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Chapter Thirty-Two

VIVI

It doesn’t get worse than this, than waking up the next morning with puffy eyes and the memories of what happened the day before, when the girl who means everything to you broke your heart. When everything shattered right before your eyes, and you don’t know what to do except pick up the pieces of who you are now and try to not think about her .

And it doesn’t get worse than fiddling with my phone all day with no energy to focus in class and all I think about is Mom, then Lan, then Mom, then Lan. I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted from this trip, to learn about the Sài Gòn that Mom grew up in and to meet my favorite blogger—so how did it all go so, so wrong?

My eyes wander to the photo spread on my desk: All of Mom’s photographs are now joined by pictures me and Lan took together. Mom in front of Ch ? B ? n Thành and right next to it a selfie of me and Lan by the market. Mom sitting on a blue plastic chair on the street, in her hand a bánh mì. Me, photographed by Lan, eating Bánh Mì 98. Mom in an áo dài at a Trung Thu festival. Lan and I with the dancing lions at Trung Thu.

The noises from the street below pull me out of my thoughts, and as I stare at the Sài Gòn skyline through my window, I think about how I’ve grown so comfortable looking at it every day. How it’s so hard to imagine being back in California.

How, as I fall asleep, I realize that all of this noise, this humidity, and the people will still be here as I leave . Everything will remain the same. People will move on with their lives, and I’m the one holding on to all of it.

When sunlight hits my face and I hear Nga shuffling out of our dorm room, all I want to do is sleep even more. Sleep away all these feelings and hope everything will resolve itself by the time I wake up again. But my phone vibrates and my heart drops, my mind racing at a hundred miles per hour thinking about Lan.

But it’s not her. It’s Dad. My heart drops for a second time. “Hi, Dad—”

“Oh good, you picked up.” He sighs—which is a bad sign. Dad never sighs, and he sounds too relieved.

“Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Your mom is in Sài Gòn. Like right now.”

“ WHAT? Why?”

“She… after the phone call with you, Mom booked the first plane ticket out of California to Sài Gòn that she could.”

“I didn’t think… what I said worked, that she’d literally take my advice. She’s here to force me to come home, isn’t she?”

Dad sighs again. “No, con, I don’t think Mom’s coming to bring you home. I think she’s finally ready to come home herself.”

My heart pounds. “What do I do? Do you know where she’s going?”

“Go to her childhood home, con. This is her first time coming home. Welcome her back to her city. Show her what you love so much about Sài Gòn. Make her understand.”

“Okay. Thanks, Dad.” I hang up and text Cindy immediately.

Me : Cindy, I’m going to need you to do the biggest best friend favor I’ll ever ask of you

Cindy : and that is… (also are you feeling better?)

Me : a bit. But um, any chance you can drive a motorbike?

Cindy : thank god for travel insurance, am I right? Jk, Nga can drive you (and I will track your location to make sure you’re alive).

I breathe in and out, each breath getting shorter as we near Mom’s childhood home. I look at the state of the house, it’s the same as yesterday except duller. There’s something melancholy about it now, something so sad that just looking at it makes me want to cry.

“You can do this,” Cindy reassures me.

“Good luck, Vivi.” Nga pats my back.

I only nod. I wonder if Mom knows that I’m here—would she be happy to see me?

I don’t know if I can do this. I know I need to talk to Mom. I’ve never been surer in my life about anything else. But as I walk toward the house, my heart stops.

Mom.

Mom is in Vi ? t Nam.

Standing in front of the house.

She’s here .

“Mom?” I call out to her.

She whips her head back, and I prepare myself for anger—for Mom to yell at me and say that I’m awful and that she doesn’t want me to come back with her and that—

Strong arms envelop me, pulling me into her embrace.

My voice cracks, releasing something high-pitched and a mixture between I’m sorry and I missed you . Mom doesn’t speak at all. She just wraps me in her arms tightly and buries her head in the crook of my neck. She feels so small. All my anger and hurt dissipate and my arms find their way to her small, fragile back.

