some songs for her, but she asked them to go play elsewhere and not make too much noise.

After a long nap, Hoa awoke to Hung sitting on the floor next to her. She slowly sat up, her hair brushing over her cheeks. Her bun had undone itself while she slept.

“Are we leaving soon?” she asked.

Hung nodded, offering her more water.

“Sanh was here,” he said.

Her head swung in both directions. “Where?”

“He's gone now,” he said. “He was only here for a minute. They were passing through to their gate. He didn't want to wake you since you were so sick.”

“You should have woken me,” Hoa muttered. The tension crept back inside her body. It wasn't something to get upset over. He simply walked by, no time to stop and chat. She'd already said her good-byes to Sanh and Lum. Still, everyone but she had the opportunity for another hug, another kiss.

Hoa slumped to the floor, wanting to sleep, wanting to wake in Paris, when all of this would be over; no more waiting, thinking, regretting.

“He won't survive there,” Hung said. “He will realize his mistake.”

Hoa concentrated on slow, steady breaths, in, out, as Hung's words drifted over her head, lulling her back to sleep.

 

1980

Kim-Ly Vo
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

… Sanh was very angry with me. The whole family was. Mother Truong refused to kiss me good-bye. Only Trinh was kind, she cried about how she'd miss me. If I was ever tempted to go to France, it was because of her. But I remembered you, our family, and I knew we were making the correct choice.

After we left his relatives at the airport, my husband was so angry. He wouldn't even watch Lum so I could use the restroom. I had to take him with me. When I returned, Sanh was still glaring at me.

“I hope you're happy now,” he said. “Now we've left my family, too. Now we are all alone.”

I am making him sound bad. He isn't, believe me. I felt sorry for him. I truly did. Because now he knew how I felt, when he asked me to make the same sacrifice with you.…

Tuyet Truong

Tustin, California, USA

 

Chapter Two

CHERRY

L
ITTLE
S
AIGON
, C
ALIFORNIA
, 1988

Improve: her mother's favorite word when they were growing up, because in America, when you improve, you get anything you want. So the only problem her mother could see was that Cherry didn't want it enough.

What was
it
? Anything worthwhile, anything her smarty-pants cousin Dat had. Certainly not what she did ask for (a Nintendo, a trip to Disneyland, a golden retriever puppy).
It
could be a stellar report card, a tidier bedroom, better manners.… Once the complaining started, Cherry had long since learned to stop listening. But what Cherry could hear, because it was so rare, was the occasional compliment, the surprise interruptions in her lectures. Her mother could not deny her daughter's one blessed feature, the one prospect Cherry hadn't destroyed,
not yet
: her memory.

Even at the young, useless age of eight, Cherry could impress the adults with her memory. She could parrot television and radio commercials word for word, skim a brochure and recite its contents weeks later, remember directions to a restaurant or store they'd driven to only once before. Cherry's father called her his little navigator. He claimed it was the Truong gene: Cherry's grandfather in France also possessed a photographic memory, as did her Uncle Yen and cousin Xuan. But instead of being impressed by the practical benefits, Cherry's mother declared them a waste. She preferred that Cherry focus her brainpower on more useful subjects, like her studies. The only thing worse than a dumb kid was a lazy kid. And Cherry's mother was convinced her daughter's laziness was ruining her potential.

Outside the nail salon, Cherry jealously imagined Lum roaming the shopping plaza, buying candy, reading comic books, enjoying the precious after-school hours before dinner and bedtime. The neon signs along the three-story salmon-colored strip mall flickered and brightened, signaling five o'clock. Her play time ticked away with each wasted breath.

“It's going to get dark soon,” Cherry said, digging her left heel across the rose-speckled linoleum squares. Lum had been released an hour ago, probably already through several dollars' worth of tokens at the arcade. Around the corner, the other girls had likely finished chalking a labyrinth of hopscotch squares. They'd start the game without her, again. Even if she left now, she'd have to sit on the blacktop and wait until they allowed her in, which rarely happened. They knew better. They'd lost to Cherry too many times during the summer.

“Next time get your work done earlier,” her mother said.

“But it's done.”

“You have a social studies test tomorrow, remember?”

Cherry exhaled sharply, trying not to look frustrated, because she knew her mother hated that. “I already read over the chapter.”

“What did you and your father agree on? You need to read it over twice and then I quiz you.”

“She looks so sad,” said Auntie Hien, blinking her spiderweb eyelashes. She usually came in on Wednesdays, the slow day at the salon, to allow Cherry's mother to practice on her nails. “Duyen will be here soon. She'll keep you company.”

“She is doing poorly in her social studies class,” her mom muttered in Vietnamese. “Too much playing. We have to be more disciplined with her.”

“I can understand you,” Cherry said. “Every word.”

“Go reread your chapter,” her mother said, raising her chin, a level-one warning.

Slumping in her seat, Cherry opened her textbook. She pressed her hand against the oily, fingerprinted pages, trying to refocus on the faded, uninspiring, unending blocks of print that lacked the clean precision of her math book's equations and fractions. Inevitably, her eyes wandered above the book, to the rows and rows of red and purple nail polish bottles dotting the shelf. Fifty-six from her last count on Monday. Behind the colors, a dusty black cassette player crooned a Vietnamese pop version of the Righteous Brothers' “Unchained Melody.” She thought of the children in Saigon: hungry, dirty, and sleeping on the corrupt, lawless streets.
That is suffering,
her mother would remind her if Cherry ever dared complain about schoolwork.
What you are doing is a gift.

