The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (9 page)

They stared at each other.

“You have the extra bedroom,” Duyen pointed out.

“But Grandmother likes your family better,” Cherry said.

This happened every few months. Cherry's mom claimed Grandmother Vo didn't want to overburden any of her children, so she took turns living in each of their houses. It was an honor to care for one's elders. So why every time before leaving a house did Grandmother need to scream and swear at all of them? Cherry had never heard anyone with a voice like her grandmother's. Even with the door closed, under blankets and pillows, fingers stuffed in both ears, Grandmother could not be ignored.

Her mother said it wasn't fair to compare grandmothers, but Grandmère in France never screamed like that. Her mom said Grandmère never had to—she'd always gotten what she wanted. Grandmother Vo had suffered a lot in Vietnam, and though her mother never went into detail about it, she seemed to blame Grandmère and Grandpère. Though what they could have done all the way from France, Cherry never understood.

“It's not that bad,” Duyen said. “She gives me and Dat money for candy when we hear the ice cream truck.”

“Really?”

“She doesn't with you?”

“No!”

The pluses of living with Grandmother: Lum and Cherry could go straight home after school, since Grandmother could watch them. She let them drink strawberry milk as an after school snack, sometimes even two glasses. She'd remind them to finish their homework, but she never checked it or kept them from going outside to play with the neighbors.

The minuses: If Grandmother was in a mood, she'd assign them household chores, and then criticize their lazy, sloppy work. If her soap operas were on television, they couldn't watch their cartoons. She'd tell her grandchildren that they walked too loudly up and down the stairs, even though the steps were carpeted and she couldn't hear anything. She answered the phone with a loud
Allo?
and if the caller spoke English, she'd simply hang up. She complained of the temperature in the house, always too hot or too cold. And if she was especially cranky, she'd accuse them of neglect, too stingy to properly care for her, after all she'd done for them. She wasn't nice to anyone, not even to her own daughters, unless company visited. Weren't you supposed to be nice to your own family?

“Grandmother went through many bad times in Vietnam,” Cherry's mother said.

“But that isn't our fault,” Cherry said.

Her mother clicked her tongue, a sideways glance. “You are too young to criticize.”

Still, even their mother was relieved when Grandmother moved out last summer, her belongings packed in two tortoise-green suitcases and carried away by the next family in line to take her in. Grandmother had wept into her flowered silk handkerchief, sniffling wet kisses into everyone's necks, like she was moving out of the country instead of a few blocks over. She promised their mother that things would be better living at Aunt Tri's house. Before getting in the car, she slipped Cherry and Lum money under her magenta scarf.

“Dat says she's probably going to live with your family,” Duyen said, crunching down on her candy, too impatient to wait for the bubblegum middle.

“Other grandmothers live in retirement homes,” Cherry said.

“We're not that American,” Duyen declared.

*   *   *

Cherry and Lum's parents said they should feel lucky to have their own home, to not have to live in an apartment or duplex.

“People living above or below you, sharing your walls, no thanks,” her mother said. It took their parents four years after moving to America to buy their own home. Every refugee family wanted to make the switch from rent to mortgage. Homeowners couldn't get cheated by landlords (like cousin Linh's family), or get kicked out with no notice (Uncle Viet).

When Cherry and her cousins played MASH on scratch paper, nobody wanted to live in a Shack or an Apartment. They wanted House. They dreamed of Mansion. In a Mansion, Cherry imagined they could all live together again. Each family could have its own wing, so they wouldn't argue over bathroom or kitchen privileges, and they could all come together for meals in a large dining room.

The Vo relatives all lived in apartments. Auntie Hien's family in the Oceanside Pavilion (it was a lie—the beach was at least twenty minutes away) a few blocks over, Auntie Tri's family and Uncle Viet in Brookhurst Court behind the Asian Palace Shopping Center. They hadn't lived in America as long as Cherry's family—only a few years. Cherry remembered when they all lived together in her parents' house, a family in each bedroom, the biggest sleepover she ever attended. But it grew too crowded, her father said—too much bickering between the adults—and within a year, the Vos had moved into their own places.

