Tuan 1979

The Versailles Arms apartments were new. That much Tuấn could tell. The
white paint smelled fresh. The rooms had a crispness of touch to them, no
dust, no staleness. When they moved in—after living at the church, the
Minhs’, the motel, and the cha xứ’s house—everyone else was moving in as
well. Rows of cars idled outside. One car’s radio was tuned in to what
sounded like a sports game, though Tuấn couldn’t understand any of it and
couldn’t guess what was being played, either. It all reminded him of the motel
they’d stayed at, where people moved in and out of rooms and sat in their cars
waiting for someone to come out and meet them, or just sat with their
windows down, smoking or eating hamburgers. Except here everyone looked
like they meant to stay. That was the difference.
As men brought in boxes, women unpacked them. Tuấn and his family
had only one suitcase and a few plastic bags of things they’d accumulated
since getting here: a new pair of shoes for him, Styrofoam cups of noodles, a
blanket with baby animals on it for Bình. They had so little. His mother must
have seen him noticing, because she placed her hand on his shoulder.
“We won’t be here long anyway,” she said.
“We won’t?” He looked up. He couldn’t read her face. What she felt—for
she must have felt something—was undetectable. She had been like that since
they left Vietnam, a silent mother. Sometimes she cried, but most of the time
she was quiet and her face stayed serious.
“Yes,” she said. “Once your father comes, we’ll move someplace else.” She
nudged him forward and he walked up the steps.
“Where?” “Garden District, maybe, with a fence and a garden.” She smirked when
she said that, and he knew everything was going to be fine then. Sure of it.

Versailles was built on the eastern outskirts of New Orleans, across the
Industrial Canal, where the tall buildings were replaced by swampland. Gated
by a chain-link fence on the front and flush against a bayou in the back,
Versailles held ten apartment buildings, each with two homes, one on top of
the other. The buildings dotted the sides of an unpaved road that ran through
the middle of Versailles until it ended at the water.
For weeks, they didn’t unpack. Everything stayed in their suitcase. It made
Tuấn uneasy. None of this belonged to them; they had to be careful not to
break anything, dirty the carpet, mark the walls—it was not theirs. His
mother continued sending tapes to their father. They sat on the floor in front
of the cassette recorder, talking into it as the spokes spun. She ended each
message, “See you soon,” and Tuấn echoed: “See you soon, cha!” She’d tuck
them in after, and, though he knew it was impossible, he heard his voice
bouncing off the blank white walls: “See you…soon…cha!”
It wasn’t until summer that his mother started decorating. From the
church, they got a used couch and an old dinner table and a painting of a
moss-covered tree. One day, Tuấn’s mother thought flowers would be nice.
Saying that, she emptied a pickle jar into a bowl and rinsed it out.
“Something nice,” she said.
“What if cha came home and there was nothing nice!” Tuấn added.
She smiled.
Together, the three of them wandered the banks of the bayou, just outside
their apartment since they were the last building in Versailles, searching for
flowers. From a distance, as she held on to Baby Bình, Tuấn thought his
mother looked younger, brighter, and his brother looked like a perfect toy,
more of a doll than a real boy. He bet she picked flowers when she was a little
girl, too, and made a note to ask her later. He picked up a fist full of the
brightest ones he could find and ran up to her. She giggled and shook her head. She didn’t like the yellow ones. The blues, she liked, and the purples
and the whites, too. When they gathered a good bunch (even Bình managed
to pluck a baby violet), they walked back inside. She threw the flowers in the
jar and started on dinner.
Just then, someone knocked. They stopped what they were doing and eyed
the door. All this time, they had lived alone. And when Tuấn thought about it,
no one had ever knocked on their door before; no one visited. Who could it
be? His mother cleared her throat and turned off the stove. She wiped her
hands on a towel. Tuấn followed after. Maybe someone had seen them
plucking flowers and they weren’t supposed to. What if they were in trouble?