“Mommy nh ? con r ? t nhi ? u,” she says, her voice squeaking as if she’s been crying for a while.

I nod and hug her tighter. She smells like California, like a house that’s overflowing with too much junk because my parents love to hoard. She smells like home. “I’ve missed you, too, Mom.”

She releases me and touches my cheeks, studying every part of my face. “Con healthy and well. Mommy has been so worried.”

I swallow. “Why are you outside?”

She sighs, her eyes looking at the house with sadness, and I realize that, like me, Mom probably feels scared—like she doesn’t belong there anymore. “I… don’t know how to face our family. I’m scared. Scared to see their faces when they look at me. Scared to know what they think of me.”

I grab her hand, nudging us toward the door. “Mom, I’m here for you. This time, you’re not alone.”

She nods.

I knock, hearing muffled voices from the other side. Someone is shushing someone else. I knock again; this time the door clicks open, and Aunt Hi ? n’s face comes into view.

I swallow. My throat is dry. I can feel Mom shaking, her grasp loosening as she takes in her sister’s face.

“Hoa? Is that really you?” Aunt Hi ? n gapes at us, her eyes misty.

Mom lets go of my hand and runs toward Aunt Hi ? n, colliding into her sister’s body as muffled sobs fill the air. “Chi Hi ? n. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Hoa,” Aunt Hi ? n cries. “I can’t believe you’re home. I can’t believe you’re back.”

“I should have come back sooner. I should have been here for you when Má got sick. I did all that I could—all the money and medicine I can send—except actually be there for you.”

Aunt Hi ? n shakes her head. “What matters is that you’re here now. You’re home.”

As Mom and I stand outside Bà Ngo ? i’s room, hand in hand, I think about how I never believed this moment would come—that one day, Mom and I would be in Vi ? t Nam, visiting our family together. That one day, Mom would come back because of me.

Mom wipes her palm against her shirt, her shoulders visibly shaking.

“It’ll be okay, Mom. I’m here.”

We enter the dim room; the only sound is Bà Ngo ? i’s breathing.

“Ma? I’m home,” Mom whispers, her voice hoarse.

“Hoa oi, are you home?” Bà Ngo ? i calls out weakly. “Is that my Hoa? Did Hoa come back to me?”

Mom walks over to Bà Ngo ? i, still shaken, but her shoulders are higher, and she doesn’t look as scared. “Ma, I’m sorry I just came back now. I’m sorry I… left you. I’m sorry I took so long.”

Bà Ngo ? i chokes back a cry, her hand reaching for Mom. “Con, you don’t have to say sorry. You don’t have to say anything at all.”

Mom sits next to Bà Ngo ? i’s bed and holds her hand tightly, Bà Ngo ? i’s chest rising up and down as she drifts off to sleep.

“Mom, kh?ng sao ? au. Bà Ngo ? i kh?ng sao ? au,” I find myself telling her. It’s okay, Mom. Grandma’s okay. We’re okay.

Aunt Hi ? n touches my shoulder and nods toward the corridor. “Go,” she says.

Mom follows me outside, grabbing my arm and pulling me close. The walls don’t feel as suffocating anymore. Fresh air greets us outside as the humidity hovers around us. I’ve been so used to this city’s heat and humidity that I can’t recall what California’s dry heat feels like. Mom stares at the herb garden out front, carefully inspecting the leaves.

“I planted this.”

Blinking, I imagine a younger version of Mom hunched over a pile of dirt, meticulously planting these herbs—the plants are still alive, too. “Oh. Wow.”

Still inspecting the plants, she seems lost in her thoughts. I wonder what she’s thinking about. So much has happened to her in the past forty-eight hours, and in this moment, I feel guilty for snapping back at her. Dusting herself off, she gets up and turns to me. “Vivi, come here.”

I stiffen up immediately and do what she says.

The words spill out of me. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. Or said all those awful things. I should have tried to understand you more.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Mommy need to try to understand you more, con.”