Except Grandmother. So it made sense for her to stay with Cherry's family, since they had the most space: four bedrooms (one officially a den), two floors, a patio backyard, concrete porch and yellowing lawn in front. It looked like every other house on the block, except for the color—theirs was brown and yellow, while the eleven others were various shades of blue and gray.

Their home was within walking distance of the elementary school, although Cherry didn't like to walk. She had to pass the park where the high school kids hung out. They threw their cigarette butts into the sandlot like it was their personal ashtray. The boys cut their hair so short they looked bald, and wore gold earrings in both ears. The girls dyed their hair orange and red. In the sun, their hair sometimes radiated blond. Cherry thought it looked pretty, so grown-up.

“It looks cheap,” her mother said. “If you ever do anything like that, I'll cut off all your hair. I didn't raise you to look like a punk.”

“Your mommy is protective of you,” her father explained. “Sometimes she doesn't know how to say it in a nice way.” They were supposed to understand their mother's stress. Even though their parents were still married, Cherry and Lum's mother claimed she felt like a single mother because their father worked the night shifts at the water treatment plant. Every evening after dinner, Cherry and Lum followed their mother from door to door, window to window, to confirm they were all locked and sealed. Bells from their old toys were rubber-banded to the door handles. Her mother didn't want anyone to know they were home alone, without a man.

“In the refugee camps,” Cherry's mother said, “we had no protection. If they wanted to steal something from your tent, they did, and there was nothing you could do about it. It traumatized your Auntie Trinh from France.”

“You don't need to scare the children,” their father said, then turned to Cherry. “Just lock the doors. They can't come in unless you let them.”

But after talking with the other manicurists at the salon who'd heard of some recent home invasions around Little Saigon, their mother realized deadbolts and toy bells were not enough. To keep the punks off their streets, their mom brought home a supermarket pamphlet on neighborhood watch groups and decided to form her own security system. She called every family on the block to invite them over for a potluck. Lum and Cherry helped to arrange
cha gio
and
banh beo
next to a peacock arrangement of brochures on community crime watching. Because her mother's
banh beo
was rather famous, the meeting was packed. Every family went home that evening with a red sticker of the winking dog wearing a detective's trench coat to post on their windows and front doors, their united intolerance against crime. They all agreed to keep their eyes open for anything suspicious—anyone funny looking. They wouldn't allow their neighborhood to become contaminated like other sections of Little Saigon.

“Does this mean we can go to the park by ourselves now?” Lum asked as they picked up the soggy paper plates and wrinkled cups after the meeting.

“That isn't in our domain,” their mom said from the kitchen. “We can only patrol the block.”

“In our old apartment,” Lum said, stopping in front of the living room window, “we had a playground in the complex. And a pool, too.”

“I don't remember it,” Cherry said. She peered outside, wondering what Lum was glaring at. It was too dark to see anything. Some of the neighbors still stood out on the sidewalk talking, but she could only see their flashlights.

They watched the last of their neighbors leave, returning to their homes, their flashlights hopping along the black asphalt. So dark, too dark. Cherry quickly pulled the curtains closed. Lum had to be wrong. It didn't matter if the apartment had a pool or a playground. Without sunlight, nothing mattered but staying inside with the doors locked, safe from the bad people that came out at night. The neighborhood watch would help; so would extra deadbolts. But they couldn't replace their father.

*   *   *

The day before Grandmother's birthday party, their father announced that they planned to invite Grandmother to move in.

“Didn't we just have her?” Lum asked.

“Is this how you are going to treat us when we get old?” he asked, tapping his wooden chopsticks against the platter of ginger-smothered green beans. “Caring for your parents is a privilege, not a burden.”

Something was up. Lum told her so later that night when they were supposed to be sleeping and their parents were downstairs in the family room watching
Dynasty
. He planned to eavesdrop on their parents and investigate.