While most of their classmates went home and watched television or played video games after school, she and her brother had to come to the salon until their mother's shift ended. When Lum turned twelve, he tried to convince their parents that they could stay at the house alone. Their father disagreed. Not until Lum's grades got better.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. When their mother announced her transfer to the recently opened nail salon in Tranquillity Buddha Plaza, Cherry and Lum celebrated. It was the newest plaza in Little Saigon, across from the Lucky Tortoise mini-mall. The new salon had large photographs of Hawaiian and Caribbean beaches on the orange walls, fancy purple pedicure stations, and a large waiting area full of year-old
Cosmopolitan
and
People
magazines.

The plaza was even better, with floor-to-ceiling windows, a two-fountain courtyard where little kids could play, and an elevator when they felt too tired from the six-block walk from school to climb the stairs. The first floor had an arcade, a Sanrio stationery store, and a bakery that sold Chinese doughnuts and pâté baguettes. The second floor offered less fun: jewelry shops, insurance companies, the nail salon. Most of the merchants' kids played together in the employee parking lot behind the building.

Cleverly enough, their mother even ruined Tranquillity. Cherry hardly ever finished her homework in time to get in any decent playing.

The store's telephone rang and her mother left to answer it. Cherry watched her mother's back carefully. Auntie Hien fanned her wet nails and flashed her teeth.

“Duyen is late,” Cherry said, holding up the plastic waterproof watch Lum had won for her at last year's Tet Festival. “The ballet school is only a ten-minute drive away and her lesson ended at four-thirty. Should we call the police?”

“I think she's all right,” Auntie Hien said. “Uncle Viet is picking her up. He said he also needed to pick up his friend. They'll be here soon.”

“How far away is his friend?” Cherry liked to approximate the driving distance of any location from Little Saigon.

“I don't know where Khanh is.”

“Khanh?” Cherry repeated, recalling the woman's spiral-permed hair and lime-green plastic earrings. “Are she and Uncle Viet getting married?”

Auntie Hien laughed. “No, they're just friends.”

“Is it because Khanh is already married?”

That made her aunt laugh harder, which Cherry couldn't understand. It didn't seem funny to her. When her mother returned, Auntie Hien repeated the question, much to Cherry's dismay.

Her mom replaced the polish bottles on the display shelf before bending over at her waist, her nose nearly touching Cherry's. A level-four warning. Smelling the dried plum candies on her warm breath, Cherry instinctively tucked in her chin. “Where did you hear that?” her mother asked.

“I don't remember.” Duyen had told her. She had overheard Uncle Viet and Uncle Chinh talking after the family dinner the week before.

“Tell Mommy the truth. Were you being nosy?”

“No,” she said, wiggling out of her mother's intense gaze.

Her mother pulled back, eyes narrow and lethal. “You can't eavesdrop on people like that. It can get you into trouble.”

“But I never—”

“Adults can say silly things. Don't mind them.”

Cherry pretended to return to her reading, but when her mom and Auntie Hien walked to the back room, her gaze drifted out the window again. Some of the other merchants were closing up early, typical on slow Wednesdays. It took several minutes for them to lock their front doors and affix the security gates. The floor vibrated as the merchants walked down the circular stairwell. Only six months old, the plaza had already begun to look shabby. After its grand opening, Cherry used to walk around and count the oil stains in the parking spaces and the cigarette butts and gum splotches on the sidewalks, recording them in a graph-paper notebook for future analysis. But her mother quickly squashed that project. She didn't like Cherry touching all those germs.

Uncle Viet's Honda Civic pulled into the parking space below the window. Her uncle made a big show of hopping out of the driver's side, jogging around the car, and opening Khanh's door. Her thank-you kiss reminded Cherry of the kisses performed regularly on her grandmother's soap operas. They sauntered up the stairs, hand in hand, with Duyen following behind.

What Cherry wanted to say to her mom earlier was that it only made sense that Khanh had been married before. Khanh talked about her daughter, who lived back in Vietnam, all the time. But if she'd said that, then her mother probably would have gotten more suspicious, more mad.

Khanh looked younger than most moms—she was skinny and wore teenager clothes like leggings and short denim skirts. As a mother, Khanh was probably very relaxed. She didn't seem like a big yeller. She wouldn't care if her daughter received a B on a spelling test or wanted to sleep in for a few minutes because she kept hearing frightening noises in her bedroom the night before that prevented her from falling asleep. She'd probably be her daughter's best friend.

Uncle Viet pushed open the door, allowing Khanh and Duyen to walk ahead. The adults stopped in front of her mother and Auntie Hien to talk, waving to Cherry. Her cousin, still in her black leotard and pink tights, sauntered over to Cherry, sucking on a yum-yum pop.

Duyen sat on the table, dangling a wrapped yum-yum pop in front of her cousin. Cherry snatched it before her mother could notice. “They kissed when they thought I wasn't looking,” Duyen said. “But I saw it. They used tongues.”

“Gross,” Cherry declared, flipping her textbook closed.

“That's what adults do, dummy. Your boyfriend is going to make you do that, if you ever have one.”

Cherry wrinkled her nose as she ripped off the candy wrapper. “Is she coming to Grandmother's birthday party?” The true test of her uncle's seriousness with a lady friend was if he felt brave enough to introduce her to Grandmother Vo.

“Uncle Viet isn't that stupid,” Duyen said. Her hair was pulled up in two buns, so she looked like a teddy bear. Cherry once asked her mom to do that hairstyle for her, but she said it would make Cherry's face look rounder. “Grandmother's ready to move again.”

Cherry looked over to their moms, who were shaking their heads at Uncle Viet. “What happened?”

“What else? She got into another fight with Auntie Tri. She plans to move out after the party.”

“Where's she gonna move to?”