The idea flashed in his mind. He wasn’t so sure about opening the door. He
wanted to tell his mother to stop, but her hand twisted the knob and the door
popped open.
An old woman’s weathered face greeted him when it did. He heard the
sticky movement of her lips as she moved them into a smile. Slowly she
shuffled in. In one hand, she held a cane and in the other, a box wrapped in
shiny red paper. Tuấn watched in amazement. That such an ancient woman
could do all of this without a cry for help caught his attention. She reminded
him of an elderly water buffalo: her large flaring nostrils, the frowning lips, a
lumbering gait.
“You must be Hương,” the old woman said.
“Yes,” his mother replied, “I’m Hương.” She, too, seemed mesmerized.
She wiped her hands on the towel again, though they were already clean and
dry. Her mouth opened to say something but she was interrupted.
“Bùi Thị Minh Giang,” the old woman said. “Or how they say it here,
Giang Bùi, from downstairs,” she added. She handed his mother the box.
“Almond cookies,” she said. “If you get the cà phê ready, we can get started
on those!”
Tuấn sat with them while they talked about themselves (she was the wife
of a businessman who died during the war) and New Orleans (“The coffee
here is good, isn’t it?”) and Versailles (“Can you believe they call this place
Versailles?”). At one point he stopped paying attention and she left. They never invited her back, but she returned anyway. The next day before
dinner and then the next and then the next, until Bà Giang’s visits became so
expected, a part of their regular lives, Tuấn couldn’t imagine a day without
them or her playful teasing.
At some point during her time there, she’d poke his arm or his belly and
he’d jerk his body back. “You’re getting so big now!” she’d say. “Chubby
hands, chubby arms, and that tummy. As fat as an American!”
At the word American, Tuấn would spring up on his chair.
“I’m not American!” he would say, reciting from memory what they taught
him in school. “I am người Việt Nam. My father teaches the great and
honorable literature of our nation. My mother is the daughter of our beautiful
countryside.”
At the end of his speech, they would clap and he would bow.
“Good boy!” they’d cheer.
“My boy,” his mother would say.
He’d blush. His whole body would feel warm and loved. It almost felt like
home, or a type of home.

Because of her age, Bà Giang didn’t work, or she couldn’t find work. To make
money she took in the children of Versailles, the ones who needed
supervision when their parents were out.
Besides Tuấn and Bình, there were three other kids. Trúc was a girl and
nine and the oldest. She didn’t like watching TV—what Bà Giang told them
to do most days—because it rotted the brain and made you stupid; she
watched anyway. Ngọc was the second oldest, a skinny boy with long legs and
a monkey’s laugh. Then there was Đinh-Fredric, a boy of seven—two years
older than Tuấn—who was lai, which meant his dad wasn’t người Việt but no
one knew what he was, either. It was why he had two names, one Vietnamese,
another from somewhere else, or at least this was what Bà Giang told Tuấn’s mother.

Đinh-Fredric never sat with them for Sesame Street or The Electric
Company or Rocky and Bullwinkle. Instead, he stayed in Bà Giang’s room
with the door closed. What he did in there no one knew.
Once, during a commercial break, Trúc told them Đinh-Fredric wasn’t
người Việt at all: he was American, one-hundred-and-ten percent.
“Listen to his name,” she said. “It doesn’t even sound like người Việt.
What kind of name is Fredric?” Ngọc nodded; what kind of name was
Fredric?
Trúc continued, “Why does he stay by himself? He’s planning something
in there, right now. Against us! My dad says Americans are bad, bad, bad
people, and my dad is always right.” Tuấn tried to remember if his dad said
anything about Americans or America. Before they left, he had talked about
Australia and France. “Australians are friendly,” Tuấn remembered him
telling his mother when they thought he was asleep. “The French, at least we
know some French.” They never told him they were leaving, but he pieced it
all together from their late-night conversations. The only shock was when they
actually did, and, after that, the fact that his dad didn’t come along.
“What makes them so bad?” Ngọc asked.
