Page 18

Chapter Eighteen

VIVI

Lan and I continue wandering through Ch ? B ? n Thành, my mind preoccupied with Mom and the women in the photograph. Somehow and somewhere along the way, Sài Gòn stopped being a study abroad fluke, a secret I’d pocket forever once I boarded my return flight. I’m really on my way to unfolding Mom’s history. My history.

While I’m lost in thought, my hand accidentally brushes against Lan’s, causing my stomach to do its silly little flip for the umpteenth time today. My heart, as always, runs miles whenever I’m near her. Whenever the lightest touch of her skin meets mine. Everything she says makes my thoughts blurry.

Vivi’s really pretty.

“Are you okay?” Lan asks, concerns dripping from her voice. Her eyes scan my body, and as a response, I stiffen immediately. I bite my cheek, and my ears heat up again as I remember what just happened. How her fingers felt on my exposed back.

I nod, eyes covered by the hair falling on my face.

She reaches to tuck them away, her lips parting. The scent of orchids overwhelms me. “Here, C? Ngan wanted to give you this.”

My jaw drops at the perfectly packaged áo dài I just tried on. “The purple dress? You’re kidding. I can’t take this.”

Lan only rolls her eyes and presses the bundle into my arms again. “It’s not your choice. If you return the áo dài, you’ll offend her.” Seeing my shocked face, she bursts out laughing. “I’m kidding. But don’t return it. Or else she’ll think that you find it ugly.”

“I would never! After what she’s just done for me—”

My phone vibrates, and of course, it’s a call from Mom. I can’t ignore it, or else she’d freak and call me twenty more times before trying the fake number of my Singapore study abroad program and finding out… I’ve been lying.

“Hey, Mom! How are you?”

“Vivi? What are you doing right now?”

Beside me, Lan lingers, eyes looking past me. My stomach recoils. Today was supposed to be just me and her, and I was looking forward to it all this time. Why do I feel like every time I think of Mom, I summon her?

“I’m—um—having lunch. It’s really loud. Can I call you back?” I manage to say back.

“What are you eating?”

A woman screams to my right, causing Lan to whip her head around. “Ch ? t Cha!”

“What was that?”

“Nothing! Cindy just loves watching Vietnamese dramas. She’s doing it again!” I mentally apologize to Cindy and thank her for being the only person I can throw under the bus for almost anything.

The lines on Lan’s forehead deepen. She must think I’m going off the rails. I’ve already told Lan about why I’m not letting Mom know, but it still doesn’t help the fact that I look… ungrateful, and just straight up stupid for lying to my mom on the phone with Lan next to me.

“Well, Mommy just wants to check in on you. Con eating okay? Sleeping okay? Are you sick?” Mom calls me every day and asks the same questions, even though she knows I can fend for myself.

“No, no.” I try covering the phone and speak louder to drown out the Vietnamese being thrown in every direction. “I’m fine. Promise.”

“Mommy miss you.”

My chest tightens. Most of the time, I brush her off when she says she misses me. But this time, I wish I could tell her I do miss her, that I’ve been thinking of Mom ever since arriving in Sài Gòn, and that all I can do is imagine her life here and everything she hasn’t told me.

But I can’t, so instead I say, “Con nh ? m ? . I miss watching K-dramas with you and reading next to you. Or just going grocery shopping. But I miss your food the most.”

“Come home soon, con. Mommy th ?? ng con.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

Mom never says “love” in English. Instead, she says th??ng —the first Vietnamese word I ever learned. Th??ng doesn’t just mean love, it’s a special kind of love, and the meaning floats between “sacrificial love” and “unconditional love.”

I wonder if Mom will ever say th??ng to me again if she finds out about this trip.

A soft hand lands on my shoulder. “That went well. Your mom didn’t find out.”

I snort. “Well, someone screaming ‘motherfucker!’ in Vietnamese almost tipped her off.”

She laughs. “That’s just how it is here. Chaos everywhere.”

“Do you find it hard to talk about family sometimes?” I blurt out, still reeling from the phone call. “Or find it so hard to know what to say to them?”

Lan nods. “I… never know what to talk about with my mom. All I know how to do is work hard, be there for her, and hope that’s enough.”

My heart feels heavy for Lan. I don’t know how that feels: to have to take care of someone you love, to work yourself to the bone for your family. “Sometimes, I wish I was brave enough to tell my mom what I want—to not back down when I sense that she’s angry with me. To make her understand how I feel, too. You always know what to do, Lan. You always know how to be a good daughter. I don’t.”

Lan stays quiet, her gaze avoiding mine.

“Today was the first time I’ve been back since my dad… passed.” She speaks again, her eyes misty. “It’s been years, and yet I couldn’t step foot into this market again until now. I guess in my head, I thought that if I didn’t come back, then maybe the memories of him would still be alive—that the last thing I’d remember about this place would be that I shared it with him.” She heaves the last part out with a sigh. As if it was a secret that she kept to herself.

“I’m not brave, Vivi,” she continues. “ You made me brave somehow. With you here, I felt less… alone. And for some reason, I felt the same today as I did years ago with my dad: happy .”

A gnawing feeling claws up my chest, and I try to force it down along with the lump in my throat. All this time, I’ve been going on about how Mom can’t understand me without even thinking of Lan and her grief over her dad. I almost think about living without Mom—almost, because I can’t. Can’t imagine not hearing her nagging through the phone.

“What… happened four years ago, Lan? Only if you want to tell me.”