“I didn’t want to disappoint you at all. I know that I shouldn’t ask, because of the pain that it causes you, but I can’t stop wondering about the past because it’s a piece of my history, too.”

She rubs her hands up and down my arms as if apologizing. “I know. I’ve hurt you very much, right?”

Tears well up again, and I can barely see her face in front of me. She tries wiping them from my cheeks, but I just let them fall. “Not as much as I probably hurt you.”

Shaking her head, Mom embraces me again and lets my head rest on her shoulder this time. “It’s been really hard for Mommy for a long time, con.”

I squeeze her hand. “I want to hear, Mom. I’m ready. You can trust me.”

This is the truth I’ve been waiting for.

She inhales sharply. “My relationship with your bà ngo ? i hasn’t always been the best. We fought. A lot. She… has the tendency to scream.”

I nod, recalling what Bà Ngo ? i had said to me when I visited her the first time—when Bà Ngo ? i screamed Mom’s name.

“Your ?ng ngo ? i die early. Your grandpa was in the South Vietnamese Army and when he went to reeducation camp, he came back nh ? ng ?? i xa l ? . Like he wasn’t my dad anymore.”

My chest tightens as I imagine Grandpa returning home to our family, the horrors he witnessed and endured. The loss of the person he used to be because the war took it from him.

From all of us.

“It must have been so hard,” I say, sniffling. “How did you leave?”

She sighs. “There was a boy.”

My heart twists. I already know where this is going. “Was he your first love?” It’s weird imagining Mom also in love in Vi ? t Nam, falling for someone in this city under this very sky.

“He was. And I wanted to leave with him—look toward a place where I could find hope and survive. Hope because I’d find a job and send money back home. Hope that someday, I’d bring my mother and sister across the ocean, too. Your grandma begged me not to go—to not be so foolish and follow a boy to somewhere so far away from home. But I was so young, and so I ended up getting on that boat with the boy.”

“What… happened to him?”

She gulped. “He left me the moment we got to Hong Kong. Married another woman. It’s shameful, isn’t it? For me to leave everything I had here and follow him.”

“Oh.” So Mom was at sea and came to the United States all by herself. I can’t imagine that, can’t imagine all the trauma and hurt she had to endure. “I don’t think it’s shameful, Mom. You were young and lost, and yet you still kept going. And now I’m here, alive and in this world because of you.”

I squeeze her, feeling her slumped shoulders against mine.

“To this day, I… I can sometimes see those memories in my nightmares—and the places I never want to revisit. I thought I could protect you by not bringing you here, by shielding you away from this country and everything that it has taken from me. But a lot of it was… shame, too, shame that I left my family for a boy. Shame that I spent so many years alone in America, sleeping in a nail salon by myself.”

I imagine a younger Mom running through this very yard, chasing her sister, and walking through the same roads that I have taken. Holding her tightly, I think about her on a small boat, confused and lost. I think about her alone in California, coming home with blisters and crying because she just wants to go home.

“Why didn’t you tell me all of this? Why did you keep Vi ? t Nam from me?”

She sighs. “Because to me, for a long time—and still now—Vi ? t Nam has always been full of hurt, full of sadness. It was a dangerous place when I grew up, and I wanted to protect you. I know I should have told you a long, long time ago, should have let my sister and mother know about you—but after running away from home like that, I just didn’t know how to tell them anything except wishing them well every time I wire them money. I was willing to live like that—to never come home again. Until you, con, pushed me to. I didn’t know how much I’ve missed this city until I was home.”

“Do you still feel the same, now that you’re here? That everything is dangerous, and you want to leave again?”

She shakes her head. “No, only a little bit. This city has changed a lot. I have changed a lot. Even you, con, you’ve grown so much these past few months.”

“I… really love Sài Gòn, Mom.”

She nods. “I know, con, and you’ve always deserved to be here, to be with your family, and to know about Vi ? t Nam.”