Trúc let out an angry puff of air. “What makes them so bad?” She leaned
forward. “Remember the boat?”
Ngọc nodded. Tuấn remembered the boat, too, though it wasn’t the same
ones Ngọc or Trúc were on. They were all on different boats. He remembered
his dad not being there and the waves and the sick feeling in his stomach like
there was too much water in there. He remembered his mother telling him to
go to sleep, always telling him to sleep, even if he just woke up. And when he
asked where they were going, she just shook her head as if “No” was a place.
“The Americans made you do that,” Trúc said. “They took your home.
They made you get on that boat. And now your mom cooks their meals, your
dad cleans their houses, even if he used to be top boss, and they both come
home smelly. The Americans are the reason for everything bad that has ever
happened. Do you understand?”
Ngọc nodded.
“What about you?” She looked at Tuấn pointedly. “Do you understand?” “I don’t know,” he mumbled. All this talk confused him. He wanted to be
alone and think it all through.
“What did you say?”
“Dạ, I said dạ.”
For lunch, Bà Giang gave them store-bought cupcakes, her favorite. They
were made of chocolate and had cream in the middle. Each plastic packet had
two. As Trúc and Ngọc returned to the TV, Tuấn paused at the hallway
leading to Bà Giang’s room. Who was Đinh-Fredric? Could Trúc be right?
Was he bad? Was he an American? It didn’t seem likely. After all, there were
no Americans in Versailles. Everyone was người Việt. It was a rule: you had
to be người Việt to stay in Versailles.
Tuấn wrapped the second of his cupcakes in a paper towel and tiptoed
down the hall. Outside the room, he tapped on the door. When no one
answered, he tried again, whispering into the keyhole, “Đinh. Đinh-Freerock.”
To Tuấn, Đinh-Fredric was a ghost. He’d only ever seen glimpses of the
boy, a bright shirt running through the halls. He didn’t have any hair or a head
or eyes or nose or body. He was just a shirt. At times, Tuấn wasn’t even sure
Đinh-Fredric existed. He was an idea, not a boy. “Đinh!” he whispered
louder.
The door opened slightly and a smell like old perfume, stale but flowery,
sprang forth. Between the door and its frame, Tuấn saw eyes gazing at him.
“Bánh!” Tuấn unwrapped the paper towel. The cupcake was falling apart
and the white filling oozed out. Tuấn wiped a hand on his shirt. “It’s still good
even though it doesn’t look like it. You can have it if you want.”
The boy stared back. His eyes traveled down to Tuấn’s bare feet then back
to his face. The door squeaked nervously as it moved back and forth.
“What are you doing?” Trúc interrupted. Tuấn hadn’t even heard her
coming. Trúc crossed her arms. She looked at Tuấn then at Đinh-Fredric then
back at Tuấn and her eyes lit up. “Are you American, too, Tuấn?” she asked,
a smirk sprouting on her face.
“No!” Tuấn exclaimed. “No! I’m người Việt. I’m người Việt! My father…
He…” He all of a sudden forgot what to say. The words were in his head, but they were in the wrong order. Trúc’s eyes stared down at him and made him
feel like hiding. He dropped the cupcake and ran back to the television, where
Ngọc sat, not even hiding his eagerness. The TV volume was on low.
“Did you see him? Did you see the American?” he asked.
Tuấn remembered the shadow figure in the dark, its thinness and
smallness. He could tell Đinh-Fredric’s skin was dark, darker than his own.
His hair was short, and to Tuấn’s surprise, stiff-looking and curly. ĐinhFredric wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t a monster. He was just a boy.
The bedroom door opened and closed with a quick yet noticeable squeak
and clap. Tuấn stretched his neck to see if Đinh had come out. The hallway
was empty and the cupcake was gone. Tuấn imagined Đinh in the room,
licking the sweetness from the paper towel happily. It made Tuấn smile. They
would be friends. Good friends.
“Nothing,” Tuấn said to Ngọc. “I saw nothing.”