Lan’s eyes meet mine, and because we’re mere inches apart, I can see the sadness eclipsing her irises. Her throat bobbles, and without knowing if it’s a boundary I can cross, I reach for her arm and pull her into me. Her cheek meets the crook of my neck, and she sniffles faintly against my ear.

“He was helping my mom deliver a catering order, but on the way back, he had a stroke. His health was already deteriorating, but he kept it all from us. Someone from the hospital called us that night.”

“I’m sorry, Lan.” Sniffles turn into tears, but I welcome them. “He was taken from you too soon. I’m sorry you’ve had to take care of your mom all alone. It must have been hard, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The tears roll down her cheeks, each droplet larger than the last. “It’s been really, really, really hard.”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” I choke out. “For dragging you here and being so stupid and making this whole day about me.”

She shakes her head, smiling sadly as she wipes away the tears. “No. It felt like I was doing something I like. Not working the bánh mì stall, not running errands, not sitting somewhere and trying to write. But exploring, trying new things, having fun . Being at Ch ? B ? n Thành helps me see Sài Gòn in a new light. Does that sound weird?”

“No, it doesn’t. I think it sounds like you really, really love this city.” To love your own home, I’ve realized, is something so special, and to think I could help Lan feels like a dream.

She nods. “I do.”

The crowd in the market has thinned out, yet Lan still holds on to my hand tightly as if I might let go of her. Has she noticed the way our palms feel against each other, too? The way I’m so flustered just because of her touch?

A loud boom shakes through Ch ? B ? n Thành.

I jump. “What was that?”

She laughs. “Probably rain.”

Rain? Rain doesn’t make this kind of sound.

She cocks her head. “What? Doesn’t it rain everywhere?”

“I’m from California. It’s a desert. You can fry an egg on the pavement in the summer there,” I say defensively.

From inside the market, we watch the torrential downpour. There’s something intimate about watching the rain with Lan. Just like the rain, what started as an off-chance meeting turned into a summer rain flooding my every thought.

Water pools around our feet as we near the entrance, our sandals sloshing through puddle after puddle. To say that it’s raining is an understatement. Rain in Southern California usually sounds like pit-pat . This rain is just buckets pouring from the sky, splashing onto our clothes and shoes and hair and faces.

“It’s monsoon season.”

It’s what season? I gape at her nonchalance. “How on earth are we going to make it home?”

Her eyes twinkling with mischief—a side I haven’t fully seen yet—she points at the water. “We can swim through it.”

“Did you just say swim ?” I give her an incredulous look.

“Yeah, wait here for me to get the motorbike.”

Lan returns moments later. Sài Gòn is practically submerged underwater now, brown waves flooding the streets and almost reaching up to our knees. Lan tosses me a raincoat from the motorbike’s trunk and orders me to put it on. The yellow poncho makes me look ridiculous. “Do I have to wear this?”

“Yes, unless you want to get sick.”

I pick at the poncho, swaying back and forth to check myself. I look like a Teletubby. “Can’t we just use an umbrella?”

“No!” She gives me her hand. “That’s dangerous. Hop on.”

I take her hand, my skin burning against the coolness of the rain as our arms brush past each other.

“Hold on to me tighter this time. Tighter than when we saw the kites.”

Blushing, I wrap my arms around her, and instead of simply holding on, I’m embracing her—embracing the girl who makes me burn. She maneuvers with her legs through the flood, mumbling sorry whenever water splashes onto my clothes. Soon, we reach an intersection and join the other motorbikes swimming through the current, the murky water dragging plastic bags and leftover food and plastic chairs. The rain beats down on our backs and I press closer to her, wishing to shield her from the stinging shower that threatens the softness of her skin. Around us, people tread water with their motorbikes, but the chaos of the city only intensifies. Some are rushing home, swerving past us without honking and not caring about who they’d bump into.

“Ouch!” I yelp. Something just cut me and it stings.

Lan whips her head around. “Are you okay?”

My leg throbs in pain, and a line of red trickles down my foot and inks my white socks. “Yeah, I think—I think something scratched my leg. I’m okay though, just keep going.”

Lan says nothing and we continue, swimming through the currents while I tighten my embrace. She leads us onto an unfamiliar road and stops in front of a pharmacy. “Here, let me help you get down.”

“Lan—”

Wrapping me in her arms, she gathers my shoulders and helps me wobble to the front steps of the pharmacy. “You’re not fine. I felt you hissing in pain from behind me. It’ll get infected if we don’t treat it.”

She lowers me onto the stoop by the storefront, wiping rainwater from my knees. “Wait here,” she orders, and heads for the pharmacy’s counter.

I nod, fidgeting with my hands and the sloppiness of my socks and shoes. Lan comes back carrying a first aid kit. Dropping to her knees, she wipes water off my legs with a towel. Finding it hard to stay still, I grit my teeth.

“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” I whisper. I know that she wouldn’t. Ever.

She holds my knees gingerly, tenderly, brushing feather-light touches on my goose bumps, kissing it all with her fingers. The pain dissipates, replaced by the searing heat of skin to skin—thundering heartbeats matching the drums of the monsoon. She locates the slit on my leg and gently rubs the disinfectant on it. The medicine stings, and I tighten my jaw. Lan intertwines her left hand with my right one, smoothing the lines of my palm as she works on my leg with her other hand. Outside, the thunderstorm pounds on the roof, joining the chorus of motorbikes honking and trees howling with the wind.

She places the bandage over my cut, pausing before letting her touch fall from my skin.