“Let me come, too,” Cherry pleaded.

“You're too noisy,” Lum insisted.

She protested, but Lum only bossed her around when he had good reasons. He shared his toys and let her play with his friends—not like their cousin Dat, who teased Duyen with stories about Thai pirates hiding outside her bedroom window. Bullies never bothered Cherry because they knew Lum would come after them. He was the tallest boy in junior high—already five foot seven inches. Their father said it was the American cow milk.

“If only we knew this in Vietnam!” he said. “We'd all shoot up like him.”

When she was younger, Cherry used to think their father was the tallest man in the world. While at a department store one afternoon, a man with a cowboy hat stood behind them in line at the register. Their father barely reached the cowboy's shoulder. The realization startled, and then saddened her. She didn't like to think of their father as short. Lum was only twelve and already taller. Cherry wondered if she would surpass him, too.

After several minutes, Lum slipped into his sister's room, a birthday morning grin on his face. “They're asking Grandmother for money.”

Grandmother Vo, everyone suspected, was rich. Though she didn't have a bank account or a job, they whispered about the gold Grandmother Vo had supposedly sneaked out of Vietnam in the stitching of her clothing. Families from the neighborhood would visit their grandmother asking for—or repaying—small loans. Dat bragged he once saw Grandmother Vo stuffing bills into her mattress. She shared with the family when she wanted to; paying for Uncle Chinh's tuition at business school, and helping Aunt Tri's family with bills when Uncle Bao was fired from his dishwashing job. There were, it seemed, benefits to living with Grandmother.

“Why do we need money?” Cherry asked, sitting up in bed.

“Dad wants to open up a bookstore,” Lum said. “That empty space in Tranquillity by the arcade? He wants to buy it and sell Vietnamese books and magazines.”

“What about the water treatment plant?”

“He's tired of working there. Too much overtime and they're not paying him enough. Besides, this way, he can be his own boss.”

Just like their mother said. Even adults had to continue trying to improve themselves. A store of their own! Cherry relished the possibilities. An after school place they might actually like. No more polish-remover fumes or older customers fussing over them. Their father would be around.

Their parents used to talk about having their own business, but when it came to either a down payment for a house or a store, they chose a home. They talked about their own store as a faraway fantasy, like they would with dream vacations to the Bahamas or Mexico.

“Did you know your Grandpère used to manage a very fancy hotel in Nha Trang?” their father once told her. “The best resort in town. All the dignitaries came to stay there. It was a prestigious position, but he always wanted to buy his own hotel, a business he could pass down to his family.”

“Could I have worked there?” Cherry asked.

“Of course,” he said. “It's always better to work with family.”

*   *   *

By the time they arrived at the party, most of the children had escaped. A stream of kids stomped down the balloon-laced staircase of Aunt Tri's second-story apartment, brushing past her family. Cherry fought the urge to hand off the tray of tofu rolls to her parents and run after them. Family parties happened this way: you could never have fun immediately.

“You must greet your grandmother first,” their father reminded them. First thing after taking shoes off. No drink or food, no bathroom stop. Respect had to be paid to the guest of honor.

The heavy aroma of Aunt Tri's crispy
banh xeo
lured them through the door. Purple and blue crinkle streamers and seventeen balloons hung on the walls and ceilings. Aunt Tri had pulled back the pea-green drapes to make room for six hanging paper lanterns decorated with dragonflies and butterflies. Shiny multicolored confetti lay sprinkled over the worn orange carpet. A silver-framed black-and-white photograph of Grandfather Vo, who died back in Vietnam before any of the grandkids were born, sat in the center of the coffee table, draped in a red silk tablecloth. The remaining shelf space on the ancestors' altar was crammed with incense sticks, red envelopes, and bowls of fruit. Lum dutifully squeezed their own family's fruit bowl onto the edge of the table, pushing the incense holder against the portrait.